A report on the market failure in flexible and part-time jobs for low paid workers, and how fixing this could have a positive impact on living standards and business access to talent and skills. Timewise commissioned this research from the Institute for Employment Studies, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The UK is facing a labour market crisis with demand far outstripping the supply of candidates, and a cost of living crisis that is hitting hard, especially for low income households. Against this backdrop, Timewise set out to explore:
The jobs market remains broken for people who need to work flexibly, and a key barrier is employer resistance. This report seeks to improve understanding around the issues, with a view to encouraging more employers to engage with the idea of hiring flexibly, and realise the benefits of changing their hiring practices.
Published November 2022
By Nicola Smith, Director of Development and Innovation
This year’s Flexible Jobs Index is being published at a time of great economic uncertainty. In the seven years since we began our annual tracking of the flexible jobs market, we’ve never seen anything like it.
The cost of living crisis is biting hard, with those not in work the worse hit, and an estimated 3.7 million people struggling in insecure work and low pay. And new figures released today show that there are four people chasing every part-time job. Yet, business leaders across all sectors are finding it hard to recruit the people they need, with vacancies remaining at record highs. Even though the country is now in recession, unemployment is still predicted to remain lower than in other recent downturns, and forecasters expect businesses will continue to struggle to recruit.
Clearly, then, offering more flexible jobs – and specifically, more part-time jobs – would help employers to fill their skills gaps. So are we seeing an increase in the number of employers advertising their roles in this way? Disappointingly, the answer from this year’s Index is ‘not really.’
Looked at as a whole, the picture is of minimal growth. Despite a real shift in attitudes towards flexible working during the pandemic, still only 30% of jobs are advertised with any kind of flexibility (up from 26% last year).
Crucially, we are only talking about secure permanent employment here. Highly insecure roles such as zero hours contracts and gig economy self-employed roles can provide high levels of flexibility for employers but little autonomy or control for workers, so we do not include them in our analysis.
So while 9 in 10 people want to work flexibly, and 5 in 10 currently do, only 3 in 10 permanent jobs are advertised as such.
The Index also demonstrates why the demand for part-time jobs is so high – just 12% of jobs are advertised as less than full-time. And it’s not just employers who are missing out as a result. The lack of part-time jobs means that people who can’t work full-time – including parents, carers and many people with mental and physical health conditions – are locked out of the workplace.
Furthermore, the Index tells a ‘Tale of Two Flexes’, with roles advertised as part-time lurking towards the bottom of the pay scale, and hybrid roles tending to be offered at higher salary levels. This is important. We have a good supply of low-paid part-time work – what we don’t have is decent part-time jobs higher up the pay scale. And in some better paid sectors that are really struggling to fill their vacancies – such as manufacturing and construction – the proportion of jobs advertised as flexible remains particularly low.
So why are employers failing to advertise flexible roles, when doing so would help them overcome their recruitment challenges? Our new report, created in partnership with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, with analysis from the Institute of Employment Studies, seeks to answer that question.
We interviewed 1,000 senior decision makers from a mix of SMEs and large firms, and followed up with qualitative interviews. Three core themes emerged – none of which, in our view, should be a barrier:
However, these reasons are no longer good enough. It’s now well accepted that offering flexible working up front can help employers gain an edge in the fight for talent, which is all the more critical given current vacancy rates. And with the cost of living already unmanageably high, helping people who can’t work full-time access paid work is not just a practical solution, but a social imperative.
The medium to long-term outlook remains challenging; our jobs market is facing a triple whammy of higher rates of long-term ill health, falling birth rates and post-Brexit restrictions. It seems there will continue to be fewer candidates than we need for some time to come. This is a problem that isn’t going away any time soon; employers who want to attract talented staff can’t afford to keep recruiting in the way they always have.
That means accepting that the old, less flexible ways of working won’t cut it any longer. Investing time and money in exploring how flexible working could benefit their organisations. And creating cultures where employees are trusted to deliver, part-time and flexible workers are valued and championed, and managers are trained to support them.
It will be time and money well spent, even just in terms of the bottom line; as we’ve shown, there’s a financial return on investment in flexible working. And as Bruce Daisley has noted, “Flex is the new salary”, so offering it will also help employers overcome recruitment challenges, widening the candidate talent pool and helping attract the best candidates. Not sure where to start? We can help.
By Dr Sarah Dauncey, Head of Partnerships and Practice, Timewise
The pandemic intensified existing labour market inequalities in access to flexible working arrangements. Half of working adults worked from home at times during the pandemic, but this opportunity wasn’t available to frontline workers.
And while 84% of those who had to work from home because of government regulations said they wanted to work in a hybrid way in the future, equivalent flexibility wasn’t available to many of those in location-based roles. The result is a risk of two-tier workforces developing, split into flexible working haves and have nots, amplifying existing inequalities.
It’s for this reason that we have joined with IES and three frontline employers – Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Sir Robert McAlpine and Wickes – in a two-year action research programme designing, testing and embedding flexible working solutions. It’s funded by Impact on Urban Health and Barclays Life Skills, and the findings from the study will be shared widely to drive change among employers.
Even before the pandemic, frontline work was overrepresented by young people, those on lower pay, and people from minoritised ethnic groups. Typically, these roles can be physically challenging with less opportunity for autonomy and control over working patterns, factors that negatively affect health and wellbeing.
As many frontline roles involve delivering care and services to other people, frontline employees were most exposed to Covid-19. In contrast, desk-based and knowledge workers were more shielded from the risk of infection, and had more options about when, where and how they worked.
Additionally, flexible working is heavily concentrated in high-paid roles and, consequently, is more prevalent in London and the South-East than in any other region. Geographical inequality in access to flexible working arrangements is largely a feature of sectoral variation, and local and combined authorities are actively working to ‘level up’ through good work and inclusive economy agendas. But there remains a likelihood that where you live can determine your access to flexible work.
These labour market patterns are often replicated within organisations, with disparities between employees working in frontline and site-based roles and those who are more desk-based. These have become starker with the increased focus on location-based flexibility. Remote and hybrid working have become synonyms for ‘flexible working’, and time-based flexibility, which is more feasible for those unable to change where they work, is being sidelined as a result.
Our new programme of research and action seeks to tackle these inequalities, widening access to flexible working and implementing it fairly across organisations. It has been built in partnership with like-minded organisations, including three employers who are committed to reducing organisational disparities in access to flexible working, and improving the health and wellbeing of their employees.
We began by devising a two-year programme of activity and establishing a steering group comprised of leading practitioners and experts. The group includes members from the three participating employers, British Retail Consortium, Build UK, Business for Health, CBI, Impact on Urban Health, and NHS England. It has informed the direction of the programme and will provide strategic oversight throughout its duration.
The programme falls into four parts:
1. Developing fair flexible principles
The first phase of the programme, which was completed in the summer, involved consultation with the steering group to develop a set of guiding principles for the development of a fairer and more consistent, organisation-wide approach to flexible working. These relate to seven key organisational areas, including: leadership, manager capability, recruitment and communications. They will be used and adapted by our participating employers to support their work to embed flexible working and align it with other priorities, like diversity and inclusion.
2. Designing and testing practical solutions with our partner employers
Next, we’ll collaborate with our employer partners to identify areas for action to widen access to flexible working, particularly among those in frontline or site-based roles who currently have limited access to flexible working arrangements. Timewise consultants will work closely with the employers to build and deliver interventions that will create change. For instance, by coaching managers to help them become more effective in managing individuals and teams working flexibly and building peer support networks.
3. Building the evidence base to better understand the impact of flexible working on individuals and organisations
We’ll then collaborate with IES to gather learnings from the programme. These will inform our future activity and influence participating employers and the wider sectors represented by them: health, construction and retail.
A key piece of evidence we’ll be seeking is the impact of access to good quality flexible working arrangements on employees, in the context of their experience of wellbeing, health and job satisfaction. We’ll also be evaluating its impact on the organisations in terms of their ability to retain employees and reduce sickness and absence, therefore their capacity to increase productivity.
4. Sharing insights to improve job quality for frontline employees across the UK
Having embedded a set of fair flexible principles, and developed solutions with three major frontline employers, we’ll then be in a position to share new models of practice to open access to flexible working arrangements in sectors with substantial operational barriers to implementing them effectively.
Critically, we’ll be able to use the evidence we’ve captured to inform policymakers and employers, and drive action to improve job quality and wellbeing among millions of frontline and site-based workers across the UK.
This programme of work has long been necessary, and the cost of living crisis has given it an added significance. There has never been a more important time to invest in workforce development, and to create a model that can drive wider change. We look forward to sharing our findings with you as they emerge.
Published November 2022
By Nicola Smith, Director of Development and Innovation
There’s been much discussion in recent months about increasing numbers of older workers leaving the workplace. The ONS figures back this up, showing that over 200,000 people aged 50-65 have left the jobs market over the last two years. Commentators, including the Resolution Foundation and the Institute for Employment Studies, have also concluded that post-pandemic shifts in labour supply have largely been driven by falling numbers of people aged 50 and over looking for and available to work.
So it follows that a key way to fill the high number of vacant roles would be to encourage and support older workers to stay in their roles, or come back into the workforce. And the good news is, flexible working can help make this happen.
It’s worth noting that ‘over 50s’ is a very wide category. As a result the health status, caring responsibilities, skills and incomes are probably more varied within this group than those of people in any other commonly used age bracket.
And while it’s relatively well understood that flexible working can support those with ill health and disabilities to remain in or return to the workplace, that’s not the only factor. There are other reasons why members of this group are leaving employment – and for which flexible working can also be part of the solution.
Recent ONS analysis gives some particularly useful insight into the varied experiences of older workers who have left the jobs market since the pandemic begun. Findings include:
Crucially, the figures also show that, among those who would consider returning to work, a third said the most important factor was flexible hours. Good pay came second (at 23%), followed by being able to work from home (12%) and work that fits around caring responsibilities (10%), both of which are linked to flexibility.
Clearly, then, offering flexible working is a critical part of the answer to employers’ retention and hiring woes. By helping to overcome the medical, personal or financial reasons why older workers are leaving the workplace, it could encourage them to stay for longer, or encourage those who have already left to come back.
Our work with the Centre for Ageing Better set out how and why employers can use good flexible working to boost the retention of older workers. And when it comes to supporting them back in, the answer is clear: employers need to advertise flexible roles from the point of hire. In both cases, this means going through a job design process that explores when, where and in how much time the role can best be fulfilled.
Today’s data make an even more compelling case for why everyone needs to act – and is a pertinent reminder of the benefits that more, good flexible working at the point of hire could bring for business and workers alike. We know that many employers are already doing this well, and that many others recognise that they need to make the shift; if you need support with this, we’re here to help.
In the meantime, keep an eye out for our new Flexible Jobs Index, launching later this month, which will highlight how far we still have to go in terms of making flexible jobs available from day one. It will be published alongside a new study, undertaken in partnership with the IES and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which explores the challenges employers face and the actions needed to widen access to good flexible roles.
Published November 2022
Employee well-being is a workplace issue that desperately needs tackling. In the UK, a huge number of working days are lost to ill health (32.5 million in 2019/20) and stress, depression and anxiety (18 million). We know that flexible working can support employee well-being – but we also know there isn’t a one size fits all solution.
While the pandemic helped focus leaders’ attention on their employees’ well-being, and normalised the concept of working from home, it also had some negative effects, as people struggled to keep their home and working lives separate. And critically, the changes driven by the pandemic have happened in a reactive way, rather than a proactive one.
Additionally, we are now in a new, also difficult era, dominated by the cost of living crisis. Right now, financial issues are affecting the well-being of many employees, and employers are increasingly willing to think creatively about how they can offer support.
The result is a ‘golden window’ in which businesses are considering the health and well-being of their staff more than ever before. So we invited three business leaders to join us to discuss this at our recent roundtable: Richard Martin, Executive Officer of the Mindful Business Charter; Rebecca Ormond, Inclusive Workplace Leader at PWC; and Jordan Cummins, the CBI’s first Director of Health.
So, what should employers do to boost employees’ well-being in the current climate? Here are the key themes that came out of our roundtable discussion.
Review pandemic-driven decisions – and make changes where needed
The new, more flexible ways of working that evolved during the pandemic were often brought in at speed. And while they have been positive in many ways, they can also be a barrier to well-being.
For example, the removal of the boundaries between work and home has led to an expectation of being always on. And while some employees relish skipping the commute and getting more time to spend with family, there are others who feel burnt out by work creep, and miss the connections that being fully office-based brought.
Similarly, while hybrid working is seen by many as the best of both worlds, it is not without its problems. There is a risk of two track workforces developing, in which those who continue to work from home are sidelined, affecting their well-being as well as their careers. Research from the CMI indicate it’s already happening, with 40% of managers saying they have observed opinions or behaviours suggesting inequality between those who work in a hybrid way and those who don’t.
Employers should therefore take a proactive look at how decisions made during the pandemic are affecting employee well-being – and make changes where needed. This includes supporting employees to reinstate the boundaries between home and work, and taking action to ensure that the flexibility on offer is fair and inclusive. The result will be truly flexible working arrangements that benefit both the business and the employee.
Increase your understanding of your employees’ circumstances and needs
A key part of this review – and of creating sustainable well-being strategies going forwards – will be to understand what issues people are dealing with and how the business can help.
Gathering data on well-being can be hard, but people are increasingly willing to disclose details about their circumstances – and will be even more so if they understand that this may lead to greater flexibility. Set out a framework of information you think would be useful to gather, and pulse check regularly.
Shift your approach to well-being and become a prevention workplace
The positioning of well-being within an organisation is central to its success. One positive step to take is to stop treating health and well-being as a cost, and instead consider it as an asset to be invested in, like sustainability.
This will lead to well-being being seen as a competitive advantage, rather than a burden, and help you focus on preventing poor well-being, rather than reacting to it. Ideas for supporting this include:
And of course, proactively offering well-designed flexible roles, which allow employees to better balance their work and home lives, is central to being a prevention workplace.
Encourage a culture of openness and trust between line managers and teams
Building on the above, line managers should be encouraged to have open conversations about well-being with their team members. It’s a big leap for many managers to go from talking about workload to talking about well-being, but it becomes easier once a culture is established in which these conversations are not only acceptable, but preferable. Things to think about:
It’s worth remembering that most employees want to achieve and do their best at work; the business simply needs to trust and support them to do so. And that includes exploring which kinds of flexibility will make that possible.
Explore the impact of the way your organisation works
As well as putting initiatives in place to support well-being, it is also important to look at your structures and processes; in reality, it’s often the way people work that creates stress. This includes the nature of the work itself and organisational expectations, as well as how individuals interact.
A key part of resolving this is to develop a company-wide conversation about how your team members are working with each other. Then act on it in your structures and processes. For example:
Again, little things can make a big difference; thinking about when you schedule meetings, or even send emails, can reduce stress and underpin your commitment to flexible working.
Address the impact of the economic crisis clearly and swiftly
Whilst employers are not responsible for the cost of living crisis, they do have a duty to support their employees to navigate it as best they can. And being clear in communications is absolutely critical. Observations from our panel included:
Of course, this kind of support doesn’t have to be limited to a financial crisis; some companies are already looking at how they can support their employees’ financial wellbeing. Initiatives include offering pension planning to parents and carers who have taken career breaks, or providing a financial well-being expert who can explain what benefits are available and how to access them.
It’s also worth noting that part-time opportunities can support financial well-being. Offering high-level part-time jobs within your organisation could help parents, carers and others who can’t work full-time to progress their careers and increase their incomes. And doing the same when recruiting could open doors to help others back into the workplace (as well as widening your talent pool).
With learnings from the pandemic ripe for analysis, and the cost of living crisis likely to continue, it feels like the right time for employers to develop and embed their commitment to employee well-being. For the best chance of success, flexible working should be at the heart of any approach; if you need support with this, please do get in touch.
Published October 2022
By Amy Butterworth, Consultancy Director, Timewise
“We cannot afford to lose any more of our people.” As these words taken from the NHS People Plan make clear, the workforce crisis in our health service is now at an acute level. Recruitment and retention are more challenging than ever; data from earlier this year suggested that one in 10 nursing positions, and one in 17 doctors’ jobs, were unfilled. And in the last quarter of 2021, at least 400 NHS staff in England left their posts every single week due to inadequate work-life balance.
Faced with a mountain to climb, and believing that flexible working is a key part of the solution, NHS England and Improvement sought our help. They commissioned us to create a model for introducing and embedding flexible working practices, and to implement it at scale. The result was NHS Flex For The Future, the largest ever flexible working change project within the NHS, involving teams from 93 NHS trusts and organisations.
So what did we do? Well, as we know from our previous work within the NHS and elsewhere, there really is no one-size-fits all solution for an organisation of this size. We therefore began by tasking each trust to create their own change team, a group of at least five members of staff who knew what their specific challenges, barriers and issues around implementing flexible working would be.
We encouraged them to make sure that the change teams were representative of their trusts, and included frontline staff (such as nurses or midwives) as well as HR and OD professionals. This was critical, not only because they had first-person insights into how things work in practice, but also to ensure that any solutions were seen to be delivered from the ground up, not imposed from the top. We also asked each team to nominate an executive-level Senior Responsible Officer, who could fast-track any issues and decisions to the board, and hold senior colleagues accountable for supporting the programme and its outcomes.
Once the change teams were established, we worked to educate and upskill them through a six-month programme of workshops and advice. This included access to specialist speakers, real-time examples of innovative practice and case studies, as well as practical tools and templates to support the process. We also set up smaller, regionally based group clinics, where they could share ideas, challenges and progress with their local peers, supported by flexible working experts from Timewise and NHS England and Improvement.
Because of its scale, the programme also provided a valuable opportunity to gather information and insights that participants and the wider NHS could learn from. For example, we discovered a real disparity in data gathering around different flexible working patterns, which has a serious knock-on effect on reporting and planning within some trusts. Similarly, we discovered that while some trusts were advertising 100% of their jobs as flexible, others weren’t advertising any in this way. Towards the end of the programme, the change teams began to put what they had learned into practice by developing a business case with which to engage their leadership teams, and a tailored action plan that proposed the right solutions for their particular trust.
Of course, driving change within such large organisations is a marathon, not a sprint, and NHS Flex for the Future was very much the start of the process. Nevertheless, we are already seeing real shifts in attitude and approach from our 93 participant trusts and organisations.
70% of participants told us they have developed an action plan which was supported by their leadership teams. And as one participant put it: “The programme has helped me influence the board and not just start the conversation, but get an organisational objective on our 22/23 business plan.” There were also clear examples within our post-programme survey of how participants’ confidence and understanding has increased. When asked to respond to the statement, “I am clear as to the ways to increase the number of quality flexible roles in my NHS organisation” agreement increased to 69% (compared to 20% at the beginning of the programme). And for the statement “I understand how to design jobs with greater flexibility”, agreement increased from 30% to 74%.
We’ve also collated more detailed feedback about the impact of the programme through a set of case studies, which have really highlighted the positive impact of our work. To pick just one example, here are some insights from Fran Wilson, Lead Nurse for Attraction, Recruitment & Retention at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust:
I was already convinced that flexible working is an area that will increase staff attraction and retention, but now I have participated in the programme I have the insight, knowledge and resources to share with other people, which really helps.
We would never have got to present at trust board level without the programme, so it’s really helped raise the profile of flexible working… It’s also inspired us to start conversations from a point of yes, and how, rather than no!
It’s a big cultural change, so it isn’t going to happen overnight… but the progress we’re making is exciting… It’s been a great investment.
You can read Fran’s full case study here.
So, having educated and upskilled change teams from 93 NHS trusts and organisations, what’s next? The teams are continuing to develop and embed their action plans, and we are supporting some of them along this next stage of the journey. We’re also keen to help keep up the connections that were formed between teams from different NHS organisations, and will be looking to create more opportunities to convene organisations who are doing exciting things in this area – watch this space. In the meantime, having created and implemented this new model for change at scale, we’re eager to put it to good use, within the healthcare sector and elsewhere. If you are interested in starting a conversation with us about whether our change team model could work in your sector, please get in touch.
Published October 2022
It seems pretty clear that hybrid is the new normal. A June 2022 survey from the CIPD noted that 78% of organisations now offer hybrid working, in a mix of formal and informal arrangements. And spring 2022 ONS data showed that 84% of employees who worked from home during the pandemic plan to continue working in a hybrid way.
Here at Timewise, we see the increase in hybrid working as a hugely positive thing. We, like many organisations, believe that it offers huge benefits for employers and employees alike (as long as it is properly implemented, of course).
But an unexpected side-effect of hybrid’s increasing popularity is that it’s becoming conflated with flexible working in general. In the media, in conversations, in focus groups, people are using the phrase flexible working when what they mean is hybrid working.
To give just one example of many, in a recent discussion we held with a group of frontline workers, a participant stated that “Flexible working won’t work for us – we can’t do our job from home”.
So, what’s the problem here? Well, firstly, it’s just not accurate to conflate the two. Hybrid working is essentially place-based flex – giving people the opportunity to work across different locations. This is a subset of flexible working, which also includes time-based flex – such as part-time, job sharing, compressed hours and flexible start and finish times, as well as more unusual arrangements such as term-time only contracts.
And while place-based flex is liberating and beneficial for many, it doesn’t work for everyone. There are many people for whom being able to work fewer days is the only way they can work at all. Parents, carers, people with physical or mental health issues… for some, working a full week, even if partially from home, just isn’t feasible.
Additionally, there are many roles for which working from home isn’t an option at all. Most frontline workers, such as nurses, teachers, retail assistants and on-site construction workers, generally have to be at their workplace to work. But they may still need flexibility, and if they don’t get it, they may leave; in secondary schools, for example, 1 in 5 teachers who leave the profession do so to take up a part-time role elsewhere.
For these groups, offering time-based flexibility is key. School timetables can be tweaked to accommodate part-time employees or staggered start and finish times; rotas and shift patterns can be designed to accommodate reduced hours. It requires leadership, job design skills and a team-based approach, but it can be done successfully.
However, the confusion between flex and hybrid means that companies which are allowing a blend of in office and WFH can assume they’ve ‘got flex done’. They therefore may not invest enough time in exploring and facilitating time-based flexible working options.
That’s a bad business decision, particularly in a skills crisis, because offering time-based flex as well as place-based flex allows companies to widen their recruitment talent pool and keep hold of employees for longer. It helps them boost employee wellbeing, and develop a more diverse workforce, which reflects wider society and avoids issues around groupthink. It also, all the evidence suggests, helps close the gender pay gap.
And in organisations with both frontline and office-based staff, it also counters the development of a two-tier workforce, in which only those in office-based roles have access to flexible working.
The other thing to note is that time-based flex and place-based flex aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s possible to have a part-time role that is executed in a hybrid way; for example, working four days per week, of which one is from home. For many people, that’s the best of both worlds; for companies who offer it, it’s a powerful lever.
So, our advice is simple. Get clear on the difference between hybrid working and flexible working, and avoid conflating the two. Explore all the different time-based and place-based options, and offer those which are suitable for your organisation. And if you spot someone talking about flex when they really just mean hybrid, it probably wouldn’t hurt to call it out.
Published July 2022
By Muriel Tersago, Principal Consultant
Debates around the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention aren’t new – but the pandemic appears to have made things even worse. April 2022 research from the National Education Union suggests that 44% of teachers are planning to leave within five years, and that it’s getting harder to fill vacancies, with a knock-on effect on workloads for remaining staff.
Teachers’ reasons for leaving are many and varied, and include issues around workload, wellbeing and stress; all of which could be mitigated if flexible working in schools was more widely available. Indeed, NFER research has shown that some teachers leave because they can’t access flexible working, and that many secondary school teachers who do leave reduce their hours when they do.
It’s for this reason that we have spent the last 16 months working on a Teaching Pioneers Programme with three MATs, across eight schools, piloting how best to champion and deliver flexible working within schools. And our findings are clear: yes, it’s complex, but it’s not impossible, and there is a return on investment for doing so. As one deputy headteacher put it: “Find the commitment and shift in mindset, and you can tackle the operational issues.”
Clearly, introducing flexible working into teaching is less straightforward than in office-based roles. Complications around timetabling and culture, the frontline nature of the role and the intensity of the school day all play their part.
But our Teaching Pioneer MATs (Academies Enterprise Trust, GLF Schools and The Kemnal Academies Trust) recognised that these challenges should, and could, be overcome. They agreed about the benefits of flexible working in schools, and saw our pilot as an opportunity to focus on how to go wider and deeper with the changes that were needed.
Our team worked closely with central HR teams and headteachers from the eight schools to explore five core areas, providing support including workshops, coaching sessions, timetabling masterclasses and train-the-trainer materials, and sharing learnings across the group at each stage.
So what was the outcome? There were a number of key learnings, which our Teaching Pioneers have already begun to implement – and which can be adopted by other schools and academy trusts who are keen to get better at flexible working. Here are some of the highlights:
Many schools currently operate on a request-response model, in which people (usually women coming back from maternity leave) formally ask for reduced hours. This pigeonholes flex as something that needs to be earned, and isn’t applicable to all, creating an unspoken sense that there are a limited number of arrangements possible.
A far better way forward is to implement a proactive whole-school approach, which opens up opportunities for flexibility across all roles. This is facilitated by regular, open discussions about what people’s flexible needs might be, how to create opportunities to support these, and how to build these into the timetabling and workforce planning processes.
A knock-on effect of the request response model is that flexible working in schools has become synonymous with part-time. However, there are many other flexible options that schools can consider, such as timetabling PPA at the beginning or end of the day and allowing staff to do that work from home, or delivering CPD and meetings remotely.
Many schools trialled some of these approaches during lockdown, and some have continued with them; but what’s often missing is a strategic approach to their implementation, underpinned by dialogue about when, where and how work can be done, which gives people a sense of input and control.
The point is to have open minds and discussions, and see what is possible within each role and team. In the words of one principal: “We can’t guarantee the same outcomes… but the process is the same for all – open conversations, trying out different ideas and trying to make it work.”
Clearly, such substantial operational and culture changes require committed leadership. So it’s vital that headteachers are not just vaguely supportive of flexible working, but committed to it in principle, and driven to make it work. This commitment is all the more powerful when heads role model working flexibly themselves.
They also need to be willing to pass on some of the responsibility to others. With a whole-school approach, the implications and execution of what’s needed and what’s possible are discussed at an individual, team and school level, rather than simply being approved or declined by the head.
The pilot also highlighted the importance of clear communication, explored solutions for the thorny issue of timetabling, focused on training and empowerment of line managers and noted the positive impact on students.
Sixteen months on from the start of the project, what’s been the impact on our Teaching Pioneers? Our post-pilot evaluation showed that a majority of teachers surveyed felt more confident about discussing flexible working, and that different reasons were considered more acceptable; they also noted that their schools were increasingly supportive of flexible working.
Qualitative feedback also highlights the impact the programme has had. Comments include: “There is so much goodwill in return for the trust and understanding we are given”, and “Thinking proactively is liberating… we engage more people to explore what’s possible and come up with more creative ideas that can work for both sides.”
One principal noted “Our absenteeism has dropped through the floor”, which highlights the return on investment that flexible working can deliver. Our own research has showed that, for a MAT with 100 teaching staff, one fewer sick day per teacher per year for three years would cover the cost of a flexible working pilot. On every level, that’s an investment worth making.
It’s our hope that more schools and MATs will use the findings from this pilot to develop their own whole school approach to flexible working, and reap these rewards. We’ve also partnered with the Department for Education to develop a programme of insights and resources to train school leaders in flexible working; to date 682 schools and 103 business institutions across the country have taken part. We’ll be watching with interest to see how the educational landscape changes as a result.
You can download the Teaching Pioneers Programme report here.
Published June 2022
It’s no exaggeration to say that the teaching profession is in the middle of a staffing crisis. Research from the National Education Union suggests the 44% of teachers are planning to leave within five years, and that it’s getting harder to fill vacancies, with a knock-on effect on workloads and wellbeing for remaining staff.
Introducing flexible working in teaching is less straightforward than in office-based roles, for a range of reasons. Complications around timetabling and culture, the frontline nature of the role and the intensity of the school day all play their part.
But all the evidence suggests that the positive impact it has on staff retention and recruitment makes it well worth the investment. The reasons why schools should implement flexible working are clear; what’s been less certain, until now, is how do it well.
Our Teaching Pioneers Programme sought to close this knowledge gap. Working with eight secondary schools, within three MATs, we spent 16 months exploring how best to champion and deliver flexible working within the profession.
Our learnings from the programme, and the implications for schools, academy trusts and policymakers, are set out in a full report, which you can download below. You can also download a guide, based on what we learned, which provides practical support for headteachers.
Published June 2022
It feels like the four-day week is a concept whose time has come. In the wake of the pandemic, companies of all shapes and sizes have been exploring how changes to working arrangements can support productivity, wellbeing and inclusion, and help navigate the Great Resignation. And now, 90 or so years after the establishment of the two-day weekend, there’s a growing feeling that working less may be the solution.
Into this space has come the four-day week campaign, part of a global movement championing the benefits of this arrangement. June 2022 sees the launch of a sixth-month UK pilot trialling the move to a four-day, 32-hour week, with no loss of pay; 60 companies, including over 3000 workers, will be taking part. And we, like many organisations, will be watching with interest.
Our interest in the four-day week is longstanding; we believe that, implemented carefully, it can be hugely beneficial on many levels. We have the experience to back up this view; we have recently been working with leaders in the tech, and retail sectors to trial it within their organisations. And we have celebrated companies who have successfully implemented the four-day week through our annual Power List.
But we are also well aware that, alongside the many positives, there are some potential issues and pitfalls that employers need be aware of if this kind of arrangement is to be a success. So here’s a summary of how a four-day week could benefit your organisation – and the challenges you’ll need to tackle to make it work.
There’s widespread agreement on the benefits of working less, both for employers and their employees, and feedback from companies which have trialled the four-day week is overwhelmingly positive. It has been seen to lower stress levels, sickness and absence and improve work-life balance, wellbeing and motivation. It can also boost talent attraction and retention and, by taking some of the stigma away from working less, could support female progression and so help close the gender pay gap.
Additionally, a November 2021 Henley Business School white paper noted that businesses that offer a 4- day week have reduced costs while at least maintaining the quality of the work produced. And there are strong arguments for the environmental benefits, with one assessment suggesting that moving to a four-day week by 2025 could reduce the UK’s emissions by 127 million tonnes.
However, it’s important to remember that these benefits will disappear if the four-day week is implemented badly. So it’s critical that leaders and managers makes sure that an employee’s workload is achievable within the four days available.
This is particularly relevant because there is evidence that the pandemic has led to an increase in the number of people working excessive hours. As IES Director Tony Wilson highlighted on Twitter, overemployment (that is, people who want to work fewer hours, and are prepared to take a pay cut to achieve it) is at 3.5 million, a record high. And the rise in work creep during the pandemic was so marked that it triggered calls for a legal right to disconnect.
So before trying to implement an arrangement in which people work less, leaders need to put in place a culture in which boundaries are respected within existing jobs, and robust dialogue between managers and their teams around quantity and quality of work is encouraged. And crucially, people’s jobs need to be designed to fit the hours available to carry them out.
Shifting from a five-day week to a four-day one, across an organisation, is not straightforward, and there are some operational challenges that need clarifying. For example:
The four-day week campaign are clear with their definition: they refer to a 100-80-100 arrangement, in which employees receive 100% pay for working 80% hours while delivering 100% performance.
This is not the same as compressed hours (for example, working four 10-hour days instead of five eight-hour ones, for the same pay) which is a completely different arrangement, and one which brings very different challenges. So employers need to understand, and be open about, what they are offering under the four-day umbrella.
If full-timers move from a five-day week to a four-day one, what happens to those who already work less than five days (and are paid accordingly)?
The four-day week campaign suggest, and we agree, that a four-day part-timer should either continue to work their four days with an uplift in pay, or reduce their hours by a similar proportion to their full-time colleagues without a decrease in salary.
And while that seems reasonable, it becomes more complicated for employers who are working three or two days a week, and is likely to have a bigger impact on deliverability than it does for full-time colleagues. None of this is surmountable, but it has to be carefully considered, robustly implemented, and tightly managed.
Depending on how client-facing your organisation is, you may prefer to stagger people’s days, so you have a full week covered, rather than giving everyone in your team the same day off. If you opt for the former, you’ll need to take care to make it fair (how do you decide who gets which day off?) and have a plan for communication that takes into account people’s varying days.
These challenges shouldn’t be a barrier to implementing a four-day week – but they do need to be considered before you start, and planned and executed well. It’s also important to remember that what works for another business might not work for you; when it comes to the four-day week, there really is no one-size-fits-all.
In the interests of fairness, a four-day week is not something that can be allocated to some employees and not others. If you want to avoid a two-tier workforce, split into four-day week haves and have-nots, it has to be implemented organisation-wide.
However, that does raise some big questions about how it can be managed for frontline employees, particularly those in shift-based or service-focused roles or those who produce. It can be done – for example, nurses already work 36-hour shift patterns across seven-day rosters – but there may be a need to plug reduced hours across a schedule with extra resource, which is likely to come at a cost.
And there is also a watchout regarding employees who are paid by the hour, many of whom are on relatively low wages and so seeking to work as many hours as possible. Whilst being paid the same for working fewer hours is of course a positive outcome, they are more likely than most to seek to fill the time with extra work, which would negate any wellbeing benefits.
This latter point is part of a much wider conversation about pay, and not one we can solve here – but it’s worth bearing in mind, nonetheless.
Let’s be clear; this kind of structural shift isn’t cost-free, and will require an investment of both time and money to get right. That shouldn’t be enough to put you off; given the positive impact it is likely to bring to your organisation, it would be money well spent. And we can say this with confidence, given that our own recent research has proved that there is a positive ROI for implementing flexible working arrangements.
But it’s important to be realistic about the additional costs you will incur up front, and to allocate the resources that a change of this magnitude deserves.
Overall, then, the four-day week is an intriguing prospect, which could be hugely beneficial to employers and employees alike. But – and it’s a big but – it’s not a quick fix, and doing it badly would be worse than not doing it at all. We’ll be watching the progress of the trial with great interest – and will be tracking the longer-term impact as it becomes more embedded into UK workplace norms.
Published May 2022
