Welcome to the project website for the Inclusive Hybrid and Remote Working Study (IHRWS), funded by the Nuffield Foundation and led by Lancaster University.

Project rationale: 

This project explored disabled workers’ experiences of remote and hybrid working, specifically in how to make remote and hybrid working (working both at home and from the office) more inclusive to promote recruitment, job retention and progression. Through a UK-wide survey of 1,221 disabled workers and 45 interviews, it explored:

  • the challenges and opportunities that remote and hybrid working pose for disabled workers’ health, wellbeing, work-life balance, job retention, progression, productivity, and work and personal relationships;
  • experiences of managing impairments or long-term health conditions while working remotely or in a hybrid way;
  • experiences of requesting workplace adjustments for remote or hybrid working;
  • factors supporting inclusive remote and hybrid working, including use of digital technologies;
  • and unmet needs, such as equipment and support.

Disabled workers have significantly lower employment rates than those without. Different forms of remote and hybrid working can help support workers’ job retention by enabling them to manage work around their health conditions/impairments, yet has often been withheld by employers. The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread remote working and many employers have retained it while some have introduced hybrid working, opening up new opportunities for disabled workers to work from home more freely than in the pre-pandemic era.

The flexibility and autonomy provided by remote/hybrid working models may help to narrow the disability employment gap and better help disabled people to stay in the labour market,  but only if they are designed and implemented by employers and policymakers to be inclusive of individual workers’ needs and preferences. Failing to do so will create further employment and health inequities: for example, a lack of duplicate specialist equipment in the office and home and inaccessible digital technologies prevent disabled workers’ full participation at work.

As well as a UK-wide survey and interviews with disabled workers, we conducted in-depth interviews and case studies with organisations to explore the benefits and challenges of implementing remote or hybrid models, and their rationale for doing so.

This  project began in March 2023 and was completed in December 2025.

Our interim report was published in March 2025 The changing workplace: Enabling disability-inclusive hybrid working – Lancaster University and our final report was published in February 2026 Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study_final report