The challenge isn't just about creating more jobs – it's about ensuring the jobs available support young people's health and long-term prospects.
Our analysis of five years of labour market data reveals a troubling pattern. The sectors that employ the highest concentrations of young workers, retail, hospitality, and health and social care, are the same sectors driving the highest rates of workers moving into long-term sickness and economic inactivity.
Nearly half of all young workers are concentrated in just three sectors: wholesale and retail (23%), accommodation and food services (11%), and health and social work (12%). These aren’t just entry-level jobs. They’re jobs characterised by insecure hours, unpredictable schedules, and working conditions that can create or worsen health problems, both physical and mental. Research has shown that young adults on zero-hours contracts are at higher risk of poor mental health than those in stable employment.
The numbers are telling. Accommodation and food services has the highest rate of workers becoming economically inactive due to ill-health of any sector. 17 per thousand workers compared to an average of seven across all industries. Meanwhile, elementary occupations, caring roles, and sales positions – where young people are heavily over-represented – account for the largest volumes of people falling out of work due to sickness.
Research challenges that concept head-on, pointing instead to economic precarity, insecure hours and insufficient income as key drivers of the mental health crisis among young people today. When over a quarter of 20 to 24-year-olds have insecure working arrangements, and nearly three in ten young employees report multiple negative aspects of job quality, we’re not looking at a generational problem – we’re looking at a jobs problem.
The government’s Youth Guarantee presents an opportunity to break this cycle. But only if it prioritises job quality alongside job quantity. Without improvements to working conditions in frontline sectors, we risk supporting young people into roles that don’t last and don’t provide meaningful opportunity. The evidence on ‘scarring’ is clear – insecure work when you’re young doesn’t just affect you now, it follows you through your working life.
The evidence from our own programmes shows what’s possible. When employers give shift workers more choice, input and control over their working patterns, sickness absence and staff turnover fall significantly while wellbeing and work-life balance improve. But many employers need support to make these changes, facing barriers from procurement models to operational constraints to cultural resistance.
The path forward requires collaboration between government, employers and unions. Young people deserve more than just any job. They deserve good jobs that support their health, provide stable income and offer a genuine route to economic security. With the right policy framework and sector-level agreements, we can make this happen.
Published April 2026
By Tess Lanning, Director of Programmes
Nearly one million young people in the UK are currently not in education, employment or training – and the numbers leaving work due to mental ill-health are rising sharply. Our new analysis reveals a troubling pattern. The sectors where young people are most concentrated are the same ones seeing the highest rates of workers becoming economically inactive due to long-term sickness.
The evidence is clear
In wholesale and retail, food and accommodation, and health and social care – the sectors employing the most young workers – we’re seeing concerning flows into economic inactivity. In food and accommodation alone, an estimated 17 out of every thousand workers will become economically inactive due to ill health.
This isn’t coincidence. These sectors share common characteristics: low pay and job insecurity. And the evidence increasingly links these working conditions to rising mental distress and economic inactivity among young people.
While most workers experiencing long-term sickness are older, over a quarter are under 40. The concentration of young workers in sectors associated with health problems adds to mounting evidence about the long-term ‘scarring’ effect of poor quality work – particularly job insecurity – on young people’s employment, earnings and health outcomes.
Creating good jobs, not just jobs
The Government’s Youth Guarantee aims to create 350,000 new opportunities for unemployed young people. But our research shows that job creation alone isn’t the solution – we need to focus on job quality.
When workers cycle back into inactivity from frontline sectors, their hours drop dramatically from an average of 21 per week to just 8.5 hours. The economic case for change is compelling: supporting even half of young workers at risk of inactivity to sustain their working hours would generate over half a billion pounds in economic output annually, and provide at least £6,500 in additional wages for each young person.
What needs to happen
Working with the TUC, we’re calling on the Milburn Review (the Independent Report into Young People and Work) to urgently examine how to improve the quality of frontline work through better job design.
The Employment Rights Act offers a vital opportunity to strengthen job security and flexible working rights. But passing legislation is only the first step – we need targeted support for effective implementation in the sectors where young people need it most.
This means working in partnership with employers in wholesale and retail, food and accommodation, and health and social care to redesign jobs that offer young workers stability, security and genuine flexibility. Because when young people have access to good quality work, everyone benefits: workers, employers and the economy.
With thanks to the Trades Union Congress (The TUC) for supporting this research, and to Paul Bivand for the analysis.
Published April 2026
By Tess Lanning, Director of Programmes
The logistics sector is the backbone of the UK economy. It keeps food on our shelves, medicines in our hospitals and parcels on our doorsteps. It contributes £170 billion to the UK economy and employs up to 2.7 million people nationwide, including more than 250,000 in London alone.
But behind this economic powerhouse sits a workforce under pressure – and a sector grappling with deep, structural challenges. An ageing workforce, persistent skills gaps, rising sickness levels and difficulties attracting younger and more diverse workers are creating a perfect storm.
For years, the focus has been on training and recruitment campaigns to attract new workers to the most acute skill gap areas such as lorry drivers. This is valuable and necessary – but it is not enough. Unless we tackle the way work is actually designed, scheduled and experienced on the ground, the workforce crisis in logistics will persist. Our latest report reveals why the logistics sector cannot afford to ignore job design any longer.
The evidence from across the sector is clear. Long and antisocial hours, high levels of job insecurity, unpredictable shift patterns and limited control over working time are forcing people out of the sector. Logistics has the highest proportion of workers reporting job insecurity (39%), poor work life balance (32%) and low autonomy (40%) of any sector.
These conditions are not just inconvenient – they are harmful. They contribute directly to:
And crucially, these patterns make logistics unattractive to the very groups the sector urgently needs to reach: women, young people, and those with caring responsibilities. Notably, only 2% of HGV drivers are female, and just 1.6% are under 24.
This is not a “nice to fix” problem. It’s a system wide risk.
The sector is undergoing rapid technological change. Automation, real-time route planning and predictive analytics should offer opportunities to consider people’s preferences in the scheduling process while still meeting operational needs.
But too often, technology is used to optimise for speed, not for workers. In practice, digital scheduling tools have increased pressure, surveillance and time chasing across long haul, warehousing and ‘last mile’ roles.
Unless tech is used intentionally to give workers more voice and more stability, it risks entrenching the very challenges it could help solve.
New employment legislation on flexible working and fair scheduling gives workers stronger rights to request control over their working patterns. Employers must now consult before rejecting a request and will soon need to provide fair advance notice and compensation for cancelled shifts.
The direction of travel is clear: employers are being expected to end cultures of excessive hours and unpredictable scheduling.
And younger workers – the pipeline the sector desperately needs – increasingly expect diversity, wellbeing and flexibility from any employer they consider.
Logistics companies that fail to modernise work design risk being left behind.
Some logistics employers are beginning to show what healthy job design could look like.
ACS Clothing Ltd has adopted secure contracts, predictable scheduling and worker-centred planning for warehouse staff – and seen improvements in retention, stability and trust as a result.
Wincanton has introduced part time and flexible options in its warehouses, including a “People Campus” model that has widened access to diverse talent and improved ‘pick accuracy’ by 20%.
DHL has enabled more part time and job share options for older drivers nearing retirement, by promoting healthy work patterns and incorporating their preferences into the route-planning process.
But innovation is still sporadic. For driving roles in particular, there is an urgent need for experimentation that grapples with the realities of mobile workers’ lives beyond work.
As well as these examples, public bus companies, social care providers and infrastructure teams all schedule people across geographies and shifts. And many have already begun modernising rostering. Key lessons for the sector include:
These approaches have led to reductions in sickness, improved retention, stronger wellbeing and better service delivery.
The report argues for a coordinated cross-sector approach to support uptake of this good practice. It calls on the government to expand the Modern Industrial Strategy to cover the sector – bringing together industry leadership, unions and technology providers to tackle workforce issues and sickness through a dual focus on improvements in performance and job quality.
Published March 2026
By Clare McNeil, Timewise CEO, and Tess Lanning, Director of Programmes
The Government has set out a welcome ambition to support full employment in the UK – with a big focus on tackling the large rise in the number of people who are ‘economically inactive’ due to ill-health.
Increasing the number of jobs that offer people the flexibility to manage their health conditions is critical to this agenda: surveys show that the majority of health and disability benefit claimants want to work in part-time, flexible roles, with the option of working from home.
In practice, however, this Timewise report demonstrates the huge mismatch between the work people say they want to do and the work they are most likely to do – with job quality issues in frontline sectors creating a revolving door of economic inactivity.
Our analysis shows the realities of where people with health conditions end up working, and why many struggle to stay in employment. The sectors with the highest long-term sickness rates are retail, transport, hospitality, health and care, followed by construction, manufacturing and education.
Original Timewise analysis shows that:
Without action to increase schedule flexibility and control for workers in these sectors, the government’s return on investment in back-to-work support for the formerly inactive long-term sick will be disappointing.
We call for a new industrial strategy for good jobs, focused on improving job quality and performance in the ‘everyday’ economy where most people work, starting with three central reforms:
Successive government administrations have neglected issues of job quality in frontline sectors. New rights due to come into force will tackle some of the worst practices associated with zero- and low-hours contracts, including short term notice and cancellations to shifts. A broader industrial strategy for good jobs would signal a more ambitious approach that ensures jobs support employee health and wellbeing. In doing so, it wouldn’t just help people back into work, it would ensure they can stay in work and thrive.
Published September 2025
By Tess Lanning, Director of Programmes
The next 12-18 months present a critical opportunity to improve employment outcomes for young people, as the government introduces a range of initiatives to tackle a rise in worklessness and insecurity.
As well as an increase in the age young people will be able to claim health-related benefits, this includes initiatives to improve the quality of jobs available. A new Youth Guarantee commits to providing decent training, apprenticeship and job opportunities for 18 to 21 year olds, while the Employment Rights Bill seeks to tackle high levels of low pay and insecurity in the economy.
Job insecurity disproportionately affects young people. Government statistics show that one in eight young workers are on a zero-hour contract, compared to less than one in 40 older workers, and young people are more likely to work volatile and variable work schedule patterns. Research has shown this is not only bad for early career job prospects – but can have a lifelong negative impact on employment, earnings and health outcomes (see Paul Gregg’s 2024 thought paper on future policy and Wen-Gui Han’s research article in to the effects of employment patterns on health in the US).
Government action to tackle these issues is therefore to be welcomed. But will employers engage with these initiatives? And if so, will young people see the benefits?
In June 2025, Timewise and Youth Futures Foundation gathered with employers from diverse sectors to find out.
Employers highlighted the focus on securing employees that can ‘hit the ground running’ in the context of rising financial pressures, combined with a reliance on tried-and-tested recruitment, selection and induction methods that favour older and more experienced workers.
Critically, they felt that there was a mismatch between dominant workplace cultures and the values, needs and expectations of younger workers – particularly in frontline sectors, where employers were finding it difficult to provide greater stability, security and flexibility at work. Many were struggling with skills gaps and vacancies as a result.
Employers had ideas for how to tackle these issues – from changes to hiring practices, management training, and more visible information about pay, progression and flexible working policies, to the creation of employee forums to co-design and support changes that improve long-term employment and health prospects for young people.
But they also highlighted the need for more support and evidence to inform good practice – particularly on issues affecting job security, such as scheduling practices and shift patterns. Without this, the new legislation may fail to hit the mark for young people.
Get in touch to understand how you can implement or inform good practice in these areas: info@timewise.co.uk
Published July 2025
Access to part-time and flexible working is highly valued and far more easily available to those in office based and higher earning jobs. Site-based and shift-based workers, such as medical staff, transport workers, nurses, cleaners, retail assistants and construction workers, who all make up our everyday economy, typically have little or no flexibility in their roles, resulting in a ‘two-tier workforce’.
In partnership with abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, we set out to understand the potential for improving access to quality flexible work in four sectors that have a high proportion of shift and site-based work. Our research focused on frontline employees’ autonomy and control over the hours they work, and when and where they work, in health and care, retail, construction, and transport and logistics. We chose to focus on these sectors for the following reasons:
These four industries make up more than a third of UK employee jobs, so provided a representative test of whether and how the new legislation will improve work-life balance for site-based and shift-based workers.
We engaged with employers, workers, experts and sector representatives over 12 months, starting with in-depth industry research. This included a review of literature and interviews with HR and senior operational leads across the four sectors.
This was to understand:
Then we further tested and refined our findings with sector stakeholders to develop practical strategies to increase the adoption of flexible and secure work in their industries, taking into account the impact for employers, sector bodies and government.
We did this through a number of roundtable discussions with employers, trade unions and sector bodies, chaired by sector leaders including Danny Mortimer, Chief Executive of NHS Employers; Helen Dickinson OBE, Chief Executive of the British Retail Consortium; Kim Sides, Executive Director of BAM Construction; and Kevin Green, Chief People Officer at First Bus and Timewise Chair, as well as focus groups with lower-income workers in site-based roles.
It was clear that a different set of principles and ways of talking about how work is designed is needed to encourage frontline employers to be able to change the way that rosters and shift patterns are created. Our ‘Shift-Life Balance Model’ recognises that it’s key to understand the size and volume of work first of all, then consider employees’ input into their schedule, fair notice of shift patterns as well as regular work patterns.
A common vision for secure and flexible work in frontline sectors
Our engagement with employers, sector bodies and workers revealed that, with the right sectoral strategies, incentives and support, is it possible to implement flexible and secure work in frontline sectors of the economy. Insights from the industry panels suggested three building blocks for making progress on this good practice vision:
Whilst there are a few examples of excellent practice, there is still a long way to go to establish secure and flexible working cultures more broadly. Workers are concerned about flexibility that favours employers, but doesn’t give them any input, control or security themselves.
![Worker voices: Quote 1, They think that they give you flexibility then the company will get out of control. A domino effect. Quote 2, I wouldn't be brave enough to ask [for flexible working] for fear it might damage my career.](https://timewise.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Industry-Leaders-Infographic-worker-voices.jpg)
Our research revealed some complex barriers to realising flexible and predictable working models, including:
The core challenge is to drive the good practice by a small number of individual organisations towards a more cross-sector approach, mainstreaming predictable and flexible working cultures across industries.
Our research has shown that a stronger statutory framework alone will not produce the workplace culture, business and operational shifts needed to tackle ‘one-sided flexibility’ in favour of employers, particularly for those in shift or site-based roles in frontline sectors. We have identified two key weaknesses (detailed in the report) and believe that a sector-based approach is essential for real change to take place.
We have established a coalition of leading employers, sector bodies and union representatives who are calling for government to work in partnership with industry and workers to ensure legislative proposals in the Employment Rights Bill can be successfully implemented.
This is urgently needed to give workers in the ‘everyday economy’ greater control and predictability and to realise the government’s wider goals on workforce participation, reducing economic inactivity and achieving inclusive economic growth.
Four ‘sector guides’ are published alongside this report offering sector-specific recommendations for employers and sector bodies on improving access to flexible and predictable work for frontline employees.
Published January 2025
Despite being a critically important sector for the UK’s economy and society, childcare providers are struggling to recruit and retain staff. Delivering good quality early childhood education and care is key to enabling parents to work and contribute to economic growth, yet staff are facing longer hours and lower pay than comparable occupations for what can be more emotionally and physically demanding work.
This is not sustainable and action must be taken to improve staff satisfaction and to make those working in early years education feel more valued and supported. The pressure on the sector will only increase further as the government rolls out the funded childcare entitlement expansion over the next year, forecasting that an additional 35,000 new places for zero to two-year olds will be needed by September 2025.
The Timewise Childcare Pioneers project explored how proactive flexible working cultures could improve staff wellbeing and engagement and attract a more diverse pool of candidates – such as older workers and those with caring and health responsibilities.
We worked with the Early Years Alliance, representing 14,00 members, and the London Early Years Foundation, representing 40 nurseries, to explore the role improved flexible working could play in tackling the current workforce crisis facing the sector, and to understand what improvements are possible without compromising the quality of education and care that meets the needs of parent and children.
Then we designed and delivered a set of activities and tools to support nurseries to be more consistent in their approach to flexible working, and to help them to consider and trial new approaches to increase the availability of quality flexible work.
Our thanks to JPMorganChase and Trust for London for supporting this project.
Our initial diagnostic work found that part-time and flexible working is relatively common in childcare provider settings, and steps had been taken by both nursery providers to improve the information and support available to nursery managers to help them respond to flexible working requests fairly and consistently. However, staff felt that these arrangements were sometimes rationed, and their requests were not always seen as significant. They also felt that many managers set shift patterns without their input, and organisational needs were considered above staff needs, leaving them feeling less valued and less able to balance work and life commitments.
Head office staff and nursery managers highlighted that flexible working could make it harder to meet statutory staff-child ratios, recommended training standards, parents’ needs for flexible care, and provide continuity of care for the children. Managers are under pressure to juggle all these factors when setting schedules and are concerned that having more part-time staff and enabling flexible working patterns for some individuals would negatively impact others’ workloads.
“It’s really difficult because everything that we do is planned around ratios. And if you’ve already got a certain number of children and you’ve hit your maximum number of children with the staff that you’ve got, being flexible isn’t always possible.”
Nursery manager
“Flexible work works better in some types of settings than others. It depends very much on types of funding and types of hours parents need… More affluent areas means less availability of the 15 hour entitlement for two-year-olds, with an increasing focus on parents working three long days a week and wanting Monday and Friday off. Staff say Tuesday to Thursday are very mixed days and then Friday is half empty and Monday mixed. This has particular implications [for nurseries] as often the parents who want this have babies, and baby care needs high ratios and consistent care. Nannies and grandparents are also in the mix in different proportions in different settings.”
Director, nursery group
We found that leaders, managers and staff in nursery settings were keen to make improvements to their flexible working offering to help retain and attract staff, provided operational challenges could be overcome. With limited capacity to pilot new approaches due to high workloads and staff shortages, our project focused on improving the confidence, skills and knowledge gaps of nursery managers with a set of resources and tools.
The project showed that it is possible to improve flexible working in the childcare sector, and that this can be one part of a solution to current workforce challenges. However, it also highlighted the need for practical support to help employers implement changes in a sector where funding constraints and acute staff shortages are limiting the capacity for innovation.
If flexible working is to be adopted more widely across the sector, it is clear that concerted action is needed at both local and national level.
How to attract and retain talent through enhanced flexibility for the workforce
Published November 2024
By Dr Sarah Dauncey, Head of Partnerships and Insight, Timewise
Occupational segregation is a distinctive feature of the UK’s labour market and a driver of persistent inequality, in income and more widely in health. Workers from black and minoritised ethnic groups are overly represented in sectors where site-based, insecure and lower-paid work is prevalent. People from minoritised groups are also more likely to have a higher risk of developing long-term health conditions, which can affect people’s ability to work – especially in site-based and more physical roles. The pandemic exposed the health inequity arising from this, with minoritised ethnic groups disproportionately impacted because of the increased likelihood of being a frontline worker without the option to work from home.
These patterns are too often replicated within organisations, with people from minoritised ethnic groups overrepresented in lower-paid, site-based roles and functions like security, cleaning, catering and caretaking which typically have more limited access to flexible options. Where an organisational focus is on hybrid as a flexible option, disparities are intensified. Further, within their workplaces, workers from minoritised ethnicities can experience a sense of precarity or inferiority that restricts their confidence to challenge decision-makers and request reforms to conditions or working patterns for fear of losing their job.
This means that workers from black and minoritised communities are overall less likely to make the most of the workplace benefits that support better health. This includes the improved work-life balance that comes from better autonomy and flexibility. Unhealthy working conditions contribute to ill-health, and ill-health restricts people’s ability to work, creating a cycle that is increasingly difficult to overcome in the context of the rising cost of living.
It’s in the context of this structural inequality that Runnymede and Timewise established a partnership, with the support of Impact on Urban Health. We wanted to better understand the relationship between flexible working and organisational approaches to equality, diversity and inclusion, and how site-based workers from black and minoritised ethnic backgrounds perceive and experience flexible working.
More specifically, we wanted to find out how new ways of working supported or thwarted a sense of inclusion and belonging. This involved us speaking with two stakeholder groups in participating organisations, leaders of site-site based teams and their employees. We took an action-oriented approach to our research, ensuring that our insights drove meaningful change in participating organisations to address processes of exclusion.
The recent racist rioting, driven by a combination of routine, normalised discrimination – heated-up over recent years by mainstream politicians and media – has raised the stakes of our research and its implications for both workers and organisations. Our interviews were undertaken early in 2024. We heard workers’ sense of fear, their reluctance to ‘rock the boat’ and ask for working patterns that might challenge ‘ideal worker’ (i.e. white and male) stereotypes. People who have experienced, or are experiencing, racial trauma invariably have a different set of expectations about their level of input and control over their working pattern.
During the riots, we read harrowing accounts in the mainstream media of people facing physical and verbal threats because of their skin colour or religion, instilling fear among people from black and ethnic minorities across the country. While we welcomed hearing about employers who led with empathy and offered increased protections to their employees, including the opportunity to work from home if they were able to, we were mindful of the risks that site-based workers had to face. Yet again, people from black and ethnic backgrounds who worked in jobs with fixed locations faced greater exposure, this time, not to disease but to an outbreak of violent racism.
This disparity once again highlights the urgent need for employers of site-based staff to think both strategically and creatively about flexible options and how they can be used to value employees and provide work-life support. Our research shows how critically important it is for employers to be pro-active here, talking openly – to all – about available flexible options. Signposting them rather than expecting employees to have the confidence to ask for them.
Our study uncovered a complex of factors that posed barriers to site-based employees accessing flexible options. These broadly fall into three categories: operational, managerial and cultural. We found that employees’ race and ethnicity shaped their workplace interactions and expectations around working patterns and level of empowerment to pursue change. Here’s a summary of some of the main barriers that we identified.
These barriers, contributing to a diminished sense of autonomy, gave rise to frustration and personal stress among some employees – impacting on their sense of wellbeing and work-life balance. Moreover, participants recognised the connections between input and control over ways of working and organisational benefits, not just personal ones. They spoke of the gains that would flow from feeling trusted and more autonomous and empowered, such as higher levels of commitment and productivity.
Leaders participating in the research recognised the potential of flexible working to support inclusion priorities but were alert to the realities on the ground and the effect of variations in managers’ attitudes and approaches. They were aware of a disconnect between policy and practice leading to disparities. Organisational values and commitments weren’t being evenly role modelled and applied by managers.
So, what are the solutions to help employers navigate these challenges, improve their working cultures and deliver on equity and inclusion?
While localised initiatives need to be tailored and based on insights and measurement, we’re pleased to share some general insights from our research to drive meaningful organisation-wide action to address workplace inequalities and call out processes of exclusion.
We’re aware that further research is needed to deepen understanding of the complexity of the challenges facing minoritised ethnic workers over accessing flexible working options. The employers who partnered with us showed bravery and commitment to tackling systemic, structural and cultural challenges. They have sustained work ahead to deliver change, but a clear sense of where they’re heading and a route to get there with accountability in place. We’re delighted to say our peer researchers have now become pivotal to holding their organisations to account on delivery equity in access to flexible options, and ultimately better health.
Published November 2024
The pandemic amplified existing labour market inequalities in access to flexible working and we’re still reeling from the effects of this, especially in the context of health. While half of working adults were able to work from home at times during the pandemic, others weren’t given this option due to the location-based nature of their work.
The reality of a two-tier workforce – the ‘flexible haves and have nots’ – became starkly apparent along with the implications for worker health and wellbeing.
Emerging from the pandemic, workers given home-based options have expressed a strong interest in maintaining them. Many employers have responded to this demand by developing hybrid policies and practice, recognising its value for attraction and retention. Yet there’s been limited coordinated action to redress workplace inequalities by investing in innovation and design to organise work differently for frontline and site-based employees.
So, supported by Impact on Urban Health, Timewise joined with the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) and three trailblazing employers – Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Sir Robert McAlpine and Wickes – in a two-year long action research programme to introduce flexibility into frontline roles and evaluate its impact, on both the individual and the organisation. Our report outlines the findings from our journey together and shares learnings to make access to flexible working more equitable.
We tested the idea that good quality flexible work improves employee health and wellbeing, leading to benefits for employers, such as improved retention. Timewise co-designed activity with each of the three participating employers to give site-based workers greater input and control over their working patterns. Then in collaboration with IES, we considered the impact of increased flexibility on individuals from the point of view of their experience of health and wellbeing, work-life balance and job satisfaction, and on organisations from the perspective of levels of engagement, attendance and retention.
Our programme shows that flexibility is both central to how people want to work in the future and is practically possible even in ‘hard to flex’ roles. Where flexibility is introduced with the support of senior leaders, and is driven by teams at a local level, it results in positive impacts for both individuals and organisations. Workers report improvements to health and wellbeing, work-life balance, and a desire to stay longer with their employer. For employers, this means higher levels of employee engagement, lower levels of sickness absence and increased staff retention.
For the organisations involved in this programme, there’s no going back to former ways of working. They’ve embraced the changes and are moving forward with plans to scale up to ensure all are able to benefit through increased input and control over their working pattern.
Published July 2024
By Emma Stewart, Co-Founder
It’s almost a year since Timewise reported on ways to increase flexible working in the film and TV industry. Our conclusion back then was that the biggest challenge for people who work in this sector is not so much a lack of flexibility, as simply its long hours’ culture.
With 10+ hours hard-wired into daily film schedules, the problem is structural. And with management fears of additional costs to change the approach, coupled with the absence of any detailed analysis of how to make this work, the working model is in a stalemate situation.
So this latest project has assessed the viability of a shorter working day of 8 hours. We looked at working models in other countries, polled over 800 UK crew members, and shadowed two productions to explore the likely impact of a shorter day on the filming process and its budget.
The result is a blueprint for an 8 hour filming day, with guidelines on how to implement it successfully and projections for the likely additional costs (which turned out to be considerably lower than feared).
The next step? We now hope that our findings will encourage the commissioning of a future drama production on a shorter day model, and are talking with a number of commissioners and funders to take this forward. If successful, the idea is to share the results of the pilot across the industry to drive top down change for the benefit of all who work in this creative but stressful sector.
Published February 2024
