Project members Calum Carson, Rebecca Florisson, Paula Holland and Jacqueline Winstanley were at Nuffield Foundation headquarters in London on Thursday 27 June for the final dissemination event of the “Unpacking the disability employment gap” project, led by Dr Mark Bryan and Professor Jennifer Roberts of the University of Sheffield. Funded by the Nuffield Foundation under the same funding programme as the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study, the project has explored over the past three years what contributes to the longstanding disability employment gap in the UK. More detail on the project and its final outputs can be found here.
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Spring 2024 has seen the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study have the voices of its research participants heard across the UK’s Parliamentary landscape, from Cardiff to London via Edinburgh!
In January 2024 Dr Calum Carson contributed to the Welsh Parliament’s Equality and Social Justice Committee’s Area of Interest call on the disability employment gap, within which the Committee is interested in exploring what action government and employers can take to increase employment opportunities for disabled people and to reduce the disability pay and employment gaps. Calum suggested areas of focus that the Committee could place an emphasis on to affect change in these areas, and provided some early insights from the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study that are relevant to the Committee’s work.
Following this, in March Dr Paula Holland and Dr Calum Carson were invited to the Houses of Parliament to give evidence to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment. Their evidence explored employer attitudes towards reasonable adjustments for blind and visually impaired people within the workplace and insights on individual experiences in this area explored throughout fieldwork for work package 1 of the study, and will help to form part of a larger report to be published by the APPG in the summer of 2024.
And finally in May, Dr Calum Carson and Rebecca Florisson were invited panelists for a roundtable event at the Scottish Parliament to discuss the findings of the report ‘Women in Multiple Low-paid Employment: Pathways between Work, Care and Health,” conducted by researchers at the University of Glasgow and funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The report was informed in part through the emergent insights from fieldwork for the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study, discussed with the project team and other invited experts at an earlier roundtable event held at the University of Glasgow in March 2024. More information on the wider project can be found here.
With the project still ongoing and employer experiences of inclusive remote and hybrid working currently being explored, watch this space for more parliamentary engagement to come!
Since the beginning of March fieldwork has been ongoing on work package 2 of the study, revolving around employer perspectives of inclusive remote and hybrid working. The team are interested in the journeys that organisations have been on since the pandemic in introducing remote and/or hybrid models of work and what their experiences have been across this time, as well as hearing their thoughts on what the future is for these models of work across the UK labour market.
If you are an organisation interested in discussing your own experiences in implementing and managing remote and hybrid working within your own organisation, we would love to speak with you: please contact Dr Calum Carson at c.carson1@lancaster.ac.uk to set up a call!
February 2024
The beginning of February saw the end of project fieldwork on work package 1 of the study, which specifically focuses on disabled workers’ experiences of remote and hybrid working. These efforts involved an online survey to explore both experiences to date and what respondents would suggest for employers to do to make these models of work more inclusive, alongside 45 in-depth interviews with individuals across the survey sub-sample to explore their thoughts in more detail.
This spring sees the project team now move to a focus on exploring employer perspectives on inclusive remote and hybrid working.
Calum Carson was an invited panelist at a roundtable hosted by Zoom on Thursday 25 January. Organised by the Disability Policy Centre, the event focused on how flexible working can work better for disabled people and carers, with panelists from across business, academia and the third sector, and was chaired by Wendy Chamberlain MP. Among other issues, the event discussed current barriers to disabled workers and carers accessing remote and hybrid working, how employers can help make these roles inclusive for all of their workforce, and what role there is for policymakers in helping to promote and facilitate these models of work. A pamphlet summarising some of the main themes of the event is forthcoming.
By Fazilet Hadi, Head of Policy, Disability Rights UK
Opening Reflections
A couple of things to say before I share thoughts on working from home.
First, I am an office worker, which means that through the use of email, Word, virtual meetings and telephone, working from home is a realistic option. I am eternally grateful to all those workers, who staff hospitals, train stations, shops, gyms and countless other services, for being physically at work.
Second, whatever we do, there should be flexibility. We all need to juggle work and other responsibilities and it is in the interests of employers to enable us to do this. Depending on the job, this could involve flexible working hours, focus on particular tasks, hybrid working, remote working, making reasonable adjustments and support from Access to Work.
So, back to my experience. I’ve spent most of my working life at the office but for the past 4 years have worked from home. Unlike some Disabled people, who can only work from home or only do their jobs at the workplace, I can do either.
The things I Love:
Not having to travel to work.
As I’m blind, travel isn’t straightforward. It involves a taxi to the station, assistance on and off trains and a bus or taxi to the office. It’s not just the length of the journey that’s a problem but the forward planning and stress, that is part of every journey. Being able to be instantly at work and instantly leave, is amazing.
Being in control of my environment
Moving with ease around an office space, making myself a drink, finding my way to the toilet, can all pose challenges. One of the nice things about working from home is that I know where everything is, no-one has left a chair sticking out, the kettle is where I left it, and I don’t have to find meeting rooms. Navigating my environment is all together easier.
Finding quiet time
Most workspaces today are open plan with a certain amount of noise and activity. This can make it difficult to find the quiet time to do some thinking, write a report or consider a knotty problem. I know this won’t be the case for everyone, but I can always find quiet time at home. This helps me to balance responding to emails and attending meetings, with thinking time.
The things I miss:
Everyday human interaction
I used to enjoy a morning chat at the station, with those providing passenger assistance and my fellow travellers. Some of my best friends are people I met on the train. When I got to work, I exchanged a hello with the person on reception, made small talk whilst buying a coffee and greeted co-workers. Before my working day started, I’d already had a number of friendly conversations and there would be other opportunities during the day.
Face to face meetings
Whilst much business can efficiently be done through virtual meetings, there is something unique about in-person interactions. It’s often quicker to build trusting relationships, often easier to have difficult conversations and sometimes better to be creative or problem solve together. When you’re in the room, there can be more empathy, subtlety and nuance.
Learning from colleagues
There is so much we can learn from each other, how to get the best out of people, how to have difficult conversations, how to plan ahead or how to run effective meetings. I know there are many ways of learning, but I loved learning on the job. I think this is harder to replicate in the online world.
Having your own voice heard
So, I’ve shared some of my thoughts on working from home here, but it would be great to hear from other Disabled people too through this project. What are your experiences of doing your job away from the workplace and working from home, either all or some of the time? Have you experienced similar benefits and challenges like the ones I have outlined above, or yours been different? The Inclusive Hybrid and Remote Working Study would love to hear your views via this survey, which is open until the end of January. Please click anywhere in this sentence to find the survey.
Concluding Reflections
When I started my working life, there was a clear demarcation between work and personal life, it definitely feels like this distinction has blurred. Now, people want to bring their whole selves to work, talk openly about their lives outside work and welcome employer understanding of their wider personal situation.
All this is positive. We need to create work cultures that benefit employers but that also benefit employees, cultures where the employer focuses on outcomes, leaving space to negotiate how work can be delivered in the most flexible way for the individual employee.
To have your own voice heard on how to make remote and hybrid work more inclusive within a post-pandemic employment landscape, please participate in this research by completing our survey of disabled workers’ experiences. Employers are making decisions now about future ways of working that will affect the long-term working conditions, health and wellbeing of disabled workers across the UK and beyond, so we thank you for taking the time to be involved in shaping these decisions through your own participation in this project.
Dr Calum Carson has written a guest article for Disability Rights UK on the need to listen more clearly to the voices of disabled workers in designing the future of hybrid and remote working models. The article can be read in full here.
Project leader Dr Paula Holland and project partner Dr Calum Carson have written an article together in recognition of the United Nations’ 2023 International Day of Disabilities on how to make remote and hybrid work more inclusive, and what employers can do to make this a reality. The article can be read in full here.
Project leader Dr Paula Holland and project partners Dr Calum Carson and Rebecca Florisson have written an article together for The Conversation, responding to the government’s new Back to Work Plan and their accompanying rhetoric on disabled people “doing their duty” by taking up remote working roles in greater numbers. The article can be read in full here.
Dr Calum Carson was the featured guest on the latest episode of the “Long Covid Podcast,” which can be listened to in full here. Calum discussed the importance of the project’s focus on representing as many diverse conditions as possible in it’s findings, including the experiences of those suffering from the effects of Long Covid since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Other episodes of the podcast can be listened to here.
Our Senior Research Associate Dr Calum Carson and Principal Analyst Rebecca Florisson have written a new article together for the International Public Policy Observatory, underlining the need for both employers and policymakers to embed disabled workers’ experiences at the heart of new remote and hybrid working models. You can read the article in full here.
