New submission to the Women and Equalities Committee: making flexible working work for disabled people

This week the Women and Equalities Committee heard evidence from Disability Rights UK as part of its inquiry into flexible working and disability.

I was delighted to be invited to draft DRUK’s submission to this inquiry and work alongside Fazilet Hadi from DRUK. It was a great opportunity to share the evidence base on flexible working and disability from my previous research on Flex Plus working.

Our submission argues that flexible working has enormous untapped potential to reduce the disability employment gap—but only if we fundamentally rethink who flexible working is for, and when people are able to access it.

The disability employment gap has remained stubbornly wide for many years. Although the expansion of home and hybrid working since the pandemic has undoubtedly benefited many disabled workers, it has not translated into a significant reduction in the gap. Our submission asks why.

One of our central arguments is that policy has focused too narrowly on helping disabled employees access flexible working once they are already in a job. Much less attention has been paid to the barriers faced by disabled people trying to enter employment in the first place.

Flexible working starts too late

Current employment law gives employees the right to request flexible working from the first day of employment. These reforms are welcome, but they overlook a fundamental problem.

Many disabled people need flexible working arrangements before they can accept a job, not afterwards.

Evidence shows that large numbers of disabled people outside the labour market have partial or fluctuating capacity for work. Many need part-time hours, home working or flexibility over when they work if they are to enter and sustain employment. Yet very few vacancies advertise these options. Research cited in our submission shows that while around six in ten employees have some form of flexible working arrangement, fewer than a third of vacancies advertise any flexibility at all.

The result is a structural bottleneck. Disabled jobseekers who depend on flexibility are excluded before they even apply.

This led us to one of our key recommendations: government should require employers to state flexible working options in job advertisements, making it much easier for disabled jobseekers to identify roles they could realistically undertake.

We need to redesign jobs, not just prepare people for work

Another theme running through our submission is that government policy has concentrated overwhelmingly on preparing disabled people for employment while paying much less attention to the design of work itself.

Employment support programmes generally help individuals become “work ready”, search for jobs and match to existing vacancies. But there is no equivalent system that helps employers redesign jobs, create more flexible roles or recruit people whose capacity for work may be partial or fluctuating.

We argue that government should establish a dedicated employer support service to help organisations redesign jobs, develop more inclusive recruitment practices and create flexible opportunities that better match the realities of disabled people’s working lives.

If we are serious about increasing labour market participation, we need to reshape both sides of the labour market—not simply expect disabled people to fit existing jobs.

Clarifying and strengthening rights

The submission also explores an issue that I think has received too little attention in discussions about the Employment Rights Act.

Many disabled employees requesting home working or reduced hours could potentially rely on two different legal routes: the statutory right to request flexible working, or the Equality Act duty to make reasonable adjustments. In practice, employers and managers often struggle to distinguish between these frameworks.

We therefore recommend that government should use the implementation of the Employment Rights Act to clarify the relationship between flexible working rights and reasonable adjustment duties, ensuring that disabled employees do not lose the stronger protections available under equality law.

A stronger approach to enforcing reasonable adjustments

Perhaps the most ambitious recommendation concerns enforcement.

At present, disabled workers who experience failures to provide reasonable adjustments are largely expected to enforce their rights through individual legal action. By contrast, the Government is creating the new Fair Work Agency to take a more proactive approach to enforcing employment rights.

Our submission argues that government should review this imbalance and consider whether the new enforcement architecture being developed through the Fair Work Agency could play a role in supporting compliance with disability-related workplace rights, including the duty to make reasonable adjustments.

This is not a proposal to transfer equality law wholesale into the Agency’s remit. Rather, it is a recognition that rights which exist only on paper are of limited value if enforcement depends almost entirely on individual disabled people bringing tribunal claims.

Looking beyond welfare reform

Perhaps the strongest message running through the submission is that closing the disability employment gap requires changing the labour market, not simply changing disabled people.

For too long, policy has concentrated on welfare reform, conditionality and helping individuals become “employable”. These measures have a place, but they are insufficient on their own.

If government wants to increase employment among disabled people, it must also increase the supply of jobs that people with partial and fluctuating capacity for work can realistically access and sustain. That means expanding flexible, home-based and part-time work, redesigning jobs, supporting employers to recruit more inclusively, and ensuring that workplace rights are meaningful in practice.

Flexible working should not be treated as a perk for a fortunate minority. It should be recognised as an essential part of creating a labour market that works for disabled people, and, ultimately, for everyone.