Is remote and flexible working the ‘new normal’?
Coronavirus lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 saw many employees compelled to work from home. While employers have had different perspectives on employees returning to their offices and places of work since then, the pandemic has accelerated discussion around more flexible working. What do these new and emerging work patterns mean for the future of work in rural communities? Jessica Sellick investigates. ………………………………………………………………………………………………..
What is flexible working? Flexible working refers to any type of working pattern that is different from the usual one. It is intended to give employees a degree of flexibility over where, when and how they work. There are different types of flexible working – from working from home, through to a combination of office-remote (hybrid) arrangements, or having flexible start and finishing times.
Who can request to work flexibly? Under existing UK legislation, employees do not have a statutory right to flexible working, only to make a request. Part 8A of the Employment Rights Act 1996 states that employees can only request to work flexibly after 26 weeks of employment with the same employer, with a limit of one request every 12-months. Under sections 47E and 104C employees are protected from suffering a detriment or from being dismissed if they have made a flexible working request. The legal right to request flexible working initially only applied to limited categories of employees with parental or caring responsibilities until it was extended to all employees under Part 9 of the Children and Families Act 2014. Under current regulations, any employee has the legal right to request flexible working through making a statutory application.
In 2018 the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) established a Flexible Working Taskforce. Co-chaired by BEIS officials and the CIPD, the Taskforce was established to clarify the benefits of flexible working, investigate the barriers that prevent employers from offering (or employees taking up) flexible working, and to increase the number of flexible working opportunities available.
While flexible working has been of policy interest for a number of years, the COVID-19 pandemic brought it to the fore of public attention. The pandemic led the Government to introduce statutory guidance instructing people to ‘work from home’ where and when possible. This was supplemented by a range of COVID-19 guidance covering the workplace that was updated by the Government as its response to COVID-19 evolved.
During the first national lockdown (March to June 2020), all non-essential high street businesses were required to close and people were ordered to stay at home, and permitted only to leave for essential purposes such as buying food or for medical appointments. Although most lockdown restrictions were lifted on 4 July 2020, the Government recommended people avoided gatherings larger than six.
On 14 September 2020, tighter restrictions came into force in England with the rule of six applying indoors and outdoors; and from 25 September bars, pubs and restaurants were ordered to shut between 10.00pm and 6.00am. On 14 October 2020, the Government introduced a ‘three tier system’ with most areas placed in the least restrictive tier one. On 5 November 2020, national restrictions were reintroduced in England. Under this second national lockdown non-essential high street businesses were required to close once again and people were prohibited from meeting those not in their ‘support bubble’ inside.
On 2 December 2020, the Government reintroduced the tier system – with a fourth tier added on 19 December following concerns about a new variant of COVID-19 circulating. On 4 January 2021 the third national lockdown began. Similar to the rules in place during the first lockdown, people were once again told to stay at home.
On 8 March 2021, England began a phased exit from lockdown – with the whole country moving through a roadmap. On 15 September 2021, Parliament approved the revocation amendments meaning there are no lockdown laws currently in force in England.
During national lockdown periods people needed a reasonable excuse to leave their home and were prevented from travelling outside their local area and/or from travelling between areas with different restrictions in place. Certain businesses were required to close, and others were required to operate restricted opening hours.
In February 2021, BEIS reconvened the Flexible Working Taskforce to understand emerging ways of working resulting from the pandemic. In December 2021, the Taskforce published guidance on effective hybrid working. The guidance included information on how organisations should:
- Provide training to managers on how to manage and support hybrid teams.
- Review HR processes and procedures – enabling inclusion and wellbeing.
- Undertake a listening activity with employees, managers and employee representatives to understand whether hybrid working is delivering benefits.
- Keep hybrid working policies and principles under ongoing review – addressing any negative or unintended outcomes.
In April 2021, the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST) published an article on remote and flexible working arrangements. This described the benefits of flexible working around increased wellbeing and productivity, but highlighted how these benefits are not equally distributed throughout the working population leading to increasing inequality.
In September 2021, the Government published a consultation document setting out proposals to make the right to work flexibly an entitlement from day one, for all employees. The document outlined the Government’s intentions to reform the Flexible Working Regulations 2014 as well as wider proposals to encourage and support flexible working – in sum, this would make flexible working the default position. The Government also launched a ‘call for evidence’ looking at the need for ‘ad hoc’ and informal flexibility and how this can be supported in the workplace.
What are the trends in flexible working? The Office for National Statistics (ONS) uses data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Annual Population Survey (APS) to estimate homeworking. Between January and December 2019, of 32.6 million people in employment, 4 million people (around 12% of the total workforce) had worked at home at some point in the week prior to being interviewed. Approximately 1.7 million people (5% of the total workforce) reported working mainly from home – an increase from 4.3% compared to January to December 2015. Data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) found in January-February 2020, approximately 27% of people worked from home at least some of the time, and 6% worked wholly from home.
As expected, all of these figures increased during COVID-19 lockdown periods. The UKHLS COVID-19 dataset includes workers in paid employment and excludes those who are self-employed or were furloughed. The figures reveal, in April 2020 [the first lockdown period], 55% of people in employment worked at home ‘sometimes’ and 40% worked solely at home. In March 2021 [during the third national lockdown], 49% of people worked at home ‘sometimes’ and 31% solely at home.
The ONS Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPS) covers all workers, including people who are self-employed and/or were furloughed. OPS figures indicate that home working peaked in June 2020 when 38% of people worked from home exclusively and 11% of the workforce worked at home at least one day a week.
UKHLS COVID-19 data suggests the majority of workers in paid employment in January 2021 (88%) wanted to work from home at least some of the time once lockdown restrictions were lifted. In February 2022, ONS OPN found 84% of workers that had to work from home during the pandemic planned to carry on with a mix of home and office working. The proportion of workers planning to return to their place of work full-time declined too – from 11% in April 2021 to 8% in February 2022.
- UKHLS data from January-February 2020 found working remotely was higher for employees in the information and communication sector, the professional and scientific sector and the financial and insurance sector; and lower in the wholesale and retail sector, agriculture and manufacturing, and human health and social work. During the pandemic this trend became more pronounced, with the UKHLS COVID-19 study showing that in January 2021, more than 70% of people working in information and communication, professional and scientific and financial and insurance sectors were working at home compared to 39% in health and social care and 30% in manufacturing sectors.
- People with more responsibility and seniority were more likely to work from home. In January-February 2020, the UKHLS found 46% of managers worked from home in some capacity in comparison to 19% of non-managers. In January 2021, 52% of managers were likely to work from home compared to 30% of non-managers. Similarly, people with no qualifications were more likely to be at their place of work compared to graduates (with 86% of people without qualifications at their place of work in June 2020 compared to 21% of people with a degree).
- People with higher earnings tend to be in jobs with scope for home working – with UKHLS COVID-19 data revealing how employees working from home ‘sometimes’ reported higher annual earnings than those who ‘never’ work from home.
- People who are self-employed tend to work from home compared to employees. The UKHLS COVID-19 data found in January-February 2020, 24% of self-employed workers reported ‘always’ working from home compared to 3% of employees.
- In January 2021, UKHLS COVID-19 data showed 58% of employees with children worked at home ‘sometimes’ compared to 48% of people without children.
- LFS data on homeworking in January-March 2022 found the regions with the highest percentage of homeworkers were London (37% in January-March 2022), the South East (36.9%) and East of England (31.1%). Regions with a lower proportion of homeworkers included the North East (22.4%) and Yorkshire & Humber (26.2%).
OPN data in September 2022 found 22% of the workforce working from home at least one day a week and 13% working from home exclusively.
Data from the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) indicates how, in June 2021, 24% of businesses said they intended to use increased homeworking as a permanent business model going forward, while 28% were not sure. However, in June 2022 the CIPD undertook a survey of 2,000 employers. 63% of those surveyed said they planned to introduce or expand the use of hybrid working.
To date, academic research on flexible working during the pandemic has found both benefits and disadvantages, depending on the circumstances of employers and employees. In April 2022 the Pissarides Review was launched. A collaboration between the Institute for the Future of Work, Imperial College London and Warwick Business School, is researching the impacts of automation on work and wellbeing and how they are differently distributed between socio-demographic groups and geographical communities in the UK. The review is supported by an expert Steering Group, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, and expected to run until 2024.
While there are variations in the trends in flexible working by sector, occupation, qualifications, earnings and geography; what the datasets clearly highlight is how all forms of flexible working increased during COVID-19 and how many employees and employers want flexible working to continue in some form.
What does flexible working mean for rural areas? According to the Statistical Digest of Rural England, in 2020 there were 1,166,000 home workers in rural areas, accounting for 25% of all workers living in rural areas. This compares to 3,712,000 home workers in urban areas (16% of all workers living in urban areas). While the rate of home working increased across all areas between 2006 and 2020, the highest increase was in rural hamlets and dispersed areas (at 6.1%) and the lowest increase in urban areas (at 5.2%). There are some sectoral differences – with rural areas having higher proportions of home workers in agriculture, forestry and fishing (7.3% difference in favour of rural areas). What factors influence an employees or employers ability to work flexibly in rural areas? I offer two points.
Firstly, connectivity. According to the Statistical Digest, in 2020 the average broadband speeds in rural areas was 54 Mbit/s compared with 81 Mbit/s in predominantly urban areas. This variation is because there is less superfast broadband in rural areas and because rural businesses are typically further away from cabinets, with long copper line connections, leading to slower performance. In 2020, 0.9% of premises in predominantly rural areas were not able to access a broadband service with a download speed of 10 Mbit/s and upload speed of at least 1 Mbit/s compared to 0.3% of premises in predominantly urban areas. Superfast broadband is available for 92% of premises in predominantly rural areas compared to 97% in predominantly urban areas.
Ofcom found the demand for data continues to grow – with average monthly data volumes across fixed and mobile connections increasing in 2021. The average consumption per data user on mobile increased by 24% to 5.6GB per month. While mobile phone take up is close to universal [with 98% of homes reporting having one or more mobile phone devices], 61.8% of premises in mainly rural areas had indoor 4G coverage from all operators, while 2.4% had no coverage. The Government has set two targets for increasing mobile coverage by 2030: that 4G mobile coverage is available nationwide, and that the majority of the public has access to a 5G signal. The Shared Rural Network (SRN) is an agreement between Government and the mobile industry to improve rural mobile coverage to 2025 – with a focus on filling ‘partial not spots’ and investing in new masts in ‘total not spots’.
A study in the United States found that spreading broadband to rural counties encouraged the formation of new local businesses—but only for the least remote areas. Proximity to a city was still a vital driver of company formation, even where new technology to facilitate remote working was present. Similarly, a UK study found that broadband did more to stimulate urban economies than rural ones, when all other factors were accounted for — leading researchers to suggest that digital contacts do not fully replace real-life ones. More positively, there is evidence that expanding broadband into a location has a positive impact on women’s participation in the labour market. And crucially, there is evidence from some studies that providing broadband to a local area might encourage suitably skilled people to move to it.
While the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the Rural Powerhouse continues to caution how slow broadband connectivity and poor 4G and 5G mobile infrastructure is holding rural areas back; and despite various public and community initiatives underway to connect more rural communities; delivering digital connectivity is vital for people living in rural areas to work flexibly.
Secondly, distance. According to the Statistical Digest, the distance travelled by car decreased by 5% (or 462 miles) per person, per year, in rural villages, hamlets and isolated dwellings between 2010/2011 and 2018/2019. This was followed by a further decrease of 3,265 miles per person per year in 2020. There have also been decreases in the average trip length for all areas between 2010/2011 and 2020: rural village, hamlet and isolated dwelling saw a 27% decrease (from 10.1 miles to 7.9 miles); while rural town and fringe saw a 29% decrease (from 8.5 miles to 6.6 miles). This compares to a 17% decrease in urban with city and town (from 6.8 miles to 5.8 miles). In 2020 those living in rural areas travelled more miles for all purposes compared to their urban counterparts. However, the differences in commuting between rural and urban areas appeared minor: with 19% of travel attributed to commuting in urban areas and 18% in rural areas. In 2019, for people living in rural hamlets and isolated dwellings in a sparse setting, average minimum car journey times to places with 5,000 or more jobs was 50 minutes and some rural residents did not have access to centres of employment with over 5,000 jobs within an hour’s travel by car.
More recently, road traffic estimates published by the Department for Transport suggest traffic in 2021 was 12.1% lower compared to 2019 pre-pandemic levels. However, 297.6 billion vehicle miles were driven on Great Britain’s roads in 2021, an increase of 11.9% compared to 2020. Between 2019 and 2021 the reduction in road traffic for rural roads was higher than for urban roads (-12.9% reduction in rural areas compared to -10.9% in urban areas). The growth in road traffic in 2020-2021 has also been higher in rural areas compared to urban areas – with 184.5 billion vehicle miles on rural roads in 2021 (an increase of 12.8%) compared to 113.0% (or 10.5%) on urban roads.
It is clear that some employees want the ability to work flexibly going forward – and one that allows them to spend part of their week working remotely and part in the office. Academic studies have found that people working from home in rural areas, on average, accept 5% longer commuting times; and that for every additional 8 hours of working from home there is a 3.5% increase in commuting time.
Other researchers have found residents living in a village with more accessible markets, higher roads, and higher building density travel a shorter distance and emit less CO2. Meanwhile, residents living in the village with centralised living style and higher transit and destination accessibility travel less frequently but emit more CO2. According to transport and environment statistics from the DfT, CO2 emissions from transport are unevenly distributed throughout the UK. While average transport emissions for a UK local authority in 2020 were 281 kilotonnnes of CO2, high levels of emissions from transport were seen in urban areas such as Leeds and Birmingham (similar to pre-pandemic trends, despite 17% and 18% declines in transport emissions respectively), as well as rural areas like Cornwall.
A report on the spatial implications of remote working in Wales recommended that in locations where the density of remote workers is low, and the distance to workspaces longer, ‘pop up coworking and information coworking groups could be a means to support the development of a community of professional coworkers’. However, a European study on rural coworking spaces has suggested they are mainly used for networking, socialising and education and less for traditional distance work to avoid commuting. More recently, an economic impact study by IWG and Arup highlighted how rural and suburban areas in the UK could benefits from some £327 million a year as a result of investment in flexible office and coworking spaces for hybrid workers. They also estimate that 4,000 new jobs could be created for people to run these rural workspaces. In the United States, research suggests rural areas with a good mix of amenities and low cost of living, even if far from an urban area, stand to benefit from the spread of remote and hybrid work arrangements.
For flexible workers in rural areas, we need to ensure travel is practical, affordable and sustainable – alongside greater consideration of work spaces and the creation of rural-rural and rural-urban connections.
Since COVID-19 there has been a debate around whether the rapid rise in flexible working would affect where people live. Some argued that these effects would be temporary and localised, while others that these work patterns would have significant long-term effects. While some indicators show that demand for flexible working remains high, there is also emerging evidence on the vulnerability of flexible and hybrid workers amid an economic downturn and recession. For example, in the United States, Lyft (a ride-sharing app) made 13% of its workforce (some 683 people) redundant. 298 of these workers volunteered their working patterns to Layoffs – 138 listed remote working and 135 listed hybrid working as their preferred way of working. Will we see a reversal in the trend of flexible working and people returning to the workplace? However, at the current time, with a series of strikes and industrial action affecting multiple sectors of the economy continuing, the CIPD has listed alternative arrangements for employees unable to travel into the workplace – including homeworking, hybrid working and flexible working. If the ‘right to have’ flexible working becomes the default position in the UK, what future opportunities and challenges does this present for rural areas?
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Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration and a senior research fellow at The National Centre for Rural Health and Care (NCRHC). She is currently evaluating a support programme for patients waiting to receive NHS and local government services, a Warm Hubs scheme and the creation of a new community orchard. Jessica also sits on the board of a Housing Association that supports older people and a charity supporting Cambridgeshire’s rural communities.
She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk.
Website: http://roseregeneration.co.uk/https://www.ncrhc.org/
Blog: http://ruralwords.co.uk/
Twitter: @RoseRegen
