The Flex Factor: Why Flexible Working Was Never Just About the School Run
A few months ago, I logged off at 1pm on a Wednesday, not for a school run or a parents' evening, but because my Godson had tickets to his first ever concert and I'd promised him I'd be the one to take him.
A couple of weeks later, a friend turned up at my door mid-afternoon needing a brew and someone to sit with because she felt overwhelmed. I dropped a message in Teams, shut my laptop and put the kettle on.
None of that would have happened in a job where flexibility was something I had to ask for, justify, or save up annual leave to cover. It happened because I work somewhere flexible by design, rather than flexible as an exception.
Why Flexible Working Isn't Only for Parents
Say flexible working to most people and they'll picture a parent leaving early for school pickup. That image isn't wrong, it's just narrow, and because it's so dominant, it quietly tells everyone else that flexibility isn't really meant for them.
It's for the colleague who does their best thinking at 6am before the office fills up. It's for the person grieving a parent, whose ability to function on any given Tuesday has nothing to do with how long ago the funeral was. It's for the person who just does better work after a run, or some daylight, or a couple of hours away from a shared inbox.
The Wellbeing and Performance Case
This isn't only a nice-to-have, and the data backs that up. Research from the University of Bath, drawing on a nationally representative UK sample of more than 25,000 people, found that neurodivergent employees are significantly more likely to experience precarious employment and lower job tenure, and that flexible and homeworking practices can substantially improve those outcomes. The CIPD's 2024 Neuroinclusion at Work report found that a third of neurodivergent employees regularly feel overwhelmed at work. That's not a performance issue, it's a design issue.
The CIPD's 2025 Flexible and Hybrid Working report found that 80% of employees say flexible working has had a positive impact on their quality of life, yet nearly half still don't have access to it in their current role. That's the gap where good HR strategy earns its keep.
I think about grief in much the same way. When I lost my dad, the workplace I was in gave me structure and familiarity, and I clung to that sense of normality. But structure without flexibility just becomes another thing to perform through. Grief doesn't move in straight lines, and neither does recovering from burnout, or a flare-up, or a genuinely hard week. Most people's lives don't fit the template the policy was designed for. They just don't say so.
The Law is Catching Up
This week, first secretary of state Louise Haigh told the TUC that employers refusing a flexible working request must "sit down with their employee, properly consider it and explain why." She was clear that this doesn't mean granting every request, but insisted each one "can and should be taken seriously."
That's not just rhetoric. It reflects reforms under the Employment Rights Act landing this year, which introduce a genuine reasonableness test for flexible working refusals. Employers will need to cite one of eight statutory grounds for turning a request down, put the reasoning in writing, and be able to show how each request was assessed, what alternatives were considered, and how the decision was reached. Handling has to be consistent across the organisation, not dependent on which manager happens to pick up the request. Get it wrong, and employees can bring a tribunal claim, with compensation of up to eight weeks' pay on the table.
For charities and students' unions already stretched thin on HR capacity, this turns flexible working from a values statement into a compliance requirement with a paper trail. Organisations that have already built trust and clear expectations into how they handle flexibility, rather than leaving it to individual managers' discretion, are most of the way there already. The ones still treating it as an occasional favour have real work to do.
What Flexible Working by Design Actually Looks Like
The real difference isn't about hours or location. It's about where the default sits. In a flexible-by-exception culture, rigidity is the default and flexibility is the special case you have to request and prove you deserve. In a flexible-by-design culture, trust is the default. You don't have to explain why you're logging off for a concert or a brew with a struggling friend. You just go, and the work still gets done, often better, because you're not spending energy managing how your own life looks to other people.
For chief execs and senior leaders in the voluntary sector, this matters well beyond individual wellbeing. We're often asking people to do emotionally demanding work: supporting beneficiaries through crisis, navigating funding pressure, holding space for communities in real need. Asking that of people while refusing them flexibility in their own lives doesn't hold up over time. It shows up in retention, in sickness absence, and in a quieter erosion of goodwill that's much harder to put on a budget line.
NCVO and ACEVO made this point directly in their joint report Time to Flex, calling on charities to lead the way by advertising all roles as flexible by default. That call was made in 2022. The gap between where most organisations are and where they could be hasn't closed as fast as it should.
Building It Into Policy, Not Just Culture
Flexibility by design doesn't mean abandoning service delivery. If you run a helpline or a drop-in centre, someone needs to be there during the hours it's open. It means being honest about which parts of a role genuinely require fixed hours or physical presence, and building real flexibility into everything else, rather than treating the whole role as rigid because one part of it is.
There's a fairness question too. Flexibility that only works for people with understanding managers, or people confident enough to ask, isn't flexible by design, it's flexible by luck. Clear expectations about cover and communication, shared visibility of who's around, and trust extended consistently rather than handed out as a personal favour: those are the habits that make the intent real. And flexibility isn't a substitute for managing performance. A culture that's relaxed about hours can still be exacting about outcomes. Arguably it needs to be.
I got to take my godson to his first gig, make my partner's birthday feel special, and be there for a friend who needed me, all within my first two years working at Atkinson HR, and without having to ask anyone's permission. That isn't a perk. It's what happens when an organisation decides flexibility is for everyone, not just the people whose reasons are easiest to picture.
At Atkinson HR, we work as a strategic partner to charity leaders across the sector, helping them build people policies that are genuinely flexible, properly inclusive, and sustainable enough to withstand funding pressure and service demand. This isn't just advice we give, it's how we actually work. With the Employment Rights Act's reasonableness test now taking effect, that also means making sure your flexible working policy and process can stand up to scrutiny, not just reflect good intentions. If you're rethinking what flexible working looks like in your organisation, we'd love to help you get the balance right.
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