Mini Report : Flexible and Part-Time Working

Opportunities for flexible and/or part-time work in research are particularly important for returners. Daphne Jackson Fellows have all taken a career break of at least two years for family, caring or health reasons.  Our 2025 former fellows survey provided data and details on the working patterns and ongoing needs of our fellows as they re-enter the research workforce.

All Daphne Jackson Fellowships are flexible and part-time to allow our fellows to return to research while balancing other needs.  Many fellows find that while the reasons for a break have improved, they are often still present at lower levels. Fellows who took a break for health (5%) or caring (20%) reasons sometimes still manage health conditions and caring responsibilities alongside their return.  The majority of our returners cite family reasons (49%), or a combination of reasons that includes family reasons (24%), as the driver behind their career break. These fellows may continue to need to accommodate short school days, holidays and the ongoing support needed by a growing family. Many are tied to specific locations for family reasons. 

The experiences of our former fellows reflect broader working patterns across the UK, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Employment Rights (Flexible working) Act of 2023 has improved standards for flexible and part-time working, and flexible work has increased steadily over the last decade. As of May 2026, 41% of workers reported that they worked as either hybrid or fully-remote employees, while 42% said they travelled to work. According to a 2023 survey, 62% of respondents worked from home at least part of the time. Compared with 2015, the number of workers on flexi-time contracts alone had risen from risen from 3.2 million to 4.4 million.

As more workers choose some form of flexible work, the “flexibility stigma” is eroding, with employers and colleagues no longer associating flexible working with lower productivity or commitment.  Recent research suggests that the increase in flexibility and decline in penalties has resulted in higher wages for mothers in the UK who work from home.

Flexible work, including the ability to work remotely and control hours, has long been common in research, especially academia. Across the research landscape, academic autonomy has blended with universities’ hybrid working policies, while funders such as UKRI are increasingly building flexibility into grant structures.  These trends are reflected in our survey data, with over half of respondents reporting a flexible working arrangement.

While flexible working has become increasingly accepted, the picture shifts when we separate part-time work from hybrid, remote, flexi-time and compressed working arrangements. In 2024, 24% of employees worked part-time, most of them women. According to UK government figures, around  38% of women in paid-employment work part-time, compared with 14% of men.

Part-time work can come with penalties, including unpaid overtime, lower salaries, and fewer opportunities for career advancement, especially when performance is measured against full-time colleagues.

In research and higher education, these challenges are compounded by limited opportunities and insecure contracts. In teaching-only roles, 64% of roles were part-time between 2017-2025, with 43% of part-time roles on fixed-term contracts, compared with 21% of full-time staff. These roles reflect the long-term problem of academic precarity.

Opportunities for part-time work are even more limited in research-focused roles. As of 2023, only 14% of higher education jobs were listed as part time, while in 2025 19% of research-only roles and 17% of combined research and teaching roles were part-time. Taken together, the evidence suggests that access to stable part-time academic employment remains limited.

These structural barriers are reinforced by attitudes that penalise part-time workers, who are often seen as less dedicated to their careers than those who work full-time.

Again, the experience of our former fellows mirrors these broader patterns.  In our survey, bias against part-time work was the most common form of bias reported by fellows, ahead of bias against lack of recent publications regardless of the number of publications prior to a career break, age discrimination and lack of professional support for returners. 39% of respondents said that bias against part-time work made it difficult for them to re-enter research.

Former fellows also described working beyond their contracted hours, effectively being paid for part-time roles while working full-time hours. At the same time, they reported difficulties managing colleagues’ expectations of hours and outputs in a part-time role: “It was challenging to balance my part-time fellowship, as it wasn’t a common or fully accepted working arrangement at the time. This required significant planning and organization to coordinate my lab work with the schedules of full-time staff.”

While flexible working has become increasingly common, research culture has not always kept pace. A system that rewards long hours and maximising outputs can penalise qualified people who need to work part-time, particularly when these working patterns are viewed as accommodations rather than standard ways of working. This can limit access to employment, fair pay and promotion.

“Academia is an incredibly competitive space, and this drives a work-load model that discriminates against people with parental/caring/health-related limits to their time. There is no effective top-down regulation of workloads so typically the person who works the longest hours and is most flexible/available with their time will reap the most rewards.”

However, the research landscape is already changing. Funders are increasingly building flexibility into grant structures, and the new Women in Research Charter: “commits to funding schemes being genuinely deliverable on a part-time basis – including adjusted timelines, applications and assessments – so researchers can continue to lead their pioneering work however it best fits with their home lives.”

Further progress could come from hosting seminars and networking events during core working hours, including flexible working options in all research funding, and incorporating flexibility into funding and promotion assessments.  

Champions who recognise the value of returners and challenge assumptions about traditional career paths can also make a significant difference.  Former fellows also repeatedly highlighted the importance of supportive mentors and colleagues in their successful research return: “I had an extremely supportive and very influential colleague who was a champion of part-time work and women returners. He was the person who encouraged me to apply for research grants and persuaded my supervisor to contribute to the continuation of my research.”

Creating a culture that supports flexible and part-time work benefits not only workers but institutions as well. When researchers are forced out by inflexible systems, employers lose experienced staff who bring valuable transferable skills, including time management, prioritisation, communication and adaptability. Supporting non-traditional working patterns enables institutions to retain expertise, broaden the range of experiences represented in their workforce and attract talented researchers who might otherwise leave the sector. When flexible and part-time working are treated as standard rather than exceptional, the penalties associated with them decrease, creating a more inclusive and sustainable research culture that benefits both individuals and institutions.

Conclusions

The experiences of Daphne Jackson Fellows demonstrate that talented researchers can thrive when given the opportunity to work in ways that fit with their responsibilities outside work. Continued efforts to normalise flexible, and especially part-time, work in research will be critical not only for supporting returners, but for ensuring that research careers remain accessible to the widest possible range of talented people.

Embracing truly flexible and part-time working across the sector will help retain expertise, strengthen diversity of experience and enable institutions to benefit from the full range of skills available within the research workforce.