In 2024, around 4.23 million employees in the United Kingdom had employment contracts that allowed for flexible working hours, making it the most common flexible working practice in that year. The second-most prevalent type of flexible arrangement was an annualized hours contract, whereby an employee works a specified number of hours over a year, instead of working the same hours every week or month. There were approximately 88,000 employees on contracts that involved job-sharing, making it the least common type of flexible working contract.

Approximately 504,000 employees in the United Kingdom were employed on job contracts to work a compressed working week in 2024, compared with 490,000 a year earlier.

Introduction

Flexible Work Arrangements Statistics: Flexible work arrangements have transformed the global workforce, with over 58% of employees now working under hybrid or remote models. Driven by advances in technology and changing workforce expectations, 72% of companies have formalized flexible policies to attract and retain talent.

Organizations offering flexibility see a 25% boost in employee satisfaction and a 30% reduction in turnover. As flexibility becomes a cornerstone of modern work, understanding key data trends is essential for strategic workforce planning. Additionally, 80% of job seekers now prioritize flexibility as a top factor when evaluating potential employers.

In 2025, there were around **** million workers in the United Kingdom employed on an annualized hours contract, a type of contract where an employee works an agreed number of hours over an entire year rather than over a week.

There were approximately 88,000 employees on job-sharing contracts in the United Kingdom in 2024, compared with 103,000 in 2023. This type of contract, where two part-time workers perform the work of one full-time person, has seen a net decrease of around 97,000 when compared with 2013.

The statistics illustrates the effects of flexible working worldwide in 2018. During the survey, ** percent of respondents mentioned that flexible working improved their job satisfaction.

PWLB21 - Employees aged 18 years and over who have availed of flexible working arrangements (FWA) in their job in the previous 12 months. Published by Central Statistics Office. Available under the license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0).Employees aged 18 years and over who have availed of flexible working arrangements (FWA) in their job in the previous 12 months...

The number of on-call employees in the United Kingdom was 813,000 in 2024, compared with 776,000 in 2023. This type of work contract requires employees to work irregular hours at short notice, depending on the demands of their employers and has proven increasingly popular recently, with 202,000 more people working on-call in 2023 than there were in 2013.

Data supporting the impact assessment for proposals to extend the right to request flexible working to all employees. These proposals aim to facilitate the employee-employer information exchange that can increase the availability and take-up of flexible working, provide all employees with the same access to flexible working, and improve the functioning of the labour market. The data analyses of both time-series (e.g. Labour Force Survey) and regular (e.g. Work-life Balance Employee and Employer surveys) datasets.

Feedback provided to an online survey that sought the views of Canadians on allowing workers in federally regulated private sectors to formally request flexible working arrangements (FWAs) from their employers and which FWAs would help them to better balance their professional, family and personal responsibilities.

🇬🇧 United Kingdom English Number and rate of people aged 16 and over, working in London with a flexible working arrangement. This dataset is one of the Greater London Authority's measures of Economic Fairness. Click here to find out more.

The second Flexible Working Employee Survey was carried out in January 2005, and was conducted by BMRB on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). By interviewing employees, the survey aimed to determine awareness of the new right to work flexibly that was introduced on 6 April 2003. It also aimed to note the number of people who had made a request to work flexibly under the new right, their reason for making the request, and whether their request had been accepted or not.

The first Flexible Working Employee Survey, conducted in 2003-2004, is held at the UK Data Archive (UKDA) under SN 5245.

A dataset containing statistics on work-life balance, employee burnout, flexible work policies, productivity, and job satisfaction, based on surveys and reports.

Survey of HMRC staff working patterns and attitudes to mobile/flexible working. Updated: one-off survey. Data coverage: 2013/14

In 2024, there were just over 1.3 million workers in the United Kingdom employed on a term-time contract, a type of contract where the employee does not work every week of the year.

Employees aged 18 years and over who have availed of flexible working arrangements (FWA) in their job in the previous 12 months by type of flexible work arrangements

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. The second Flexible Working Employee Survey was carried out in January 2005, and was conducted by BMRB on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). By interviewing employees, the survey aimed to determine awareness of the new right to work flexibly that was introduced on 6 April 2003. It also aimed to note the number of people who had made a request to work flexibly under the new right, their reason for making the request, and whether their request had been accepted or not. The first Flexible Working Employee Survey, conducted in 2003-2004, is held at the UK Data Archive (UKDA) under SN 5245.

Employees aged 18 years and over who felt there are barriers to them taking flexible working arrangements (FWA) at work

The survey studied organisational practices, organisational change, job characteristics, workplace relations and well-being at work in Finland from the employee perspective. The contents of the survey were influenced by the MEADOW (Measuring the Dynamics of Organisations and Work) tool created to collect data on change at work and in organisations at the European level, both from employers and employees. Another influence were the national MEADOW surveys in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. This dataset forms the Finnish employee-level MEADOW survey. However, the Finnish survey also includes some national questions. Data were collected from employees of the private and public sector organisations that had participated in the employer survey. Both employer (FSD2955) and employee (FSD2954) surveys have been archived and the data can be combined using the organisation number variable. First, the respondents were asked whether they still worked at the organisation in question and what their job was. Job characteristics were charted with questions on work contract, working hours, use of foreign languages at work, supervisory or management responsibilities, presence and nature of group or team work, team member influence. The respondents were asked to evaluate their workplace regarding a number of aspects, for instance, enthusiasm, competence, employee well-being, management, utilisation of staff ideas. Assistance received from supervisor, co-workers or clients in difficult or overload situations, targets set for the job, achieving these targets, and working to tight deadlines or at speed were charted. Further questions investigated how often the respondents worked at home, or worked or were contacted outside normal office hours. Changes in work organisation were studied with questions on what kind of changes had been done in the organisation in the past two years, including changes in task division, organisational structure, working methods or systems, whether these changes had had impact on the respondent's work tasks, job security, career, meaningfulness of job, workload or pay. The necessity of these changes and R's satisfaction with involvement in the change process were charted. Possibility to participate in decision-making regarding own duties, and performance appraisal and its consequences were studied as well as own image of and pride in the work. Other topics included level of educational achievement or prior work experience required for the job, requirements regarding learning new things, helping others with advice, participation in improving own work or developing new products or services, participation in training or education paid by the employer, and sufficiency of training regarding work duties. Working time questions investigated working time arrangements, shift work, own influence over shifts, and unpaid and paid overtime. Employment security was charted by asking about likelihood of losing the job. Satisfaction with working time arrangements, job security and pay as well as what kind of changes had happened in staff numbers in the past two years were studied. Finally, employee well-being was investigated with questions on positive feelings about work, overall job satisfaction, feelings of stress, days of absence, and self-perceived work capability. Background variable included R's gender, age, household composition, highest level of education attained, number of years in paid work after full-time study, pay type and level, and occupation.