Flexible work is accessible work

First published as a guest article for the The IDEA substack 23 Aug 2024

Research suggests that flexible work helps bring people into the labour market who would otherwise be excluded from it – and can allow them to stay in their jobs longer.

Flexible work gives more people more choices about their hours, days and/or place of work. This has been seen most obviously in the ‘working from home’ revolution that has swept the world post-covid.

And the benefits of flexibility, when done well, go far and wide. Businesses can enjoy improved productivity, stronger performance, lower levels of sickness-related absence and higher staff retention. Individuals enjoy better health and wellbeing because they can do the things they most value – whatever that might be – and fit them in more comfortably alongside their employment. 

And, crucially from an inequality point-of-view, flexibility allows more people to participate in paid employment. Many people can’t engage in the traditional model of 40 hours per week at a fixed workplace. That model creates barriers to entry that are too high – and often unnecessary. 

Last year, Public First, a UK-based policy consultancy, reported that sectors with high levels of hybrid work had seen a significant rise in the number of women working full-time, compared to pre-pandemic levels. 

Public First research shows that more women working full-time post-pandemic

In a recent interview, professor Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, said his research showed working parents often take up the opportunity to work from home, as do people managing a health condition or a disability. 

Detailed New Zealand data on this subject is lacking. But Maretha Smit, chief executive at Diversity Works, points to anecdotal evidence of the same trends. “Hybrid work is an exceptional inclusion practice, particularly for those with caring responsibilities,” she says.

Flexibility can’t stop with the hybrid workforce, however. A huge number of people have to work at a fixed location. But even they would benefit from being able to engage on terms that they can manage. 

What’s more, a recent research report from Timewise, in partnership with the Institute for Employment Studies, showed that flexibility for frontline workers enables them to stay longer in their jobs. Their two-year study demonstrated that flexible work practices in healthcare, construction and retail generated multiple benefits, including better health and wellbeing and higher levels of retention. Which is hardly surprising: if people have some flexibility and choice over how they work, they are much more able to fit it in around the other demands in their lives.

If all work became more flexible, people would no longer need to self-select out of employment. Currently, even if they are not opting out altogether, many people’s paid employment is severely limited because so little is available to them on terms they can manage. And it’s likely this limited work will sit below their level of capability and potential. With flexibility for every person in every role, the evidence suggests we would be more likely to see the right people in the right jobs, lifting each individual’s contributions. The aggregate of that effect would be a stronger, more inclusive economy for everyone.