The Lead Untangles: Flexible working rights
Lots of tinkering around the edges leaves employers wide open to refuse requests.
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At a glance facts
The Employment Rights Bill is expected to become law before the end of the year, and it will bring in new parental leave and flexible working rights, which could, in theory, help to lower unemployment figures – which are at a four-year high. But will they really make any difference?
For a decade, flexible working laws have promised change in the UK. In reality, the reforms have been slow and deeply contested, inching forward through piecemeal legislation.
Back in 2014, the former Conservative government extended the right to request flexible working – previously reserved for parents and carers – to all employees with at least 26 weeks of service, through the Children and Families Act. It was a notable step in the right direction, arriving years before the pandemic would force millions into new ways of working and deliver a far greater cultural and attitudinal change than any law.
Last April, the legislation was extended to allow workers to request flexible working, from ‘day one’ in a job, whether that’s their hours or days, start and finish times and location of work. But critics argue this is too light a touch; a reform in name alone. The law still treats flexibility as a nice-to-have perk for which each employee must negotiate, not a right they can count on.
Furnished with eight business reasons for refusal, including ‘the burden of additional costs’ and ‘detrimental impact on performance’, employers can easily deny requests, without penalty. And they often do: almost a third (28 per cent) of workers who asked for flexible arrangements had their request refused, usually on the grounds of ‘productivity’.
Few disputes ever reach an employment tribunal, partly because of the costs employees must pay to bring a case against their employer. Essentially, these laws aren’t shifting the dial as hoped.
Context
Few workplace policies divide opinion quite like flexible working. For employees, it’s often essential; for many employers, it’s a threat.
But can legislation like this actually influence employees? Although too early to gather meaningful data on the impact of the 2024 law, a new study conducted by researchers from University College London, King’s Business School, and City St George’s, University of London, examined the effects of the 2014 policy reform, and its findings are pretty damning.
The analysis of 15,000 employees between 2010 and 2020 found that women were more likely to reduce their hours after the reform, while men’s use of reduced hours did not increase. There was also no increase in flexitime or remote working among either men or women. Without careful design and implementation, flexible working legislation risks baking in existing inequalities, rather than alleviating them. It can also carry long-term costs for women’s career progression and financial security, while limiting men’s opportunities and undermining wider family wellbeing.
“Despite rapid expansion of this flexible working policy, the government and employers need to go further to make this flexible working a reality, rather than just on paper,” Dr. Baowen Xue, lead author and lecturer in Quantitative Methods & Social Epidemiology at UCL, tells The Lead. “Simply giving them the right to request is not enough, because workplace cultures, bias and stigma continue to act as barriers.”
Real change requires embedding them within a wider package of policies, backed by cultural and organisational shifts that encourage all workers – not just parents, and certainly not just mothers – to use them. The next step is ensuring those rights are not just available, but actively support families in practice.
One of the Labour’s big promises has been to ensure all workers can benefit from flexible working arrangements, including flexi-time and term-time working. In its Plan to Make Work Pay, it pledged to make the workplace fairer and more family-friendly by making flexible working “default from day one for all workers, except where it is not reasonably feasible”.
The Bill includes a range of measures aiming to improve family friendly rights.; from strengthening protection for pregnant workers and those returning from family leave to making paternity leave and parental leave a right from day one. “This is about making work pay, and starting to build an economy that properly delivers for working people – with secure jobs, better pay and stronger rights at work,” said Yvette Cooper, former home secretary.
Can laws really make a difference?
Despite the misgivings, there is no doubt that legislation matters. It can enshrine rights, especially for those least able to advocate for themselves, and it often has a halo effect beyond the individual policy.
“Stronger protections and family policies like parental leave and childcare don’t just support workers, they reset workplace culture and prove that balance isn’t the enemy of productivity,” Professor Heejung Chung, Director of the King’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, tells The Lead.
But laws alone cannot normalise flexible working. Protective mechanisms need strengthening – for example, requiring employers to advertise flexible options in job postings – and cultural change is essential. The state has a particular role here: not just as a rule-setter, but as one of the largest employers in the economy. As Chung points out: “if the government itself shows these policies work, that’s even better than passing new laws, because it leads by example and forces other sectors to compete for top talent.”
That leadership has faltered. While the government once promoted remote and flexible working as a model employer, recent rollbacks have undermined its credibility. Leading by example could be one of the most powerful levers for change.
And yet employees are not powerless in the absence of stronger laws or leadership. Many are already finding ways to resist return-to-office mandates and to push quietly for the flexibility they need. Laws can set the stage, but it is the interaction of policy, culture, and worker agency that determines whether flexible working truly reshapes lives.
What’s next?
A suite of legislative changes, delivered through the Employment Rights Bill, could give workers stronger protections to draw on. Instead of leaving flexible work to individual negotiations – where employees often hold little leverage – the UK could embed rights through collective agreements or sector-wide legislation.
A recent amendment tabled by Angela Rayner, which would bring forward the reduction to the qualifying period from 2027 to 2026, will be voted on in the Commons next week. This means that new flexible working rights may come into force sooner rather than later.
But the central challenge is this: rights may soon be written into law, but whether they reshape everyday working life will depend on the detail of implementation, the political will to see them through, and the ability of workers and unions to hold government to its promises.■
About the author: Megan Carnegie is a London-based freelance journalist who specialises in writing features about the world of technology, work, and business for publications like Fast Company and the BBC. She investigates what’s not working in the working world, and how more equitable conditions can be secured for workers—whatever their industry.
About The Lead Untangles: In an era where misinformation is actively and deliberately used by elected politicians and where advocates and opposers of beliefs state their point of view as fact, sometimes the most useful tool reporters have is to help readers make sense of the world. If there is something you’d like us to untangle, email ella@thelead.uk.
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