What do we mean when we say ‘flexible working’?

Talk to any number of employees about their work arrangements, and you will very often hear “We have flexible working here.”

Many are often only talking about having the option to change one thing or another about their jobs – being able to work from home, for example.

But flexible working can mean many different things. As a term, it very often becomes a kind of umbrella describing a range of concepts which are similar – but not the same. So let’s look the reality: how are employees working flexibly in our member organisations, and what does it mean to them?

Flexible working means employees being able to modify how they do parts, or all, of their jobs. Home and hybrid working are some of the most well-known changes, but others include adjusted hours, condensed hours, flexitime, and job sharing.

How many disabled employees have flexible working?

With this in mind, in The Great Big Workplace Adjustments Survey 2023 we found that these types of changes constituted many of the most common workplace adjustments disabled employees had in place. Of the disabled employees we surveyed, 47 per cent worked flexibly or with adjusted hours and 42 per cent had time off to attend appointments, another change available under flexible working policies.

These figures don’t tell us, however, whether disabled employees got their flexible working requests via a flexible working policy (see our recent blog about the new the new Flexible Working Act for a discussion of different types of policies) or via an adjustments process. If disability drives a request for flexible working, then it should go through an organisation’s adjustments process.

Of course, it hard to tell when that is the case from numbers alone. We know that some of the disabled employees we surveyed will have made flexible working requests for reasons not related to disability: one reason for requesting flexible working is to help fit work around childcare commitments, for example. Some will also have made flexible working requests before acquiring a disability, so their arrangement may have become an adjustment in practice even though it won’t be recorded (or regarded by the organisation) as one.

The main thing employers need to know is whether disability is a reason for a flexible working request.

Flexible working doesn’t just mean home or hybrid working

Regardless of why or how employees request flexible working, we must remember it doesn’t just mean home-working or hybrid-working. Where hybrid working is in place for most staff as the default – hybrid being where a certain amount of time in a specific working location is required, versus time spent working at home – this isn’t the same as flexible working, because it all employees follow the same ‘rules’ set by the employer.

Alternatively, we might look at the government-mandated shift to home-working during the COVID-19 pandemic. This actually wasn’t flexible working per se, even if it did feel more flexible for many employees. The move, ultimately, was usually compulsory. In fact, in The Great Big Workplace Adjustments Survey 2023, we found that some disabled employees wanted flexibility in the opposite sense, that is, being able to work in an office rather than just at home.

Flexible working vs. working flexibly

We also need to look at the difference between two very similar terms, ‘flexible working’ and ‘working flexibly’, which mean quite different things.

If an employee works flexibly, then they can adjust the way their do their jobs ‘on the go’, without having to request changes specifically. An example might be someone working, variously, in an office, at home, or in another location, without any set requirements to spend a certain amount of time at any single location, or any need to request to work at one location as opposed to another. The employee having the option to choose independently would mean they were working flexibly.

Where the employee needed to request specific changes, this would be ‘flexible working’: the option would still be available, but it would require a more specific, permitted change.

This distinction is important. In The Great Big Workplace Adjustments Survey 2023, we found that the most commonly reported adjustment for disabled employees was “working flexibly”. The flexibility involved in this particular adjustment cannot be confused with a general request to change one’s working patterns – it is instead something that is required to enable disabled employees to do their jobs.

This leads us neatly into the final distinction we should make when it comes to flexible working.

Flexible working as a workplace adjustment

We need to note the difference between flexible working as something all employees can request versus flexible working as a workplace adjustment to enable disabled employees to do their jobs while managing their conditions.

Employers have to note the difference between requesting the change to a working pattern (as per employees’ new day-one right) and requesting a workplace adjustment. The reasons for employees (including disabled employees) requesting flexible working might well overlap, but requesting a workplace adjustment means requesting something an employee needs to complete the job. Employers should not simply direct these types of requests (for flexible working as an adjustment) down a general pipeline for flexible working requests – to do so would not properly support disabled employees, and possibly incur legal risks.

Conclusion: a single solution?

Flexible working, you may have gathered reading this article, can be a complex and potentially confusing topic.

But the key takeaway is this: flexible working doesn’t just mean one thing, which is why the Flexible Working Act doesn’t “fix” everything for disabled employees, even if it is a welcome step in general.