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Beyond the Office – How remote and hybrid working can help close the disability employment gap

In our interim report we present some of our survey and interview findings on disabled workers’ experiences of remote and hybrid working:

• Working from home had a positive impact on 80% of those in fully remote roles when it came to managing their health. This proportion reduces to 38% for those who work remotely less than half of the time, suggesting that the benefits decline if people are expected to work onsite very regularly
• There is high demand for remote and hybrid working to manage health conditions and impairments, with 85% of disabled workers reporting that access to remote and hybrid work is essential or very important when looking for a new job
• Nearly one in three disabled workers (30%) who are already working in a hybrid way want to spend more of their work time working at home
• Despite increasing demand for remote and hybrid roles, there is an advertising gap, with only one in 26 vacancies (3.8%) on the Department for Work and Pensions Find a Job portal including an option for such work
• Remote and hybrid working is generally experienced as beneficial by disabled workers but there is unequal access to support, understanding and the right type of flexibility.

Amongst our recommendations, the study calls on the Government to:

1. Increase the levels and visibility of remote and hybrid working opportunities, including exploring a legal duty to publish flexible working options in job advertisements
2. Strengthen disabled workers’ ability to access remote and hybrid work as a reasonable adjustment
3. Reform the Department for Work and Pensions Access to Work service to support remote and hybrid workers by improving awareness of the scheme, increasing funding and ensuring awards are passported between employers
4. Overhaul the Disability Confident Scheme and align with the proposed Equality (Race and Disability) Bill, including by providing information on disabled worker employment levels and reasonable adjustment rates.

Further findings, including how employers are implementing remote and hybrid working, will be released in June.

Friday 13 December saw Lancaster University play host to the beginning of production for a film based on our findings from the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study. Envisioned as a way to allow participants to discuss in their own words how working in a remote or hybrid way allows them to better balance their careers with their disabilities, filming involved each participant discussing these issues individually, before a group discussion between all of them together chaired by Dr Calum Carson. Project leader Dr Paula Holland also filmed a section highlighting some of our main findings. Production of the film now moves to the digital sphere, with remote working participants filming their own sections over the coming months to be integrated with the in-person scenes in the finished film. The film is being directed and produced by Diverse Media, a specialist disabled-led creative productive house which you can find out more about here.

The film will be available in full in Spring 2025, so watch this space!

On Tuesday 12 November, Dr Calum Carson participated as an invited speaker in a roundtable exploring how flexible job design and help to improve employment outcomes for people with fluctuating disabilities. Highlighting recent research on “FlexPlus” jobs conducted by Kings College London researchers Catherine Hale, Ben Baumberg Geiger and Kim Hoque , speakers at the roundtable (consisting of employers, professional organisations and researchers) discussed how employers could help to support people to better balance their disabilities and/or long-term health conditions with their working lives through the introduction of “FlexPlus” jobs, and how best to persuade employers of the virtues of such roles.  More information on the FlexPlus project can be found here.

On Monday the 14th of October Paula Holland and Calum Carson attended the launch event at the Houses of Parliament of a report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment’s entitled “Changing Attitudes, Changing Lives – Employer Attitudes and the Employment of Blind and Partially Sighted People.”  The event was attended by a varied audience of contributors to the report, and speakers including Jamie Ward (Head of Talent & Learning at Channel 4) and the Minister for Employment Alison McGovern spoke about the need for the employment landscape to be accessible for blind and visually impaired workers.

The report sets out 22 recommendations for the UK government  and employers to implement in order to break down barriers for blind and partially sighted people to better access the labour market, and improve their everyday working life within their current roles. These recommendations were based on the testimony received during evidence sessions earlier this year from employers, disability organisations and academic researchers, including Paula and Calum who presented evidence to APPG members in March on the working experiences of blind and visually impaired people derived from the findings of the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study. The report can be read in full here (large print and accessible versions are also available at the bottom of the page).

The 7th to the 12th of October 2024 played host to Dutch Accessibility Week, which saw researchers, campaigners, employers, policymakers and practitioners across the Netherlands highlight  the importance of an accessible workplace. What is needed to be able to work comfortably if you are in a wheelchair, for example, or cannot see well, cannot hear well, are sensitive to crowds or have an energy limitation? This week is dedicated to starting (and continuing) conversations on making work a ((more) accessible workplace where everyone can work well, regardless of disability and/or long-term health condition. In the same week  for the UK it is  also National Work-Life Week, part of an annual campaign to get both employers and employees talking about wellbeing at work and work-life balance.

As a contribution to these conversations across both the Dutch and the English employment landscapes, on the first day of the Week project analyst Rebecca Florisson presented (in fluent Dutch)  preliminary findings from both the quantitative and qualitative findings  of the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Study at a webinar in collaboration with academic researchers at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. These continue the Study’s efforts in collaborating across national boundaries on the implications of remote and hybrid working for people with disabilities and long-term health conditions, and engaging with non-academic partners and stakeholders working on how to make working life more inclusive (and accessible) for all members of the workforce.

The Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study team submitted evidence at the beginning of September to the Welsh Parliament Equality and Social Justice Committee’s consultation on the disability and employment gap, based on the preliminary findings of interviews and survey responses from disabled workers and employers on their experiences of remote and hybrid working models. An in-person evidence session based on testimony received has also been arranged for Monday 30 September.

On Thursday 25 July,  Dr Calum Carson took part in an invited roundtable organised by the Work Foundation at Lancaster Castle with employers from the North West of England, focused on the health and work challenges currently facing organisations in 2024. Questions deliberated among the speakers included:

• What workplace health and wellbeing strategies and policies (e.g. sick pay, occupational health) need to be put in place in light of the new long-term health challenges? And what support do employers need from Government to do so?
• What innovative action have employers trialled to support workers to remain in employment whilst managing conditions? (e.g. implementing flexible leave models, using new technologies for remote and hybrid working).
• Are there key groups of workers with specific barriers or needs that employers are trying to recruit into jobs or support to stay in work?
• What role could re-designing job roles play to provide more security and flexibility to workers?
• What are the implications for the welfare and health systems, and how employers and employees engage with them? How will systems and institutions need to change and adapt?
• How do these factors play out in different sectoral and organisational settings?

This roundtable also saw an announcement of the launch of a renewed Work and Health Forum across the North West, bringing together academics, employers, civil society, and policymakers to discuss issues related to work, health and wellbeing and how best to tackle them in today’s employment landscape.

Project members Dr Calum Carson and Dr Alison Collins have spent time this summer presenting preliminary findings from the Study to an international audience of academics and practitioners at conferences across Europe. Calum gave a talk in July highlighting some of the main mixed methods findings emerging from the first stage of fieldwork for the study (involving an exploration of the experiences of people with disabilities and long-term health conditions) at the European Society of Health and Medical Sociology’s Conference on Intersectionality and Inclusion in Health at the University of Antwerp, while Alison focused on findings regarding absenteeism and presenteeism during a talk in June at the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology’s annual conference at the University of Granada.

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.

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!