Slide-deck from the joint Alliance MBS and CIPD Manchester Fellow's Forum event held on Thursday 3 December 2020. Flexible working has always been a double-edged sword: bringing greater freedom for employees and employers, but also unexpected negative consequences for both. As organisations continue to oscillate between returning to work, working from home and new hybrid patterns of working, what can we learn from the lessons of the past to help navigate an uncertain future?

1. Navigating Flexibility:
Hybrid working, equality
and Covid19

2. Jill Rubery
Professor and Director of
The Work and Equalities Institute
Alliance Manchester Business School
Emma Banister
Professor of Consumption and Society
The Work and Equalities Institute
Alliance Manchester Business School

3. Flexible working –
past, present and future
• Flexible working pre-Covid
-a double-edged sword?
• Flexible working under Covid
-an unprecedented experiment
• The future for flexible working
- opportunities and risks

4. Flexible working pre Covid
-a double edged sword?
Very low level of working from home only- less than 6% (Felstead and Reuschke 2020)
Right to request flexible working introduced in 2003
Positive benefits for employees(especially women)
• Reduced pressure to give up career job- consequence of switching employers was
often occupational downgrading to find a job offering part-time hours from start
• Widening criteria beyond care provided opportunities for all employees who
wanted a better reconciliation of work and life objectives
Positive benefits for employers
• Opportunity to retain staff
• Experimenting with flexible working provided opportunities to overcome
prejudices re its possibilities/ productivity effects etc.

5. Flexible working pre Covid
Negative aspects for employees
• Eligibility conditions (26 weeks with employer before right to request) reduce
its effectiveness as an equality strategy
• Rights to flexible working cannot be ‘ported’ to another employer- risk of being
trapped on a ‘mommy track’ with limited opportunities
– research shows how those on flexible working may be assumed to be less
productive/less interested in promotion
• Requests more likely to be granted in some organisations e.g. public sector- than
others -could be asked to move to a more precarious contract
• Men may be eligible but don’t feel entitled to request
• No right to return (or right to request a return) to full-time working
- not even right to be given first consideration for vacancies
Negative aspects for employers
• Wide criteria and, if flexibility more an exception than a rule, employers may find
it difficult to decide whose requests to grant and whose to reject- simpler to say
no to all?

6. Flexible working under Covid
• Normalisation of flexible working for all office workers
• Share working only at home rose 8-fold under lockdown from 5.7% to 43% in April ,
36.5% June
• Men and women fairly evenly likely to work from home (estimates vary)
• Experiment came alongside school closures- divergent impacts on men and
women/ mothers and fathers
• Women did more of the additional caring/ reduced wage work hours but increased
total hours
• Men increased their caring hours as a percentage more then women ( particularly if
they were working from home) but did more paid work hours and work was less
interrupted
• If men lost job women still did high share of the care but reverse not the case
• Presumption that if someone could work from home they could do work and home
school- minimisation of the support for parents – no right to special parental leave
unlike in 20 EU states
• Mixed productivity effects- 40% no change, 30% increased, 30% decreased
• New forms of management and monitoring

7. Andrew et al. 2020 The Gendered Division of Paid and
Domestic Work under Lockdown IFS London

8. Andrew et al. 2020 The Gendered Division of Paid and
Domestic Work under Lockdown IFS London

9. Andrew et al. 2020 The Gendered Division of Paid and Domestic
Work under Lockdown IFS London

10. A. Felstead and D.Reuschke 2020 Homeworking in the UK : Before
and During the 2020 Lockdown WISERD working paper

11. Future for flexible working
No longer possible for employers to say it cannot work- may spend up to a year
with all effectively working from home
Benefits of new flexible working for employees
• Opportunity for flexibility from point of hire- end to entrapment with single employer
• Opportunity for fathers to be more involved in childcare
• Reduced commuting time and costs
• Easier to integrate work and life
• Reduced business travel- easier to arrange meetings
• Reduced sick leave/ easier to combine work and care – school holidays etc.
Benefits of flexible working for employers
• Reduced need for office space
• Less stressed/ more productive workforce
• Facilitates project work/ formation of new and diverse teams
• Recruit and retain staff across wider geographical area
• May be able to increase monitoring of productivity/ reduce productivity loss from coffee machine
socialising

12. A. Felstead and D.Reuschke 2020 Homeworking in the UK : Before
and During the 2020 Lockdown WISERD working paper

13. Future for flexible working
Issues for employees
• Risk that men will return to the office/women work from home- new forms of
segregation with problems for development and promotion
• Risk of long working hours and/or higher work intensity (dependent upon
monitoring systems – logged on time or based on results)
• Risks to privacy at home
• Risk of reduced commitment by organisation to homeworking only staff- might
use intermediaries /platforms to employ and/or manage
• Potential for increased pressure at home to combine work and care and to reduce
childcare costs (plus childcare infrastructure may have declined under Covid)
• Variations in how people – both men and women- like to organise their work and
life- segregation with strong borders or integration of work and life
• Benefits for mental health from opportunities to be in the public space/ leave
the house

14. Future for flexible working
Issues for employers
• Productivity under Covid may have been enhanced by existing strong workplace-
based relationships among staff
• Commitment to organisations may be weaker- engagement less likely if not
linked to physical workplace and relationships with colleagues
• Problems of inducting new employees
• Challenge of monitoring productivity- too much surveillance undermines trust
and morale but too little may lose control over work pace and/or capacity to
meet deadlines etc.
• Reinforcement of gender divide- problem for how to meet gender equality
objectives but also how to maintain engagement /motivation across segregated
workforces

15. www.wei.manchester.ac.uk
wei@manchester.ac.uk
Useful Links
www.cipd.co.uk/learn/branches/manchester

16. Thank
You
Stay
Safe