The Covid pandemic threw up challenges for us all, but there was one upside: it opened up a world of flexible working options. Within a matter of days of lockdowns coming into place, many workplaces adjusted to offer working from home as standard. But as we navigate our new normal, will flexible working continue?

Although the government promised in 2019 to introduce reforms to make flexible working the default, little progress was made until Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi introduced the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) bill to parliament in June 2021. The bill is now at the committee stage, where it will be discussed in detail before heading to the Lords and Commons for further reading.

If the law is passed, it is a first step towards making flexible working the norm, something women have long talked about needing to achieve equality in the workplace and in the home.

“Flexible working is no longer just a nice-to-have,” Simon Kelleher, head of policy at Working Families, a charity supporting parents and carers in the workplace, tells Stylist. “It’s a lifeline providing a pathway into employment and helping families avoid prohibitive childcare costs.”

The ‘right to request’ framework, which has been in place since 2014, is limited. Currently, employees who have been with their employer for 26 weeks are entitled to make one formal flexible working request a year, and must explain to their bosses the impact their flexible working arrangement would have on the employer. The employer then has a whopping three months to respond to the request.

As employment law stands now, the lack of flexibility in the workplace makes a parent’s day-to-day life more difficult to manage, requiring them to pay out large sums of money for childcare costs.

“Beyond that, it limits the opportunities that mothers have to build their careers and progress in employment, and in the worst instances their ability to stay in employment,” says Kelleher. “This phenomenon has been described as the motherhood penalty, and contributes to child poverty and the gender pay gap, and feeds right through to gendered pension inequality.”

When Ali went back to work as a classroom teacher and head of English after her first baby, she expected that her request for flexibility, previously agreed upon, would be respected. “However, when I returned to work it was clear that they were not prepared to be flexible in practice, and I was constantly asked to come into school for training days, parents’ evenings, or open evenings that fell on my time off,” Ali tells us.

Soon after, she was called into a meeting with the head teacher and was told she had to return to her full-time position or give up her management role. “The head shut down any potential of discussion of other options and could give me no reason why this change needed to happen apart from the fact that it was what he wanted,” she says.

In the following months, Ali claims she was targeted by the headteacher and other staff for wanting to be both a mum and an employee. “I was called a difficult woman and told I was being emotional, not coping with a career on top of motherhood,” she recalls. 

Her hope of flexible working, so that she could both be present with her child and continue progressing at work, was constantly berated, resulting in Ali struggling with depression and panic attacks. While she wanted to continue progressing her career, she couldn’t bear to put her job above her family.

“So I quit teaching,” said Ali, who now has two children and is working as a freelance writer and studying for a PhD in creative writing. “It has already paid off because since September we have had bouts of chicken pox, Covid and stomach bugs and I have been able to keep working through it all, either in the evenings or while the boys are resting when at home.”

While she doesn’t regret the decision she made, Ali doubts she would have quit her job if her employer had allowed her to work flexibly.

The flexible working bill is the first step towards helping mothers like Ali stay in and progress at work, while simultaneously caring for children.

If passed into law, the bill will make requesting flexible working a day-one right. It will remove the requirement for the employee to explain how the arrangement will work, enable employees to make two requests per year, reduce the decision-making time to two months, and require a consultation between the employer and employee if the request is rejected.

“This bill is a big step in the right direction,” says Kelleher. “It moves us toward a working world where flexible working is the default – where everyone can fully meet their work and caring responsibilities, and where all parents and carers have an equal opportunity to find and progress in secure, paid work. Ultimately that’s good for families, and it’s good for employers and economic productivity.”

Bharti Lim is reaping the benefits of working for an employer who fully understands and accommodates for her as a mother of two children.

“In my interview, I asked for part-time and was asked how many days I would like to do,” Bharti recalls. “I asked for three days and was told it wasn’t a problem. I still work three days a week, which is almost unheard of in most technical cyber security roles; it’s a very male-dominated field.”

When she has taken an hour out to attend school assemblies, sports days, or meetings in school, Bharti has never once been made to feel guilty for working flexibly. “There is an understanding that I have children at home,” she says. “I am not penalised for this or judged for putting my family first. I work hard and my manager knows that my commitments get delivered.”

Before having children, Bharti worried her career would remain at a standstill, or that she would be penalised for working around her children.

“None of these are the case for me,” she says. “My career has progressed into a senior role and there is lots of support available to continue that journey. I love working for an organisation that understands people have lives outside of their jobs.”

While the proposed flexible working bill isn’t perfect, if passed, it will be the first successful flexible working legislation since 2014, a step closer to wider flexibility in the workplace so that women can thrive both at home and their careers, like Bharti has.

“It’s not a silver bullet to achieve the working culture that we’d like to see in the UK,” adds Kelleher. “But we hope that it will nudge more employers to think carefully about job design and how roles can be performed flexibly.”