Organisational case studies on flexible working: variations in practice

This research explored the different flexible working practices, both statutory and non-statutory, used by organisations in 5 sectors. It answered the following research questions:

• How have organisations developed policy environments around flexible working legislation?
• How do sectoral and organisational factors affect the management of flexible working arrangements?
• How do line managers handle and make decisions around a range of statutory and non-statutory requests for flexible working, and what are the influential factors in this process?
• What do different approaches offer employers in a changing world of work?

35 semi-structured interviews were conducted with HR representatives, including policy leads and practitioners, in addition to trade union representatives and individual managers, across 5 large service sector organisations. These employers were: a retailer, a local government organisation, a professional services organisation, a healthcare organisation, and a bank.

How have organisations developed policy environments around flexible working legislation?

In recent years, flexible working has become part of case study organisations' strategic thinking, central to recruitment, retention, and workforce wellbeing. In the case studies, legislation steered organisational policy, with employers ranging from those who replicated the legislative framework in their policy, to those who used it as a starting point to build a more tailored offer. Knowledge of legislation and Acas's 2014 statutory Code of Practice on flexible working was most extensive among HR professionals, with managers calling upon this expertise as and when needed.

The research highlighted some managerial knowledge gaps around organisational policy that could lead to inconsistencies in staff's access to flexible working. Participants also expressed challenges around the pre-2024 legislation's scope to respond to multifaceted workforce needs. For example, managers felt that formal statutory requests requiring contract variations were at odds with the need for everyday, often more informal, flexible working practices.

Interviewees were concerned that the changes proposed by the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act and the day-one right to request flexible working would impact organisations unequally. Larger employers felt they had greater inbuilt capacity to process and handle new requirements, owing to their policy expertise and ability to coordinate different arrangements across a substantial workforce.

How do industry, organisational and individual factors affect the management of flexible working arrangements?

The research found that type of industry strongly influenced organisations' policy environments, with job roles informing flexible working options. Aligning business needs with different working patterns presented a greater challenge in retail and healthcare. In these cases, organisations were carefully managing team needs alongside individual ones to ensure equity between co-workers.

Influential organisational factors included size and scope for technology utilisation. Enablers of successful implementation included cultural openness to change and leaders' and managers' role-modelling of flexible working. Consideration of staff needs was an essential part of equity and staff retention across the case studies. Staff profiles, such as a gendered workforce, drove flexible working demand and embedded it into organisational strategy. Alongside gender, age was a key differentiator in flexible working requests; for example, the mid-career point drove flexible working needs around parenting. Pandemic working also provided managers with insight into how well-being and mental health challenges informed diverse working needs.

How do line managers handle and make decisions around a range of statutory and non-statutory requests for flexible working, and what are the influential factors in this process?

Formal and informal flexible working were evident in all case study organisations. Informal flexible working was the most common arrangement and formal statutory requests were the rarest. Non-statutory requests were used for both contractual (formal) and non-contractual (informal) arrangements. A key determining factor in opting for a non-statutory procedure was the expected predictability of working variations – non-statutory arrangements provided greater day-to-day adaptability to evolving circumstances, but they could also be more challenging to track.

Interviewees regarded formal statutory requests that missed this step as indicative of a problem, and these were relatively unusual. Tailored support from HR advisers was an important resource in coaching managers through difficult or unfamiliar circumstances, and ensuring that they were legally compliant, applied decisions consistently, and communicated them effectively. HR teams also assisted in designing and refining arrangements and advised line managers in evolving hybrid environments.

Changing circumstances often triggered employees' requests, and as such a key design feature of sustainable flexible working arrangements was adaptability. Decision-making was affected by managers' knowledge of their staff's relative need for flexible working arrangements, with informal flexible working often identified as most appropriate where rapid action was needed, for example to deal with caring or health complications.

While a great deal of informal flexible working was not centrally recorded in the case studies, interviewees increasingly saw the value in becoming more systematic in documenting regular variations in working patterns. For organisations that took this approach, it enabled workforce analysis, planning, and more consistent decision-making. Informal, ad hoc arrangements were generally dealt with by line managers without creating a clear central record.

What do different approaches offer employers in a changing world of work?

The pandemic accelerated informal flexible working in organisations, and the managers interviewed recognised its value in enabling employees’ performance during challenging circumstances. Coming out of lockdowns and moving into hybrid working, the organisations saw a range of different types of flexible working being used more routinely, reflected in the strategic 'Work Futures' groups (hybrid policy working groups) set up in each of the organisations to oversee hybrid working policies and ensure that discussions about work organisation were placed at the heart of business planning. This represented a shift in their priorities: as organisations experimented with hybrid working, they appreciated the benefits of keeping arrangements fluid and informal until they were able to fully capture and implement their learnings from these trials.

Hybrid working enabled culture change around flexible working in the case studies, in becoming more 'learning' organisations that reflected upon the benefits and costs of recent changes and factored these into future planning. At the time of the research, organisations were engaged with challenges around ensuring equity among their fully site-based and hybrid staff, with other forms of flexible working playing a key role in these discussions. Emerging good practice was evident around:

• leaders and managers creating a transparent climate for change, that incorporated good communication and role modelling into their practice around flexible working arrangements
• staff development initiatives, including buddying schemes, aimed at ensuring that staff using flexible working arrangements did not experience inequities through being overlooked for promotion, and identifying ways of sharing innovation
• wellbeing initiatives that connected and supported employees with varied working patterns, such as staff networks and drop-in social events
• innovation around hybrid working, including moving toward a more outputs-based assessment of performance in roles, building in learning opportunities, and curating working patterns to connect people at opportune times.

Conclusions

Recent years saw an expansion of informal flexible working in the case study organisations. It became integrated into everyday working due to the effects of the pandemic and was linked to organisational performance, enabling employees to combine their jobs with other responsibilities in their homes. Flexibility was being used both responsively and strategically as a working practice with retention and recruitment benefits.

Some organisations' offer to staff went beyond legislative requirements, prioritising making flexible working accessible to people with fluctuating needs, such as carers. As organisations moved into hybrid working, some proactively recorded the different forms of flexible working that they were supporting.  

Flexible working arrangements became more diverse and routine in organisations during the pandemic. The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023 and day-one right to request could provide a climate in which more statutory requests are made to formalise recently-evolved arrangements and ensure that informal flexible working is protected from future change.

Recommendations around organisational support for flexible working practice

The research identified 5 areas where it recommends that practice can be enhanced and supported by employers:

Data collection

Record-keeping by different parties around flexible working arrangements could be variable within organisations, and gaps represent a missed opportunity to conduct better workforce analysis and troubleshoot around inequities.

Managerial training and guidance

Organisations can be more proactive in supporting managers to engage in management training programmes, and ensure that these contain the latest insights around hybrid design and flexible working, well-being support, and legislative change so that they have immediate application for practice. Policy guidance can be developed in more accessible formats that reflect different organisations' needs, for example, through decision-making trees, case studies that highlight different sectoral experiences, and toolkits.

HR support 

Responsive and trusted relationships are important in encouraging take-up of guidance, and there can be mileage in targeting support at managers who have more recently joined organisations and those leading large, complex teams. Sharing information with line managers about pre-existing flexible working arrangements, as well as offering learning and support around developing these, can improve organisational consistency, and will be valuable during a period of rapid working practice change like the current one.

Hybrid working policy 

This is still emergent in many organisations, and sharing learning here will help support the development of responsive approaches that reflect organisational and sector needs.

Sharing good practice of innovation around flexible working arrangements

Innovation around flexible working arrangements is an essential part of effective knowledge exchange at a time when hybrid working and legislative change are driving engagement in new ways of working, such as the emerging model of a 4-day week for full-time pay and team-based decision-making around rostering. The kinds of exchange that managers might particularly welcome both between and within organisations around hybrid working include:

• how to maximise in-person collaboration when staff have diverse hybrid working patterns (often combined with other forms of flexible working)
• how to enhance learning and organisational attachment in hybrid working environments
• and how to ensure inclusiveness and equitable career progression when staff are working in a more diverse range of ways

Acas: Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service

CEO: Chief Executive Officer

CIPD: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 

DBT: Department for Business and Trade

ERGO: Ethics and Research Governance Online

HR: Human Resources

HRA: Health Research Authority

IRAS: Integrated Research Application System

ITC: Information and Communications Technology

LFS: Labour Force Survey

NHS: National Health Service

Formal flexible working: flexible working arrangements that have been agreed upon with a manager, HR, or both, and which include both applications made through the right to request system and those organised outside of the right to request procedure. Thus formal flexible working may involve both statutory and some non-statutory requests. There is a clear intention that the requested arrangement will become a part of the employee's agreed contractual terms. As such, formal flexible working describes a contractual change that is logged in a central record and is therefore visible at an organisational level. 

Informal flexible working: flexible working arrangements that have been agreed locally with a manager in a way that does not make use of the statutory framework, and which do not (intentionally) result in contractual changes. A caveat here is that informal flexible working arrangements can sometimes become contractual through custom and practice. Informal flexible working arrangements can range from regular agreements about hybrid working to more ad hoc  occasional requests and/or irregular changes to working patterns. Informal flexible working may be logged in a central record so that it is visible at an organisational level, but more often it is based upon a spoken agreement between an employee and manager only.

These distinctions are discussed in more detail in the Typology section 1.4.

Acas commissioned Southampton Business School to undertake a research project to understand organisational approaches to flexible working in 5 industries, exploring organisations' awareness, use, and handling of statutory and non-statutory requests.

1.1 Research background and aims

The pandemic has raised awareness of the potential for flexible working arrangements to foster sustainable working practices for diverse workforces. The return to offices has created a will for hybrid experimentation in some industries, reflecting a recognition that both employers and employees might welcome more fluid working arrangements. At the same time, Dobbins (2021) has highlighted tensions between employees' and employers' flexible working preferences.

In December 2022, following consultation on making flexible working the default, the Government announced its intention to extend the provisions around the right to request flexible working, shifting the requirements upon employers towards greater and more frequent consideration of statutory applications. The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill cleared the House of Commons on 24 February 2023 and received Royal Assent in July 2023. It came into force on 6 April 2024 alongside a right to request flexible working from the first day of employment (Cunningham et al, 2024). A new Labour government taking office in July 2024 has confirmed plans to build on the statutory framework. This is a live public policy issue and one that many organisations are engaging with as they develop their competency with hybrid working. A hybrid working pattern is a blend of home-based and office-based working. This can be either fixed or fluid in terms of the proportion of time that an employee spends in either location in a typical week (Parry et al, 2022). It is itself a form of flexible working where work is organised across multiple sites, which can be overlaid across modifications around working hours. Changes to the right to request framework could trigger organisations' further re-engagement around flexible working, particularly those whose policy framework is more aligned with the 2014 right to request legislation.

Indeed, in the period since the pandemic, the CIPD was already reporting that 40% of employers had seen a rise in flexible working requests (2023). However, there remain significant and varied differences between actual and desired working patterns, highlighting an important area of unmet need among employees. In particular, the CIPD's analysis (2023) indicated a 40% expectation-reality gap for a 4-day week working patterns and 22% for flexi-time, compared to patterns that were relatedly more accessible like regular working from home (a 2% gap) and informal flexibility (9%).

Flexible working arrangements are not evenly distributed across the UK labour market, with significant variation between industries (Labour Force Survey, 2022). This labour market variability implies that many employees cannot access the kind of flexible working that they need, and there may be cultural norms around industries that influence how flexible working is designed and managed.

This variation was evident in the analysis of 2022 Labour Force Survey data conducted for this project (see Appendix 2). Part-time working is the most common form of flexible working arrangement in the UK, experienced by 25% of those surveyed. It is a relatively feminised working pattern, more prevalent in the NHS, third-sector organisations, and smaller workplaces. A third of part-time workers also make use of at least one other form of flexible working.

22% of the workforce work mainly from home, an increase from 5% in 2019, and this is somewhat more common for women and in industries and occupations like the for-profit sector, higher education, charities, professional services, ICT, and managerial occupations . Working from home is also commonly used alongside other forms of flexible working.

Meanwhile, 13% of the workforce is on a flexi-time contract, a working pattern that is more common in central and local government, the third sector, professional and administrative occupations, and in larger workplaces.

We know less about precisely how these different flexible working arrangements are organised within organisations. Cheng's analysis of calls to the Acas helpline revealed differences in how statutory entitlements and organisational policy around flexible working arrangements are communicated and implemented (2021). There is an urgent need to understand how organisations approach flexible working (and why they do so in certain ways), how they handle combinations of statutory and non-statutory requests, and the consequences of these practices. This research looks at the range of everyday practices around flexible working by looking at 5 employers that represent a broad cross-section of employers, differing in industry and size.

Reflecting the language used around flexibility by personnel within organisations, the term 'formal' flexible working is used in this report to cover both statutory and non-statutory requests for flexible working that seek to make a contractual change. By contrast, 'informal' flexible working is used to cover the non-statutory requests that are based upon agreements with managers; these do not seek to change contracts and tend to be less visible at the organisational level. They can include a range of both regular and more ad hoc arrangements. These distinctions are covered in more detail in the terminology section of this report (section 1.4).

The abundance of informal flexible working arrangements within organisations (CIPD, 2023) make it difficult to accurately measure and assess demand and how informal arrangements co-exist alongside formal ones. The CIPD defines informal flexible working as "the ability to change hours or location on an as-needed basis, informally agreed with your line manager".

Nevertheless, it is important to understand the rationale for why employers may prefer different flexible working formats, be they statutory or non-statutory, and the associated benefits and organisational implementation challenges of these approaches.

Further, while the implementation of working from home during successive lockdowns has provided organisations with substantial evidence regarding its benefits (Parry et al, 2022), less is known about how other forms of flexible working were deployed in more informal arrangements to complement diverse experiences of working from home during the pandemic, which of these are persisting, and in what format.

1.1.1 Research aims and questions

The primary aim of this research was to explore the range of flexible working practices used by organisations, both statutory and non-statutory, and to understand the benefits and challenges of managing these combinations in a working environment that has seen fast-paced change in recent years. This can be broken down into the following research questions:

• How have organisations developed policy environments around flexible working legislation, and what are the implementation challenges? (See Chapter 2)
• How do industry, organisational and individual factors affect the management of flexible working arrangements? (See Chapter 3)
• How do line managers handle and make decisions around a range of statutory and non-statutory requests for flexible working, and what are the influential factors in this process? (See Chapter 4)
• What do different approaches to flexible working offer employers in a changing world of work? (See Chapter 5)

This report's findings offer insight into how flexible working policy and practice can be implemented in a range of organisational contexts.

1.2 Methods

To understand how flexible working processes are developed and operate across a range of organisations, a qualitative case study-based design (Yin, 2009), which could explore these differences in detail, was adopted. The research focused on 5 organisations in different industries that had become familiar with implementing flexible working arrangements to provide expertise on a range of formats:

• a retailer (referred to in this report as Organisation A)
• a local government organisation (Organisation B)
• a financial services company (Organisation C)
• a healthcare organisation (Organisational D)
• and a bank (Organisation E)

These covered both public (Organisations B and D) and private sectors (Organisations A, C, and E), and ranged from a regional focus (Organisations A, B, and D) to an international operation with a headquarters in the UK (Organisations C and E). Further details of the case studies can be found in Appendix 3.

Study sites were identified through the analysis of Labour Force Survey data to identify notable patterns of different flexible working arrangements. Across the case study sites, 35 interviews were conducted with a combination of HR representatives, policy and hybrid working leads, managers, and trade union or staff representatives (see Appendix 1, Table 4). Interview content varied according to job role and covered issues like organisational and individual approaches to managing flexible working, decision-making, and enablers and barriers around implementing different kinds of flexible working arrangements. Interviews took between 30 and 75 minutes and included the use of vignettes (that is hypothetical unresolved situations; see Appendix 1) to further probe organisational decision-making around different kinds of flexible working requests. Further details of this case study approach can be found in Appendix 1. Interviews took place in late 2022 to early 2023, towards the end of which awareness was building around the new Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill.

This research design offered insight into how and why particular forms of flexible working have become a mainstream part of organisational practice, and the systems that developed around managing requests. A case study approach enabled the researchers to develop a deep understanding of how organisational culture, process, and industry factors affect flexible working, as well as how and why variation around implementation occurs within organisations. The qualitative interviews were complemented by gathering organisational policy materials that documented processes in the study sites. The data was analysed on NVivo software, using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

1.3 Report structure

This report divides the findings into 4 parts:

1.3.1 Policy environments

Chapter 2 looks at:

• organisational policies on flexible working
• how these aligned with the legislative framework
• and policy-to-practice gaps

1.3.2 Flexible working observed in research

Chapter 3 concentrates on:

• organisations' approach to flexible working
• how statutory (formal) and non-statutory (a combination of formal and informal) forms of flexibility were used within organisations
• the facilitators and barriers to flexible working practice
• and industry variations around flexible working

1.3.3 How flexible working requests are handled by organisations

Chapter 4 examines:

• what drives these requests
• how decisions are made and what influences these
• the kind of organisational support that is available to managers around requests
• how rejections are handled
• and what organisations are doing around the monitoring and use of flexible working data

1.3.4 New working practices that impact on flexible working

Chapter 5 looks at:

• starting by looking at pandemic and hybrid working in organisations
• issues around culture change
• and emerging good practice

Key findings are presented at the start of each chapter, and chapter 6 brings together conclusions from the research and sets out support gaps where interventions will be beneficial.

Appendices include further detail on the Labour Force Survey (LFS) analysis, case studies of the 5 organisations that took part in this research and provide further information on research methods.

1.4 Typology of flexible working arrangements used in this report

Case study organisations used 4 distinct types of flexible working arrangements:

• Formal flexible working arrangements, organised through the right to request process (otherwise known as statutory requests)
• Formal flexible working arrangements, organised outside of the right to request process
• Informal, regular flexible working arrangements
• Informal, ad hoc flexible working arrangements

These are the main differences between the formations: How and why they were used by organisations in different situations will be picked up in the report.

Since all or some of the above forms of flexible working may be present in an organisation at any one time, and because arrangements may be dynamic, reflecting employees' changing circumstances, it can be useful to think of flexible working in terms of a spectrum of experience (see Figure 1).

The boundaries between different forms of flexible working can be fluid. For example, 2 individuals in the same organisation might both be working compressed hours in ways that appear identical to their colleagues. However, one arrangement may have been organised formally (either through the statutory or non-statutory routes), reflected in a change to the employee's contract (arrangement 1 or 2) , while the other is based upon an informal understanding with their line manager, without an intention for there to be a change to the employee's contract or a central log of the arrangement (arrangement 3).

In this report, we primarily use the terminology formal and informal flexible working arrangements rather than statutory and non-statutory flexible working arrangements (however such terms are specified where appropriate). This reflects an important linguistic difference between policy communities and organisational practice, with interviewees preferring to refer to formal/informal distinctions. Indeed, given that statutory requests tended to make up a small proportion of the flexible working arrangements managed by case study organisations (see chapter 4), the formal-informal terminology enabled more fine-grained distinctions to be drawn across the large category of non-statutory flexible working. A discussion of how this report uses flexible work terminology compared to the 2023 Department for Business and Trade call for evidence is found in Appendix 4.

Figure 1 presents these features in terms of the spectrum of flexible working arrangements being used by case study organisations. This illustrates further that formality-informality is best viewed as a continuum rather than a binary distinction, with a diverse range of flexible working practices in each of the categories of arrangements identified above, some of which can look similar in practice. A further consideration is that organisational norms were influential in how flexible work was applied to different roles, such as the use of flexi-time in the local government case study organisation. Furthermore, flexible working experiences within a given arrangement are not necessarily static but can change to reflect changing circumstances in people's personal lives. Just as informal flexible working arrangements might become formal over time (as they become more established), so too can discussions that start off formally result in a more informal arrangement. This might occur, for instance, where organisations find that it is advantageous to assess how different arrangements suit both employees and managers before committing to more lasting contractual change.

Figure 1 shows where on the spectrum of flexible working, the arrangements of different case study organisations sit. The spectrum starts with the most formal arrangements and ends with the least formal arrangements. 

The most formal is arrangement 1. This is a statutory arrangement that has a:  

• regular pattern 
• contractual change 
• written agreement based on organisational policy

Arrangement 2 is a non-statutory arrangement that has a:

• regular pattern 
• contractual change 
• written agreement based on organisational policy

Arrangement 3: is a non-statutory arrangement that has a regular pattern but no intended contractual change. These are mostly spoken agreements with a manager.

The least formal is arrangement 4. This is a non-statutory arrangement that is ad hoc with:

• no intended contractual change 
• a spoken agreement with a manager

Hybrid working – a relatively new form of flexible working arrangement to many organisations – illustrates the fluidity of this spectrum. While organisations experimented with what worked, they used a combination of arrangements 3 and 4 (informal, non-statutory agreements with managers about regular or more ad hoc hybrid working patterns). This was influenced by a combination of individual, managerial, and team factors.

In the future, as learning becomes embedded and organisational policy is developed around hybrid working, there might be a tendency towards greater formality (arrangement 2). It is possible too that employees might seek to formalise hybrid working through a statutory request (arrangement 1), perhaps particularly at the point of starting employment. Further, hybrid working is often combined with other forms of flexible working, such as varied working hours, so it might particularly drive the need for managers to have access to, and to know how to arrange and implement, a range of ways to organise diverse working patterns.

In this chapter, section 2.2 sets out the unique policy environments of the case study organisations: the influences on their flexible working policies, how these had been developed in relation to the legislative framework (2.3), and the gaps that existed between policy environments and flexible working practices (2.4).

2.1 Key findings of the chapter

• Organisational policy environments were strongly influenced by industry.
• Flexible working had become integral to some organisations' recruitment, retention, and wellbeing strategies and, as a result, they had put more inclusive policy frameworks in place.
• Legislation has provided an important foundation for organisational policy development, reflecting statutory requests for flexible working, but there was evidence that it was out of step with how working practices have evolved since 2020, particularly around informal flexible working, including hybrid working.
• Gaps in managerial knowledge around organisational policy could give rise to inequalities in implementation. Given that the new Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act and 'day 1' right to request flexible working aims to extend access to flexible working, legislative change can have different impacts on organisations depending on their circumstances. Larger case study organisations anticipated that they would be able to more easily adapt to new requirements.

2.2 Organisational policies on flexible working

The different approaches that case study organisations adopted around their flexible working policy are described in Table 2. Two approaches were used: one that was broadly aligned with the legislation (Organisations A and B), and one that allowed requests from the first day of employment, which encouraged discussion in recruitment interviews about flexibility in order to establish working needs (Organisations C, D and E).

With the exception of Organisation C, none of the case study organisations' hybrid working policies were incorporated into their flexible working policy when the research interviews took place. For Organisations A, B, D, and E, their flexible working policies focused on more formal practice: a mixture of statutory and non-statutory requests, resulting in contractual changes. Full case studies are provided in Appendix 3, with a breakdown of interviewee types in Appendix 1, Table 4.

In Organisation A (retail) interviewees made the point that a key characteristic of their flexible working policy was its simplicity. This was valued because the business comprised several distinctive sites and job types, more so than the other case studies. Consequently, they needed a policy that could be applied to multiple working scenarios.

For Organisation B (local government), an HR stakeholder explained that their flexible working policy was an increasingly important part of their reward and recruitment strategy, making flexible working strategically important. An HR stakeholder in Organisation D (healthcare) made a similar point, that flexible working had shifted in recent years and become more central to business success:

A policy stakeholder in Organisation E (banking), extended this point, claiming their flexible working offer gave them a competitive advantage:

As the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023 and day 1 right to request flexible working came into force in April 2024, m any organisations will need to adjust their flexible working policy to achieve compliance. Where organisations' approach has been to model their policy on the legislation, like Organisations A and B (respectively retail and local government), they can follow the new framework in making revisions. A policy stakeholder in Organisation A spoke of their awareness that, despite revising their flexible working policy less than a year ago, the pace of change since 2020 meant this would continue to be an ongoing process. Notably, and as Chapter 3 explores in more detail, while organisational policy frameworks tended to reflect the more formal (but mainly non-statutory) end of the flexible working 'spectrum', in reality, there was considerable variation in flexible working arrangements. For example, a manager in Organisation A explained that, in practice, the former 26-week qualifying period was not rigorously applied, since line managers interpreted policy fairly broadly:

For Organisation D (healthcare), a key component of their flexible working policy was enabling requests to be standardised. This gives line managers a clear process to follow that would result in equitable outcomes. To this end, they developed a toolkit to support line managers' decision-making. This approach involved allowing flexible working regardless of the reason for the request, an approach similar to Organisation C (financial services), and which contrasted with other case studies, as a policy stakeholder there explained:

Being regarded as a flexible employer was very much a part of Organisation C's brand, which they saw as an integral part of their approach to talent management.

In Organisation D's highly team-based working environment, their priority was to handle flexible working requests equitably. This approach was deemed essential due to the nature of their staff mix, comprising a workforce known to have significant caring commitments. They took a qualitative, data-informed approach, so that earlier applicants did not have an advantage over later ones in securing desired shift patterns, something that they were aware could create workforce tensions.

Interviewees in Organisation D talked about a '3-pronged' policy approach to flexible working, comprising:

• a proactive, leader-led style, used particularly around non-clinical work
• team talks, where flexible working patterns were the product of negotiation amongst individual teams
• team-based rostering, mainly used in hybrid roles

The team-based approaches had the advantage of being seen by workforces as more democratic, which aligned with how Organisation D wanted its approach to flexible working to be perceived. In the past, they had received accusations of managerial bias around rostering, and an HR representative there explained how they had subsequently moved towards a more transparent and inclusive approach:

Aside from the equity drive around policy, a manager in Organisation D reflected that in practical terms it was preferable to know about staff's flexible working needs at the start of contracts, rather than having to redesign jobs several months into a post:

Notably, in Organisation D, the trade union was particularly involved in its policy review.

Organisations were influenced by the 2014 Acas Code of Practice when developing their flexible working policy, and there was a range of ways in which they used it as flexible working became more established. An HR stakeholder in Organisation A (retail) described the Acas Code as their "go-to" on policy issues, and others pointed to its influence on employee relations. Managers tended to be less familiar with it, having an awareness of the Code's guidance, but were not routinely seeking it out, assuming that their HR advisers could offer expert interpretation on specific issues. A few interviewees (managers) mentioned that they perceived Acas more in terms of grievances and would not think of looking at the Code to inform their flexible working policy or practice, particularly when arrangements were more informal. Others reflected that it was a useful resource to dip into to ensure compliance since it was "well-known and reputable." An area where some policy interviewees felt the Code could be enhanced was in developing information about hybrid working models.

The main challenges raised by the case study organisations around implementing effective flexible working policy were in establishing a fair and consistent process and balancing this with business needs. A manager from Organisation A (retail) raised a point that was echoed by a number of managers. They argued that rigid adherence to organisational policy could make the process of deciding a request too drawn out. In their view, this was not always practical when responding to a sudden change in an employee's circumstances that would benefit from flexible working, such as following a family health crisis. In such circumstances, following organisational policy could result in losing a staff member, and it could be in managers' interests to be proactive in progressing an application. A policy stakeholder in Organisation B (local government) suggested that organisational policy had not kept up with changes to ways of working brought about by the pandemic, leading managers to be pragmatic about how they resolved flexible working requests.

2.3 Alignment to the legislative framework

The legislative framework around flexible working requests provided a foundation upon which organisations could develop their own flexible working policy. At the time of the research (late 2022 to early 2023), legislation provided that employees may make flexible working requests after 26 weeks of continuous service.

Some case studies, such as Organisation A (retail), intentionally kept their flexible working policy simple, so that it reflected the statutory minimum. Notably Organisation A had 4 distinctive elements to its business (a mixture of office and different customer-facing environments), each with different working models, which complicated the development of holistic flexible working policy. By contrast, Organisations C (financial services), D (healthcare), and E (banking)'s flexible working policy went beyond the (pre-April 2024) statutory minimum, offering a 'day 1' entitlement to request flexible working.

In addition to providing a template from which organisations could design their own policy, interviewees felt that (1) the legislative framework offered a safety net that protected individuals whose circumstances changed and (2) that it was valuable on the grounds of workforce equity. Even though use of the statutory procedure was a minority practice in all case study organisations (see Chapter 3), various interviewees noted the value of the right to request route in providing access to flexible working for those who might be prevented from acquiring it through other channels (for example because of unsympathetic managers or ones who were inexperienced in implementing complicated requests).

Criticisms of the (pre-April 2024) legislative framework were:

• the business reasons it set out were said to be too generic to be useful across different organisations
• that the law was seen to favour employers' interests
• that it required requests to be processed in an unrealistic timeframe for applicants who had a pressing need to change their working patterns

One manager, who was using the right to request process to support a staff member with complex caring responsibilities by trying to circumvent organisational hybrid working requirements, explained that they felt the legislation was unduly restrictive around circumstances that could be fluctuating and unpredictable. The concern was also raised that where organisations used the 'business reason' set out in the law (of the need to maintain service provision) to reject a request, then it might be perceived as discriminatory and preclude those with caring responsibilities or health conditions from accessing flexible working.

Conversely, a policy stakeholder from Organisation C (financial services) felt that – where flexible working arrangements had been agreed – the legislation could provide impetus for employers to redesign jobs more proactively to ensure that they were fit for purpose. However, this interviewee also felt that the legislation's tone of formality around requesting flexibility was out of step with how working patterns had changed around a 24/7 society and during the pandemic. Extending this point, organisations were engaging with issues raised by trends like the four-day working week alongside more established flexible working arrangements, and there was a perception that the legislative framework should have the capacity to be applied to a diverse range of flexible working needs.

An HR representative in Organisation D (healthcare) felt that the 26-week qualifying period around making requests was unhelpful because it deterred applicants from raising working preferences at the start of their contracts and – from a business planning perspective – it would be preferable to factor this in earlier. The interviewee reflected that Organisation D wanted to support motivated staff with working patterns that complemented their responsibilities from day 1, and had adjusted their flexible working policy accordingly:

Meanwhile, others felt that the legislation appropriately set the tone for an appropriate minimum standard of flexible working that organisations should provide. An argument against shifting towards a day 1 entitlement to request flexible working was raised by an HR stakeholder in Organisation A (retail), who reflected that this would present greater business challenges to some organisations than others:

More often, interviewees felt that movement towards a day 1 entitlement was inevitable, even before the results of the government consultation on Making flexible working the default was published in December 2022. Interviewees across the case studies frequently reflected that the pre-April 2024 legislation had been set too restrictively to be useful and had not kept pace with changing working preferences and different needs. A policy stakeholder in Organisation C felt that it was inequitable to have a qualifying period of service to access flexible working and that it was organisations rather than individuals who needed to be accommodating here. Notably, industry is an influence here, with, for example, financial services organisations, like Organisation C, being more easily able to accommodate flexible working arrangements than industries with fixed operating models.

Size can also be influential, with larger organisations, such as Organisations C and E, having greater capacity to process and implement new legislative requirements. Larger organisations can have an advantage around rapid adaptation where they have on-site policy expertise. It is also possible to coordinate and refine more combinations of different flexible working arrangements across a larger workforce.

2.4 Policy-practice gaps

A key gap between organisational policy and practice was around knowledge. Competence and awareness of organisational policy varied among staff in the same case study organisations, resulting in pockets of practice that diverged from organisational policy expectations. This could lead to requests being made differently, and more informally, than the process signposted by policy. Issues could also arise where organisational policy made no mention of how to approach informal flexible working. This could generate workforce inconsistencies, such as informal requests being rejected that could have been accommodated had HR advice been sought. Policy to practice differences were also accentuated by managers' personal preferences around working practices, with many interviewees referring to the inequities that resulted from some managers being more obstructive than others.

While managers might have a broad awareness of organisational policy, this did not necessarily translate into an understanding of its application in different situations, which could create an unintentional policy to practice gap. For example, a manager in Organisation C (financial services) discussed her own annualised hours working pattern at length, but reflected that she had been quite proactive in seeking this out:

Knowledge gaps could exist even within organisations that prioritised flexible working policy that was adaptable to a wide range of circumstances. The case study organisations rarely saw statutory flexible working requests. Even where their policy closely followed the legislation, managers interpreted it more broadly, for example, varying the entitlement to request flexible working to earlier than 26 weeks in post. One implication of this is that where organisations did not routinely collect information on flexible working arrangements, variations in practice became invisible, which compromised internal knowledge about levels and types of flexible working, making it difficult to develop appropriate centralised support (see section 4.4).

This chapter shifts from organisational policy to focus on the broader flexible working practices observed in the case study organisations. Starting by examining how organisations approached flexible working (section 3.2), it moves on to explore the facilitators and barriers to flexible working (section 3.3), and industry variation around flexible working practice, incorporating both workforce and organisational factors (section 3.4).

3.1 Key findings of the chapter

• Flexible working arrangements were diverse, not only in terms of their type (for example part-time, remote, compressed hours), but around their relative formality or informality, and in the degree to which they were logged centrally and monitored within organisations.
• Informal flexibility ranged from ad hoc, occasional changes to working hours, to more regular changes to working patterns.
• Arrangements ranged from ones organised locally as a spoken arrangement between line managers and their direct reports, to more formal changes to contracts, which were logged centrally and visible at an organisational level.
• Organisations encouraged applicants to speak to their managers about flexible working requests in the first instance, initiating an informal discussion.
• Statutory requests were regarded by many interviewees as to be avoided or indicative of a breakdown of preferred processes.
• While some industry factors around business needs, such as operating hours and team composition, could present a barrier to flexible working, factors like cultural openness and leadership role-modelling of different arrangements were important facilitators.
• An interplay of industry and organisational factors created unique environments for flexible working in the case studies. For example, Organisation D (healthcare) coordinated clinical and non-clinical teams with specific skillset needs, which it approached in the cultural context of that organisation and what was known to work there. At the same time, lessons were drawn from national comparators (healthcare organisations) with similar staffing experiences.

3.2 Approaches to flexible working

All case study organisations used a combination of formal and informal flexible working. Non-statutory (some formal and all informal) flexible working was a routine part of all case study organisations' business practice, considerably more so than flexible working organised through the right to request process (formal statutory requests). Table 3 provides further detail on each organisation's approach.

Figure 2 develops the illustration introduced earlier in the glossary of terminology by indicating where some of the case study organisations' common flexible working practice mapped onto this spectrum of formality-informality.

Figure 2 shows where on the spectrum of flexible working, the different case study organisations sit. The spectrum starts with the most formal arrangements and ends with the least formal arrangements.

The most formal is arrangement 1. This is a statutory arrangement that has a:

• regular pattern
• contractual change
• written agreement based on organisational policy

This is a minority of flexible working arrangements in all organisations.

Arrangement 2 is a non-statutory arrangement that has a:

• regular pattern
• contractual change
• written agreement based on organisational policy

This arrangement was found in organisations C and D.

Arrangement 3 is a non-statutory arrangement with a regular pattern but no intended contractual change. These are mostly spoken agreements with a manager.

The majority of hybrid working patterns. They were found in organisations C, D and E. As well as subgroups of organisation A's headquarters and organisation B's office workers.

The least formal is arrangement 4. This is a non-statutory arrangement with:  

• an ad hoc pattern 
• no intended contractual change 
• spoken agreement with a manager 

This arrangement was found in organisation A's retail component.

Generally, all interviewees understood the differences between informal and formal arrangements and the contexts in which they should be used. However, managers were more focused on developing effective working practices that were responsive to operational and staff needs, while HR and policy interviewees were more interested in the systematic application and consistency of working practices across an organisation.

A notable difference between the case study organisations was how they managed informal flexible working. Sometimes, as in Organisation A (retail), changes were made in an ad hoc manner and working patterns fluctuated, with managers juggling shifts to fit in with employees' family demands (represented on the far right of Figure 2). An HR stakeholder in Organisation A reflected that this practice might not even be considered as flexible working by managers, but rather was regarded as a necessary part of good business practice to retain staff:

For other organisations, informal flexible working might be a more regular pattern, such as an employee coming in and leaving late on a certain day, or working from home for part of the week. Neither regular nor ad hoc informal flexible working involved managers issuing any variation to the employee's contract.

3.2.1 Statutory versus non-statutory requests

The preferred approach in all case study organisations was that employees should raise non-statutory requests for flexible working through their manager. This enabled employees and line managers to co-design mutually acceptable arrangements, with HR departments available to offer guidance to both parties.

Not using the statutory request process allowed organisations to trial and refine a range of flexible working arrangements, giving them an agility that – it was perceived – statutory changes could lack. An HR manager in Organisation B (local government) explained that this was useful when responding to urgent or complex requests, such as around a health crisis, giving them scope for experimentation rather than outright rejection:

Over time, this approach increased organisational knowledge and skills around flexible working arrangement design and management.

A policy stakeholder in Organisation A (retail) noted that, since the return to offices following lockdowns, they had received only 2 statutory requests for flexible working, both from individuals who had moved further away from their workplaces during the pandemic and who were seeking to change their contracts to reflect wholly remote working arrangements: a request that would have been unheard of pre-pandemic in that organisation.

There was consensus among different types of interviewees that utilising the statutory request process at an early stage in an application signalled a lack of trust in employee-employer relationships. A manager in Organisation A (retail) talked about this in terms of a breakdown in manger-employee relations, giving the example of a store that had seen an unusual clustering of statutory requests:

Another issue with statutory requests related to team cohesion; a manager in Organisation A explained that applications taking this route could be disconnected from, or even add odds with, team interests, and that this could create tensions:

This was not an isolated interpretation of the statutory route. Overall, it was rare to see a request initiated through the statutory process in the case study organisations. However, requests could become more formal over time. For example, an informal request (non-statutory discussion with managers) might later turn into a more formal request (non-statutory but utilising organisational policy to request contractual change) to provide greater structure (including HR input) around a complicated case or to support more permanent changes to working hours, such as a reduced hours return following maternity leave.

From the employer's perspective, flexible working arrangements that involved contractual changes could lack the capacity to be changed to suit individual circumstances and business factors that were evolving and dynamic. As a result, they were to be avoided. This was particularly evident around hybrid working arrangements, which were, aside from some exceptional cases, all being managed informally at the time of the research – if sometimes also logged (see section 5.2) – and were not triggering contractual changes, precisely because it was perceived that this approach gave organisations agility in a still-evolving environment.

For the most part, interviewees were very comfortable shifting between managing statutory and non-statutory requests in recognition that they had different and complementary advantages.

3.2.2 Record-keeping of arrangements

There was variation in how consistently, and in what circumstances, the case study organisations logged flexible working arrangements in a central record. Section 4.6 explores organisations' broader processes for monitoring data on both applications and agreed arrangements for flexible working.

Some organisations logged arrangements that generated contractual changes while others logged informal arrangements that did not involve changing employees' contracts. These might look quite similar (and sit next to one another in Figure 2's spectrum of flexible working), but the process for setting them up was distinctive, the latter being handled by managers without there necessarily being any involvement from HR. For example, an informal arrangement could be logged in a central organisational record or noted in a manager's personal records, but it could also simply be a spoken agreement between a manager and an employee that was not captured anywhere, that is 'invisible' at an organisational level. In the case of Organisation A (retail), it did not keep a central record of informal variations, rather, they were part of the agility that shop floor managers required in their everyday work.

Managers logging requests in a central record was felt to offer advantages, for example, by enabling effective monitoring and ensuring consistent decisions across the organisation (see section 4.3). Record-keeping could also democratise flexible working, where it signposted a clear procedure for applicants to follow, and potentially opened up access to flexible working where staff were not confident that their requests would be treated equitably. By contrast, a trade union official in Organisation D (healthcare) pointed out that formal (both statutory and non-statutory) processes could still be problematic and should be reviewed for inconsistencies in how they were applied, "You make it a bit fairer by looking at it from the outside." In other words, there was value in continual reflection upon and improvement around flexible working processes.

Case study organisations' flexible working policy tended to favour centrally logged or more formal types of flexible working, that is those that would require a contractual change. As a result, employees – particularly newer staff members – might not know how to access informal flexible working, such as variable hours over the school holidays. Managers, who were dealing with daily operations, observed that the definitions of flexible working could be slippery, as one in Organisation C (financial service) observed:

There was a sense that, as a result of working during the pandemic and associated lockdowns, the language of 'working from home' and 'flexible working' were used interchangeably, when in fact flexible working is much broader.

3.3 Facilitators and barriers

3.3.1 Leadership buy-in

The most important facilitator of organisations' adoption of flexible working was 'cultural openness' and buy-in from senior leaders. An HR stakeholder at Organisation A (retail) attributed their employer's readiness to adopt hybrid working to their leadership team's open-mindedness:

Interviewees suggested that an organisational climate of openness encouraged staff to come forward and discuss changes in their situation, knowing that managers would listen with sympathy and fairness. Some interviewees also noted that when leaders were observed to be working flexibly, this sent a powerful message to workforces that flexible working arrangements were accepted. It could, however, be difficult for individual senior leaders to challenge traditional working patterns where fixed ideas about successful working patterns persisted from some elements of leadership teams.

Managers' personal qualities were also perceived to be an important facilitator of flexible working. It was important that they took the necessary time to understand applicants' rationales for preferred approaches and the possible sensitivities that underlay these. A policy representative in Organisation E (banking) reflected that managers were a key influence in the successful implementation of their flexible working policy, both as facilitators and barriers. For example, there might be a range of attitudes towards – as well as experiences of – managing flexible working across an organisation, which inevitably affected practice.

Some senior leaders were observed to be less receptive to hybrid working, with managers reflecting that these leaders were not convinced remote working served the business's interests, which created a tension. A policy stakeholder in Organisation C (financial services) attributed this to a generational divide:

Where approaches rested upon informal agreements in the case study organisations, managers' perceived receptiveness to discussing flexible working was key to creating a climate where applicants felt comfortable initiating a discussion. Some interviewees flagged that this might vary within organisations, as a manager in Organisation D (healthcare) put it:

3.3.2 Organisational factors

Organisational processes and technology adoption were generally considered to be facilitators of flexible working. For example, in Organisation D (healthcare), electronic health records facilitated remote and hybrid working and simplified data sharing between teams. Organisation size could also play a role, with larger organisations having greater capacity to redeploy staff to accommodate shift work patterns. Interviewees in Organisation D were conscious of rostering challenges presented by complex working patterns and different skill mixes: digital software that confirmed shift patterns was essential to support this and ensure consistency.

The main challenge of implementing flexible working arrangements was ensuring that business needs were covered when staff varied their working patterns. For example, in customer-facing roles, organisations were analysing how much contact needed to be in-person. This varied between industries – in retail, in-person contact was essential, while in banking, customer interaction might be designed around a combination of face-to-face and remote exchanges. Several interviewees reflected that, in retail, it was necessary to align individual flexibility with service needs to sustain a functioning business.

Team needs were central too, and sometimes presented a challenge in designing flexible working arrangements, as an HR manager in Organisation B (local government) explained: "You can't just look at a flexible work pattern in isolation." When implementing an arrangement, it was important to communicate it well within teams, and that other team members were able to accommodate new working patterns.

A further challenge was ensuring organisation-wide equity: being fair to employees whose jobs were less amenable to flexible arrangements. A comparison was frequently made between hybrid workers and staff in the same organisation whose jobs required them to be site-based some, or all, of the time. In such scenarios, the solution was often to offer site-based staff alternative flexible working options that were not hybrid, but which could enhance their wellbeing at work. Organisations with a greater variety of job types faced challenges in developing effective job design around flexible working.

Interviewees in Organisation D (healthcare) were mindful of how differences between clinical and non-clinical roles' access to hybrid working presented challenges, as an HR representative there explained:

There was also a concern that services would be unable to accommodate universal flexibility and that employees who had requested flexible working earlier might find it relatively straightforward to access it, whereas subsequent reconfiguration of the team's work could be more complicated for managers to address. A manager in Organisation D explained:

Managers were addressing inequities by applying forward-thinking to their consideration of requests, anticipating how these affected teams' future working patterns. In the healthcare organisation, for instance, this meant increasingly involving teams in decision-making.

3.4 Industry variation

The case study organisations had distinctive workforce characteristics, which are summarised in Appendix 3. This section considers how industry variation, and within that, workforce and organisational issues, affected opportunities for flexible working.

3.4.1 Workforce considerations

Organisations in all the industries studied reported experiencing workforce shortages. Interviewees perceived that flexible working could aid recruitment, as a manager in Organisation A (retail) explained:

This was a view held across all case study organisations, and applied to both lower-qualified employees and professional staff, who could be difficult to replace. In addition to recruitment, flexible working was seen as helpful for retaining staff.

Staff shortages could limit the level of flexibility available to staff. However, it was also recognised that if requests to alter working patterns were rejected, then employees might go elsewhere, causing further staffing problems, as expressed by an HR stakeholder from Organisation D (healthcare):

Reflecting this, interviewees in the healthcare organisation noted that being seen as a flexible employer gave them an edge in a tight labour market, which is an ongoing challenge for the industry. Organisation D was very conscious that staff had alternative options in private hospitals or agency work and offered flexible working to counter this. Organisations recognised the advantages of making this clear in adverts in order to attract a more diverse and experienced range of candidates. This was especially true for the case study organisations that had made day 1 requests for flexibility a part of their policy framework (ahead of the change in legislation in April 2024). Given how severe labour shortages were in all case study organisations, being able to adapt their recruitment strategy was valued and played a significant role in business success during a challenging economic climate.

A strong theme in Organisation A (retail) was that the industry had a mobile workforce that could easily find work elsewhere if they were unable to secure suitable working patterns. This recognition had brought about a cultural change in attitudes towards flexible working requests in multiple organisations, which a manager in Organisation D (healthcare) noted:

An HR representative in Organisation E (banking) linked this change to pragmatism around staff retention:

Notwithstanding this greater openness to requests, some interviewees also expressed concern about the unintended consequences of more flexible working arrangements, such as leaving a gap in service provision following a reduction in hours worked. This reflected the balance that managers had to strike in aligning employee and employer interests, pointed to by a manager in Organisation D (healthcare):

Organisation C (financial services) had recently recruited a large proportion of one of its key professional groups from overseas, which created a new set of cultural issues in the workplace regarding working expectations. An HR representative there commented:

Differences could arise in the interpretation of flexible working practices and how they can be applied within and between different countries, which had operational implications for global organisations.

A common observation across the case studies was that there had been a shift in employees' attitudes around the level of flexibility they considered reasonable to expect from their employer as well as their own willingness to be flexible. This was articulated by a manager in Organisation A (retail), reflecting their offer to allow requests from day 1 of employment:

Notably, the case study organisations faced different demands around their operating hours, some of which were shift-based (Organisations A and D). For example, Organisation D provided 24-hour, 7 days-a-week healthcare, meaning rostering required a great level of skill, as explained by an HR manager there:

Organisation D needed seven days a week of coverage. The nature of this operating model meant that particular kinds of flexible working, such as a 4-day week, did not align well with its service provision.

3.4.2 Organisational factors that impact flexible working arrangements

Participants were asked whether they thought that their industry experienced unique issues that affected flexible working. A manager in Organisation A (retail) referred to the limited opportunities for remote working for staff employed in their stores:

The manager of another store reflected that the limited numbers of staff to pool from in any given shift also hindered flexibility:

To manage these issues, store employees were recruited to work specific hours: changes to their shift pattern were then arranged between colleagues and agreed upon with their manager. Another manager again reflected that some of those working in the retail industry were working multiple jobs, and were working flexibly across a number of different organisations:

This kind of working profile was mentioned solely in Organisation A (retail), which was also the organisation that employed more low-income young people.

Some of the employees in Organisation B (local government) worked in roles where it was more difficult to use hybrid working arrangements since work was strongly linked to work sites, such as refuse collectors or cashiers. A two-tier system operated here whereby office-based staff worked in hybrid patterns, while frontline staff did not. Some of the latter group here did not ask for flexibility, which an HR interviewee perceived reflected frontline staff's satisfaction with their shift working patterns, which suited their lifestyle:

Other types of flexible working could be offered to frontline staff, such as term-time working or compressed hours, provided they aligned with teams' service provision. Other frontline employees, such as theatre staff, were required to work with seasonal flexibility, such as longer hours over Christmas or summer weekends, as a manager in Organisation B (local government) explained: "We generally expect people to work in that way." Thus, there were nuances to flexible working arrangements within organisations, which reflected industry norms.

Organisation D (healthcare) faced a comparable challenge where there were differences in the types of flexible working that they could offer to their clinical and non-clinical staff. This raised concerns about inequities developing within workforces, which Organisation D was attempting to address by promoting other flexible working arrangements to staff who were required to be onsite, similar to Organisation B's approach. An HR interviewee explained:

In Organisation C (financial services), the project-based nature of the work could lend itself to more self-managed patterns of flexibility, a feature that one manager, working an annualised hours pattern, adapted in such a way that she could concentrate leave time around her children's holidays:

Flexibility around office hours was an automatic expectation for people in Organisation C if they were working in a global role, which they saw as necessary to manage the role, and was something they managed themselves. An interviewee in a senior role in this organisation explained:

Specific issues had arisen for Organisation E (banking) as a result of its global presence. The organisation had worked to ensure consistency across continents with respect to hybrid working and had invested in technology enabling people to work in multiple locations. However, differences in flexibility around home-based working arose due to local regulations, observed by one manager:

Some disparities arose from different organisational roles, irrespective of the country that they operated in, as a manager in Organisation E observed:

There were factors in all industries that affected their ability to provide employees equal opportunities for flexible working. The most common flexible working practice that caused disparity was the ability to work remotely or in a hybrid way. Whilst these issues reflect a particular snapshot in time (the period post-covid-19(coronavirus)), they reflect an enduring organisational challenge to balance the flexibility that people want from their employer with business needs (Sturges and Guest, 2004; Anderson and Kelliher, 2009; Peters et al, 2022).

This chapter looks at how flexible working requests were handled in case study organisations. Starting by setting out some of the main drivers of requests (section 4.2), it explores how managers make decisions and what determines them (section 4.3), using evidence from some of the vignettes referred to earlier. It further considers the role of organisational support for requests (4.4), how organisations handle rejecting requests (section 4.5), and approaches to collecting and monitoring data on flexible working – both applications and agreed arrangements (section 4.6).

4.1 Key findings of the chapter

• A wide range of circumstances could trigger flexible working requests, with the demands of parenting and caring featuring strongly and driving more unpredictable demands that managers often found practical to handle informally.
• A commonly-preferred approach to managing requests was to adopt case-by-case based decision-making, weighing individual, business, and team needs together to identify and work through solutions.
• Organisations were becoming increasingly aware of the importance of equity in decision-making to make arrangements functional and sustainable when they were used by a larger proportion of the workforce. This could be achieved through improving data monitoring processes and robust organisational support for managers, particularly when they might have less experience in managing flexible working.
• Value was seen in organisations centrally logging and monitoring different flexible working arrangements, not just the more formal arrangements. This would assist workforce analysis and planning, and shore up consistent decision-making, although this is likely to be influenced by the size of organisations and their HR capacity.

4.2 Drivers of flexible working

The most common reasons for flexible working requests were caring and parenting commitments, with managers reflecting that these particularly drove ad hoc (informal) requests to cover unexpected illness. Other factors included age (which could, for example, prompt phased retirement requests, or remote working to cope with menopause symptoms), the cost of living (around working from home requests), health, leisure, or voluntary activities, neurodiversity, other paid work commitments, and a desire to improve work-life balance.

Caring for elderly parents drove a need for informal flexible working, such as staff needing to vary working hours to accompany their parents to medical appointments, while regular time set aside for caring might trigger a formal statutory request. An interviewee in Organisation C (financial services) explained how a member of her team used everyday flexibility (informal, ad hoc flexible working) to cover unpredictable caring needs, and that this was an appropriate way of utilising such arrangements to cope with the situation:

In Organisation D (healthcare), by virtue of its (disproportionately female) workforce, three-quarters of employees had caring responsibilities of some kind. Consequently, providing flexibility around these was a key part of its workforce retention strategy, as one of its HR professionals explained:

Some organisations also had specific policies around caring commitments, which formalised staff's entitlement to take time off for these responsibilities.

Working parents often requested informal flexible working to do the school run on particular days, to work at home when children were ill, or to take a few hours off to attend a school event. Several interviewees said that more men were making these kinds of requests than pre-covid, having taken greater responsibility for childcare during lockdowns. A policy stakeholder from Organisation E (banking) reflected that their Parental Leave policy had been instrumental in creating a climate where these kinds of requests were becoming less gendered. More commonly, however, such requests came from female employees. Interviewees frequently mentioned the popularity of remote working amongst working parents because it improved their quality of life and wellbeing, as an HR representative in the healthcare organisation reflected where staff worked unsociable shift patterns:

Another policymaker in Organisation C (financial services) reflected that cultural differences could intersect with family demands in prompting the need for flexible work:

A common prompt for more formal (but mostly non-statutory) flexible working requests was women returning from maternity leave, who wanted to reduce their working hours for an extended, and as yet undecided, period of time. A more formal approach was also considered appropriate for developing flexible retirement working patterns, which generally involved a permanent reduction of hours, as an HR interviewee in Organisation B (local government) explained:

There were a number of other ways in which age informed flexible working requests. For example, Organisation A (retail) employed a large student demographic, who returned home during holiday periods. The organisation was able to accommodate this kind of flexible working by temporarily transferring the students to another branch. Organisation A had also noticed age-related preferences around its store shifts, with older staff preferring not to work late, and younger staff preferring not to work early. An HR representative in Organisation E (banking) noted that younger staff were more likely to request flexibility around second jobs, while a colleague observed that graduates increasingly expected to be working four compressed days (for no reduction in pay), rather than a traditional 9 to 5 working pattern over 5 days.

Relatedly, some managers observed that the cost of living crisis was driving staff to plan amongst themselves where they worked on different days. For example, a manager in Organisation A (retail) spoke about a staff member struggling with the significant increase in the cost of travelling into the office 2 days a week; this was exacerbated for staff who lived further from offices. One implication of this is that managers' knowledge of staff's circumstances could inform organisations' hybrid working strategies to make them more sustainable. Age could also affect staff's priorities, prompting them to seek more flexible working patterns. For example, some older workers were investing more time in leisure or voluntary activities, which they wanted to combine with flexible working. A policy stakeholder in Organisation C (financial services) talked about younger staff who were elite athletes with highly structured training plans, and the need to coordinate these around flexible working patterns.

Health differences were also important in why staff might want to work flexibly, enabling them to manage health conditions more easily. Managers' appreciation of these had been heightened by pandemic working, particularly around mental health challenges like anxiety. Remote working enabled organisations to recruit people whose health prevented them from working on-site. Increasingly, organisations were exploring how hybrid and other forms of flexible working could enable them to tap into new labour sources, as well as enabling staff living with long-term conditions to work for longer.

4.3 Decision-making and influential factors

While organisational policy provided an important framework for support and guidance – and reassurance around process when handling more difficult scenarios – in practice, in the case study organisations, flexible working was negotiated between employees and their managers. HR professionals, when approached by employees about flexible working, advised employees to talk to their line manager in the first instance, unless there were reasons why this appeared likely to be unproductive. This was based on the knowledge that an open conversation with the person who knew most about the job could enable a resolution to be achieved more quickly and simply than through making a formal request (whether statutory or non-statutory).

The emphasis changed when interviewees talked about making decisions regarding formal requests. In these instances, they referred more explicitly to business-led factors than they did in weighing up informal requests. Organisations' ultimate goal was designing flexible working arrangements that met both employees' and employers' needs (a 'win-win'). This might involve some degree of compromise from both sides, as an HR representative in Organisation C (financial services) noted: "There needs to be give and take."

Starting flexible working discussions informally with line managers (a non-statutory route) was found to be beneficial due to their unique understanding of operational needs. This helped ensure that flexible working arrangements were sustainable and matched needs. Informal approaches kept decision-making within teams, which – according to interviewees – fostered a more cooperative and problem-solving approach, conducive to effective work organisation and performance. For managers, the challenge of flexible working was balancing the individual and business benefits against operational and team working challenges.

While case study organisations all weighed up different parties' needs in deciding requests, there was variation in how they considered particular factors, which to some degree reflected industry contexts. For example, in Organisation E (banking) employee wellbeing was a primary concern in decision-making. In Organisation B (local government), an HR stakeholder explained that, while business needs were important, each case was considered "on its merit". Managers would also reflect on how proposed changes might affect wider teams: it was insufficient to consider jobs in isolation. As an HR professional in Organisation B explained, operational factors of business functioning also impacted decision-making around requests:

Organisations saw flexible working requests as the beginning of a discussion to try and balance individual needs with those of the business and team. The dialogue enabled managers to develop a better understanding of the circumstances and work through options for reconciling employee-employer interests, which might involve compromise. An HR stakeholder in Organisation B (local government) explained: "We try to meet people in the middle where we can."

Managers often talked about the need to consider each request, working with the applicant to weigh up different ways of approaching it. This might involve developing a trial solution, which could be adapted if it did not work for either party. Given that requests were often prompted by unpredictable changes in personal circumstances (such as a health crisis in the applicant's household), arrangements needed to be adaptable. There was recognition amongst some interviewees that, while business factors were important, employee wellbeing was important too. This was particularly apparent in Organisation E (banking), where a policy representative explained:

Vignette: a request for part-time working driven by caring commitments

A vignette that involved an older applicant prompted interviewees to engage in how to manage skill set depletions around flexible working arrangements. The protagonist was requesting to move to work part-time in his technical job in order to care for his wife, who was going through cancer treatment. The applicant was in a fluctuating and unpredictable situation, which required rapid action from his employer if he were to stay in work.

This scenario drew interviewees' sympathies and they were keen to find a way of accommodating the request. However, the nature of the job role made adaptation challenging and involved not only job redesign but also changing another staff member's role. Job share and opportunities for upskilling a more junior member of staff were common suggestions, and the protagonist's age meant that a strong case could be made for organising skills transfer around this flexible working arrangement, as the employer could usefully be anticipating long-term outcomes around succession planning: a point which a trade union representative considered in some detail. The scenario raised a number of potential solutions, with interviewees reflecting that a process of brainstorming between the involved parties could find the best fit.

All interviewees who considered this vignette felt that the process should start informally with the line manager supporting the protagonist in working through a series of options. Most saw this in terms of co-creation, although one HR representative expected the protagonist to have given forethought to possible solutions before approaching their manager. More generally, it was framed as a situation that required productive discussion and ongoing planning, given the unpredictable circumstances driving the request. Trial arrangements were raised as a suitable approach in the first instance more than permanent changes to contracts. While several interviewees reflected that precedents were important in establishing organisational equity, there was consensus that instances like this illustrated that individual circumstances around requests were so unique that a case-by-case approach was necessary to do them justice.

The healthcare interviewees (from Organisation D) were most focused on the protagonist's unique skillset, and the difficulty that losing these might pose for the organisation. In designing solutions one of these interviewees suggested breaking down the job role into specialist and generic skills, and analysing whether careful job design around the new arrangement could retain scarce aspects of expertise. The healthcare interviewees also focused more on ensuring that teams weren't negatively impacted by new flexible working arrangements. Generally, interviewees were sympathetic to the drivers of this flexible working arrangement, and suggested that they would accommodate this sort of request if it came before them, as a manager in Organisation D explained: "I would try really hard to accommodate that."

4.3.1 The role of business needs

Business needs often influenced decisions about whether new working patterns were possible, with service operating hours being a key factor. A manager in Organisation A (retail) explained:

While new ways of working post-lockdown have prompted managers to rethink how operations are organised, interviewees felt that limits remained around certain aspects of work organisation. Some managers reflected on the challenges of applying flexibility equally to their workforce, despite their best intentions. An HR manager in Organisation A (retail) observed the difficulties that preferences for particular working patterns could present to covering all shifts, "if everyone wants to work school hours, that's a challenge." This kind of consideration was unique to specific industries and organisations and was less of a challenge for project-based work that was more output than time-dependent. For organisations that involved office-based work, flexible working discussions focused on combinations of remote working. A key issue was whether staff could be trusted to achieve their targets off-site, as a manager in Organisation B (local government) explained:

This could be more straightforward when there was a longer relationship between manager and staff member, with trust and performance evidence being established. Informal ad hoc requests (for example, attending a hospital appointment or parents' evening) generally provided uncomplicated decision-making, compared to formal requests (both statutory and non-statutory) requiring contractual changes. For informal ad hoc requests, managers were generally able to make an instant decision. Indeed, all interviewees felt able to accommodate these requests and they were considered to be a routine part of working life.

Managers would also assess – with reference to job descriptions – whether an employee's tasks could be performed in another way when considering a request. Where this involved a shift away from how work had previously been organised for a role, this could require a large degree of trust on the managers' part. For example, some managers reflected that it was easier to be persuaded of staff's adaptability towards working remotely when they were already familiar with their work compared to newer recruits who had yet to establish their reliability.

4.3.2 An equitable approach

Organisation D (healthcare) was particularly committed to embedding equity into its decision-making to counter potential tensions. It developed a process to ensure requests were treated fairly and consistently, rather than being subject to managers' varied experience with and attitudes towards flexible working. This was felt to result in more sustainable arrangements that supported functional teams. Recognising this, a manager in Organisation D pointed to the organisation's policy as integral to deciding flexible working arrangements:

Attention to equity was considered by interviewees to have wide-ranging implications for organisational stability and loyalty. A manager in Organisation E (banking) explained that transparency and fairness of decision-making was central to how they approached requests:

This manager led a large team and reflected that her decision-making followed a consistent process to effectively manage a complex set of factors. Furthermore, a manager in Organisation D (healthcare) pointed out that some individuals had unique circumstances, such as complex caring commitments, that:

4.3.3 Team-based approaches

An additional dimension was where a team-based approach to decision-making was taken, which gave teams collective ownership of working patterns. In a hybrid environment, teams needed to function effectively across multiple locations and often across additional forms of flexible working. In Organisation D (healthcare), for example, it was essential for multidisciplinary teams to connect at certain milestones in their work. This organisation had adopted team-based rostering, which enabled teams to co-create transparent solutions for flexible working, as one manager described:

Their approach started with collecting and cross-referencing data from all team members, to ensure that jobs were analysed for their potential to be performed in a hybrid way. Another manager in Organisation D detailed this process:

This consultative, data-driven approach enabled managers to design new working patterns. This might lead to variations in team working patterns across the organisation but, because they were co-developed in a transparent way, tensions were mitigated, resulting in more sustainable flexible working arrangements.

4.3.4 Supporting diverse workforce needs

Interviewees were reluctant to decide arrangements solely on the basis of historical precedent (that is, defaulting to how they had been handled in the organisation in the past). They felt that each case should be considered on its own merits since circumstances were so unique that comparisons could be unhelpful. There was also an issue, particularly in the larger case study organisations, that it was difficult for managers to be aware of what other managers had done. In such cases, HR could provide advice, as a manager in Organisation A (retail) highlighted:

To some degree, it was clear that although managers wanted to be equitable wherever possible, there was a hierarchy of needs around flexible working requests. This was particularly referenced in terms of caring responsibilities, and these priorities formed an implicit part of decision-making, or unwritten rule, a point acknowledged by an HR professional in Organisation D (healthcare):

Thus decision-making systems had to be flexible to ensure that certain groups were not disadvantaged. Often managers were conscious that carers faced invisible and unpredictable pressures, which they were keen to support. An interviewee in Organisation D (healthcare) reflected that recent internal research had indicated that one in three of their employees was currently a carer (and many more had broader caring responsibilities), which made this a significant issue for workforce management and staff retention. Carers' leave was available for dealing with emergency needs, but flexible working requests were considered more suitable to cover longer-term changes in circumstances.

This kind of approach can be considered a diversity management-led one, in its recognition that supporting diverse needs is essential to achieving equitable staff outcomes; a manager in Organisation D (healthcare) explained: "I don't think there is a sort of single one-size-fits-all sort of approach to managing this." On the other hand, some managers talked about organisational pressure (manifested in policy) to place equity over individual circumstances in their decision-making, including another manager in Organisation D:

Ultimately it was down to managers to disentangle these competing pressures and to apply them to dynamic workforces in a way that they thought would be sustainable.

Vignette: a request to establish a regular working from home pattern driven by the menopause

A vignette that stimulated a complicated discussion described a protagonist who worked in an office-based job, and who was experiencing some health difficulties around the menopause. She had experienced her performance being positively affected by being able to control her working environment while working remotely during the pandemic and wanted to work hybrid on a more permanent basis in the future. She was nervous about broaching the issue, however, as she felt that in a tight economic climate it could damage her job security, and she was embarrassed to discuss her motivation for the request with her younger male boss.

A common theme in the discussions that followed with interviewees was that there was a need to make multiple routes available for initiating a flexible working request, given that a single route may disadvantage some people: in this case, the protagonist would prefer not to have in the initial discussion with her line manager, as might normally be expected. Alternative request routes might involve managers at a similar level, or an HR business partner who could advise on progressing an application. Trade unions and taking advice from Acas were also raised as resources. Notably in Organisation A (retail), interviewees identified the situation as creating potential tensions, with one manager describing it as "quite an emotive scenario," where putting in a formal statutory request would be more likely to have a positive outcome for the applicant than an informal one.

Although interviewees from the other organisations felt that the formal statutory right to request route might not need to be followed, here too there was a greater tone of formality in their responses than applied to flexible working discussions generally, suggesting greater involvement of HR in particular requests. In line with the relatively formalised approach that was felt to be appropriate, several interviewees advised that the applicant should evidence the case around how the arrangement would work for the job, feeding into a business case rationale. Several interviewees referred to organisational precedents as being valuable in taking the request forward.

Organisations B (local government) and C (financial services) were involved in awareness-raising work around the menopause and organisational culture was flagged as important in how applicants might raise requests. In Organisation C, for example, it was hoped that sufficient foundational work had been done in the area that it would be a straightforward request to make. There was generally a recognition that this might be a difficult conversation with some managers and that it was therefore a situation where the general advice to have an exploratory informal conversation with one's manager might not apply.

For most interviewees, the hybrid working request that the protagonist was making was not problematic in itself, being similar to how many colleagues already worked. Instead, their priority in responding to it was around job design and ensuring that effective teamwork was designed into any new working arrangements. A trade unionist framed their response in terms of making reasonable adjustments around the menopause and 3 managers focused on how days in the office could be modified to provide a more appropriate environment for the applicant, highlighting that it was not just hybrid working that was being requested here, but a more comfortable working environment, something that was implicit in the vignette. Menopause policy was not referred to by interviewees in contextualising the request, and one interviewee explained that the lack of clear boundaries around the menopause could make it difficult to codify good practice.

4.4 Organisational support

The organisational support available to managers facilitated good quality decision-making around more formal requests.

4.4.1 HR support

In all of the case study organisations, HR departments provided expertise and support to managers around more challenging requests. Managers with less experience handling flexible working requests particularly valued this support, typically because they were new to a role or to the organisation.

It was observed that managers would benefit from additional support around the evolving new set of demands posed by additional forms of flexible working while people are also working in a hybrid environment. One way in which HR was responding here was by developing closer, more coaching-based relationships with managers to support them over time in responding to complex requests. In Organisation B (local government), HR staff had completed external training in order to fulfil this role responsively:

This could also be about supporting managers' communications with staff, in recognition that discussions around flexible working might entail 'difficult conversations', such as when managers were declining a request.

HR departments also provided tailored advice in developing and trialling individual arrangements, which could be nurtured and refined to ensure their success. In Organisation D (healthcare), the HR department organised well-attended weekly drop-in sessions for managers, providing an environment where concerns could be raised and supported.

Similarly, in Organisation C (financial services), a manager explained how HR could be used to sense-check requests:

This manager also explained how decision-making on flexible working was informed by their peers' approaches, which helped ensure consistency across the organisation. The thinking was that this kind of transparency enabled relevant comparisons to be made. This was particularly valuable in large organisations, and allowed managers to take all factors into consideration to make balanced decisions.

Further, an HR representative explained that the profession had an important role to play in ensuring that line managers fulfilled their legislative responsibilities around flexible working. In this context, managers needed to develop a good understanding of how the business reasons set out in the legislation informed decision-making. An HR representative in Organisation B (local government) explained how distinguishing between operational and procedural aspects of decision-making could clarify where they could be useful to managers:

4.4.2 Policy, guidance, and other resources

An HR stakeholder in Organisation A (retail) explained how written guidance on the flexible working and decision-making process informed managers' practice. Additionally, organisations' flexible working policy was available to managers on all of the case study organisations' intranets.

In Organisation D (healthcare), which had recently implemented its team-led process around flexible working requests, this was supported by a decision-making tree and toolkit to make the methods clear and accessible to managers. These highlighted alternative solutions and types of flexible working arrangements that could be relevant, and were regarded as important in a large organisation to ensure that policy was understood and applied consistently, as a manager there explained:

Using the toolkit enabled managers to take initiative in their approach to flexible working, and, through this, avoid difficult scenarios, such as requests being rejected when similar previous ones had been accepted. This was complemented by work to encourage managers to use these new resources and to reach out to HR for support and be assigned an adviser who could work alongside them.

On the other hand, a trade union representative noted that stand-alone flexible working training had not taken place in the organisation for several years, and this could be an area in which to build new resources for managers, particularly given more recent changes around pandemic and post-pandemic working. In Organisation E (banking), an HR representative explained that their new managerial training programme incorporated aspects that would support flexible working requests:

The increase in remote working during covid required existing training programmes to be improved or new ones added, in ways that had direct relevance for flexible working requests. This included guidance on managing new working patterns, including supporting wellbeing. An area where some managers noted they were lacking training was around job design (or redesign), which was expected to be a skill that they accumulated through experience.

4.5 Rejection of requests

It was rare for the case study organisations to reject applications. Where this did happen, the main reason was that work could not be performed outside of a job's current design. This covered, for example, situations where a request was in direct conflict with business needs, such as applications to make jobs fully remote where some in-person contact was required for the role to function effectively, or when the suggested changes would require securing a job-share partner but this was considered impractical.

Occasionally, interviewees talked about "unreasonable" requests being made that would not be operationally feasible, and which they felt took no account of business needs, as an HR stakeholder in Organisation A (retail) explained:

This interviewee explained that certain types of flexible working were easier to accommodate than others, and the cases most likely to be rejected were "people who are wanting to do really abstract things because it suits them." In these circumstances, all case study organisations would seek to negotiate an alternative arrangement that better aligned individual and organisational needs: a reframing of the original application. Thus, the preferred course of action for difficult-to-accommodate requests was to engage in a dialogue with applicants to see if the request could be reframed in an alternative, more practical way.

An HR representative from Organisation A explained that retail managers needed an overview of how their store would be staffed over the week, and that requests for working patterns that restricted their ability to do this could be turned down:

In Organisation E (banking), some roles were less compatible with remote working, where applications to move off-site and work from home might generate a rejection, as a policy stakeholder explained:

In this sense, industry-specific demands meant that some jobs had less scope for flexibility than others, particularly when organisations' trading hours varied: gaps in one area could compromise business operations elsewhere. Organisation size was also a factor: compared to smaller businesses, larger organisations had greater scope to redeploy staff from other departments to cover shortages.

Organisation D (healthcare) had invested time in scrutinising rejections to better understand why they had been turned down, and assessing whether alternative outcomes could have been found. A manager there explained that "we are working really hard to make it work for everybody," recognising the value of successful flexible working arrangements to the whole organisation. Interviewees in Organisation D were also aware of some requests being rejected when they were raised informally with managers. Since these requests were not logged centrally, the reasons for their rejection could not be studied by Organisation D, and any implications for policy development were lost.

If a request was rejected, applicants would be referred to an appeal process. For example, in Organisation A (retail), appeals would go to a next-level manager unrelated to the applicant to consider the case, helping ensure consistency in decision-making. Another HR manager in Organisation B (local government) commented that the rationale for rejections was very clearly communicated to applicants in a letter, and, as a result, the organisation received very few appeals. A manager in Organisation E (banking), like Organisation A, explained how fairness was designed into the appeals process:

Additionally, in Organisation C (financial services), the appeal hearer would be guided by their HR team to ensure full compliance with the legislation around flexible working, all of which took a significant amount of time.

4.6 Data monitoring and use

Case study organisations collected varying amounts of data on flexible working applications. At the most informal ad hoc level, such as when a member of staff asked to leave early for a medical appointment, no central record would be kept of a variation in working hours. However, it was common, particularly in larger organisations, for record-keeping on flexible working to extend to a larger range of statutory and non-statutory requests.

An HR representative in Organisation D (healthcare), which was attempting to record flexible working arrangements consistently, explained how boundaries were drawn in data collection:

While this interviewee talked about hundreds of applications being recorded on Organisation D's staff records, "that will be a fraction of the flexibility that exists," illustrating the challenges of recording all flexible working arrangements for organisations.

One of the difficulties in developing better quality organisational information on flexible working arrangements is that, for example, managers log hybrid working in different ways. Organisation D (healthcare) was keen to develop better quality data around flexible working and saw value in analysing how working needs related to different job types or demographic criteria. Since implementing team-based decision-making (see section 4.3.3), the organisation had generated a new dataset on varied working patterns. The HR interviewee explained some of the possibilities that this was opening up:

This HR representative accepted that their data collection process had not yet been perfected, but observed that it was already improving their policy work, and they anticipated that over the longer-term it would have cumulative impacts. Another manager in Organisation D reflected on the importance of maintaining good quality data collection so that national-level workforce projections could be made in the healthcare industry. However, operational practice at a managerial level provided a challenge in consistency:

A theme picked up by some interviewees was of managerial uncertainty around where the boundary should be set in terms of centrally logging requests. If this was not done consistently then it became more complicated to monitor flexible working pathways across organisations. Pulse or staff surveys provided a mechanism for tracking employees' preferences and patterns around how flexible working was managed. More recently, some organisations were measuring the uptake of hybrid working by monitoring office attendance, data which they could use in making calculations about estates usage.

In most case study organisations, data collection systems were relatively new and would benefit from some bedding-in time. The hope was that, over the longer-term, systems would enable better quality decision-making and planning, identifying, for example, if there was a clustering of rejections in a particular department, role, or around a demographic characteristic. A trade union representative in Organisation D (healthcare) observed that: "it gives us better tools to analyse things in the future." More fundamentally, these systems enabled organisations to assess how their flexible working policy was being implemented, and where inconsistencies could be addressed with enhanced communication and support. Larger organisations, like Organisation E (banking), had the capacity to adopt an analytical approach to their flexible working management system, with feedback and testing loops, while smaller ones such as Organisation B (local government) had the advantage of more in-depth workforce knowledge to support their approach to flexible working management.

This final chapter looks at the new working practices that have emerged alongside more traditional forms of flexible working in recent years. Pandemic and hybrid working has had a significant influence on wider flexible working practices, which are explored here (section 5.2), together with organisational culture change (section 5.3), and emerging good practice (section 5.4).

5.1 Key findings of the chapter

• Flexible working that was already abundant in the case study organisations was accelerated by pandemic working since extended working from home under complicated domestic circumstances was only possible through being supported by variations in working hours. 
• These working arrangements were overwhelmingly managed on an informal basis. Staff were generally not yet seeking contractual changes as organisations moved into hybrid working – although this was an area that could quickly change as arrangements became more established. Culture change was going on around the acceptability of flexible working at an institutional level. 
• Coming out of the pandemic, 'Work Futures' groups were set up in all case study organisations to oversee transitions into hybrid working. These saw flexible working discussions extended into strategic planning. Hybrid working trials were a common way of evaluating how to integrate different forms of flexible working into future working patterns. 
• In a climate of learning, good practice was emerging around leadership behaviours, organisational approaches to managing flexible working, including hybrid working, and wellbeing initiatives around working patterns.

5.2 Pandemic and hybrid working in organisations

Managers repeatedly observed that pandemic working had not just been about working from home. Since lockdowns had forced employees to manage unusual domestic responsibilities, such as supporting children's online learning alongside their jobs, informal flexible working proliferated as a coping mechanism. Line managers knew the most about the complicated ways that staff were working during this period. Through this, organisations increasingly recognised the benefits of informal flexibility for staff performance. As a manager in Organisation A (retail) observed, during the pandemic, informal flexible working became a common way of varying hours:

The pandemic had prompted a shift in employees' attitudes towards flexible, and, in particular, hybrid working. Interviewees reflected that organisations needed to respond to this for reputational and staff retention reasons. For example, an HR stakeholder in Organisation A saw their shift towards being a hybrid employer as a positive step that could give them the edge over other employers in the region:

As the case study organisations moved from exclusive working from home into hybrid working arrangements as government restrictions eased, all set up some kind of project group at a strategic policy level to plan around new ways of working (referred to here as 'Work Futures' groups). These discussions often overlapped with those concerning broader flexible working practices.
 
Hybrid working in the labour market crosses several conceptual boundaries, being a sub-group of flexible working that is primarily a variation in where the work is performed. It is a working pattern that is relatively new to many UK organisations, around which good practice is still evolving. Some case study organisations were moving from more informal hybrid working, where remote working was combined with office-based working days across the organisation, to hybrid working arrangements that were curated by managers or teams. For example, Organisation A (retail) was trialling a programme of 2 office-based and 3 home-based days a week for staff who worked in its headquarters. They were also collecting and documenting information on when staff worked remotely and in offices in order to better manage hybrid working. Hybrid working was therefore taking on a sense of greater formality where organisations required staff to work on-site on designated days, even it if was not yet reflected in written variations of contracts.

At the other end of the hybridity spectrum, Organisation B (local government), was enabling more pragmatic discussions to take place between employees and managers, and setting minimal organisational expectations about office presence (a day each week). The difference between these 2 approaches was conceptualised in terms of reflecting business versus employee needs.

For some managers, organisational-level planning around hybrid working conflicted with the diverse ways that they had learned their staff needed to work. An example was a manager who was comfortable with a staff member coming into the office less frequently in order to manage her son's complex care needs. From the manager's perspective, they did not want to risk losing this individual by being prescriptive about her working patterns – this employee had more than proved her capability during the pandemic, and it seemed illogical to now move the goalposts and mandate a different set of working patterns. The manager explained:

This operational flexibility was facilitated by the pragmatism that Organisation B afforded to its managers in implementing flexible working policy. Another HR interviewee in Organisation D (healthcare) explained that mandating a particular hybrid working pattern could be discriminatory and that there was a need for nuance and sensitivity in its implementation:

Somewhere in between these 2 positions were organisations that wanted to facilitate staff being in offices 2 or 3 times a week, but who were holding back from communicating a fixed expectation that did not reflect the diversity of job roles in the organisation. A policy interviewee from Organisation C (financial services) articulated this:

Managers played an important role in coordinating patterns of hybrid working that enabled teams to come together in offices in meaningful ways. In this sense, managerial expertise was key to the effective use of space by teams. A manager in Organisation B (local government) explained that his team's hybrid working would benefit from being more organised:

A key challenge in coordinating hybrid working patterns with other kinds of flexible working was reconciling mandates around office presence, which could exclude people whose working patterns had not previously included those days, and who might then experience career penalties. This might affect part-time workers, and by implication, female employees (3 times as many women work part-time as men in the UK (Devine et al, 2020)). Managers reflected on these kinds of issues more deeply as organisations used different working arrangements, looking at how organisational culture could be maintained in a hybrid working environment, and how new starters and younger people could be better supported in building organisational attachment and professional experience when they experienced fewer in-person connections.

Hybrid working was also raising new discussions about its scope to increase workforce diversity: some managers said it was broadening their recruitment pool by making it possible for candidates to apply for posts that no longer required attending a central location for all their working hours. For example, it was noted that employees with some disabilities and mothers with young children who would not have previously applied for office-based positions were able to commit to hybrid working.

At the level of business functioning, many interviewees talked about how the pandemic had changed their business' operational hours, as staff worked more varied working patterns around their outside commitments. An unanticipated gain here, and one that organisations were keen to retain, was that they were then able to provide their service beyond traditional 9 to 5 working hours, since a greater part of the day was staffed when employees were starting earlier and finishing later. This shake-up of how work was performed also extended to how organisations interacted with their clients or users. For example, Organisation D (healthcare) was able to make some clinics phone-based, which reduced waiting times and ensured that clinical needs could be prioritised more quickly, and Organisation C (financial services) was able to interact with clients virtually, which cut down on travel costs.

Hybrid working was not yet reflected in employees' written contracts in any of these approaches. Indeed, some interviewees noted that since contracts had historically been office-based, and had not been changed during the pandemic, they were now out of step with workplace practices. Interviewees felt that contracts might be formally varied in time if these arrangements persisted.

Due to the evolving approach that organisations were taking around hybrid working, analysing jobs, and trialling different working patterns, most had not yet developed a specific hybrid working policy (although some 'Work Futures' groups were developing guidance and toolkits to support its implementation). Only Organisation C (financial services), which had a longer-standing relationship with hybrid working, had integrated their hybrid approach within their broader flexible working policy, and Organisation B (local government) was in the process of developing a stand-alone hybrid working policy, as an HR representative there explained:

What this process has enabled, for these organisations considering the hybrid working potential of individual roles, is the collection of robust information about how jobs can be performed, which will be invaluable in future flexible working management.

Hybrid working is evolving amid fluctuating wider socio-economic circumstances, which can limit the degree to which it is possible to formalise working patterns. For example, during the fieldwork, interviewees were engaging with the pressures placed on staff by energy and cost of living increases (over the winter of 2022 to 2023). These made fluctuating, and sometimes competing demands upon employees' decisions about whether to work at home or return to workplaces, which had consequences for their wellbeing. Managers wanted to exercise sensitivity around these, particularly for their lower-paid employees. It was also a period of railway strikes, which made mandatory presence in offices on particular days impossible to enforce, challenges that were being managed informally by line managers.

To some degree, hybrid working was emblematic of the flexibility that proliferated during the pandemic, which organisations were trying to log in different ways, and it may be that the study period was an unusual time of flux in organisations' approaches to flexible working.

5.3 Culture change

There had been rapid culture change in the case study organisations around flexible working, in part due to how it was integrated into working practices during lockdowns and subsequently supported through 'Work Futures' projects as organisations established good practice (see section 5.4). Interviewees frequently equated culture change with learning, and a key part of this was the shared experience of pandemic working. Throughout the pandemic, case study organisations saw flexible working applied to a broader range of jobs than previously, which had improved access to employment, enabling candidates to apply for jobs whose design had previously precluded them (see section 5.2). In the case study organisations, moving out of lockdowns saw at least some of their workforce continue towards hybrid working. For many, this was an untried working method or one that had previously been available to fewer employees. A manager in Organisation A (retail) explained the significance of this shift:

Others explained that working from home, as a part of the working week, had become destigmatised and normalised by the pandemic, with the effect that organisations were developing a range of good practice (see section 5.4). Some interviewees pointed to the mindset shift that had occurred amongst employees regarding their working patterns, which was making organisations more responsive to the need to embed learnings into their flexible working processes if they were to remain competitive.
 
Not all case studies experienced a high degree of change around hybrid working. Organisation C (financial services) already displayed elevated levels of hybrid working before the pandemic. However, extended working from home enabled it to revisit its policy and embed hybrid working more firmly in its flexible working offer to employees, as well as to redesign offices around hybrid working practices.

5.4 Good practice

Interviewees repeatedly commented on the managerial mindset shift that had occurred around working hours following lockdowns. Flexible working was increasingly now a routine part of their daily problem-solving tools used to ensure that businesses were fully staffed and shifts covered appropriately. Good practice emerging in this new landscape clustered around: organisational approaches, which included around wellbeing, leadership and management, design, and everyday practice around new ways of working.

5.4.1 Organisational approaches to good practice

Organisational-wide processes and initiatives could provide important support in a hybrid working environment. One way in which this was being achieved was through buddying schemes to support new starters and younger people who would benefit from additional information around navigating organisational processes. An HR representative reflected that she chaired a new starters' group which was valuable for troubleshooting organisational problems and enabling solutions to be developed before issues became more ingrained.

Interviewees also raised a concern that flexible working could harm progression opportunities, particularly since it often meant reduced hours. Organisation E (banking) was developing an initiative to engage with these issues. The organisation recognised that this was an issue that disproportionately affected female employees' careers, and focused on reviewing progression processes and tackling organisational biases.

A policy stakeholder in Organisation C (financial services) reflected that it was important to develop mechanisms for identifying good practice so that they could be shared and developed. One of the ways in which they had done this was through a storytelling campaign. A similar approach worked well in Organisation E (banking), when they invited 3 line managers to speak to one of their staff network groups, each focusing on a different type of flexible working arrangement. This provided a useful opportunity for understanding how flexible working arrangements could be applied in different environments where they had not previously been adopted since experience was often limited to particular arrangements. Organisation E also featured stories on their intranet, which introduced employees in a variety of roles, to make the point about how flexible working applied across the workforce.

The pandemic has stimulated organisational-level thinking about how to better support staff wellbeing, prompted by managers observing a link between productivity and wellbeing. An important aspect of this was thinking about ways that human connections could be reinforced across increasingly varied working patterns, but there was also an important learning for managers who had to ensure that flexible and remote working did not result in unsustainable levels of work intensification. Partly this was about managers checking with staff and reminding them to take the breaks at home that they might take in offices in between different activities.

Organisations reported measures like developing a toolkit and training managers on supporting wellbeing, including how to pick up on signs that staff were struggling and support them, and signposting to relevant resources. Conversely, wellbeing and mental health issues were also becoming more visible to managers in terms of staff who would benefit from more office time, sometimes because they were isolated at home, or because they lacked suitable home workspaces. An important part of good practice was to prioritise this group's need for office space. Supplementary approaches included providing staff bulletins focused on wellbeing and online training and support.

This increasing emphasis on wellbeing was a significant change for the case study organisations, which interviewees felt was a positive and permanent change in strategic direction. An HR representative in Organisation C (financial services) talked about creating "a wellbeing culture", which included a number of supporting measures:

There was a commitment to shore up staff network activities and drop-in social events, both in person and online, and to make the space in the working week so that staff could attend these sessions, in recognition that informal connections between staff were essential to wellbeing. There was also communication taking place to tackle the intensified work that managers had witnessed during lockdowns, driving conversations about the importance of balancing work with taking time to eat, exercise, and connect with family, part of which was about investing in training around time management and technology. A policy interviewee in Organisation C explained that: "making it part of the culture costs time and effort." A manager in Organisation D (healthcare) also raised the issue that remote working could enable working while ill, and that this was an aspect of work intensification that they were trying to tackle.

5.4.2 Leadership and managerial good practice

An important part of the evolving good practice around new ways of working lay with leadership teams, whom workforces looked to for clear communication, the modelling of new working practices, and policy guidance, sometimes discussed in terms of 'modernisation'. An HR representative in Organisation E (banking) highlighted leaders' role in creating a positive climate for change, and explained that they were supporting these communications with bespoke leadership training:

A theme that reoccurred throughout the research was that workforces looked to leaders, not only for their vision around flexible working arrangements, but also to see good practice reflected back at them.

The research also highlighted that managers could experience challenges accessing flexible working themselves, since it was often assumed that good management could only be achieved through traditional in-person working hours. Interviewees observed that this expectation could limit diversity around who becomes a manager. However, pandemic experiences contested these ideas since managers too were working remotely and more flexibly. While culture was slower to change in some businesses than others, there were examples of managers role-modelling new working practices, and of HR teams challenging leaders' thinking around whether new managerial positions were advertised as full-time. Another way of projecting positive messages that supported culture change was using case studies to challenge thinking and explore new possibilities.

Some of the good practice emerging around managerial work was less about specific initiatives than qualitative changes in style, a large part of which was about communication. An HR representative in Organisation C (financial services) explained:

However, it could be observed that this type of work was necessarily time-consuming, and a recognition of this will need to be built into organisational culture shifts around flexible working.

5.4.3 Design and everyday practice around new ways of working

The experience of incorporating hybrid working into how organisations operated also brought new opportunities for learning and establishing good practice. For example, the widespread use of remote working stimulated thinking about jobs less in terms of time spent in a particular location or workplace, and more about outputs, which could have benefits around both efficiency and job satisfaction.

A policy stakeholder in Organisation C (financial services) talked a lot about the importance of reflecting on the processes and practices around hybrid working and considering how these could be improved: "You can't do enough in terms of guidance, it will not happen automatically." They highlighted their good practice here in consulting with staff about what was needed, rather than imposing solutions upon them.

At the organisational level, some of the case studies had engaged in job profiling and analysing posts' suitability for hybrid working. They created templates that served as the basis for job design and allowed communications about anticipated working patterns to be shared transparently among staff.

Managers played a crucial role in finding ways to ensure that hybrid working was being used effectively. For example, they were working at bringing people together in offices at optimum times for collaboration and limiting the chances of staff coming in to find none of their team there, which could be demoralising and counter-productive to maintaining workforce commitment to new ways of working. A manager in Organisation C (financial services) explained that this was not an automatic process and needed more careful attention to team dynamics than in pre-covid times: "really trying to drive connection, and trying to drive team spirit."

Other ways in which teams could develop good practice that underpinned their hybrid working arrangements were through electronic signatures and diaries that were used to communicate working patterns to colleagues, and having joint mailboxes that could be picked up by all team members. Interviewees spoke about how hybrid meetings provided an opportunity to foster more inclusive participation, with wider and more equitable distribution lists set up, and enabled staff to enhance their learning across the organisation by participating in a wider range of meetings than had previously been possible.

To foster organisational connections beyond team or project-based ones, interviewees spoke of the value of setting up employee interest groups and informal networking opportunities such as virtual coffee mornings. These could be bolstered by external speakers, webinars, and sharing information. They also addressed the wellbeing concerns described above. At an individual level, good practice could be established around maintaining privacy during remote working and keeping a check on team members who were not a part of an individual's daily interactions, to ensure that team dynamics were maintained virtually.

Some of this good practice around hybrid working will be behavioural, for instance learning boundary management techniques to prevent less effective remote working practices such as the overbooking of meetings disrupting participants' productive working time. These can be incorporated into organisational training programmes, which can also cover the management of virtual communications, for example, building chat time into meetings. Organisation C (financial services) used 'virtual taxi rides' around client meetings, which factored in time for connecting and debriefing, as a policy stakeholder there explained: "We are much better at informal flexibility if we keep the best of those good practices." HR departments can also review their practices to ensure that they reflect hybrid working environments. For example, in recruitment, the location of new roles can be advertised as flexible, and all roles can be re-examined to see if they can be performed differently.

The concluding chapter returns to the study's 4 research questions, supplementing these with suggestions as to how to address workplace support gaps around flexible working.

6.1 How have organisations developed policy environments around flexible working legislation, and what are the implementation challenges?

Flexible working covers a wide range of arrangements that can be organised both formally and informally. When this research was carried out, for most organisations it was the first time that these arrangements had been combined with hybrid working, itself a form of flexible working that is still evolving. In the case studies, informal flexible working had been common business practice before the pandemic and was further extended by pandemic working. Consequentially, much of the day-to-day management of flexible working operated outside of organisations' written policies, which tended to focus more on formal (both statutory and non-statutory) requests.

Pre-existing legislation provided a baseline for organisational policies. However, interviewees often found the statutory framework to be out of step with modern business needs and offering insufficient protection for employees with complex and fluctuating needs, such as carers and those with health conditions. For most organisations, implementing flexible working involved using a combination of formal and informal flexible working practices, reflecting employees' varying needs. Case study organisations rarely used the formal statutory right to request process, except around more complicated contractual changes. Organisational policy-practice gaps could develop due to shortfalls in managerial knowledge of organisations' flexible working policy process, or where managers' preferences about the use of flexible working arrangements varied between teams.

Post-pandemic, organisations have experienced change with a greater range of flexible working arrangements used, aligned with a shift towards hybrid working models. There was evidence that flexible working was becoming a more central part of organisations' strategic thinking in terms of recruitment, retention, and workforce wellbeing. In the future and given the April 2024 legislative change, employees who have experienced the benefits of more informal flexible working since the pandemic may decide to ringfence these through statutory requests. This raises the possibility that organisational practice will shift towards more contractual arrangements following this period of learning, and in the context of an evolving legislative framework. However, this research suggests that it is likely that there will continue to be a steady demand for the everyday flexibility triggered by unpredictable demands.

6.2 How do industry, organisational, and individual factors affect the management of flexible working arrangements?

A combination of industry, organisational, and individual factors affected the management of flexible working arrangements. At an industry level, labour market shortages simultaneously placed pressure on organisations to use flexible working as a lever for talent recruitment and staff retention, but also presented a challenge for managers in ensuring that services were fully staffed. This limited how managers' ability to adapt effectively to different flexible working arrangements. This was particularly the case when organisations were constrained by fixed operating hours, such as Organisations A (retail) or D (healthcare). Some industries required very specific quotas around team composition, such as the make-up of clinical teams, which informed how flexible working was organised to complement service needs.

A combination of industry, organisational, and individual factors affected the management of flexible working arrangements. At an industry level, labour market shortages simultaneously placed pressure on organisations to use flexible working as a lever for talent recruitment and staff retention, but also presented a challenge for managers in ensuring that services were fully staffed.

This limited how managers' ability to adapt effectively to different flexible working arrangements. This was particularly the case when organisations were constrained by fixed operating hours, such as Organisations A (retail) or D (healthcare). Some industries required very specific quotas around team composition, such as the make-up of clinical teams, which informed how flexible working was organised to complement service needs.

Often organisational and industry factors interacted in ways that affected the management of flexible working. For example, Organisation A had a mixed workforce, in that different components of its operation comprised substantially different types of work. In the case of Organisation A, its retail workers presented different managerial challenges from its office-based workers, and different kinds of flexible working were offered to them to ensure equity. Organisational factors were consequential in the 2 global case study organisations, who were more experienced in hybrid working, which they had been routinely using in multi-national teams. And for Organisation C, in which project-based work featured strongly, this type of work offered significant agility around utilising different kinds of flexible working to manage staff needs.

At an individual level, managers were cautious not to lose sight of staff's distinctive needs around flexibility. Gender and age often differentiated requests, with, for example, the mid-career point for women being a notable influence on flexible working needs. Particularly since the pandemic, managers were becoming more conscious of the relationship between health and wellbeing and flexible working needs, and of the need for everyday flexibility where these were unpredictable.

Moving out of pandemic working and implementing hybrid working, organisations are facing a new set of diversity management and equity challenges around the working patterns available in different job roles. Organisations are at a key period of re-evaluating their relationship with flexible working in order to address these social justice challenges while aligning them with business needs.

Facilitators of high-functioning flexible working practices included:

• cultural openness to flexible working arrangements
• trusted two-way relationships between managers and staff
• leadership modelling of good practice

Obstacles to effective flexible working practices included: 

• industry-staff mix, in that some roles required site presence whereas others were more flexible
• the complexity of designing flexible working arrangements for teams with specific skill mix requirements (such as clinical teams)
• difficulties aligning team needs with service provision

6.3 How do line managers handle and make decisions around a range of statutory and non-statutory requests for flexible working, and what are the influential factors in this process?

The case study organisations had a strong preference for flexible working requests to be raised informally with managers, an approach that enabled organisations to develop sustainable solutions for teams, businesses, and individuals. Ad hoc requests for flexibility operated informally, but managers tended to centrally log more permanent changes in working patterns. This approach gave organisations greater oversight of how flexible working arrangements were distributed and operated, with benefits for policy work as it enhanced organisational knowledge of workforce needs. In the post-pandemic period, some organisations were making greater use of record-keeping around flexible working requests and arrangements. This gave them a clearer picture of the range of working patterns in operation and helped with planning shifts and efficiency.

Very often, interviewees regarded formal requests through the statutory right to request process as indicative of a breakdown in managerial relations, in that it had not been possible to resolve flexible working needs through an informal discussion between applicants and managers. Such requests tended to be reserved for more complicated cases, followed the rejection of an informal non-statutory request, or occurred when a fundamental change in contract was required. Formal statutory requests could then provide an important safety net for individuals who might not otherwise be able to access flexible working, and who might face leaving their jobs if they were unable to secure a varied working pattern. However, formal statutory requests were not part of organisations' everyday experience of the management of flexible working. Rejections of formal statutory requests were rarer still and tended to be extreme cases, often around unusual proposals, or unique skillsets that it was not possible to reconfigure in job design in the suggested way without damaging the business. In such instances, managers attempted to negotiate with the applicant to see if the request could be reframed and accommodated in another way.

Keeping discussions about flexible working between applicants and their managers enabled decisions to be taken by the people with the most knowledge about these job roles. An informal approach to flexible working (at least initially) enabled managers and applicants to trial and refine new working arrangements in a safe environment. Conversely, managers often perceived that contractual changes triggered by formal requests offered less adaptability.

Primary factors in managers' decision-making around flexible working requests were organisational equity, business needs, team considerations, and employee wellbeing. The balance of these factors varied between industries, and in large part managers weighed them against each other on an informed case-by-case basis. The case study organisations sought to accommodate requests wherever possible and regarded flexible working as having reputational value with potential employees as well as more broadly. Decision-making typically involved problem-solving and co-creation of new working arrangements between applicants and their manager, but would draw upon HR in more complicated or sensitive cases. Larger organisations were able to develop a more structured approach to data collection, analysis mechanisms around requests and subsequent flexible working arrangements, and were better able to redeploy staff, while smaller organisations had more in-depth workforce knowledge and agility that supported decision-making. An emerging part of good practice was to embed collaborative approaches throughout decision-making processes in order to ensure that all relevant information was considered and to produce more consensus-based, sustainable outcomes.

6.4 What do different approaches to flexible working offer employers in a changing world of work?

The lockdowns of 2020 to 2021 were a time when informal flexible working became a part of organisations' everyday practice. These arrangements became more integrated with business needs as a way of maintaining service provision since large proportions of workforces were working remotely and juggling unusual domestic circumstances that made working 9 to 5 hours unrealistic. Common working practices changed again when government directives were lifted and more flexibility around space was possible. During the research, new hybrid working arrangements were being refined, with emerging policies overseen by strategic 'Work Futures' groups, and case study organisations were at various stages in starting to record and assess the sustainability of new working arrangements. A process of culture change around flexible work was commonplace, accompanied by a learning mindset to capture the benefits and challenges of recent experiences in employers' future practice. Good practice that supported the embedding of team connections was more important than ever amid hybrid ways of working that were new to most organisations.

The move to hybrid working for formerly office-based workers has raised an issue around the potential for inequities to form in mixed workforces with regard to the application of different working patterns to different roles. Organisations were working hard to address this challenge, looking at how alternative flexible working arrangements might be offered to site-based workers to rebalance employment conditions. Reflecting the evolving nature of good practice in this area and the need for flexibility, hybrid working patterns were not yet reflected in written contractual changes and some organisations' hybrid working policies were less developed than others. A particular challenge raised by hybrid working was experienced by teams where co-presence was more functional to broader operations, such as for clinical teams in Organisation D (healthcare).

An emergent area where organisations were refocusing their attention was around wellbeing in an increasingly hybrid environment. Best practice here involved innovating around ways to ensure that human connections were maintained both on-site and remotely. Good job design could bring teams together at optimum times, managers were becoming more skilled at spotting where staff were struggling or where work had intensified, and time management focused on creating more balanced working patterns.

6.5 Support gaps

The research identified 5 areas where Acas can enhance and support employers by highlighting good practice and innovation across different industries:

Data collection 

Organisational gains can be made around good quality record-keeping on flexible working. Accumulated knowledge around diverse working patterns can be used to inform organisational policy work and support interventions and spot inconsistencies or gaps early on. The research uncovered variation in managerial record-keeping, and while it may not be practical or desirable to log all informal ad hoc requests to adjust working patterns, collecting better quality information around more lasting flexible working arrangements (their format and rationale) can provide organisational benefits and promote equity across workforces through becoming a resource to be drawn upon in more consistent decision-making. Equally, it can be important for organisations to analyse rejected applications (both informal and formal) to identify support needs where practice can be refined. Acas can share anonymised stories and examples of good practice that illustrate the value of managers keeping these kinds of records of their teams' flexible working arrangements.

Managerial training programmes and guidance

Organisations' management training programmes had mixed take-up. This could be improved by organisations setting aside time for engagement in management development activities and designing programmes that offer managers the latest insights around hybrid management or supporting wellbeing. Organisations can also take a more innovative approach in distributing policy information to managers to supplement the guidance that is already available on organisational intranets, and enhancing understanding with practical add-ons like toolkits and decision-making trees. With the recent change in the legislative climate, now could be an optimum time for organisations to embed job design and flexible working training into managerial training programmes, and to accompany this with updated support resources for managers who have been in post for longer or who may not be familiar with the latest legislation. Acas can play a valuable role here in providing industry-specific examples about applying legislation, with relatable illustrations likely to be more effective in accelerating compliance than reiterating obligations. The emphasis can be on practical guidance for change that managers can quickly incorporate into their practice.

HR support

This worked well where it was responsive and managers could call upon trusted HR advisers to advise them on ongoing cases. Work to enhance these connections can support managers who are curating complex team working patterns, as well as those who are newer in post, which in turn will improve organisational consistency. Positive experiences can bolster managers' confidence about reaching out to HR for support, and encourage this to become a supplementary and routine part of good decision-making. A second area to develop is around knowledge alignment, that is, facilitating managers and HR advisers to share information on flexible working arrangements, to enhance organisational consistency and workforce equity. Here Acas can distribute learning around different approaches to HR support, and the benefits they offer for rapidly changing practice, including taking a more analytical approach to flexible working practice.

Policy learning

Organisations may benefit from trusted sources sharing guidance about what works in specific industries around developing a hybrid working policy. Given that this will be emergent in many organisations, this is an optimum time to share good practice, including how learning from job design around hybrid working can be applied, and designing a policy that does not exclude groups with more complex working needs, such as carers.

Good practice

Knowledge exchange will be valuable around new and evolving forms of flexible working that organisations might want to incorporate into their working practices, and which could improve decision-making and innovation. This might include a 4-day week and team-based decision-making. Some of this might be facilitated by Acas, who can provide a trusted platform to access resources. 

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Devine, B.F., Foley, N. & Ward, M. (2020) Women and the Economy, House of Commons Briefing Paper no. CBP06838  

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Peters, S.E., Dennerlein, J.T.,  Wagner, G.R. and Sorensen, G. (2022) 'Work and worker health in the post-pandemic world: a public health perspective', The Lancet Public Health, 7:e188 to 94.
 
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Yin R. K. (2009) Case study research: Design and methods (Vol. 5), Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

In order to develop a sample of case study organisations, national-level Labour Force Survey (LFS) data was used to identify characteristics of organisations that used flexible working arrangements. The analysis focused on responses from employees and made use of the relevant questions in the Labour Force Survey that can identify the use of the following flexible working arrangements:

• part-time work 
• work from home 
• flexitime
• annualised hours 
• term-time working
• job sharing
• condensed or compressed hours 

Multiple regression models were estimated for each of these variables on a set of worker and organisational/workplace characteristics to guide the subsequent choice of case study organisations. 
The following predictors were used: 

• gender 
• organisation type (for-profit, central government, local government, university, NHS, or charity and voluntary) 
• workplace size 
• industry 
• occupation
• region of work 

Based on the results of the regression analysis, suitable workplaces were targeted to develop a purposive sample, with the intention of maximising variation in the sample (ensuring a range of organisations), while targeting industries where flexible working was known to be in operation, which would therefore provide productive sites for fieldwork. See Appendix 2 for a detailed presentation of the Labour Force Survey results and the rationale for the choice of the case study organisations.

Five organisations were then identified and agreement was reached with gatekeepers to participate in the research. The distinctiveness of these case studies, in their contrast from each other, enabled the research to explore different industry differences, organisational approaches, and workforce characteristics. 

The case studies were:

1. a retailer (Organisation A) 
2. a local government organisation (Organisation B)
3. a financial services company (Organisation C)
4. a healthcare organisation (Organisation D) 
5. a large bank (Organisation E)

Although they would all be considered relatively large organisations, there was considerable variation in this, from Organisation B with a headcount of 500, to Organisation E's 60,000 employees (see section 2.2). These covered a range of jobs and flexible working arrangements, the distribution of which reflected variations around organisational culture. Case studies of the organisations are provided in Appendix 3.

Within the case studies, key stakeholder groups were identified as distinctive for exploring how flexible working is negotiated and operates across organisations. These included: 

• policy leads or hybrid working leads 
• HR staff 
• managers 
• trade union or other staff representatives

The sample of 35 interviewees was populated with personnel from across these categories that contained the most relevant expertise around flexible working in that organisation (see Table 4), as signposted by gatekeepers. Managers were a key group for the research to focus on, in order to capture the variation in practice amongst individual managers and across different types of working teams. In the NHS case study, the sample included employees with both clinical and non-clinical jobs, since we anticipated that this could produce different perspectives around flexible working. Not all organisations were unionised, reflecting the sample's cross-industry coverage.

Distinctive, but related, semi-structured interview questions were asked to these 4 groups of interviewees, using complementary topic guides. Sometimes distinctions between these categories were fluid (such as when an individual's role took in both policy and HR components), in which case interviews used a combination of questions from different topic guides. Interview questions reflected interviewees' different interests around flexible working. For example, line managers were asked about their approaches to, and decision-making around, statutory and non-statutory requests. The interviews probed issues such as the embedding of good practice, organisational barriers and enablers to flexible working arrangements, and ad hoc approaches to decision-making around informal flexibility. Interviews all took place online or by telephone and lasted between 30 and 75 minutes.

We also collected supplementary materials from organisations, wherever these were available, such as flexible working and hybrid working policies. We returned to gatekeepers after the original interview to capture ongoing change that had been indicated as relevant in the interview. This involved following up progress on a report around flexible working that was under development, or results from a staff survey that included findings around working patterns. This approach built further nuance into our development of the case study organisation's experience of implementing flexible working arrangements over the research period.

At the end of each interview, we presented each participant with 2 vignettes from a portfolio of 9. These vignettes were short hypothetical stories in which a protagonist was seeking a particular flexible working arrangement, driven by a change in their circumstances. Vignettes are useful for exploring organisational decision-making (Schoenberg and Ravdal, 2000), and enabled us to clarify differences in process between the case study organisations in responding to flexible working requests. Covering a range of labour market experiences, we were able to tailor vignettes to organisations and individuals, so that they were relevant and engaged participants around the problem-solving activity. This gave us 7 to 8 responses to analyse for each of the 9 vignettes.

All interviews were recorded and transcribed word for word, and summary documents were produced by the researchers on individual interviews, which enabled rapid comparisons to be made around emerging issues across the sample. Anonymised transcripts were thematically analysed on QSR NVivo, version 12 (Braun and Clarke, 2006), using a coding framework that picked up on key concepts and emerging themes. Ongoing discussion with Acas ensured that its research and policy interests fed into the analysis and has shaped the structure of this report.

Ethical considerations

The research went through a process of ethics review and approval at the University of Southampton (ERGO no.76925) in addition to submission through the Health Research Authority (HRA) in relation to the NHS case study (IRAS no. 320633). The main ethical considerations were establishing informed consent, ensuring secure data storage, and protecting participants' confidentiality. Since the research was conducted across case study organisations, it has been important to ensure that participants' identities were protected from one another as well as anonymised in the reporting, and correspondingly, only generic job titles have been used. 

In order to achieve informed consent, potential participants were initially approached by a gatekeeper who introduced the research aims to them and passed on information sheets and consent forms. Only if people indicated that they were interested in taking part in the research, were their names passed on to the research team, who then contacted them to arrange an interview. After a consent form had been returned, at the beginning of each interview researchers recapped the information sheet with participants, and only proceeded with the interview once further oral consent had been established.

Each transcript was assigned a unique identifier, using a code that was not shared beyond the 2 qualitative researchers. Personal data was stored separately from research materials, and all data was stored in password-protected format on the University's secure server, in line with the University's Data Management Policy. All information in this report is presented anonymously, with care taken not to reproduce quotations that might compromise this.

To guide the choice of case study organisations, the research first identified how various flexible working arrangements were distributed across the working population in the UK, using data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey. This Appendix presents the methodological details and results of this analysis, concluding with a rationale for case study selection.

Data and methods

Worker-level data was used from the second quarters (April to June) of 2019 and 2022 of the Labour Force Survey series. The analysis of both pre and post-covid-19 (coronavirus) data shed light on pandemic-induced changes in the use of flexible working arrangements by organisations and workers (for example, the well-documented increase in working from home arrangements). The analysis was based on employees and made use of relevant questions in the Labour Force Survey that can identify the use of the following flexible working arrangements: part-time work, work from home, flexitime, annualised hours, term-time working, job sharing, and condensed or compressed hours. 

Employee use of any of these flexible working arrangements was coded as an indicator (dummy) variable for ease of analysis. Notably, the use of flexible working arrangements is as reported by employees themselves. It is thus not known for certain that all these reports refer to formalised (by contract or otherwise) arrangements, but the nature of the relevant questionnaire items suggests that this is likely to be the case for all flexible working arrangements measured here (apart from working from home arrangements which, have very often not been contractually formalised yet). 

Multiple regression models were estimated for each of these indicator variables on a set of worker and organisational/workplace characteristics to guide the subsequent choice of case study organisations. 

Specifically, the following categorical predictors were used: 

• gender 
• organisation type (for-profit, central government, local government, university, NHS, or charity and voluntary) 
• workplace size (0 to 24, 25 to 49, 50 to 499, and 500+ employees) 
• industry (21 one-digit categories) 
• occupation (9 one-digit categories)
• region of work (13 regional identifiers)

Since the data was pooled for 2019 and 2022, a year indicator variable estimated the significance of the change between the 2 years. 

The full regression results are not presented below; instead, the findings are summarised by commenting on worker and employer characteristics that significantly increase (or decrease) the probability of the average worker to be on each specific flexible. All statistics and results reported below are based on the analysis of weighted data and it is thus representative of the UK population. All regression models are estimated on large samples of between 30,000 to 70,000 employees.

Analysis results

Results from our analysis of Labour Force Survey.

Part-time work

Part-time work declined slightly between 2019 and 2022, but remains the most predominant flexible working arrangement in the UK: 25% of employees are currently working part-time hours. Part-time work is strongly feminised, slightly more prevalent in the NHS and third-sector organisations, as well as among smaller workplaces, but also more extensively used among workers in retail, accommodation and food services, education, health, and arts and entertainment industries. 'Blue-collar' workers, as well as administrative and secretarial ones, are far more likely to be working part-time than managerial, professional, and associate professionals. Strong or clear-cut geographical patterns of use are not observed in the Labour Force Survey data (apart from a slightly higher use of part-time in the South West, and a lower use in workplaces outside the UK). Around a third of part-time workers are also on 1 or 2 more of the flexible working arrangements analysed below, mainly working from home, flexitime, term-time, and job sharing.

Working from home

It is a well-established fact that working from home increased dramatically during the covid pandemic, first due to the lockdowns and 'stay at home' guidance, but then also as a continuation and adaptation of the new work practices. This is reflected in the Labour Force Survey data: while in 2019 only about 5% of employees reported that they mainly work from home, in April to June 2022 this percentage had risen to around 22%. Women were more likely than men to report so, as were workers in the for-profit sector, in universities, as well as in charity and voluntary organisations. In terms of industry distribution, the heaviest use of work from home took place in information and communication, financial and insurance activities, and professional, scientific, and technical activities; as expected, professional and managerial occupations are far more likely to work from home than 'blue-collar' occupations, as are workers in the South of England relative to workers in the North and, particularly, Northern Ireland, or in workplaces outside the UK. Finally, around 45% of home workers are also on multiple of the flexible working arrangements analysed here.

Flexitime

Flexible hours, or flexitime, arrangements are used by around 13% of UK workers, with only a slight increase in this percentage since 2019. Central and local government employees, as well as workers in third sector organisations, make the heaviest use of them. Flexitime is also more prevalent in larger workplaces and among professional and administrative or secretarial occupations. The only strong and clear industry pattern is the much higher likelihood of flexitime being used in public administration – the opposite is the case in education. London workers, as well as those outside the UK, are less likely to use flexitime.

Annualised hours contracts

The use of annualised hours contracts declined during the pandemic years from around 6% to around 5% of employees. Overall, there are few discernible patterns in the data concerning the distribution across different employee and organisational characteristics. One important difference from other flexible working arrangements is that men are slightly more likely to be on such a contract. Otherwise, workers in caring, leisure, and other service occupations, and in NHS organisations, are more likely to work on annualised hours. Finally, annualised hours contracts are far more likely to be observed among employees in Northern Ireland.

Term-time work

Term-time contracts concern around 4% of UK workers. A very big percentage of these workers (close to 45%) are also on part-time hours. It is a strongly feminised flexible working arrangement, far less likely to be observed in the for-profit sector, and predominantly observed in education, but also in the NHS. Term-time work is also more likely to be observed among certain 'blue-collar' occupational categories.

Condensed or compressed work week 

Compressed hours are also a relatively rare flexible working arrangement, currently used by less than 1% of the UK workforce. Such arrangements are more likely to be observed among women, in larger workplaces, in the public sector, and in managerial occupations; they are also more likely to be observed among workers in Scotland than in the rest of the countries of the UK.

Rationale for case study selection

Based on the data analysis presented above, the following types of organisations were prioritised for inclusion in the sample:

• A retail company: the relatively very heavy use of part-time contracts in this industry, particularly among 'blue collar' workers, makes the choice of such a private firm appropriate to explore flexible working arrangements. 
• A local government organisation: multiple flexible working arrangements are more likely to be observed among local government workers, particularly flexitime and term-time working, but also part-time work and job sharing. 
• An NHS organisation: there is an increased probability of NHS employees working part-time, while there is also a relatively increased prevalence of term-time working and annualised hours contracts in such organisations. 
• A professional services organisation (for example, financial services): such organisations are likely to make heavier use of work from home and flexitime arrangements.

Selection on this basis enabled the research to capture the most common forms flexible working arrangements in UK organisations (part-time working, annualised hours, working from home, flexitime), and to cover a range of socio-economic experiences. The sample was then supplemented by a bank, which offered insight around being a global organisation managing hybrid working across a much larger workforce.

These case study summaries look at 5 different organisations across 5 different sectors.

Organisation A – A large retail company

Organisation A was a retail-based company with a mixed employee profile with a range of ages and higher numbers of females to males in customer-facing roles.

It operated out of several locations around the South of England, running a variety of distinctive services in multiple locations. 

Around 4,500 employees were hired to work in a particular location and, apart from head office personnel, were required to work on-site. 

The head office staff were the smallest group of the employee base and held the highest professional qualifications. 
Most employees were based in the retail part of the organisation and many worked part-time. Organisation A was able to put its flexible working policy into use fairly easily. This was due to the nature of its employee roles and its flexible (shift) working hours.

Managing flexible working arrangements

Organisation A's workforce was diverse and non-unionised. 

This had implications for how it addressed work flexibility: no single approach was suitable for all employees. For example, some services operated over a 24-hour period, while others functioned on more traditional working hours. 
In the organisation's central offices, staff had worked entirely on-site before covid but shifted to remote working at the start of the lockdown in March 2020. 

Organisation A's central offices, which included more of their senior roles, now operated on a hybrid basis, with employees expected to be on-site for a minimum of 2 days every week. Staff in the central offices were required to make requests for hybrid working to their managers and to state the pattern of flexible working that they wished to follow. 

Organisational culture in their headquarters had changed dramatically following pandemic working, from a requirement that work should be done in the office, to an acceptance, based on trust, that people worked effectively at home.

Within Organisation A's retail outlets, expectations were different. People were recruited to fill specific hours, and there was limited scope for hybrid working, at the same time as a significant proportion of employees worked part-time. Reportedly, there were few requests for changes to employees' established working patterns. However, ad hoc shift changes were frequent. 

The retail part of the business has become more agile since the pandemic. For example, a manager would now interview on the spot when someone walked into the building to inquire about employment, in response to recruitment difficulties that had been experienced post-covid.

Flexible working policy

Organisation A's flexible working policy was available to all staff online. It had deliberately been kept as simple as possible and was loosely based on the legislation, with no plans to review it soon. 

This uncomplicated design meant that the policy could easily be applied to multiple job types, a feature that was important for an organisation that involved a diverse range of businesses. 

The Acas Code of Practice was viewed as the starting point for organisational policy development. Given Organisation A's diverse business model, HR played a key role in joining up knowledge across its businesses, and HR advisers were available to provide one-on-one support to managers in meetings around flexible working requests. This approach could be more responsive to managers' needs than participating in more generic flexible working training.

Managing complex cases

More complex or challenging cases were dealt with through a statutory right to request application, in which employees were required to put forward a case that they could meet business objectives while working an alternative pattern. 

When requests were agreed they were usually then implemented on a trial basis, to give the arrangement the best chance of success. Decisions were made giving due consideration to meeting business needs and employee requirements. Relationship-building was key: Organisation A took the long view and aimed to keep good staff.

Organisation B – A local government organisation

Organisation B was a borough council in the South of England delivering a disparate variety of services. 

It had a relatively small workforce (500) compared to the other case studies, who were employed in a mixed range of roles. This meant that the HR team had in-depth workforce knowledge. 

The hours worked by staff varied around roles: some employees worked from early morning, others late into the evening. 

Some were required to work at a designated site, such as refuse collectors or theatre staff, without the opportunity to work remotely, but the majority of jobs (80%) were adaptable to hybrid working, and flexible working was fairly routine in these jobs, although more women than men were reported to request flexible working. To address this disparity in staff access to flexible working, Organisation B was making efforts to offer its frontline staff alternative forms of flexibility that complemented service provision.

Managing flexible working arrangements

Organisation B's reputation as a flexible employer was established before the pandemic and it was currently trialling novel approaches to flexible working, partly driven by a review of office utilisation prompted by the growth in hybrid working among its workforce. 

There had been a culture change from presenteeism towards an acceptance that people working from home were productive, a shift that had been facilitated by improvements in performance assessment and Organisation B's experience during the pandemic. 

It was also moving towards greater flexibility around places of work, including a recognition that third spaces of work were equally valid as offices or home workspaces. 

Organisation B was running a hybrid trial around its formerly office-based work. This set the expectation that people would be site-based for at least one day per week, with the trial due to be reviewed after 6 months. 

Offering hybrid working arrangements was seen as conducive to recruitment and retention, and Organisation B was currently developing its hybrid policy, conscious that this needed to happen to keep in step with current workforce needs. A concern for the future was getting better at designing hybrid working around team needs.

Flexible working policy

Policy development on flexible working was being guided by Acas's Code of Practice, with Organisation B's union representative routinely referencing the Code, as well as the legislative environment.

The union had good relations with the senior management team at Organisation B, was afforded significant input into policy development, and was involved in flexible working discussions with staff.

Formality of arrangements

Flexible working requests were managed on a case-by-case basis and were mostly dealt with informally by line managers, who made efforts to keep good records around flexible working arrangements. 

Popular working requests among parents of school-aged children were for 9-day fortnights. There was also a trend among people approaching retirement to reduce or flex their hours, in order to better manage their work-life balance. 

Organisation B was keen to position itself as a flexible family employer in the labour market and to hold onto good staff that way. They regarded flexible working policy as strategically important, and it was linked to their reward and recruitment policy.

Variations around contracts had been mainly handled informally since the pandemic, and Organisation B had moved away from the idea of core working hours. 

It was estimated that only 5 to 10 flexible working requests went through the statutory right to request process each year. There had been no increase in formal requests since the pandemic; people were still negotiating working patterns with their managers. Organisation B's approach to requests was to be guided by policy and to work out a solution: what they considered to be finding a 'middle way'. HR staff had been trained in coaching and offered one-on-one support to managers in dealing with complex requests for flexible working. There was a view that the statutory process provided greater rigidity around working arrangements, whereas an informal approach facilitated greater flexibility and opportunities to experiment with arrangements. It was still unclear whether informal flexibility, such as the hybrid working patterns currently being trialled, would later be translated into contractual changes.

Organisation C – A global financial services organisation

Organisation C was a global financial services organisation, that employed around 20,000 staff in the UK, where its headquarters were based. 

The business regularly admitted a large number of graduates onto its graduate training scheme and school leavers onto its apprenticeship scheme. This ensured a continuous flow of young talent into the organisation, amounting to around 40% of the workforce. 

A stable base of staff with long service, combined with this recruitment module, meant that the workforce was age diverse. In 2022, Organisation C reduced its full-time contracts from a 37.5 to a 35-hour working week, a decision that was judged to be a success since it was able to maintain employees' salaries whilst retaining previous levels of productivity.

Managing flexible working arrangements

High turnover of staff could make it difficult to maintain a strong organisational culture, and this could be challenged by a continual inflow of younger recruits.

Organisation C had recently recruited from overseas and observed that this was generating a new set of working expectations since flexible working was interpreted differently in different countries. Many staff in Organisation C worked in a hybrid arrangement, including those in client-facing roles, and some senior leaders worked mainly remotely. 

The company moved to a flexible working pattern during the London 2012 Olympics when it started to incorporate more varied working patterns as part of its routine practice. Consequently, the pandemic had a relatively minor impact on Organisation C's hybrid approach to work since this was already embedded across the organisation. 

Unusually, it had a standalone hybrid working policy, which had been designed to complement its flexible work policy. Changes since covid related mainly to office space, and Organisation C took the opportunity to introduce further good practice around remote working, such as maintaining high levels of connection with colleagues through focused initiatives.

Flexible working policy

Organisation C's flexible working policy and commitment to strong flexible working practices relied upon staff's integrity to self-manage working arrangements and to keep colleagues informed about their working patterns. Its flexible work policy was unusual in incorporating informal flexibility. 

Organisation C very much saw being a flexible employer as an essential part of its brand and as key to talent management, and it was an early adopter of a day 1 entitlement to flexible working.

A 'Work Futures' programme was introduced in Organisation C to evaluate learning from flexible working through and beyond the pandemic. This was considering how hybrid working has: 

• impacted staff
• office use 
• technology requirements 
• engaged with legislative parameters 
• consolidated best practice

throughout the organisation. 

Discussions were in process as to whether employees who worked in a hybrid pattern would be required to work on-site for at least 2 days a week, an approach that was favoured by Organisation C's CEO. There was concern, however, that this could create more rigidity than flexibility. 

All employees worked in some form of a hybrid arrangement. This could have an impact on junior staff when their managers were unavailable to offer face-to-face coaching and support in real time.

There was also evidence that the younger workforce may not have home environments that are conducive to work. These were issues currently being addressed through the 'Work Futures' programme. Working on ensuring good practice continued to emerge, and Organisation C had recently promoted a storytelling campaign, encouraging employees to connect with colleagues, sharing their accounts of what was working well and what they were finding more challenging. 

Resilience-enhancing practices were also encouraged to highlight the importance of self-care when working from home, such as spending time with friends and family, ensuring exercise was taken, and taking measures not to overwork.

Organisation D – A regional healthcare provider

Organisation D was a large non-specialist healthcare organisation, based in the South of England and employing approximately 10,000 staff. It had a high percentage of professionally-qualified staff, supported by non-clinical managerial and administrative staff.

It coordinated services that had a range of operating hours, including some offering 24-hour delivery. Due to the pandemic, some clinical services had moved online and subsequently those clinicians retained an element of hybrid working.
 
More generally, there was a divide between clinical and non-clinical staff in the type of flexible working arrangements that were accommodated, with less opportunity for hybrid and remote working among clinical staff.

Managing flexible working arrangements

In 2021 Organisation D revised its flexible working policy in response to a central directive that the healthcare industry should become more attractive to employees by offering greater flexibility in working patterns. 

Due to the pandemic, remote working was introduced for all eligible staff, including clinicians, as part of a sustained move to hybrid working. There was no requirement that staff must work on-site for a minimum number of hours a week. 

Having a predominantly female workforce, with a relatively high degree of caring responsibilities, Organisation D regarded flexible working as key to its business success. It recognised that flexible working was an important consideration in work-life balance and mental health.

Flexible working policy

Organisation D's updated policy since the pandemic standardised how flexible working requests were considered, which has been important in maintaining equity and transparency. Managers had a process to follow, supported by an online toolkit to aid their decision-making, which ensured consistency in how requests were addressed. All flexible working requests had to be considered by the applicant's line manager. To eliminate bias from decision-making, reasons for the request did not need to be given. Where it was not possible to reach an agreement with a line manager, then a manager from a different department would review the employee's request. Requests went to appeal if the second manager upheld the decision of the initial line manager. Organisation D was currently developing managers' knowledge around its flexible working process to enable consistency and fairness in decision-making when dealing with requests. Its flexible working policy was supplemented with implementation guidelines and a high-profile roll-out programme.

Formality of arrangements 

Most flexible working requests were made informally, enabling line managers to address the matter with their direct reports. Substantive changes to a permanent member of staff's working pattern were recorded electronically, irrespective of whether the request had been made informally. Another (non-line) manager automatically addressed a formal request. 

Decisions on requests were made according to the perceived ability of the employee to do their work within the confines of the flexible working request and the impact upon the department or team. While this process for logging requests enhanced Organisation D's understanding of the patterning of different types of flexible working across the organisation, in practice interviewees estimated that about half of all arrangements would be recorded in this way.

Managing complex cases

The greatest issue for Organisation D was remaining equitable to staff who were unable to work from home, such as ward-based nurses and hospital porters. Thus, considerations such as revising shift patterns, using compressed hours, and offering flexibility in working around lifestyle choices were offered to these staff.

There was also now greater flexibility within clinical roles than was perceived as possible before covid, making the clinical and non-clinical divide less of an issue. 

For example, rounds could be undertaken remotely and surgeons could do non-operative work at home. Technology has helped support this transition, such as the introduction of electronic patient records and the capability to make remote diagnoses. Team-based decision-making was frequently used around rostering to ensure that the process was democratic, that needs were well understood, and that the resulting arrangements were sustainable.

This gave teams greater ownership of working patterns and investment in making them successful.

The right to request flexible working

Employees had the right to request flexible working arrangements from the first day of their employment, with hirer's encouraged to raise the issue at interview and for a discussion to take place ahead of employment offers. 

Organisation D was named a 'flexible employer' on job advertisements, and managers' focus was on granting flexible working requests wherever possible. In an industry where recruitment was a challenge, flexible working was regarded as important leverage.

Organisation E – A global banking organisation

Organisation E was a global retail and commercial bank, with its headquarters in London, and the largest of the case studies with around 60,000 UK employees based across various sites. 

Legislative requirements differed in the countries in which it operated, which affected the consistency of its flexible working practices. For example, in some countries, people who worked from home were legally entitled to have a 'working from home allowance'. This was not the situation in the UK, and the organisation had to make decisions on their offering of flexible working arrangements considering local factors around government legislation.

Managing flexible working arrangements

Flexible working arrangements had been established in Organisation E before the pandemic, and it focussed on being seen as a flexible and family-friendly employer since flexible working was perceived as an employee benefit and an aid to staff retention. 

The pandemic accelerated some changes to working arrangements, particularly of people moving from hybrid to complete remote working, creating greater opportunities for flexibility for some staff. 

Adopting a new approach to how working patterns were structured, Organisation E identified 3 distinct options that related to employees' roles. 

The first was employees who were customer-facing, whose roles were deemed to be office-based. 

The second option was those working largely remotely, albeit still required to attend the office for 2 days each month. 

A third hybrid working option saw staff's roles 50% office-based and 50% working remotely. In this way, access to hybrid and remote working was restricted by employees' type of job role. 

New employees who intended to work in a hybrid pattern were requested to spend more time on-site initially, to get to know their colleagues, understand the organisation's culture and policies, and accelerate their learning to establish confidence and competence. This was considered particularly important for early career staff. 

Contractual changes had not yet accompanied these new working arrangements, which were introduced on an experimental basis. Impact on the business, staff, and customers was regularly monitored through, respectively, balanced scorecards, staff opinion surveys, and customer value measures. 

The feedback allowed Organisation E to work on a 'test and learn' basis, making minor adjustments as necessary. Recent staff feedback had shown high levels of satisfaction with flexible working arrangements and indications that these were providing a positive impact on work-life balance. People in roles with greater flexibility reported a higher level of satisfaction. Those in office-based roles were increasingly requesting to be moved into departments with greater opportunities for hybrid or remote working.

Flexible working policy

The organisation's flexible working policy had been updated and went beyond the legislative requirements at the time of the research, being available from the start of employment.

Options for flexible working were discussed before employing staff, ensuring transparency on what was available. Flexible working policy was accessible to managers and employees on the bank's intranet, along with supporting documentation to facilitate decision-making. 

In large part, flexible working was agreed informally through a 2-way conversation between applicants and line managers, and it was seen to be a priority that decision-making around requests was seen to be transparent and fair.

Formality of arrangements

Informal requests were preferred since decisions could be reached more quickly. 
There was a perception that formal (statutory) requests damaged the manager-employee relationship, with the conversation seen as heavier and more consequential. 

This process required a written request to be made to the line manager, with an HR policy adviser assisting during decision-making, and checking adherence to statutory requirements. An independent manager from a different department, usually of a senior grade, heard appeals, which could be a lengthy process. It tended to be the more complicated requests that were dealt with through this statutory route.

Most flexible working arrangements involved a variation around contracted hours. Recent trends included a rise in requests for compressed hours, annualised and term-time hours, particularly amongst departments such as telephony call centres, and an increase in part-time work by younger male employees. Good practice included employee-led networks through which flexible working webinars could be accessed, and sharing personal stories about flexible working on the intranet.

Managing complex cases

Specific difficulties arose from balancing flexible working opportunities throughout the global business. The organisation had to consider local legislation in the various countries where it operated. For example, remote working in some countries required the employer to contribute towards the employee's mortgage and utility bills, which was not the case in the UK. This created a potential inequity and was seen as a gap in current legislation.

There is some overlap between how flexible working arrangements are conceptualised across the four-fold typology of this report, and how they have been defined in the Government (Department of Business and Trade) call for evidence on non-statutory flexible working, which closed in November 2023.

Where they differ, is that this report draws a greater distinction between the different forms of non-statutory but regular flexible working arrangements (see Table 5, arrangements 2 and 3), which represent a significant part of the flexible working operating within the organisations studied in this research. It has been important to differentiate here and to drill down into the different factors contained within these distinctive organisational forms and how they operate in practice.

While each of these 4 distinctions contains a spectrum of experience, they have been extracted here conceptually as meaningful categories that capture key differences around flexible working arrangements. 

The main difference between the government's typology and the one used here is that this report breaks down the 'non-statutory (regular)' category further by the degree of formalisation of flexible working arrangements, reflected in contractual changes versus non-contractual arrangements. This indicates differences in the relative intended permanency of these arrangements. These 2 groups of non-statutory (regular) arrangements 2 and 3 tended to contain quite distinctive forms of flexible working arrangements, notably with hybrid working being concentrated in arrangement 3, along with a range of other flexible working arrangements organised verbally with managers. While then, managers had been using arrangement 3 to organise regular but non-contractual flexible working arrangements pre-pandemic. The agility of this format aligned well with the management of a range of flexible work arrangements during and coming out of the pandemic. This has been a period of relative experimentation with hybrid working, and we might expect to see further shifts around this framework over the next few years. Further discussion of flexible working arrangement 3 as a management tool in dealing with workforce change is provided in section 5.2 of the main report.