Oral evidence: Equality at work: flexible working and disability, HC 177
Oral evidence, 21 October 2026.
Witnesses
Angela Matthews and Daisy Goodall.
Chair
Good afternoon and welcome to the Women and Equalities Committee. Today we are holding a session for our inquiry into equality at work, flexible working and disability, in the context of a stubbornly high disability employment gap. We are pleased to be hearing from a fantastic panel today with expertise in trade unions, workers and business. Thank you so much, Daisy Goodall, policy officer at the Trades Union Congress, and Angela Matthews, director of public policy and research at the Business Disability Forum. We are grateful to you both for coming today and sharing your thoughts with us. I will hand straight over to Rachel, who will kick us off.
Rachel Taylor
I am going to come to you first, Angela. You previously emphasised that some businesses report reaching the limit of flexibility in terms of what they can offer their workforce. What types and sizes of businesses are telling us that?
Angela Matthews
BDF predominantly works with very large employers whose workforces range from ten thousand to hundreds of thousands of employees. What we see—and what our members tell us—is that over the course of the past two, five, or 10 years, while they have been providing a lot of redeployment or flexible working as a reasonable adjustment, they get to a point where, for example, they have too many people in office-based or desk-based roles and not enough people on the frontline. The reasonable adjustments duty in the Equality Act is about how things are right now: what is this person’s job, this individual’s barriers, and what can you do right now? However, some employers get to the point where they have made so many adjustments and introduced so much flexibility that it changes the shape of their organisation, and that prompts a restructuring activity. This affects organisations most where there are front-facing roles, for example, across the NHS, police, and retail, and back-office roles. It can happen in a couple of ways. For example, someone might be returning to work and need adjusted duties for a short amount of time; when they are fully recovered, they go back to their initial role. However, if a flexible working request has been made under flexible working rights, that is seen as more permanent: there is not the idea that you will go back to your role after a certain amount of time. Our members are struggling to keep the shape of their organisations intact while making adjustments, redeploying people either permanently or temporarily, and agreeing flexible working requests.
Rachel Taylor
Do you think there is more they could do to organise their working patterns and practices in ways that are more inclusive of disabled people?
Angela Matthews
Many employers struggle to find the time to retrain someone, and that is particularly the case in smaller organisations. A lot of the time the law allows an employer to look at an individual and say, “Okay, is there an existing vacancy where we can redeploy you, which matches your current skills and our current vacancies?” They can look at flexible working or a change of roles, adjusted duties, job carving, and the skills the individual has that they need now. A lot of organisations could get better at dealing with that skills gap. Where is the space for retraining and upskilling people so that there is a broader range of roles for redeploying people when their current role is no longer doable?
Daisy Goodall
I want to feed back some points that were made at a roundtable with union reps from all different sectors, including education, health and social care, police, retail, seafarers and hospitality. There was a real consensus in the room that employers do not always consult; sometimes there is a lack of creative thinking in finding solutions to flexible working requests. There were examples where multiple staff members had requests for part-time work rejected with no investigation into whether two members of staff would consider a job share. They said that employers often fail to provide evidence when rejecting a request, and that the eight business reasons allow employers to use vague reasoning. We still have a poor culture around flexible working. The examples you used, Angela, were strong. If the job is location-based and you have to be in one place, what about thinking more creatively about the hours that you work? If you are on the shop floor, could you have more empowerment over your roster and shift patterns? It is about empowering employers to feel that they can come to creative solutions.
Rachel Taylor
That is helpful. Staying with Daisy, how should Government policies strike the right balance between encouraging flexible working where possible, and requiring it through legislation?
Daisy Goodall
That is a good question; I can go into more detail later about the legislative requirements that the TUC is calling for. We have some good examples of unions negotiating better flexible collective working agreements than the legislation, but there is evidence that stronger legislation is needed, particularly in certain sectors with less unionised work. There are a couple of examples: first, in 2021 we carried out a survey of over 1,700 reps investigating the impact of the pandemic on flexible working. The results indicated that some employers only offered home working when it was effectively mandated by Government guidance; 33% of reps—particularly those in the private sector—told us they thought home working would get harder to access post-pandemic. That shows that employers could offer flexible working when it is mandated but then decided to take it away. That is strong evidence. Secondly, the evidence around gender pay gap reporting shows that voluntary approaches can be difficult and do not always work. There was sustained Government action to encourage and promote a voluntary approach to the gender pay gap, but it was largely ineffective: 280 employers signed up to the scheme, but only five employers published their data. However, when mandatory reporting was introduced, there was almost 100% compliance; more than 10,000 employers reported the gender pay gap in their first year. This shows that when something is voluntary, employers do not sign up and do not have that drive to get involved but when it is mandated we see really good practice.
Angela Matthews
I agree. One of the tangible things that our members say—particularly with regard to the flexible working provisions of the Employment Rights Act and identifying a reasonable refusal—is that they would like the Government to allow them to consider the sustainability of the arrangement. In the Equality Act, for example, the reasonable adjustments request is about what can be done now and we regularly review that, but that provision is not in the ERA. Employers said they wanted an addition to the reasonableness section of the ERA so that they can say, “This is doable now, but within our five-year strategy, we have plans that look like this, so it’s not going to work in four years’ time.” For example, if an employer identifies that their business plan over the next couple of years will include structural or organisation changes, and a flexible working request will not fit within that, they would like to be allowed to include that strategic question as a reasonable refusal. We absolutely recognise that there is a place for mandating such measures. We speak to many employers that want to do the right thing, but they do not know where all the guidance is, and they cannot keep up with what they can and cannot do. At some level, we have to let businesses be businesses: principles come from the Government but we should let businesses do their thing.
Rachel Taylor
That brings me on to my next question about the academic witnesses we have seen who argue that clearer guidance on implementing flexible working across sectors and roles could encourage wider adoption by employers. Do you agree, and if so, what is the best way to produce that guidance?
Angela Matthews
Very large businesses have many different types of roles. It is common for our members to be able to say to postholders in some roles across their business, “You can work in whatever way you want; the output is what matters.” But in other areas of the business there is no flex: “We have to deliver in this way, to this time, with this outcome.” Often it is not about whether an employer is offering flexible working; it is about the fact that with specific roles across very large organisations, there is more flex for that business to be operational in the way that it needs to be. Government mandates should recognise that it is not a case of whether employers are flexible or not; it is about them looking at occupations across the whole organisation. That said, I completely agree with what you have said about part-time flexing. Many disabled people tell us that their careers stopped when they reduced their hours or went part time. We have therefore been asking our members to voluntarily audit roles across their organisations to show how they decide what is full-time only, what can be flexed and how, so that they can be the most inclusive employers possible.
Daisy Goodall
There is still a widespread lack of flexible working, as we have noted for the purpose of the Committee. Since the pandemic and the April 2024 changes to legislation, there has only been a change of three percentage points in the number of employees who have access to any form of good-quality flexible working. You touched on the impact on individuals when they do not get flexible working: the TUC has found that 20% of people left a job due to lack of flexible working, and this rises to 27% of disabled workers. We need to be working with employers but also mandating where needed to make sure that people have the ability to enter the job market and stay in the job market. I also want to make a point about the impact on the individual. When someone returns to work after a period of ill health, their earnings can remain unaffected if they go back to their previous employer. However, if that connection is severed, the individual faces what we call a cost of job loss penalty, which can be about 15% of their earnings; if they are out of work for two years or more it can be a 25% reduction in earnings. That means they find it difficult to return to work and their wages and stability of employment suffer, as does their long-term health, which has knock-on effects for the economy. How can we maximise people’s performance using flexible working, rather than seeing it as a perk?
Rachel Taylor
Are there case studies showing how it could be done in more challenging scenarios? Would that encourage more businesses to take it up?
Angela Matthews
Yes. We have a forum where employers swap stories about what works and what does not. The perception can be, “Flexible working is not right for this role,” without thinking about it further. I am not saying that is not the case. I completely agree with Daisy. We see layers of disadvantage when someone is coming to the point where they need to ask their employer for a flexible working arrangement. Employers tell us this is the part they struggle with the most. Usually, a line manager receives the request but to get something structural and organisational signed off requires a journey up through the organisation. The line manager is waiting, and the employee is frustrated because they are not getting an answer. We see many managers—both at line manager and mid-manager level—who are up for this because they need their teams functioning, working and getting the job done. As Daisy said, at the end of the day there is a human behind this and when it goes up through the many layers, the conversation can easily become only about the cost, the risk to business, and the disruption. We see all this terminology in the reasonableness element of the ERA, and we forget that there is an employee who, as Daisy said, might have a disability, might be caring for their parents, might also be a parent themselves and is overwhelmed and at risk of burnout. They are trying to hold down their job and make work work for them. When our employers get together and swap stories about what works and what does not, that is usually the conversation, including how you get leaders on board.
Nadia Whittome
Daisy, we have heard evidence that most disabled workers who need Equality Act reasonable adjustments do not have their needs fully met. What does the TUC’s research suggest is driving that? Is it a lack of awareness and understanding or is it that employers are disregarding the law?
Daisy Goodall
That is a good question. We know that disabled people experience a prevalence of poor treatment and discrimination in the workplace. I want to talk about the long waits they face to get reasonable adjustments and the rejection that is common, and then touch on Access to Work, if that is helpful. We know there are significant barriers. TUC research into accessing reasonable adjustments found that six in 10 disabled workers did not make a request at all because of the fear of rejection and poor treatment. To better understand this, we surveyed 1,000 disabled workers and asked them to share their experiences. Over half, 55%, who put in a request had only some, or none, of their needed adjustments implemented. Some 19% of those said that their employer had not provided any reason for refusal. When we looked at the reasons given, the examples included that the request was impractical, there was a financial cost, or the employer doubted its effectiveness. All these reasons undermine the legal obligations that employers have under the Equality Act. There were some shocking examples of employers saying that the person was not disabled enough or that they needed to wait for further diagnosis. One employer even said that they did not want the person to have different furniture to other people in a shared office. Therefore, we can see that disabled people face awful experiences in the workplace and these are grounded in wider poor experiences. Some 49% of disabled workers experienced bullying or harassment in the past year and 16% left work due to that disability-related mistreatment. Complaints are not dealt with appropriately; almost a quarter are ignored entirely, and all this puts people off from claiming the adjustments that they deserve and need in order to work effectively. If it is helpful, we can talk about Access to Work, which can also be a barrier. The National Audit Office carries out reviews that reinforce the need for employers to meet the cost of providing those reasonable adjustments. The NAO sampled Access to Work cases and found that 40% of the support funded should have been provided by the employer, employee, or NHS, but was instead provided by the Access to Work programme. It found that employers failed to make adjustments in 18% of cases. Public funding is being used when the duty to provide reasonable adjustments should be kicking in. We also know that the scheme is not reaching the disabled people who need it. Spending has nearly doubled in the past five years but it only reaches 1% of working disabled people. The TUC has further recommendations around Access to Work, but I want to make a quick point about the EHRC: it desperately needs funding for enforcement action. If people are not getting their adjustments and employers are skirting their legal obligations, then the EHRC needs to kick in. When it opened in 2007, it had a budget of £70 million and over 500 staff, which has been reduced to around £17 million and 200 staff. It cannot fulfil its current obligations, let alone take on the new responsibilities that are desperately needed. We need to ensure sufficient funding and allow the EHRC to take on first-instance cases where proceedings have begun—or are first heard—on the failure of employers to put reasonable adjustments in place. We need ringfenced resources to conduct a targeted enforcement of workers’ rights around reasonable adjustments. As you mentioned, guidance on the EHRC is important to boost employer confidence in using the positive action provisions in the Equality Act. The three key points are the treatment of disabled workers, the fact that they do not feel confident at work, and enforcement mechanisms.
Nadia Whittome
Is it your view that clarity and understanding could be improved by updated guidance alone, or do you think there needs to be changes to the law?
Daisy Goodall
We definitely think there should be legal changes. We welcome the changes made to the ERA—including the reasonableness test and the statutory process that employers need to follow before rejecting a request—which will create a clear and thorough process. We still have concerns about the eight business reasons and the low compensation award at tribunal, which make it easy for employers to reject requests. With flexible working requests we generally ask members to go down a reasonable adjustment route; if the request is related to their disability, they have stronger proactive rights. We are also calling for a default right to flexible working rather than the right to request, grounded in the fact that requests are rejected and people face poor treatment, as I have set out. That, and the advertising duty, which I know we will talk about later, are the key TUC calls at the moment.
Nadia Whittome
Angela, currently 82% of disabled people are having to wait between four and 12 months for their adjustments; there have been calls for a more stringent process for reasonable adjustments, including a two-week deadline for employers to respond to requests in a prescribed way. Do you agree that this is needed, and do you believe that the impact on businesses will be proportionate?
Angela Matthews
We agree that adjustments need to be implemented quicker, and I completely identify and agree with all the stats that Daisy has shared. Our research shows that out of nearly 2,000 disabled employees, one in eight will wait over a year to get the adjustments they have requested; that has to change. With regard to the two-week turnaround time, we are supportive of making anything quicker. However, we need to unpack what is meant by two weeks and a decision. As part of our research we carry out The Great Big Workplace Adjustments Survey with disabled employees and managers who are implementing adjustments. The survey shows that it is procuring the adjustment and provision that takes time, not the decision. For example, many of the employers and managers who contributed are still using Access to Work. As Daisy said, if Access to Work is taking between three and 12 months to get support in place at the moment, it needs to change before we impose a two-week turnaround time on employers. It also depends very much on the adjustment. Many of our employers have large organisations and keep a lot of adjustments in stock. If you have the kit that someone needs in your organisation now, then two weeks is too long; it should be sorted today, because the Equality Act says that the deadline is when you know. However, if the adjustment needed is a job coach or training, that is going to take way over two weeks. We need to be clear in what we are saying to employers and not penalise those who are making a lot of adjustments that—by their nature—take longer than two weeks to implement. We are behind the principle of using whatever works to speed up adjustments as long as it is pragmatic.
Daisy Goodall
I agree that there are barriers to this. I want to flag one of the TUC’s calls around Access to Work that speaks to one of your points. If disabled job seekers who are entitled to Access to Work were to get in-principle indicative awards, that would support employers to move more quickly in accepting adjustments and putting them in place. It would skip the massive delay process and make Access to Work more efficient. I also want to raise where the two-week time frame comes from. It is proposed in the Disability Employment Charter; it is good to flag the many signatories to this charter from all types of sectors, including local councils, NHS trusts, charities ranging from small to those such as Amnesty International, businesses of varying sizes, and consultancy services. There is a lot of groundwork within the employer sector; as you say, it is just about thinking of the practicalities of roll-out.
Nadia Whittome
I have one final question. Unfortunately, many of the public conversations around disability in the mainstream media make a distinction between so-called genuine disabled people who have genuine needs and those who are undeserving of support. How far do you think these wider cultural messages shape what happens in the workplace? Do they mean that people with fluctuating or hidden conditions, or conditions that are less widely understood are less likely to ask for flexible working and reasonable adjustments in the first place?
Daisy Goodall
That is a good point. The law is strong around fluctuating conditions, so you are right that this is more of a perception issue. The Equality Act is specific about fluctuating conditions: it is about the impact of the impairment and how that affects the person’s ability to work and live. Energy impairments are a good example: there is a lot of employer disbelief around the impact of these conditions. A report by Chronic Illness Inclusion stated that the widespread notion that fatigue is not real stands firmly in the way of disability equality at work. The TUC carried out research into long covid that speaks to the experience of people with fluctuating conditions in the workplace. I want to raise what employers put in place and what they did not because it is instructive as to their understanding of what people with fluctuating conditions need. We asked our respondents—people with long covid—what workplace adjustments they had asked for and what employers had put in place. More people got a phased return to work than had asked for it, which is interesting because it shows that employers expected a linear recovery, even though long covid recovery is not linear. Only 32% of respondents were able to return to work on their first attempt; they needed more long-standing flexible working and adjustments than they were offered. In all the remaining categories, fewer workers received a change than had asked for it. These were mostly around genuine forms of flexibility to support fluctuations in their symptoms, such as longer and more frequent breaks, permanent home working, and other changes to hours. Those requests were more likely to be turned down, which shows the culture around energy impairments in particular. Only half the number of requests to make physical changes to enable the person to do their job were granted. Those included improvements to ventilation; people with long covid wanted to reduce their vulnerability to repeated infections, which would obviously make them feel more unwell. These issues had a serious impact on people’s longer-term health, so it is important to understand the types of adjustments that employers are offering and maybe the types that they are not offering.
Angela Matthews
In terms of whether the narrative or rhetoric out there influences what disabled employees ask for, the biggest impact is on what leaders think. They hear the media narrative and the response to political rhetoric and, for example the Fonagy review into ADHD, autism, and neurodiversity. We have a lived experience forum at BDF where we test how disabled employees in work today feel about societal perceptions. Many forum members feel that what their employer hears has an impact on how they are treated. I do not have evidence that it stops a representative number of disabled employees from asking for support. I spoke to a disabled professional who said, “I have to ask because I need it and I can’t work without it.” But they feel that the response is impacted by what is going on beyond their organisation. As I said, leaders hear it too, as do boards and investors, so it has a real impact on decisions about supported employment schemes or schemes for disabled people. If there is such a bad rep in the media and in society, why would leaders think, “Hey, this is a great thing to do, it’s great for my reputation and my investors are going to love it.” I completely agree that it has an impact, mostly on decision makers.
Richard Quigley
You mentioned supported work. It seems to be a great way of taking the fear out of employing someone with additional needs or additional requirements. What do you think we could do to encourage businesses to take on more supported internships and those easy routes in? From experience, everyone who does that says, “Oh, why haven’t I done this before? It’s such an easy win.”
Angela Matthews
I have just come from a panel this morning talking about how employers can do more supported internships; BDF led that conference because our members say there is a lot of jargon around supported work. What is a supported internship? What is Pathways to Work, or Access to Work? The schemes have lovely, engaging names, local authorities lead with them and they are well structured, but businesses are not keeping up to date with all these different names for different things. It is also hard when a business is in a business plan cycle; it is taking on procurement contracts and saying, “This is our recruitment partner for the next four years,” then we come along and say, “Have you thought about supported internships and partnering with someone?” It does not always fit, or speak in a business language. To answer your question, we have to avoid talking in riddles. On our BDF panel this morning we talked about needing to get to a place where this is just another way of recruiting people to fulfil the jobs that need to be done in the business. It is not just about language; all these schemes run in different ways, have different structures and are based in different places. Connect to Work is a great programme for local authorities. Some are led by the not-for-profit sector; with others you can partner directly with further education institutions. There are so many different ways of doing this, employers cannot keep up, and they certainly do not know what is best for their organisation.
Daisy Goodall
I would add a couple of tangible things that employers can do to ease the confusion. We are calling for employers to use reasonable adjustment passports; that is a way of formalising what you need in the workplace whether you are on a placement, an employee, or a worker. It means your adjustments travel with you if you change line manager and so on, and it is a good way of embedding a positive culture. Another key way of addressing the confusion and lack of clarity is to have equality reps in the workplace. We welcome the stronger rights for equality reps that have been brought in by the Government; they will embed good practice, ensure that employers can meet legislative requirements, monitor any unintended consequences, and ensure that new and existing rights are understood and implemented. They can help with the EqIAs and with understanding equality law changes. Before I worked for the TUC, I worked within a union that worked with the NHS; the equality reps there were brilliant for supporting with the EqIAs. They are a good way of ensuring that you remain compliant while dealing with lots of different legislation.
Kevin McKenna
I would like to move on and look at potential duties and obligations on employers beyond reasonable adjustments. Daisy, I know the TUC has asked for a legal duty on employers to advertise flexible working options. Have trade unions taken steps to encourage this on a voluntary basis so you can see what might be possible? If you have, what have the impacts been? The other question is: has there been any resistance from employers?
Daisy Goodall
Yes. We are calling on this legal duty to publish flexible working options in job adverts, and for workers to then take up that advertised flexibility from day one. There is support for employers so, if they cannot accommodate that, they can transparently set out the reasons for it. I will set out the current landscape as you have asked, and we have some TUC polling of HR managers that speaks to acceptance levels within the field. We already know that there is an issue with advertising in its current form. Too many jobs are not advertised as flexible and we know that 58% of disabled workers—in terms of TUC polling at least—were unlikely to apply for a job if they did not know if it could fit around their condition. Only a third of disabled respondents are likely to ask for flexible working in the first few days of a job. That shows the advertising duty would do a lot in making sure that people who otherwise would not request it are actually able to access it. If jobs advertise flexible working, they attract up to 30% more applicants. That is really positive. Looking at the current landscape, there is some research from Timewise that showed that only about 30% of jobs currently are advertised with flexible working options included. It is better in unionised workplaces. Our equality audit that we do every couple of years showed that already 62% of reps from the public sector and 44% from the private sector displayed flexible working options in job adverts. That is really good to hear. There has already been quite a lot of take-up in both those sectors. We have also set up some practical steps around it but I will leave that for now and focus on the polling. It is really important because it is of HR managers, so the employer side of it. It was conducted for the TUC by YouGov and showed that employers were willing to advertise flexible working arrangements in job adverts. Some 59% of over 900 HR managers polled said that it would be easy to include specific information about the types of hours-based flexible working arrangements available in each job advert, or that they already did this. It rose to 62% of HR managers when asked about home or remote working. There was a lot of acceptance with people saying it would be easy to do and identify what they were going to advertise. There is interest in how this impacts on smaller businesses. Again, we looked at HR managers for businesses of one to 249 employees and 59% said it would be easy to include specific information about the hours-based flexibility they could offer, or that they already did this, and 63% said it would be easy to identify that before advertising or that they already did this, and 75% said that about home or remote working. We are not asking for a massive culture shift. We are not asking for a big change. It is something that employers seem ready to take on and it is something that would really help. The time when the worker requests flexibility is when we know that discrimination kicks in. I will finish with an example of one company that has already done this and the impact on it. Zurich is the first company in the UK to advertise all vacancies with the option of part-time, full-time, job share, or flexible working. This led to a 66% boost in applications. One in four of the new hires chose to work part time, so there was a big impact on its workforce. It also uses gender-neutral language in its job adverts and, as a result of both changes, it saw a 16% rise in women applying for jobs and a 20% jump when looking at management roles. That is really helping with diversity and inclusion, and it is not complicated to enforce this duty. It will be done through the EHRC and all our policies are around that.
Angela Mathews
I do not disagree with that at all. It is a question; it is not disagreeing. In terms of being pragmatic, there is a difference between a job advert and a job description. Forgive me, I do not know what the TUC are asking for in terms of what you are saying. I agree with Daisy 100% that this is not a huge shift for employers, if we think about what a good job description should have in it, but it takes me to a place that is about better inclusive guidance from the EHRC. Does it need to go all the way to being mandated through legislation? I do not have any evidence for or against that, but a lot of disabled people tell us that job adverts are too long. They feel like, even when they are applying for a job that is not about reading and writing or is desk-based, they have to read a lot to understand what they need to be, what they are applying for, and what they are going to need to do in the job. I do not disagree at all, subject to detail and practicalities. To come back to your question on employers’ duties beyond reasonable adjustments: of the 1,480 disabled employees we spoke to in our research who have a disability and adjustments in place, only 19% said their adjustments removed all barriers that they experience in the workplace. Just 19%. That is to your point. What else should employers be doing? As I said earlier, reasonable adjustments are about an individual, an individual’s barriers, and what is being experienced right now in the job they are doing. If you think about your workplace it is not just your job that you experience, it is getting to the building and around the building. It is socialising. It is eating. It is moving around from the entrance and the length you have to walk every day. It is the perception that leaders have of disability, let alone disabled people. It is how your policies are structured. All these things create disadvantage and barriers that the reasonable adjustments duty does not touch. That is why this number of just 19% of disabled employees saying that adjustments are removing all barriers in the workplace for them is haunting. The other thing to mention is health and safety legislation, which requires employers to provide a safe working environment. When we think about disabled employees, what safe means is very different. It means making sure I do not fall flat on my face when I am moving around my workplace—am I safe because of my body and my disability when moving around and doing my job, and so on? What we see is that the EDI and workplace adjustments agenda—for want of a better phrase—has focused almost with exclusive, razor-sharp vision only on the Equality Act. Employers, even our sector, miss a lot of really good stuff that they already have a responsibility to fulfil under the Health and Safety at Work Act. We even get to working conditions when we look through that health and safety lens, which goes into what impacts the need for flexible working. If we look at the stressors that the Health and Safety Executive talks about, do you have autonomy over how you work? This is what we are talking about: flexibility. There is a lot more that employers can and should be doing and be aware of in terms of legislation and statutory guidance that necessarily has to reach beyond adjustments, because reasonable adjustments for an individual in a specific role only go so far to make work doable for disabled people.
Daisy Goodall
Can I come really briefly back to a point? The TUC policy is that flexibility would be advertised and then the worker would have the opportunity to take up that advertised flexibility. To speak to your point about the length of job adverts, which is a good one, there was some really interesting research from Timewise, one of our partners. It said that often flexibility is actually more important than salary when people are looking for a job. Nine out of 10 people are looking for that flexibility. Despite the length, if that is the real key thing that people are looking for, then it is really important that employers include it. To speak to your point about how far we mandate, the TUC has set out that all roles should be deemed suitable for flexible working unless it can be shown that the unavailability of flexible working is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. Therefore, it mirrors the objective justification of the Equality Act. To answer your question, that is how we propose for it to work.
Angela Mathews
The devil is in the detail in terms of whether an employer has to do that up front. I am not saying that they should not, but when you are getting employers with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of roles, maybe the answer is yes. Are we expecting them to do this flexibility equality analysis on every role before they advertise it?
Daisy Goodall
Probably, yes.
Angela Mathews
Whether or not it is in the advert, the detail should be in the job description, because that is what an individual is going to be performance measured and assessed by. For me it is all about the job description; it is golden. I am less worried about the job advert. We know there is a lot of improvement that needs to be made when writing an inclusive job description, so I agree with you.
Daisy Goodall
Just one quick point: a collective agreement around flexible working will reduce the number of requests that are coming in, which will support employers when they make those decisions. Lots of unionised workplaces have collective agreements already and if your policies are really strong around flexible working, paid carers’ leave, disability leave, and so on, then you are going to have a much easier time doing that analysis when you are looking at a big job pool.
Kevin McKenna
Some of what you have been saying is almost in the old nudge unit style: slightly changing language has a big impact on the employer as well as the employee. Moving back to mandating, if you are saying that outside the scope of reasonable adjustments there are vast elements of things that are not covered and, as Daisy was saying, there are some jobs where flexible working is not possible at all, is it worth flipping everything on its head, making it so that all jobs are advertised as flexible by default? Is it worth making that a legal requirement and then making employers have to say, “Right, there’s this small set that aren’t; we just can’t do anything about that,” to make sure that you have simplified things and evened out the demand across the board? You are not making a few jobs with a small set of demands that have to be flexible; you are making it every job by default. Have you thought about that? Do you think that would be proportionate on employers?
Angela Mathews
It depends on what flexible means. I will talk about my own team: I am a stroke survivor. I work with a million adjustments, and without those adjustments I would not be in a job. One thing that is non-negotiable is being able to work across Westminster, travelling in whatever way I need to, to be in person and come to these things. It is non-negotiable. You could say, as a flexible working request I am going to ask for my role to be carved so that someone else in my team does the in-person stuff and I can stay at home to preserve my energy, or stay in the office and do the other elements of the role. However, we are a tiny team. There is me and Hamish, who is behind me. What is flexible and reasonable would be different if we were a team of 10. Organisations change a lot, so it might be that in the same team over the course of five years you move between one and nine people. We have other roles in our organisation. We are a small to medium organisation where our advice service is a phone line available to members 9 am to 5 pm. You have to be on that phone between those times. If I ask to work between 7 am until 3 pm, the answer is, “No, sorry, you can’t because we would not be covered. We are a small team.” Flexibility is sometimes about times and sometimes about, as has already been said by a colleague, fluctuating conditions. I need to work like this when I feel like this, but I need to work like that when I feel like that. The biggest issue is knowing, at the point of a job advert, what we mean by flex in a role. As an example, I might have started my day at 12 pm today but then I might work until 11 pm. That is flexibility. Others who have flexible working arrangements start from 6 am and work until 11 am. They then have a few hours off and work from 3 pm until 7 pm. That is fine for a person whose job is purely desk-based and involves data auditing. However, if they did my job, that would not be okay. It is about what we mean by flexibility at the point that we are asking employers to write the job description in a flexibility-by-default way.” Daisy, what do you think?
Daisy Goodall
Obviously, the TUC holds that flexibility should be the norm and we agree that there should be a default right to flexible working. As I was saying with the job adverts, flexible working legislation would reflect that objective justification that we have in the Equality Act. Most disabled people should already receive flexibility at work via reasonable adjustments but the reason this is so important is because of the discrimination and the stigma around flexible working, as I mentioned earlier. If there were stronger rights for flexible working, then it would become more normalised and there would be less stigma around it. When we are talking about disabled workers and the requests they are putting in for flexibility and the discussions they are having at work, it is important to highlight that polling has shown that 34% of disabled workers do not want to talk about their health with their manager, including their disability or long-term health condition, and 20% had not disclosed at all because they were worried about negative repercussions: losing their job, unfair treatment, and so on. Stronger rights for flexible working would benefit disabled workers hugely even though it would not necessarily be aimed at them. We welcome the changes in the ERA around reasonableness and the duty to consult. I also want to flag a bit of research that we have done around the eight business reasons that remain. The TUC and Flex for All partners asked members of the public to send in responses to the previous Government consultation on flexible working in 2021 and 87% of almost 6,000 respondents felt the business reasons meant employers could turn down requests too easily. Unions agree with that from their experience, so replacing these with criteria for rejection, mirroring the objective justification in the Equality Act, would be a fairer process. That is what we are calling for. The response to our flexible working consultation outlines how we think the legislation could be improved, including a right to accompaniment and a right to appeal that employers often already have in place but it empowers workers through the process as well. We are trying to break down those barriers that disabled workers feel when they request flexibility.
Richard Quigley
Welcome, both. Sorry I was a little late; democracy was calling. We have seen employers on this drive to mandate people going back to the office. You might be lucky enough to have a flexible arrangement such as all from home or half and half. What is the evidence to support that mandate to be back in the office?
Daisy Goodall
Interestingly, lots of the research shows it is more likely to come from senior leaders than line managers. A CIPD survey found that 40% of employers said there was pressure for their employees to come into the office more, and 56% of those said it came from senior leaders. We see that trend across the different employment sectors. The things that employers talk about when mandating time in the office are things such as improved collaboration, enhancing engagement and connection, and boosting productivity and support for new employees. These are all really hard to measure and unions have told the TUC that these mandates often do not have evidence around those desired outcomes. In fact, we have some really good research from the FDA that shows members felt the blanket increase in mandated office time, which was introduced in 2023, had not led to any of those desired outcomes in productivity or support for younger employees. Managers felt they were forced to micromanage their teams and waste time doing so. There is some evidence that is really key; it is supported by Prospect union and Public First research. It showed that employers that did not offer remote working were the least likely to think it improved productivity. That is really interesting because it shows that it is not based on evidence; it is based on a lack of trust or bias. If you reverse it, it shows that employers that offer remote working think that it boosts productivity. They talk about a perception gap and they say that it actually stunts a business’s ability to maximise productivity of hybrid work. University of Birmingham research found that 71% of line managers thought home working was a performance-enhancing tool, which is another really strong piece of research. Essentially, back-to-office mandates are often rooted in negative perceptions of hybrid working, despite the wealth of evidence that home working has a lot of benefits. Thinking back to the disabled workers we have been discussing, their experiences of discrimination and reluctance to put in place arrangements may be part of the reason for the mandate and not seeing how that could impact different parts of your workforce. This also ties in and reinforces our calls for stronger rights to flexible working and the duty around advertising.
Chair
Can I jump in super quickly? You are both being so brilliantly thorough in all your answers and it is so helpful for us. I am just conscious of time, so as we go through the last few questions, could you keep the answers very short? Thank you so much.
Angela Mathews
Yes, of course.
Daisy Goodall
Yes, absolutely.
Richard Quigley
Your answers are fantastically in-depth and very well answered. Thank you both very much. You mentioned there is an impact on disabled workers. Are you able to measure what that impact is? What steps should be taken to avoid the negative impacts of mandating for disabled workers?
Daisy Goodall
In terms of getting the data that you asked for, what is it specifically that you wanted, because I have some stats?
Richard Quigley
You have quite a lot of stats around what happens in general terms when going back to the office and the productivity of those who are still allowed flexible working. Is there a specific set of data for people with disabilities if they are mandated to go back to the office, or otherwise?
Daisy Goodall
Yes. The best I have here is the Work Foundation, which is a really good body that we use a lot for its evidence. It did a study in 2022 that found 65% of disabled workers wanted to work remotely and 10% did not want to. That empowerment to make choices around the types of flexible working they had to manage their conditions was preferable to the mandates. Obviously, that shows that 90% expressed a desire to carry on working remotely or hybridly. It is really strong evidence that they are able to manage their conditions a lot better when they have access to choices. It is important to say that there was a lot of uptick in mental health among respondents to our survey from working hybridly; often reasonable adjustments and control over their working hours were needed to make that happen. There are detriments to these mandates, especially for disabled workers. In the FDA study I referenced earlier, about 60% of respondents reported that office time mandates meant that disabled respondents experienced more negative impacts than their non-disabled colleagues. Some 32% of disabled respondents said the mandate had significantly worsened their productivity and it was 80% for non-disabled respondents. Further, 45% of disabled respondents said that it had significantly worsened their work-life balance and it was 34% for non-disabled participants, so there was quite a big difference there as well. Ideally, people need to be empowered to make choices about these things and to have reasonable adjustments, because that is the way they are going to be more productive at work.
Angela Mathews
I will not repeat the good stuff Daisy has said, but we also see in our research that there is no doubt that there are benefits to working from home, or working in a hybrid way, not just for disabled people but for many people with lots of different life circumstances, backgrounds, and situations. I agree with that 100%. Return-to-office mandates get a bad name by default. The reason for wanting people together is sometimes not evidence-based, and it is not always wrong. I spoke to a business leader a couple of months ago who was still trying to get 60% of time in the office back. This person said to me, “Is it bad that we just want our people to be together?” I am not saying that there are no other ways to bring people together but leaders we have spoken to sometimes feel that they are somehow being, by default, non-inclusive, or doing something wrong or bad by wanting people back to the office. We see very few employers that are demanding their workforce come back every day. A lot offer flexibility with at least one day a week in the office and people can choose. Some organisations have been so open about how people choose that they have seen flexible working requests go down because they have left it to employees to choose. As a disabled person myself, I do not think it is right that disabled people can work from home. Inclusion is about, “Okay, how can we get you to the office?” If it does not work, or it is not what you want, or it is going to be easier for you to stay at home, then that is different, but to not bother is another issue.
Richard Quigley
It just lets people off the hook, effectively.
Angela Mathews
Absolutely. It is also not good for disabled people to not be in the workplace and for organisations to say, “Let’s keep the disabled people at home because it’s too hard.” I will be quick; I have noted what you said. We also hear a lot of well-meaning reasons for people wanting their workforce back in the office. A couple of our members said, “It’s just easier to look after our employees when they’re all together.” I dug a little more on that and they said they had had a couple of situations where people had been on Teams meetings and witnessed someone have a heart attack. That is really traumatic. They said that when people are all together, we can see if someone is not doing okay and check in more. There are different reasons for those mandates happening, but I would agree with Daisy that, for the most part, we hear that some of those mandates are coming from leadership. A lot of the time the manager does not know it is going to happen before it does.
Richard Quigley
Do you think the Government should take steps to test the validity of return-to-office mandates? I am not advocating that the Government should interfere. One-word answers are sufficient, if you wish.
Angela Mathews
If we have the ERA flexibility right and we have reasonable adjustments in the Equality Act, we should not need to mandate this because those two things should have it covered. Good conversations and good decision-making should happen.
Daisy Goodall
At a minimum, equality impact assessments are really important. We need to make sure that they are conducted thoroughly, always including the union; encouraging employers to have equality reps, as I mentioned before, is really important as part of preventing mandates from having negative repercussions for workers.
Alex Brewer
Thank you both for coming in and giving us such brilliant information. A stubborn statistic is that only 6% of people with a learning disability are in any kind of paid employment, and people with a learning disability obviously have further barriers to advocating for themselves. What can be done by employers or legislation—or both—to make meaningful progress in this area?
Angela Mathews
One key thing is that there are a lot of initiatives and programmes that are available. Employers do not understand them though. BDF is trying to make employers more aware of the options and support that is there for the employer to onboard themselves and be part of these schemes. The big thing for employers we hear about is the fear of getting it wrong and the reputational risk that could happen. Our members watch for each other: “Oh they’re doing it. Let’s see how it goes for them before we do it as well.” I will not mention the name of the business but it is a big retailer that had work experience for a person with a learning disability. The case was huge. Some retailers told us that, because of how big it became on social media, it was no longer going to take part. Going back to one of the earlier questions, we have to somehow try to quieten the media response when things go wrong, because things go wrong in everything businesses try to do. That is life. We also need to de-mythologise how employers can start on this. It is usually with schemes that are really supportive for the employer and the individual. That is what we are working on at the moment. As we were saying, it is also about how employers talk about work. They say, “This is the job.” Looking at how accessible job adverts, application portals, and methods are will also go a long way. We sometimes hear that some individuals look for these types of schemes but they just needed a well-written job description and an accessible recruitment method.
Daisy Goodall
As you are talking about the clarity that is needed, just to flag that the unions tell us that there is often confusion between the legislation that should be used when dealing with flexible working requests. When we talked about guidance earlier, some guidance on when to use the reasonable adjustments route and when to use the flexible working route would be really helpful to bring more people in. Another point about guidance: we talked about case studies earlier and thinking about the sectors that people work in is really important. I want to make the point that disabled people are more likely to be found on zero-hour contracts and in low-paid insecure work. It is 4% compared to 2.8% of non-disabled workers. The Government have talked about making headway in ensuring that the worker status is changed so there is one category of worker. That will be really important because at the moment only employees can access the flexible working rights. The TUC is calling for that to happen really quickly and in consultation with unions. That would bring a lot more people into work because it would strengthen protections in all sorts of sectors for all sorts of workers. We know that disabled workers are more likely to be in those more insecure forms of work.
Alex Brewer
Angela, we have touched on this a little so you only need to answer if you have something additional to add. What does really good organisational leadership look like in terms of creating a disability and learning disability-inclusive culture around flexible working?
Angela Mathews
It is about leaders being really clear that these are the vacancies, these are the jobs that have to be done, and how can we open up ways of getting to candidates in the best way possible? One big problem is procurement because contracts with partnerships and recruitment suppliers, for example, are so long, over multiple years. We sometimes hear from employers, “We just can’t do this for six more years because we’re in this contract and we’ve agreed to co-deliver this, or be supplied by this.” Procurement is a huge issue. As we have been discussing, leaders also need to make adjustments. It is about being open-minded about how this job could be done differently. It is about that flexibility-by-default lens. That is also a lot of the reason why we see, again as Daisy said, the decline in reasonable adjustments for people who do not have a learning disability. It is about the lack of time that organisations spend sitting down with employees, either virtually or in person, to look at a job that has to be done—“This is what needs to happen; let’s think creatively about this and what is going to work for us both.” I do not want to say open-mindedness—it sounds a bit brash—but a different way of thinking is needed. As always, when you open up different ways of thinking about how to achieve this, you bring a broader range of people into your working environment.
Chair
We have not talked much about progression today; I assume lots of those lessons will also apply, creating opportunities for disabled people to progress in their workplaces.
Angela Mathews
Yes, absolutely. Again, it is that thing of, “This is the job that I am potentially thinking I could be promoted into,” and the rigidity of thinking, “This is how the job needs to be done, with this type of support, or flexibility”—or not—rather than thinking, “How could this be done in a different way, by a candidate who we have invested in, who is here, and who knows our organisation well?” A lot of disabled people tell us that they would like sideways moves as well. They would like to build their portfolio in an organisation and move around. A lot of the disabled civil servants we speak to say they really like the model where they have been able to move around the civil service and pick up different skills in different policy environments. That has been valued. We also hear from disabled employees, particularly employees with progressive conditions, that they would sometimes like to move down as a career progression option. It means less pay, but sometimes it means less hours or less responsibility. Thinking about career progression in itself, we need to get away from it being upwards with more money and responsibility and broaden our reach across the whole organisation.
Daisy Goodall
Can I make a quick point about progression? Lots of disabled workers tell us that they feel hybrid working puts them at risk of not progressing and they feel they are going to be overlooked for promotion, which happens. We have seen examples from across the union movement of people working part time and being told that they have to relinquish any leadership or skills development. Obviously, there are legal issues with that. The TUC recognises how important line manager support is and how much of a difference it can make. We have a whole series of recommendations in a report called “Making hybrid inclusive”, which I am happy to share afterwards if that would be helpful.
Chair
Please do. Thank you very much.
Alex Brewer
Daisy, the TUC and others have been critical of the DWP’s Disability Confident accreditation scheme for employers. What would you like to see in its place that would more effectively drive disability-inclusive cultures at work? Is there anything that can be incorporated into it that would be relevant for people with a learning disability?
Daisy Goodall
That is a really good question. One thing we are calling for that fits into this is for the Government to adopt the social model of disability, which would hopefully be developed with the full involvement of disabled people. We want to move away from Disability Confident because we want to look at approaches that are based on mandatory requirements as well. Disabled trade union members have frequently highlighted the failings of the Disability Confident scheme. They say it allows employers to claim commitment without employing disabled workers, and employers in the scheme fail to provide reasonable adjustments. Employers can self-certify without independent verification checks through the scheme. Level 1 accreditation just requires signing up to commitments. You do not have to show any progress. Disabled workers say they see this as a marketing tool and it does not work in any way. Disability at Work did some analysis of job adverts from Disability Confident employers. They found that their adverts did not even mention accessible recruitment practices, interviews, reasonable adjustments, or any benefits such as enhanced sick pay that might help disabled staff. The real core of what we are calling for is for it to be independently verified, whatever replaces or whatever updates are made to the scheme. We are calling for it to be robust, independently verified and crucially co-designed with disabled people and unions. That verification needs to show that employers have actually made a difference to disabled people’s experiences. The Disability Employment Charter says that “Employers at Disability Confident Levels 2 and 3 should meet minimum thresholds regarding the percentage of disabled people in their workforce; and remove accreditation from employers that do not” show progress. The call for minimum thresholds is achievable. Germany has regulations around this to promote the participation of disabled people in working life. If you have 20 roles, you must fill at least 5% of them with disabled employees. It also has a compensatory levy: if you do not meet that quota, then you pay, and that money goes towards enabling disabled workers to participate in working life. There are really good examples of this that we can take from other places.
Chair
On that specific point, I believe the Government are planning a re-launch of the scheme. I was just wondering about your level of confidence in it. Have you had any engagement? What are you expecting? How confident are you feeling about the changes that are going to be coming down the track?
Daisy Goodall
I had a little look at that. They have the two key things we are calling for: co-designed with disabled people and independently verified were both present in that scheme, which was really positive to see. I cannot say more than that because the TUC does not have a line, but I have looked at it and those two things looked really good.
Chair
I just tempted you into one.
Angela Mathews
We have been encouraged by the methodology that DWP has carried out throughout the revision of the Disability Confident review. Over the last year, it has been speaking to a lot of employers that are signed up to the scheme. It has been showing employers drafts over the last few months. We put in a paper to say that our members really want, at an initial level, to know what they need to do to be compliant. At the second level, they want to know what to do to be a good inclusive employer, consistently making adjustments proactively. At a third or last level, they want to be exemplary, doing it all the time, and proactively looking across their organisations to identify barriers before they are experienced by disabled staff. We want something that helps employers know they are compliant at a basic level because, with all the legislation across different policy areas at the moment, many employers say they are not confident. The next iteration has an opportunity to bring together all the different legislation that we are talking about today and that first tier, or level, or whatever we call it is about this is what you need to do to be compliant. There is nothing at the moment that says to employers you need to do all these things to be a compliant employer of disabled people.
Chair
Can I just say a huge thank you to you both? It has been a really interesting and informative discussion this afternoon. You have given us lots of food for thought. I am leaving with a sense of how important the whole workplace culture is. I am very grateful to you both for being so thorough. You have been brilliant witnesses. Please follow up with anything that you think would be helpful.