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 explores workers with disabilities and/or long-term health conditions and their 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. It builds upon a previous Work Foundation-led research project conducted by some members of this project team focused on making hybrid work more inclusive, which can be found in full on the Work Foundation website by clicking anywhere on this line.
Workers with disabilities and/or long-term health conditions 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 workers with disabilities and/or long-term health conditions 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 those with long-term health conditions 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.
This project began in March 2023, and will run through to December 2024. Fieldwork begin in June 2023 with the launch of a UK-wide survey exploring disabled workers’ experiences of remote and/or hybrid working, which can be found by clicking here. with research efforts now focused on understanding these issues from the perspective of employers. A Best Practice Guide to Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working will be published following the completion of the research.
Please feel free to explore this website to learn more about the project, and how you can get involved.
