🧭 Let's think about flex — new from NHS Employers & agilab (University of Sussex)

Flexible working policy is not the same as flexible working practice. That's the core message from Dr Emma Russell (Director of agilab, University of Sussex) and Sam Owen (NHS Employers; agilab steering committee member), drawing on five years of NHS research.

The finding: statutory rights (the UK's nine types of flexible working) too often get applied as a rigid, one-off contractual change — ironically inflexible in itself. What actually determines whether flexibility works is manager mindset, not policy wording.

Two mindsets emerged from the research:

✅ Enabling mindsets — managers who design work around mutual (not just organisational) needs, recognise that one size doesn't fit all roles or people, and treat flexibility as an experiment to learn from.

🚫 Mindset blockers — managers who see flex as "special treatment," assume certain roles/grades don't qualify, or worry about optics in the current climate.

Why this matters: "we work flexibly" has been a core premise of the NHS People Promise since 2020, and flexible working is now embedded in the 10 Year Health Plan — with a bigger role expected in the forthcoming NHS Staff Standards and 10 Year Workforce Plan. Yet NHS staff satisfaction with flexible working opportunities currently sits at just 58% (latest NHS staff survey).

To close that gap, agilab has produced a range of research reports plus an evidence-based managerial toolkit 🧰 to help managers find agile solutions to workforce problems and build enabling mindsets. These sit alongside the new "Think Flex First" campaign, and include real NHS exemplars showing how decent, agile flexible working has been rolled out successfully — and how it's benefited both staff and service-users.

The wider point applies well beyond healthcare: flexible working succeeds or fails on managerial psychology, not policy design alone. 💭

Read the full blog post here