UK studies and official statistics

The evidence behind flex codes

Most UK employers offer some flexible working, but few job adverts say so, and the people who most need to know are the ones shut out. This is the research behind that, from UK studies and official statistics.

The flexibility is there, but it isn’t said

Most employers already offer some flexibility. 58% offer regular or ad hoc home working and 55% offer part-time hours, and a further 43% offer informal flexibility that is never written down.4 Yet fewer than one in three job adverts say so when people apply.2

Around 60% of workers end up working flexibly once they’re in the job, against the 22% to 31% of vacancies that say so upfront.3 To someone applying, flexibility that isn’t stated looks exactly like flexibility that doesn’t exist.

Saying it changes who applies

A randomised controlled trial by the Behavioural Insights Team, the Government Equalities Office and Indeed covered 55,000 employers, more than 200,000 job adverts and over 5.5 million applications. Prompting employers to state their flexibility raised the share of adverts offering it from 34.5% to 41.5%. Adverts offering flexible working attracted around 30% more applicants, which the researchers note is likely an overestimate.5

When the John Lewis Partnership made part-time and job-share the default on its vacancies, applications per vacancy rose by 50%, from 11.1 to 16.7, and the share of female applicants rose from 38% to 51%.6 The same trial found no significant change in promotion rates, its main measure. More applicants is the first step, not the whole answer.

Who is missing out

9.11 million people of working age in the UK are economically inactive: out of work and not looking for it.7 1.7 million of them say they want a job.1 Long-term sickness keeps around 2.8 million out of the labour market, the largest single reason since 2021.8 The disability employment gap stands at 29.7 percentage points,9 and 544,000 working-age carers cannot work because of caring responsibilities.10

Asked directly, people say what would let them work:

  • 85% of disabled workers in remote or hybrid roles say remote or hybrid access is essential or very important when looking for a job, and 79% would not apply for a role without remote options.11
  • 93% of women returning after a career break of a year or more looked for part-time work.12
  • 72% of over-50s want flexible work, a third of them citing caring responsibilities.13
  • Of people aged 50 to 65 who had left work, 58% would consider returning. Asked what would matter most in choosing a job, they named flexible working hours (32%) ahead of good pay (23%).14

The cost of getting it wrong

  • 3% of UK employees, around 1.1 million people, left a job in a single year because of a lack of flexible working. Among 18 to 24 year olds it was 8%.4
  • The Department for Work and Pensions puts lost output from working-age ill health that prevents work at £127bn to £188bn a year.10
  • Working-age health-related benefit spending is forecast to rise from £48bn to £67bn by 2029-30.15 Moving 400,000 people out of health-related inactivity into work has been estimated to save around £10bn a year in higher tax receipts and lower benefit spending.16
  • Flexible working can pay for itself. Pilots with frontline employers found it can recover its costs within two to three years through lower staff turnover and absence alone.17

About the evidence

Most figures are what people said they want or would do, not observed behaviour. The ONS Over 50s Lifestyle Study dates from August 2022. Where a primary release was not directly available, a figure is credited to the source that reported it.

Sources

  1. Office for National Statistics, Labour Force Survey, January 2026: economically inactive people aged 16 to 64 who want a job. As reported in secondary analysis; see the ONS series on economic inactivity by whether people want a job.
  2. Timewise, Flexible Jobs Index (annual). The 2023 edition analysed over 5.7 million UK vacancies advertised between 1 January and 30 June 2023 and found 31% offered some form of flexible working at the point of hire.
  3. Timewise, cited in Behavioural Insights Team and Government Equalities Office, Encouraging employers to advertise jobs as flexible, 2019/2021. Read the report (PDF)
  4. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, Flexible and hybrid working practices in 2025, 15 July 2025. Survey of 2,000 employers and 5,000 employees. The 3% figure covers the period since January 2024 and is stated by CIPD as about 1.1 million workers.
  5. Behavioural Insights Team, Government Equalities Office and Indeed, Encouraging employers to advertise jobs as flexible. Two-arm randomised controlled trial. Read the report (PDF)
  6. Behavioural Insights Team, Flexibility by default: increasing the advertisement of part-time or job-share options, trial with the John Lewis Partnership, final report, 20 May 2021. Read the report (PDF)
  7. Office for National Statistics, Labour Force Survey, April to June 2026, released 18 August 2026; and House of Commons Library, UK labour market statistics, Research Briefing CBP-9366, 18 August 2026. ONS economic inactivity · Commons Library briefing (PDF)
  8. Office for National Statistics, labour market statistics. Long-term sickness has been the largest single reason for working-age economic inactivity since September 2021.
  9. Department for Work and Pensions, The Employment of Disabled People 2025, and Office for National Statistics, Q2 2025. Disabled employment rate 52.8% against 82.5% for non-disabled people.
  10. Department for Work and Pensions, The cost of working age ill-health and disability that prevents work, official statistics, 20 March 2025. The lost-output figures are the gap between current and potential output, not a cash cost.
  11. Holland, P., Carson, C., Florisson, R., Collins, A., Martin, A. and Winstanley, J., Breaking down barriers: How remote and hybrid work can support disabled workers, Work Foundation at Lancaster University, Manchester Metropolitan University and Universal Inclusion, February 2026. UK-wide survey of 1,221 disabled remote and hybrid workers.
  12. Timewise, survey of over 1,000 women who had taken a career break of a year or more. See also Timewise and Department for Work and Pensions, Returner Programmes: Best Practice Guidance for Employers, 2018.
  13. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the 50Plus Choices Employer Taskforce, Flexible after fifty, February 2024. Read the CIPD release
  14. Office for National Statistics, Over 50s Lifestyle Study, wave 1, fieldwork 10 to 29 August 2022, published 27 September 2022. 43,250 adults in Great Britain aged 50 to 65 who had left or lost their job since the start of the pandemic. Read the ONS evidence (PDF)
  15. Institute for Fiscal Studies, The role of changing health in rising health-related benefit claims, 12 March 2025, drawing on Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts.
  16. Institute for Fiscal Studies, December 2024, cited in House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee evidence. Assumes movement into sustained employment.
  17. Institute for Employment Studies and Timewise, Reaching a positive financial return on investment in flexible working, April 2022. Based on five frontline pilots across retail, construction, social care, teaching and the NHS.