EDI Case Study resource 2025

Spotlight on flexibility as a factor

Flexible working arrangements were considered a key enabler by almost all of the interviewees and there are examples of this throughout this toolkit. Flexibility is typically considered with regard to gender but there were a number of examples beyond this. Flexibility contributes in a number of ways to the overall ambition on EDI:

  • Sectors with longer standing flexibility in their working arrangements tend to have a naturally larger pool of senior women due to historic choices made by some women around which industries better enable a family friendly approach.

  • Flexibility is a strong cultural indicator – the most flexible organisations highlighted that where the flexibility is celebrated rather than tolerated, it is utilised by a wide range of staff at all levels for a wide range of reasons beyond family life. One private school described their first step in changing the culture as being to ‘assume the answer to a flexible working request is yes.’

  • Often there appears to be a lower tolerance for flexible arrangements in the early career grades, where women and employees of more ethnically diverse backgrounds are overrepresented in healthcare. Evelina London has taken an interesting approach to tackling this, through an Anti-Racism lens.

Evelina London: Tackling racial bias in their flexible working approach