Gender dynamics and hybrid work trends in the UK

Hybrid working is here to stay and appears to have increased in the UK since the pandemic (between January 2021 and October 2024), according to recent ONS data. The sudden onset of the pandemic initially led to employers focussing on enabling remote working to maintain business operations. Since then, many workplaces have transitioned to hybrid models, which allow employees to split their time between home and the office.

The ONS data also highlight a surprising trend: fathers in the UK are now more likely than mothers to work from home (15% to 12%). This gender pattern for remote work becomes nearly equal for those who are not parents. The recent data, collected between April and June 2024, make an interesting comparison with statistics on the immediate impact of Covid-19 on UK work arrangements in 2021. The circumstances then required flexible schedules and disproportionately increased women’s caring responsibilities, leading to a phenomenon named “double shift” (McKinsey, 2021). The pandemic circumstances exacerbated a historical trend where women have traditionally been disproportionally burdened with career and domestic demands (Hochschild, 1997). The increase in care duties during the pandemic may have temporarily pushed more women out of the workforce or into less flexible roles, resulting in exacerbated career disparities. As a result, more men are working from home now after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, according to the ONS.

Industries where workers are most likely to work remotely in the UK are: Software Development; Insurance; Mathematics; and Information Design and Documentation (Indeed Hiring Lab, 2024) and these are majority male dominated (Career Smart, 2023). In contrast, industries with a large workforce, and requiring a physical presence in the workplace are disproportionately female: in health and social work, 77% of the workforce is female (House of Commons, 2024), and in teaching it is 74% (Gov.UK, 2024). As a result, we can explain why more men work from home than women.

Paradoxically, despite carrying a higher care load, women have fewer opportunities to work remotely even after the pandemic (TUC, 2022) and despite women having a stronger preference than men for these arrangements (HRD Connect, 2024). The evidence from multiple surveys and studies suggests that:

1. Hybrid or remote arrangements allowed more women to take up work (Resolution Foundation, 2021).
2. Women consider themselves more productive when working from home, in comparison with men (British Business Excellence Awards, 2024).
3. Women are more likely to say they have more time for juggling housework when they have the opportunity to work remotely (Durham University, 2024).
4. Women prefer telework because harassment is less likely to happen online compared to in person (WEF, 2023).

For working fathers, the societal perceptions of caring responsibilities are evolving and there is a greater emphasis on shared parenting responsibilities. This cultural shift is encouraged by policies that support paternity leave and flexible working conditions. Yet evidence collected during the pandemic showed that equitable sharing of household responsibilities did not happen (Harkness, 2021). Instead, men exaggerated their contribution to housework and caring tasks. In this way, men were starting to recognise that traditional gender roles are unfair, without automatically connecting them to broader gender inequality (Carian and Abromaviciute, 2023). For fathers working from home there is evidence that they tend to sit down longer than women in similar work arrangements (Wahlström et al, 2023), which can be explained by women taking more housework and caring responsibilities while at home.

Both men and women can derive benefits derived from working from home, either full or part-time. The ONS data suggest that people in these work arrangements, regardless of gender, spend 15 more minutes a day on sleep and 15 more on exercise. Hybrid working makes a positive difference to work-life balance with potential health benefits for both sexes, so the uneven distribution of hybrid working could further exacerbate inequality.

Remote working is not all positive, however. The disadvantages derive mainly from a lack of physical presence. Remote connection impairs free-flowing communication with team members, particularly with those outside the immediate collaboration team, resulting in the silo effect. A more perverse impact of telework is the reduction of the proximity effect, which denotes a preference of the managers for those employees who attend in office in conditions of equal performance. As a result, people working from home tend to be disadvantaged in promotion (BSA, 2024) and this effect is noted for both men and women.

Further ONS data shows that homeworkers are predominantly over 30 years old, have several years of experience in the industry, and are more likely to be managers. Those who have worked from home for a while become more effective over time (Allen et al., 2024), therefore this suggests that with time and experience, the workforce can adapt and thrive in these new work arrangements. Remote management, however, has its challenges because it reduces the sense of belonging in the employer’s branded office of the employer (Durakovic and Aznavoorian, 2024). Equally, it is not ideal for difficult or personal conversations.

All in all, it is surprising that more fathers than mothers work from home, despite the preference of women for this working arrangement. A few dynamics cause this: gender roles, opportunities for flexible work arrangements, and their effectiveness for the work-life balance. More importantly, employers should prioritise creating tailored policies for hybrid work arrangements that are adjusted with employees’ preferences where feasible, to increase wellbeing and productivity.