Modern retail: a nation of part-time shopkeepers?

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Flexibility in working hours is one of the most important reasons cited for choosing to work in retail¹. And yet employees who need flexibility all too often become trapped in shop-floor roles by the lack of opportunities to work part-time or flexibly at store management level.

Following an initial pilot with Pets at Home, Timewise launched our Retail Pioneer Programme in 2017, developed with the BRC and five pioneer partners: B&Q, Cook, Dixons Carphone, Tesco and the John Lewis Partnership.

We set out to understand what was getting in the way of offering flexible working at store management level. Through in-depth research with each of the five retailers, we interrogated and challenged the cultural and operational barriers to flexibility. We then identified key changes needed to break down the barriers, so that employees who need flexibility can progress their careers and employers can make the best use of their talent.

KEY FINDINGS

Current take-up of flexible working at the five Retail Pioneers’ stores

• 50%-75% of all store staff work part-time
• 1%-23% of supervisors or managers work part-time
• Only 6%-25% of promotions are awarded to part-time staff

How retail staff feel about current practice

• 36% are dissatisfied with current flexibility or work life balance
• 52% are interested in promotion if they can keep their current working arrangement
• 40% believe they would need to work full-time to achieve promotion
• 49% think part-time managers have full-time workloads

STAFFING PROBLEMS CAUSED BY CURRENT PRACTICE

Under-utilisation of skills
Talented people who need flexibility are being underdeveloped because of the lack of flexible career progression. This might encourage them to leave the industry, and deter others from joining it.

Diversity issues and the gender pay gap
For some of the five retailers, attracting female talent to their stores was a particular challenge. Other retailers had a diverse gender mix at shop floor level, but this reduced dramatically at supervisor or manager roles. As flexible working is disproportionately attractive to women, there is a real opportunity for flexible career pathways to have a positive impact on the gender pay gap for retailers.

TAKING ACTION TO DESIGN JOBS DIFFERENTLY

Our research points to the need for a 2 step change process:

1   Redesign existing part-time managerial jobs to make them achievable and attractive, supporting management teams to explore how they can redesign workloads and schedules collaboratively.

2   Open up all roles to flex, promoting and hiring people flexibly into managerial roles.

Based on the insights revealed by our research, we worked closely with each of the five retailers to develop tailored action plans containing our recommended job design options. We have been delighted with the responses from the Pioneers, who are taking a variety of approaches, depending on their particular findings and their business priorities.

1 Retail 2020, What Our People Think, May 2016, BRC

Published May 2018

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An ambitious government programme is underway to raise the quality and quantity of apprenticeships, funded in part by the new Apprenticeship Levy. It has catapulted apprenticeships to the top of the agenda for many businesses. The benefits to apprentices, to businesses and to our wider economy and society are considerable.

However, access to high quality apprenticeships is uneven. Gender segregation is entrenched, mirroring the inequalities in the labour market that see women over-represented in low paid, low skilled jobs.

Timewise holds that one root cause of this gender inequality is the lack of part-time or flexible apprenticeships. Just one in ten apprentices are contracted for less than 30 hours per week, leaving the training out of reach for many who are unable to work full-time – particularly women, people with caring responsibilities, disabled people and young people leaving the care system.

Research objective

This report investigates the feasibility of part-time and flexible models of apprenticeships. It is based on research conducted by Learning and Work Institute and Timewise, supported by the Young Women’s Trust and Trust for London.

Key findings

The research suggests that part-time and flexible apprenticeships can increase access to skills and allow businesses to reach a broader, more diverse candidate pool. An effective programme would include the following critical success factors:

• Working with employers to understand their workforce needs and where part-time and flexible apprenticeships may be beneficial.
• Resolving misunderstandings around demand and supply of part-time and flexible apprenticeships. Currently, apprenticeship providers do not perceive a demand from employers, and employers do not think providers offer them.
• Focusing initially on sectors and occupations where some degree of part-time or flexible working is already established, in order to establish a model for success.
• Engaging the managers who oversee the apprentices in decisions about how work and study can be organised, with the terms of hours and flexibility agreed upfront.
• Ensuring the level of apprenticeships offered are appropriate for the individual, of a high quality, and offer real progression opportunities and wage returns.
• Ensuring that apprentices taking up part-time and flexible opportunities are paid at least the Living Wage or London Living Wage.
• Improving use of online and distance learning approaches to facilitate part-time and flexible apprenticeship models, while retaining the benefits of face-to-face and peer group learning.

What next?

Timewise are now developing a part-time and flexible apprenticeship model which we intend to pilot later this year. Our goal is to build an evidence base to support a scalable part-time and flexible apprenticeship offer.

Published February 2018

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Across the UK, policy makers with ambitious plans for regeneration and growth are keen to ensure that no one in their community is left behind. But the lack of good flexible jobs means that key groups of people (such as parents and carers, people with disabilities or older workers) are often trapped in low-paid roles or locked out of the jobs market altogether.

Timewise has been commissioned by some of the UK’s most forward-looking local authorities and policy makers to report on the availability of flexible roles within their regions. The research we’ve carried out so far has shown clearly that the demand for flexible roles dramatically outstrips the supply, and has provided the evidence to support the creation of strategies for systemic change.

However, gathering the evidence is just the first step. We’re also working closely with local leaders to bring these strategies to life, unlock their jobs markets to quality flexible roles, and so tackle issues of social mobility, gender and diversity, as well as a lack of career progression.

We are currently partnering with over 25 councils and other major public sector employers, who are acting as champions for change, both as employers and influencers. We’re also working with metro mayors and anchor institutions to support the drive for more flexible jobs, through social consultancy and job design programmes.

As the Social Mobility Commission highlighted in their recent report, local leaders have a key role to play in building routes out of low-paying roles and into higher, skilled positions, by thinking creatively about interventions that could help address career progression. The lack of good, flexible jobs is holding communities back; if you are a regional policy maker who is looking to develop an innovative strategy for inclusive growth, please get in touch.

Download our latest Regional Flexible Jobs Index, for West Yorkshire

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• 63% of full-time employees already work flexibly in some way.
• 87% of all full-time employees either work flexibly already, or say they want to
• The preference for flexible working is strong for both sexes: 84% of male full-time employees either work flexibly already, or say they want to. For women this rises to 91%.
• Younger workers want it most: 92% either work flexibly or say they want to.
• Amongst the different types of flexible working patterns, 1 in 4 (25%) of all full-time employees would specifically prefer to work part-time for part-time wages.
• 93% of non-workers who want a job would prefer to work either part-time, or flexibly in a full-time role.
• And among self-employed people, 89% work flexibly.
• People are most likely to say their reason for wanting to work flexibly is work/life balance, or it being generally useful or convenient. Other key reasons include commuting issues, leisure or study interests, and caring responsibilities.

What do we mean by ‘flexible working’?

Flexible working means different things to different people. Our research focuses on the following types of flexibility, which are generally seen as favourable for the employee:

• Flexible working hours (sometimes called ‘flexi-time’)
• Working from home or remotely (for some or all of the working week)
• Shift work (with the ability to choose favourable shifts)
• Term time or seasonal work
• Part-time hours

Our respondents included full-time workers who might be working flexibly now (or not), and may have told us they would prefer to work part-time or to work full-time but with flexibility in their working pattern.

Implications for employers

BUSINESS IMPERATIVE TO HAVE A PROACTIVE STRATEGY FOR FLEXIBLE WORKING

• Our research finds that the UK appetite for flexible working has been grossly underestimated. The proportion of full-time workers who are already working flexibly (63%) far surpasses previous estimates, let alone the proportion of people who would prefer to (87%).
• The research also confounds the idea that flexible working is only of business interest as a solution to diversity and inclusion problems. It may well help to solve those problems, but the demand for flexible working goes much further – cutting across all ages and genders.
• To attract the best talent, it is clearly no longer sufficient to have a flexible working policy in place, offering flexibility only to existing employees on request. Employers must build a proactive flexible working strategy that makes it part of ‘the norm’, and opens it up to all employees equally, rather than targeting it at specific groups.

THE NEED TO OFFER FLEXIBLE WORKING IN THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS

• When 87% of UK employees either work flexibly already, or would prefer to, it makes no sense at all that fewer than 1 in 10 job adverts offer flexible working as an employee benefit 
• Candidates who need flexibility are worried about applying for roles that don’t specifically mention it.
• The result is that many excellent candidates get stuck in their flexible jobs, preferring to stay in place even if it means they miss out on career progression. The impact of down-skilling is huge – for example, 1.5 million people are trapped in low-paid, part-time jobs below their skill level, because they can’t find an appropriate new job with the working pattern they need7.
• ‘Flexible hiring’ is lagging far behind the take-up of flexible working in the UK. Greater transparency is urgently needed in job adverts, followed through with much more open conversations around flexible working during the recruitment process.

Methodology

Timewise commissioned the survey from ComRes, who interviewed 3,001 UK adults online between 13th and 26th June 2017. Within these sub-samples: 1,250 full-time employees; 750 part-time employees; 500 self-employed people; 501 people who were not working but wanted to work. All participants were aged 18+. The data for full-time employees and for part time employees was weighted to be representative of the UK working population for those employment types; other data were unweighted.

Published September 2017

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Social care has a reputation for offering flexible working to suit those with personal caring responsibilities and indeed 53% of the care workforce work less than full-time. But equally, it requires unsociable hours – early mornings, evenings and weekends. Up to 60% of workers in domiciliary care are on zero hours contracts: in theory, such contracts enable carers to choose both the schedule of hours they work, and the amount of work they do each week. But does the rhetoric of flexibility and family-friendly match the reality of carers’ jobs?

Timewise, with the support of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, set out to explore how care providers manage the challenge of delivering a high quality service to people who need care, whilst enabling carers – 82% of whom are women – to find the flexibility they need to manage their own non-work responsibilities.

Key findings from qualitative research with carers, managers and sector experts

• We found great confusion about what flexible working means in social care, and who it’s supposed to benefit – employers or employees. Domiciliary care has a reputation for being a local, ‘family-friendly’ job, which attracts many women to consider the sector. However, the reality is very different. Many carers have very short careers, with a high proportion failing to make it even through the induction and training period, once the reality of the scheduling becomes clear.
• We identified five formidable structural constraints on providing jobs which are compatible with non-work responsibilities: the unpredictability of rotas, the absence of slack in the system, unsociable hours, downtime in the middle of the working day, and the need to travel long distances between clients. These factors make it difficult for employers to offer carers a stable or attractive schedule, and many have given up on even attempting to help their carers to achieve work-life balance. Instead, care managers and schedule coordinators are forced to focus on ‘filling the gaps’ in the schedule.
• However, rather than giving up on work-life balance for carers, Timewise believes there is another way. We identified three potential ways to create compatible scheduling for carers: reducing the volatility of the schedule from week to week, increasing advance notice of the schedule, and maximising carers’ input into schedules.
• We also found that care providers were making special, individualised ‘family-friendly’ working arrangements for some carers, which disadvantaged other carers and were perceived as unfair. A team-based approach might solve this problem.

Key findings of a six-month pilot with Rathbone, a community support provider

The purpose of the pilot phase of our research was to test whether a geographical team-based approach to scheduling could stabilise and enhance jobs in care. The pilot showed that:

• The team-based approach gave carers greater control and input into their working times. There was also an improvement in the perceived fairness of the schedules.
• Reducing travel time by clustering support workers in a particular geographical area enabled the scheduling of a weekly team meeting. This was a forum for negotiating work-life needs, but also served to reduce isolation, improve teamwork and peer support, and increase team members’ knowledge about service users and their needs. We identified a seven-step process which other care providers can use to implement this approach.
• The pilot has highlighted the need for further research on how to tackle the other two ways of improving compatible scheduling for carers – the volatility of each carer’s schedule from week to week, and the amount of advance notice of the schedule. We know that there are multiple causes of schedule unpredictability, but we need to understand the relative importance of the various factors and then to develop strategies for reducing it. This is the critical next step in designing jobs which are more compatible with carers’ non-work responsibilities – jobs which will attract and retain carers in the sector. While there has been a wealth of reports into the state of the social care sector, there has so far been little focus on practical actions to improve the compatibility of carers’ jobs with their non-work responsibilities. The structure of the social care industry, with thousands of small care providers operating on extremely tight margins, suggests that change needs to come from sector-wide initiatives. There is a strong business case for policy makers and commissioners to review job design in social care, as well as a strong social and moral case to enable carers to raise their living standards through secure employment which is compatible with their non-work lives. We recommend that the commissioning of care will need to change to enable the redesign of jobs in this way.

Published May 2017

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1.5 million people currently work in low-paid roles in retail, and the majority work part time. Flexibility in working hours is one of the most important reasons cited for choosing to work in retail. However, much talent is wasted because retail staff who need to work flexibly or part-time are trapped in junior jobs: they cannot take their flexibility with them to progress to store management level.

Timewise, supported by the UK Futures programme and working alongside Pets at Home plc, piloted the redesign of retail management roles on a flexible and part-time basis. The aim was to find out if greater access to flexible working could unblock the retail talent pipeline and address diversity issues.

The project also aimed to identify a process for implementing wider access to flexible working, for other retailers to follow.

The Pets at Home pilot

Pets at Home employs 8,000 store-based colleagues of whom 65% are women. The business suffers from high attrition rates for women. Research amongst employees found that:

• The ratio of men moving off the shop floor into assistant manager roles was double that of women
• The lack of flexible working in management roles was a major contributing factor to this gender gap.

Through data mapping, surveys and listening groups, and analysis of operational practices, Timewise helped Pets at Home to identify the challenges and opportunities within the business. The board made a commitment to job redesign for managerial roles, and set up a steering group to run the change process. Training for managers helped to facilitate the new approach, and role models have been championed through internal communications channels.

Recommendations for other retailers

Through the pilot, Timewise developed a guide for retailers interested in using flexible working as a means to improving talent retention and progression. We recommend a five-stage process to implement flexible job redesign in retail management roles:

1. Establish a business case
2. Explore your current capacity to drive change
3. Identify which job design options will support your business
4. Set up a pilot and measure its impact
5. Roll out the changes and continue to measure the benefits.

Published November 2016

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To raise family living standards in the UK, the number of ‘quality’ part-time and flexible jobs needs to be increased. This study quantified the impact such an increase might have. It also analysed supply versus demand, and suggested that businesses are currently under-utilising a proportion of the skilled candidate market.

Key points

• Parents, older people and disabled people (the three groups under study) need to earn at least £10.63 an hour to meet minimum income standards. This rate establishes the pay threshold for a ‘quality’ job and equates to a full-time equivalent salary of £19,500 a year.
• 1.9 million people could benefit from getting a quality flexible job and hold the necessary qualification levels to attain one. Of these, over 1.5 million people are currently in part-time work below the pay rate for a quality job. A further 154,000 people are workless.
• There are 202,300 well-qualified people in the groups who are living in poverty.
• Only 6.2 per cent of quality job vacancies are advertised with options to work flexibly. This compares poorly with the high demand for flexible work (47 per cent of the workforce want to work flexibly).
• There are 8.1 people in poverty for each quality flexible vacancy, of whom 7.4 people are workless. For quality full-time jobs, the demand is only 0.9 workless people per vacancy.
• An eight-fold increase in the number of flexible job vacancies would be needed, for supply versus demand to match that for quality full-time jobs.

Published January 2016

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Over a period of three years, our research tracked a sample of 80 out of work mothers facing significant barriers to working. It investigated their career trajectories over three stages: making an initial decision about returning to work, looking for a job, and experiences whilst working.

Key findings

• Most mothers had a preference for part-time employment, but many struggled to find this.
• Most shared a common set of barriers to work: low confidence, concern over the lack of part-time and/or flexible jobs, and concern that childcare was unavailable or unaffordable.
• Of those who entered employment during the 3 year period, most found work through social and professional networks, rather than through job adverts or recruitment agencies.
• Many mothers compromised on working hours, salary and level of responsibility, in order to achieve balance with their family lives.
• Many mothers were unable to move into work that was secure, allowed them to balance work and family life, and offered opportunities for progression.

Recommendations

Addressing the issues that women face in finding and sustaining work requires action in three key areas:

• Providing integrated employment support and advice which covers the spectrum from confidence building to high-end careers advice.
• Opening up intermediate and senior level roles to flexible and part-time working patterns, to prevent women (and others with caring responsibilities) from having to compromise their career aspirations.
• Providing affordable, flexible, quality childcare.

Published in 2014

Getting back into work after a career break can feel a bit daunting. In aid of understanding what women returners want, we surveyed over a thousand potential “women returners” who had taken a career break of a year or more, and were seeking flexible work. We found that while there is a high demand for “women returner programmes” among those who have taken a long career break, the overwhelming majority are looking to return to part-time or flexible work.

Key findings:

The context

Of the women we surveyed:

• 71% took a break of at least one year. 42% took 2 years or more
• Only 26% returned to work with the same employer
• 58% had chosen to return to work on a part-time basis
• 63% of those returning to a part-time job had taken a lower salary than in their previous role
• 60% of part-time returners and over half of full-time returners feel they have fallen behind in their careers and would like to get back on track.

What do women returners want?

Of the women we surveyed:

• 93% of career break women wanted to return to a part-time job.
• 45% are interested in returner programmes.
• 70% want the returner programme to result in a flexible job, compared to 13% wanting a full-time job.
• 49% want the returner programme to update their knowledge of industry sector trends
• 47% want the returner programme to be confidence building

Timewise’s recommendations to employers

As there is little interest in returning to full-time work, employers should open up to flexible hiring, so they can offer appropriate flexible working arrangements. More specifically, employers should consider whether a 4 day working week can be accommodated, as this is the most preferred working pattern.

Published October 2015

With 8.7 million UK full time workers wanting to work flexibly in 2014, this research explores managerial attitudes towards flexible working. We interviewed 500 managers, all responsible for key hiring decisions, to find that while the majority have positive views about flexibility, few take positive action on it. And many managers recognise that there are barriers in their organisations to doing so.

Key findings:

Managers own views about flexible working

Among the managers who responded to our survey:

• 7 in 10 managers believe flexible workers are an underused talent pool
• 9 in 10 are open to discussing flexible working options during the recruitment process
• Nearly half believed that the roles they’d advertised in the past year could have been filled by a candidate on a flexible basis.

Perceived organisational barriers to flexible working

Despite managers being open to flexible workers, our research found both structural and cultural challenges that prevent flexible job design and discussions surrounding flexible working. Among the managers who responded to our survey:

• 75% had never had any training on how to handle flexible working enquiries
• Only 30% said that their organisation was open to offering flexible working in managerial-level job vacancies. This dropped to 14% at director level and 9% at leadership level.
• 25% said that flexible working does not tend to be offered for roles with key responsibilities.

Our recommendations

Timewise recommends a more transparent recruitment process to better reflect the possibilities of how a role can be worked. Additionally showcasing successful examples of flexible working will address the stigma.

Published in 2014