On 25th March 2025 we launched The 39 Steps: realising the potential of Flex Plus working for disability inclusion, my report with Kim Hoque and Ben Baumberg Geiger. The event was held in parliament, hosted by Deirdre Costigan MP, with speakers Laura Davis (BASE), Emily Hyland (TUI Group) Sally Hemming (EY), and Mo Koheeallee (Coca Cola) and attended by representatives from Disabled People's Organisations, flexible working campaigners, disability inclusion advocates and civil servants.
Here is the text of my announce
Hello and thank you all for joining us for this discussion.
Our report is about the new concept of Flex Plus working – a model of flexible working that’s come out of disabled people’s experiences of managing health and work.
I’d like to start by thanking Ben Geiger and Kim Hoque for the incredible opportunity of working with them. On a project that has a direct bearing on my working life as a disabled person, as well coming at a critical time in our national discussions about disability, health and work.
I’m talking of course about the release of last week’s Green Paper Pathways to Work. It’s very difficult to bring this up without evoking fear and anger at the scale of the cuts being proposed, and the damage they will cause.
But what I want to focus on today is a positive aspect of the government’s proposals that risks being overshadowed by the Green Paper, and that is the goal of increasing participation in the workforce among disabled people who can do some work, and who want to work.
Last Autumn’s Get Britain Working White Paper recognised the role of employers in creating inclusive workplaces for people with health conditions and disabilities. and we especially welcome the review by Sir Charlie Mayfield on what role both employers and government could play in preventing more people from falling out of work and in creating new pathways back into work.
So what is Flex Plus working?
Flex Plus comes from previous research I’ve done among people with long term health conditions. Where I found a surprisingly large proportion face the same employment challenges as I do: being limited in the amount, or hours, of work we can do, often due to an energy limiting condition. And being limited in the regularity of work, because our conditions fluctuate.
A recent survey for the DWP of 3K people in receipt of health and disability benefits, provides further evidence that these experiences are widespread.
The survey found that:
· 66% would need to work part-time, including 39% who needed to work 16 hours a week or less;
· 70% said that fluctuation in their health was a major barrier to employment. Only 18% said they could do a job with fixed shift patterns;
· And three quarters said they faced transport barriers in accessing the workplace, with around a quarter saying they could work if the job was fully remote.
Flex Plus is the answer to this evidence because it refers to a combination of part time hours, worktime flexibility and working from home.
Not everyone with a health conditions needs the full extent of these flexibilities course. But Flex Plus is intended as a paradigm rather than a rigid framework.
The DWP survey was about people not in work, but we also know that flexibility is a key factor in keeping people in work. Research shows people employees without flexible working arrangements are 4X more likely to leave employment when they develop a long-term health condition.
About the study
So for this study, we focused on the perspective of employers, since they are the gateway to Flex Plus working. Our research explored both the potential of Flex Plus as well as the barriers that restrict its availability. We looked at the dynamics of offering Flex Plus working for both existing employees, and for new hires to the organisation.
We spoke to 27 employer representatives as well as other expert stakeholders.
We largely discussed desk-based roles, since these are more feasibly done from home. And we focused on fluctuating energy-limiting conditions, although the application of Flex Plus is far wider than this group.
So in sharing the findings with you I’ll discuss new hires separately from established employees because there were notable differences between these two groups.
Established workers
In terms of established employees, we found encouraging level of understanding and support for the concept of Flex Plus working, and some good practice.
There were barriers to adopting Flex Plus, as we expected. They can be broadly summed as operational factors, relating to the nature of the role, and implementation factors, relating to the capabilities of managers, and cultural factors.
To give an example, there were some key cultural differences in organisations approach to flexible working. Most of those we spoke to were engaged in reviewing their flexible working policies following the experience of Covid lockdowns and in response to new legislation. And there were two contrasting approaches in evidence.
And one approach was what we call flex as compliance.
This is where employers are moving towards uniform policies on flexible working, with the aim of treating everybody the same. Unfortunately, this has led to the loss of informal flexibilities that benefited disabled employees during the pandemic. Mandating a return to the office is of course typical of this approach.
The other approach we call ‘flex as opportunity’ where organisations offered more personalised flexibility to everyone who needed it, citing the benefits for employee engagement and loyalty. This is where Flex Plus arrangements were much more easily adopted.
The report goes into much more detail about the barriers to Flex Plus from an employers perspective.
But an overarching finding I want to emphasise is that, when it comes to flexible working and disability, there’s a gap in organisational understanding and knowledge about why it’s needed and how to implement it.
To bridge this gap, our report lists 39 actionable steps for facilitating Flex Plus working. And more than half of them are measures that employers can put in place now.
There are two areas of recommendations I will highlight.
One is the critical role of line managers
Too often the right to work flexibility hinges on earning the trust of a line manager. But this disadvantages disabled workers if they can’t perform at their best and gain manager’s trust without flexible working arrangements to start with.
So managers must be better trained and supported:
- They need better knowledge about need for Flex Plus working, especially among people with fluctuating and energy limiting conditions
- They need training on performance management, moving to evaluating outcomes rather than focusing on hours spent in the office.
- They need support in carving out or restructuring roles in the context of a whole team when an employee requires Flex Plus.
Another is the importance of improving disability workforce data.
Unlike other protected characteristics, most organisations aren’t able to track their flexible working policies against disability-related outcomes such as pay gap, recruitment or retention. Because disability workforce data is often poor to non-existent. So Better disability data collection is essential to building the evidence on Flex Plus working.
We therefore support the introduction of mandatory disability pay gap reporting in the draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill – but we would also like this extended to employment as well as pay gap reporting.
And also in this regard we call for employers to sign up to the Disability Employment Charter to pledge their support for mandatory disability reporting.
New Hires
So that’s the picture for established employees. Now we come to question of whether the Flex Plus working is available to those seeking a pathway back into employment.
Recalling that the majority of disabled people in the benefit system need extensive flexibility, we can see how crucial it is that they can access Flex Plus arrangements at the point of hire.
Here’s where our findings were particularly worrying. We found there are many more barriers to providing Flex Plus working arrangements for new entrants to the organisation than for those already in a job.
This is reflected in data on UK jobs vacancies. Which shows a huge gap between the supply and demand for flexible working of all types at the point of hire.
For a start, employers don’t make the same business case or moral case for accommodating an unknown job candidate with Flex Plus arrangements than they do towards an employee they’ve invested in.
Secondly, the element of line manager trust is much weaker for someone who hasn’t had the chance to prove themselves in the role.
Thirdly, jobs are generally designed around a standard template of full-time hours. And recruitment teams appear particularly averse to the idea of restructuring to part time hours for a job candidate except in exceptional circumstances.
Lastly, organisations have very different levels of tolerance around negotiating flexibility with candidates during recruitment. This creates uncertainty for jobseekers. When you add this uncertainty to the risks they face in disclosing a disability, we can see that disabled jobseekers have far less leverage in negotiating Flex Plus arrangements compared to established employees.
So, the system is effectively broken for people who need flexible working as a precondition of employment. And as a result, many disabled people are effectively locked out of the labour market.
And therefore although the government’s plans to improve the provision of employment support in the Get Britian Working proposals is welcome, work coaches and CV writing courses can only achieve so much if the accessible and inclusive jobs are just not there for people to move into.
Conclusions and recommendations to government
The encouraging thing is that many of our participants recognised how their organisation’s job design and recruitment processes are exclusionary, and they wanted to be part of designing better pathways for Flex Plus working. But there was a strong sense from all that external stimulus is needed, especially in the case of new hires. Because the knowledge, and the evidence base for Flex Plus is not yet there to kick start this change.
And on that note I will end with our recommendations on the role of government in catalysing the changes that are needed.
Firstly the government must to more to generally to promote the benefits of flexible working for people with disabilities and health conditions among employers.
And One of our key recommendation is that government commission a pilot of Flex Plus job design with leading employers, looking specifically at creating Flex Plus working conditions as a pathway back into work for disabled people. This would help build the evidence base for Flex Plus, demonstrating its benefits for both employees and businesses.
In the meantime, this government needs to recognise that many people on health and disability benefits who could do some work are locked out of the labour market as it now stands, and that they need to be supported through a compassionate and properly resourced social security system. Making life harder for disabled people by cutting our support will not help to break down these barriers in the labour market.
I sincerely hope that the Mayfield review and the DWP more broadly will engage with the findings and recommendations in our report.
And that the report will spark curiosity in some employers to explore the possibilities of Flex Plus working as the next step in their disability inclusion journey.
Read the full report here
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