I was delighted to speak in the UK House of Lords last week in support of my colleague Baroness Taylor’s Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill, which has Government support.

I opened my speech by commenting on the huge impact Covid has had on the world of work and how we must take the opportunity of such significant disruption to think hard about what work is and how we should be setting the parameters – as employers, employees and most pertinently for us, as legislators.

“Coming out of that experience [of the pandemic], we must take all of that experience into how we think about work and structure it, and how we fundamentally underline the essential truth of work and employment: that it is a relationship. It should never be seen as simply transactional; it is relational. That is why there is a lot of writing, understandably, around hybrid working and lots for all of us to think about. One thing must be clear to all of us, coming out of Covid: work, employment, cannot mean five days a week, 8 am until 6 pm, in the office—but nor can it mean five days a week at home on Teams, on your tod.”

Lord Holmes of Richmond, House of Lords, 19th May 2023

I am hugely supportive of the proposed legal changes because, as my colleague Baroness Taylor put it,

This modest package of measures will help secure more flexible working, will meet the needs of individuals and businesses, and will create a situation where there is more constructive dialogue between employee and employer. This matters, and it could make a great difference. A recent ONS study showed that, if a person had flexible working opportunities, it really made a difference to whether they were able to stay in the labour market. The measures will also help employers who want to retain staff and retain skills.

Baroness Taylor of Bolton, House of Lords, 19th May 2023

Currently, under Part VIII A of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (as amended), employees with at least 26 weeks’ continuous service have the right to request a change to their working hours, times or location and have that request considered by their employer in line with a statutory Code of Practice.

Employers are currently obliged to respond to such flexible working requests within three months. After making such an application, employees are currently prevented from making another one for the following 12 months.

Employees are also currently obliged in their application to explain what effect their request might have on the employer and how to deal with that.

This Bill will change the Law so that:

Employers will be required to consult with an employee before rejecting a flexible working request

Employees will be permitted to make two requests for flexible working in the same 12-month period

Employers will have to decide on whether to approve or reject a request for flexible working within two months (instead of three currently)

Employees will no longer have to explain the effect of their request on the employer.

Flexible working is popular with employees. Research shows that where flexible work is mentioned in job ads, 30% more applications come in. As an employer wouldn’t you want to secure the brightest, best, talent for any role – and wouldn’t a larger pool to recruit from give you a greater chance of finding it?

It makes sense. It is not about where work takes place; it is more about how we experience work, what it feels like, how it is structured and, fundamentally, how it is made human.

Back in 2018 when I was conducting research for my review into how to open up public appointments to disabled people we heard often how beneficial it would be to have greater flexibility in the application and interview process and my recommendations included that “appointing departments should be open to alternative means of application and assessment” and interviews via “phone or online video called should be offered as standard”.

It is hard to imagine now quite how forward-thinking and impossible that sounded to many pre-Covid. The fact that these particular barriers to flexible working have been eradicated is perhaps one small silver lining of the pandemic.

I welcome that this Bill will remove more. There is a pressing need to rethink work. As I said during my speech, work is not simply transactional, it is about relationships and is it about being human.

Recent research by Gallup found 30% of people said they had a friend at work and that corresponded directly with productivity and retention. Those who did not have positive relationships at work were more likely to be unhappy/leave.

Finally, the algorithmic elephant that is all too often in the room in so many of our discussions: AI, machine learning, LLM—is having a profound effect already, not least on work and employment. If we just look at this morning’s newspapers, we see the headlines screaming out: “Bloodbath of AI impact on employment”, with the BT decision yesterday. Should we accept that prophecy of doom: the sense that the bots are coming, our jobs are going, we are all off to hell and we are not even sure there is a handcart? I do not think so.

We should be neither Panglossian nor terrified about the prospects, we should be evidence-based and rationally optimistic about what we as humans, individually and collectively, can do alongside AI and all the new technologies, which are in our human hands. They are incredibly powerful and certainly could do a lot of harm and damage, not least to the labour market, but we should conceive of them, in essence, as tools, incredibly powerful tools but tools in our human hands.

If we do not make a success of AI and all the new technologies in our human hands, that will be a human failure on our part, not a failure of the technologies. The opportunity is clear. If we get it right, we can have the augmented worker.

The critical point for all of us to focus on is the transition—as some parts of the labour market get hollowed out, how we intervene to support and help to transition those individuals and communities to the new opportunities that I believe will come through. Transition, transition, transition is where government should be focused if we are to make a success of AI and all the other new technologies in our human hands.

Lord Holmes of Richmond MBE, House of Lords, 19th May 2023

We need to be thinking much more about how we ensure work benefits us on a human level and this flexible working bill is a welcome step in that direction.