Most of my working age life has been spent in what economists call ‘economic inactivity’. This was not because I lacked educational qualifications or the motivation to work. It was, and still is, because my chronic health condition severely limits the amount and the predictability of the work I can do, and no jobs or career paths seemed to accommodate my need to work from home on very reduced and irregular hours. Research has led me to discover that many others share my predicament.
Catherine Hale, lead author, and founder of Chronic Illness Inclusion
25 March 2025
New report calls on employers and the Government to realise the potential of Flex Plus working for disability inclusion
Researchers from the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health and King’s Business School have launched a new report which proposes 39 recommendations to enable greater adoption of remote working, worktime flexibility and part-time working (‘Flex-Plus working’) as a way to increase disability inclusion.
The report will be launched at the House of Commons on 25th March to an audience of policy makers, activists, researchers and representatives from charities and disabled people’s organisations.
By drawing on interviews and focus groups with 27 organisational leaders, line managers, HR managers, disability/inclusion leads and researchers/consultants, the report identified five barriers to Flex Plus working:
- Organisational cultures may not offer flexibility to all;
- The nature of the job matters – it's easier to apply Flex Plus working to some jobs than others;
- Part-time roles may be difficult for some employers, particularly for small organisations;
- Not all employees are offered flexible working depending on trust and type of skills;
- There may be a lack of line manager capabilities to create part-time work and manage flex working effectively.
There is no point in simply pretending that Flex Plus working is available to everyone who needs it, or exhorting employers to do more without understanding the issues. Instead, we need to take this challenge seriously – to understand the barriers that mean Flex Plus jobs are only rarely available, and to work with employers and Government to ensure that the labour market is more inclusive in the future
Ben Geiger, report co-author, Professor of Social Science & Health, and programme lead at the ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health
The barriers have important policy implications given the calls to increase the employment rates of people with fluctuating and energy-limiting conditions (FELCs). The authors argue that these barriers are not intractable, and offer 39 recommendations aimed at addressing them.
The majority of the recommendations are for employers. These include establishing a business case for Flex Plus working, changing organisational cultures around flexibility, ensuring Flex Plus working is available as a reasonable adjustment, giving workers opportunities to show that they are worthy of trust, better line manager training, monitoring outcomes and improving practice over time, and better recruitment strategies.
For the Government the report recommended there should be an incentive for employers to adopt Flex Plus working - including a requirement for all employers with more than 250 employees to report the percentage of workers that are disabled. The Government should also contribute to better understanding of Flex Plus, including commissioning a major Flex Plus trial. The authors propose that the fortunes of disabled people will also be significantly improved if the Government implements robust disability employment policies more broadly and recommends the Government implements the Disability Employment Charter. Finally, the report makes clear the many continuing barriers people with FELCs encounter in obtaining and remaining in employment. It recommends the Government should therefore ensure that disabled people who are excluded from the labour market are provided with a decent, secure standard of living by the social security system.
The Government has just announced a raft of deep benefits cuts and welfare reforms. However, it is essential that the government also acknowledges that this will not lead to an increase in the percentage of disabled people in employment in the absence of greater employer willingness to dismantle the barriers disabled people encounter in getting into, and remaining in, work. Given this, it is more important than ever that the government incorporates our recommendations into disability employment policy, and encourages employers to offer FlexPlus working, given how important this is in improving disabled people’s employment opportunities.
Kim Hoque, report co-author and Professor of Human Resource Management at King’s College London
The full report is available here.
For further information please email csmh@kcl.ac.uk.
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Professor in Social Science and Health
Professor of Human Resource Management