Flexible Working: How UK Employers Can Make It Work in Practice

Flexible working is one of those subjects where the policy can look perfectly clear and the reality can still become quite muddled.

The businesses that handle it inconsistently tend to find that flexibility becomes a culture and trust problem rather than a working-hours one.

Someone wants to start at 8am so they can collect their child from school. Another person wants to work from home three days a week. Somebody else wants four longer days instead of five. A manager agrees something informally for one employee, another manager handles the same request completely differently, and before long nobody is entirely sure what the company approach actually is.

We see versions of this fairly often.

The legal position is relatively straightforward. Employees have the right to make a statutory flexible working request from their first day of employment. They can make two requests in any twelve-month period, and employers normally have two months to consider the request, discuss it with the employee and reach a decision.

But good flexible working is about much more than processing requests correctly.

It is about deciding what flexibility genuinely works for your organisation, being clear about where the boundaries sit and making sure managers can apply those boundaries consistently.

That is usually where the real work begins.

What is flexible working?

Acas defines flexible working as a change to when, where or how an employee works. It can include part-time hours, staggered start and finish times, homeworking, remote working, hybrid working, flexitime, job sharing, compressed hours, annualised hours, term-time working and team-based rostering.

That breadth matters.

Flexible working and working from home are not the same thing.

Nor does flexibility automatically mean giving everybody complete freedom over where and when they work.

For somebody in a client-facing professional services role, flexibility might involve two homeworking days and three days with colleagues or clients.

For someone working in hospitality, location flexibility may be impossible, but a different shift pattern could work extremely well.

For a parent, flexibility might mean leaving at 4pm twice a week.

For another employee, compressed hours might be more useful.

Acas makes the point that some form of flexibility can be built into almost all jobs, regardless of sector or organisation size, even though not every type of arrangement will suit every role.

We think that is a much better starting point than asking whether a job is simply "flexible" or "not flexible".

The useful question is: What kind of flexibility could work here?

What is the legal right to request flexible working?

Employees in England, Scotland and Wales can make a statutory flexible working request from their first day in a job.

A statutory request can ask to change the employee's hours, the times they work or their place of work.

The employee needs to make the request in writing. It should state that it is a statutory flexible working request, explain the working pattern they want and when they would like it to start, and say whether they have made an earlier statutory request and when.

Employees can currently make two statutory requests in a twelve-month period.

Employers then need to deal with the request reasonably and normally reach a decision within two months, unless a longer period is agreed with the employee.

If the request is accepted, the agreed change normally becomes a change to the employee's contractual terms.

That last part can sometimes be missed.

A manager says yes to somebody working four days rather than five, everyone starts following the new arrangement and the paperwork catches up several months later.

It is much better to confirm what has actually been agreed, when it starts and whether the change is permanent or has been agreed on some other clearly documented basis.

Can an employer refuse a flexible working request?

Yes, but not simply because the manager would prefer everybody to work in the same way.

Under the current law, an employer can only refuse a statutory flexible working request for one or more of the eight business reasons set out in legislation.

There are eight permitted business reasons:

1. the burden of additional costs

2. inability to reorganise work among existing staff

3. inability to recruit additional staff

4. detrimental effect on quality

5. detrimental effect on performance

6. detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand

7. insufficiency of work during the proposed hours

8. planned structural changes

An employer must also consult the employee before refusing the request.

That conversation matters.

It gives the manager the opportunity to understand what the employee is actually trying to achieve and to discuss another arrangement where the original proposal genuinely will not work.

A request for three days at home might not be possible. Two could be.

A request to stop working Fridays might create a client coverage problem. Starting and finishing earlier may solve the employee's underlying problem without creating the same difficulty for the business.

There is quite a difference between considering a request properly and searching for the quickest lawful reason to reject it.

Good employers understand that difference.

What is changing with flexible working law in 2027?

The framework is due to change again in 2027 under the Employment Rights Act 2025.

Acas says that when an employer rejects a flexible working request, the employer will still need to identify one or more of the existing eight statutory business reasons, but will also have to explain why it believes its refusal is reasonable. Acas plans to review its Code of Practice after the legal change takes effect.

That makes the quality of the decision-making process more important.

Simply inserting "detrimental impact on performance" into a rejection letter without explaining the actual anticipated impact is unlikely to fit comfortably with the direction the law is taking.

For businesses reviewing their flexible working policy in 2026, we would build that reasoning into the process now.

Managers should already be asking:

·       What would actually go wrong if we agreed this?

·       What evidence do we have?

·       Could we change the proposal rather than reject it?

·       Is the same standard being applied to everybody?

Those are sensible management questions even before the legal test changes.

Why flexible working is not the same as hybrid working

The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they describe different things.

Hybrid working is one form of flexible working. Acas describes it as a mixture of remote working and working in the workplace. Someone might work three days from home and two in the office, or work at least one office day with flexibility over the remainder of the week.

Flexible work is much wider.

An employee who works entirely on-site but starts at 7am instead of 9am is working flexibly.

So is somebody working part-time.

So is somebody sharing a role.

So is somebody compressing ten working days into nine.

We think businesses sometimes make flexibility unnecessarily difficult by starting with a debate about homeworking.

If the real business question is attraction, retention, caring responsibilities or helping people work more effectively, there may be several ways of solving it.

What does a good flexible working policy include?

Acas describes having a policy as good practice because it helps employees understand how flexible working operates and helps managers deal with requests consistently.

A useful policy should explain what flexible working means in your organisation, the types of arrangements that may be possible, who can make a request, how requests should be submitted, how the organisation will respond, how appeals work and what happens once an arrangement is approved.

It should also deal with how flexible arrangements operate once they exist.

·       How will people communicate?

·       How will performance be measured?

·       When do teams need to be together?

·       What does good availability look like?

·       How do people raise a problem if an arrangement stops working?

Acas also recommends checking related policies covering areas such as homeworking, hybrid working, hours, reasonable adjustments, family leave, health and safety, data protection and risk assessments so they remain consistent with each other.

We would add one more test.

Could a manager read the policy and confidently run the conversation tomorrow?

If not, the policy probably needs more practical guidance.

Why manager consistency matters more than the wording of the policy

A policy can say the company supports flexible working.

Then one manager enthusiastically discusses options while another responds to every request with, "We really need everyone here."

Employees notice that.

JourneyHR has previously written about this in the context of retention. Flexible working has been a day-one statutory right since April 2024, but the employee experience still depends heavily on whether managers apply the approach consistently. People rarely leave because they dislike the wording of a policy. They are much more likely to become frustrated when the policy means something different depending on who their manager happens to be.

We think this is one of the reasons flexible working sometimes becomes emotionally loaded inside organisations.

The individual employee thinks they are asking for a practical adjustment.

The manager hears a challenge to how the team has always operated.

Another employee sees someone getting something they were previously told was impossible.

And suddenly the conversation is about fairness, trust and culture rather than working hours.

Clear parameters help.

Manager training helps more.

What should managers think about before agreeing flexible work?

We would encourage managers to look at the job rather than starting with the person.

·       What needs to get done?

·       When does it need to happen?

·       Which parts require colleagues to be together?

·       Which parts require client or customer coverage?

·       What dependencies exist across the team?

·       How is performance already measured?

Then look at the proposed working arrangement against those requirements.

That keeps the conversation focused on the work.

It also reduces the risk of unconscious assumptions entering the decision.

Someone asking to work flexibly because of childcare should not automatically be seen as less committed.

Someone asking to work from home because of a disability may also have rights around reasonable adjustments, which sit separately from the flexible working regime. Acas explicitly reminds employers that the duty to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 is separate from the duty to consider a flexible working request.

The process has to recognise both where relevant.

Case study: Coffee Break Languages and the value of testing an idea

One of the more useful flexible-working case studies comes from Coffee Break Languages, a small family-run business in Scotland.

The company wanted to explore a four-day working model but did not simply announce one and hope it worked.

According to the CIPD's 2025 case study, the business ran a series of trials, tested different arrangements and invested in collaborative tools before settling on its model. The resulting approach retained some individual flexibility inside clearer company-wide parameters.

CIPD reports that the organisation increased productivity while maintaining customer satisfaction, and that 95% of team members said it was a great place to work.

What we like about this example is the trial.

Flexible working decisions do not always have to be treated as irreversible philosophical statements about the future of work.

Sometimes you can test something.

Agree the measures.

Run it properly.

Then look at what happened.

·       Did clients notice?

·       Did output change?

·       Did people work longer hours to compensate?

·       Did collaboration become harder?

·       Did retention improve?

Evidence is much more useful than everybody defending the working model they personally prefer.

Should employers use trial periods for flexible arrangements?

A trial can be useful when the business genuinely does not know whether an arrangement will work.

For example, a manager may be concerned that a new schedule will make client cover difficult, but nobody actually knows because the arrangement has never been tested.

Rather than immediately refusing the request, the employer and employee may agree an alternative or trial arrangement where appropriate.

The important part is making the terms clear.

·       How long is the trial?

·       What exactly are you testing?

·       How will success be judged?

·       What happens at the end?

Do not use a "trial" simply as a way of avoiding making a decision.

But where there is genuine uncertainty, testing the practical concern can tell you far more than debating it in a meeting.

Case study: RSPCA and designing hybrid work around different jobs

The RSPCA is a useful example because one working model obviously cannot apply across its entire workforce.

The CIPD's 2025 case study describes an organisation of around 1,700 employees, including roughly 1,100 people in frontline roles and around 600 people working in support functions.

For desk-based support staff, the charity introduced flexible hybrid working as part of a wider redesign of the employee experience.

CIPD reports benefits including improved wellbeing, more personalised work-life balance, improved engagement, access to a broader and more diverse talent pool and savings on office space.

But the frontline workforce cannot simply copy the desk-based model.

Inspectors, rescuers and people working in hospitals or animal centres have different operational requirements.

That sounds obvious, but it is one of the hardest parts of flexible work.

Fair does not always mean identical.

You need to be able to explain why different jobs have different parameters without creating the sense that flexibility belongs only to office employees.

Sometimes that means looking harder for different forms of flexibility rather than abandoning the idea altogether.

What does good hybrid working look like?

We think good hybrid working starts with purpose rather than a number of office days.

If you want people together three days a week, what do you want to happen on those days that is harder to achieve remotely?

·       Collaboration

·       Learning

·       Client work

·       Coaching

·       Creative problem-solving

·       Building relationships

Then design the office days around those things.

If employees travel for an hour to sit in individual video calls all day, they will quite reasonably question the point.

Acas recommends setting clear expectations and boundaries around working hours, communication and team working. It also suggests measuring performance around outputs and achievements rather than hours physically spent in the workplace.

That is an important shift.

Hybrid working tends to expose weak management quite quickly.

When managers could see everybody at their desk, visibility sometimes stood in for performance management.

Once people are working in different places, the manager needs clearer objectives, better communication and more deliberate check-ins.

That is not a hybrid-working problem.

It is a management problem that hybrid working has made visible.

Case study: Phoenix Group and flexibility around when, where and how people work

Phoenix Group provides another useful example because its approach went wider than home versus office.

CIPD's 2025 case study describes the company's "Phoenix Flex" approach as giving employees more choice around when, where and how they work. The organisation used evidence to shape the model rather than relying entirely on assumptions about what employees wanted.

CIPD reports that increased flexibility helped Phoenix attract higher-potential and more diverse candidates, supported employee wellbeing and strengthened organisational resilience.

The broader point is useful for growing companies.

A flexible-working strategy becomes much more interesting when it stops being an argument about how many days people spend at home.

There are roles where location cannot change very much but hours can.

There are people for whom predictable start and finish times matter more than homeworking.

There are teams where compressed hours work and others where they would create serious coverage problems.

Different types of flexibility solve different problems.

Does flexible working really help recruitment and retention?

The evidence suggests employers certainly believe it matters.

CIPD's 2025 research found that 91% of employers offered some form of flexible working arrangement. Employees reported homeworking during normal hours and flexitime among the most commonly used options.

The same research found that 61% of employers considered advertising flexible working important for attracting staff and addressing skills or labour shortages.

CIPD also reported in July 2025 that 3% of employees surveyed had left a job during the previous year because of a lack of flexibility, which it estimated represented around 1.1 million UK workers.

That does not mean every request should be agreed.

Commercial realities still matter.

But flexibility has become part of the employment proposition.

A business offering none at all should probably be clear about why, because candidates will compare that decision with other opportunities.

How do you create a culture where flexible working actually works?

Writing the flexible working policy is probably the easier half.

The harder part is making sure people believe they can use it.

Acas recommends designing jobs with flexibility in mind, advertising available options, sharing success stories, asking leaders to role-model flexible working, training managers, setting clear boundaries and assessing performance by output rather than physical presence.

We think leaders underestimate the role-modelling point.

If the policy says flexible working is encouraged but every senior person is in the office from 8am until 7pm, employees will draw their own conclusions.

If people who work flexibly disappear from promotion conversations, employees notice.

If meetings are routinely scheduled at times that exclude part-time colleagues, they notice that too.

Culture is often built through those small signals rather than the policy statement itself.

What should you measure after introducing flexible working?

Do not judge flexible work entirely by whether people say they like it.

Look at the business as well.

·       Has retention changed?

·       What is happening to employee engagement?

·       Are certain roles easier to recruit?

·       Has sickness absence moved?

·       What is happening to customer service?

·       Are deadlines being met?

·       Are some teams consistently working longer hours?

·       Are people who work remotely progressing at the same rate?

·       Is office space being used differently?

Acas recommends monitoring how much flexible working is being used, whether it affects other parts of the organisation and whether particular changes are working.

The important thing is to decide what you are trying to improve before measuring it.

Otherwise six months later everyone has a view but nobody has much evidence.

How JourneyHR can help

We work with growing businesses on the policy, management and cultural sides of flexible working.

Sometimes the immediate issue is a flexible working request that a manager is unsure how to handle.

Sometimes the business has twenty different informal arrangements and needs to bring some consistency to them.

Sometimes an old flexible working policy needs updating.

And sometimes the bigger question is whether hybrid or flexible work still supports the way the company wants to operate.

Our HR Policy + Process work includes creating and updating clear employment policies, while our retained HR teams support managers with day-to-day people decisions and help businesses apply those policies consistently in practice.

We can help you review existing arrangements, create a practical policy, train managers, consider statutory requests and work through the commercial impact of different options before decisions are made.

Because the answer is rarely that every business should work in the same way.

The useful answer is working out what flexibility means for your business and making that approach clear enough that employees and managers understand it.

Get in touch: Speak to JourneyHR

HR Policy + Process support: Explore JourneyHR's HR Policy + Process Consultancy

Final thought

Flexible working has become much easier to discuss in theory and, in some businesses, strangely difficult to manage in practice.

We think the businesses handling it best tend to be clear about three things: what the work requires, where genuine flexibility exists and how managers should make decisions when the answer is not immediately obvious.

Once those things are clear, flexible working stops being a collection of individual exceptions.

It simply becomes part of how the organisation works.

FAQs

What is flexible working in the UK?

Flexible working is any arrangement that changes when, where or how an employee works. It can include part-time hours, flexitime, compressed hours, homeworking, hybrid working, staggered hours, job sharing, annualised hours and term-time working. Flexible working is therefore much broader than working from home. The right arrangement depends on the employee's needs and what the role and business can practically support.

Can an employee request flexible working from their first day?

Yes. Employees can make a statutory flexible working request from their first day of employment. They can currently make two statutory requests in any twelve-month period.

Employers normally need to discuss the request and reach a decision within two months unless a longer period is agreed. If the employer agrees to a permanent change, the employee's contractual terms should be updated to reflect it.

Can an employer refuse a flexible working request?

Yes, but a statutory request can only be refused for one or more of eight business reasons set out in employment law. These include additional costs, inability to reorganise work or recruit staff and detrimental effects on quality, performance or customer demand. Employers must consult the employee before refusing the request and should consider whether an alternative arrangement could address the business concern.

Is hybrid working the same as flexible working?

No. Hybrid working is one type of flexible working. It usually means dividing working time between a workplace and a remote location such as home.

Flexible working is a much broader term and can also include changes to hours, start and finish times, working days, job sharing or compressed hours. A role can therefore offer genuine flexibility even where remote working is not practical.

What should a flexible working policy include?

A flexible working policy should explain your organisation's approach, the types of flexibility that may be available, how employees make requests, how managers consider them, the appeals process and what happens once an arrangement is agreed. It should also set expectations around communication, performance and supervision and link clearly with relevant policies including hybrid working, reasonable adjustments, family leave, health and safety and data protection.