Good news for remote work jobs in the UK

Despite increasing calls to return to the office, the share of UK job postings mentioning remote or hybrid work remains high.

New data from Indeed shows job postings mentioning remote or hybrid work remain high at 15% as of end-May, down from a peak of 16.6% back in March, but well above the levels of around 3% seen pre-pandemic.

Despite attention on return-to-office (RTO) calls from a number of businesses, remote and hybrid work continues to be widely offered. Even in categories such as Banking & Finance, where RTO calls have been loudest, the share of remote/hybrid roles remains elevated at 39%, down from a peak of 45% in February 2024.

New remote working reforms expected

The UK is working on employment reforms, which will make flexible working more feasible and should make remote working the default.

Flexible working is already a day one right, thanks to legislation introduced by the former Conservative government, which came into effect from 1 April 2024.

This means employees can request flexible working from their first day of employment, instead of needing to wait for 26 weeks’ service, notes legal firm Lewis Silkin.

Employers can refuse a request based on one or more of the eight business reasons listed in legislation. These are:

• The burden of additional costs.
• Detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand;
• Inability to reorganise work among existing staff;
• Inability to recruit additional staff;
• Detrimental impact on quality;
• Detrimental impact on performance;
• Insufficiency of work during the periods the employee proposes to work;
• Planned structural changes.

Under the planned Employment Rights Bill, there will be two key changes:

• An employer can only refuse a flexible working request if it is reasonable for them to do so. 
• An employer must state the ground for refusal and explain why it is reasonable to refuse the request on those grounds. 

If the Bill is enacted, employment tribunals will be able to consider whether it was reasonable for an employer to decide to reject a request.

This is intended to encourage careful consideration of requests and enhance access to flexible working.

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