Working from home vital for disabled people to keep a job, DWP told ahead of benefit cuts

Arbitrary return-to-office mandates could disadvantage more than a million disabled people in the workforce, a new study has warned – and jeopardise the government’s ‘back to work’ agenda.

Five years on from the first Covid lockdown, and one in five UK workers (6.64 million) mainly work from home. Some 1.16 million of these employees are disabled.

According to sweeping new analysis – led by researchers from Lancaster University and Manchester Metropolitan University – working from home can work incredibly well for people in this latter group.

A staggering 80% of disabled workers in fully remote roles told researchers the practice had a “positive impact” on managing their health. The proportion reduces to 38% for those who work remotely less than half of the time.

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But employers, it seems, are less keen on the practice. An increasing number of businesses – including Amazon, Boots and JP Morgan – have issued return-to-office diktats.

And according to the new study, remote and hybrid roles are increasingly difficult to come by.

Researchers examined the roles available to job seekers through the Department for Work and Pension’s Find a Job portal over one month in the UK (8 December 2024 to 7 January 2025). There were 94,827 new jobs advertised – but just one in 26 had the option of hybrid or remote working. 3.2% of the roles were hybrid and 0.6% were fully remote.

This scarcity of roles alienates disabled workers, said Rebecca Florisson, principal analyst at the Work Foundation at Lancaster University – and runs counter to the government’s pledge to reduce the growing tally of people out of work.

“Remote work is not an ‘optional extra’ for many disabled workers but is vital to enabling them to get into and stay in work,” she said.

Some 85% of disabled workers surveyed described access to remote and hybrid working as “very important” or “essential” when looking for a new job. Fully in-person jobs will turn off the “vast majority of disabled workers who require access to home-working”, Florrison added.

“If employers are shortsighted and ignore the rising demand for flexibility in roles,” she said, “they are missing out on a vast pool of talent that could benefit their organisations, while further distancing disabled workers from the UK labour market.”

The number of people who are out of work due to long term sickness has surged to 2.8 million since the pandemic. Meanwhile, spending on disability and incapacity benefits for working-age people is up by £19bn in real terms since 2019-2020, and it is set to rise by £13bn by 2029-2030.

The Labour government has pledged to turn the around, promising to get people with health conditions back to work.

Its package of employment reforms – dubbed by ministers as the “biggest in a generation” – include an overhaul of Jobcentres, a youth guarantee to ensure young people are working or earning, and intensive and personalised support for disabled people.

But at the same time, Keir Starmer has described the “bulging benefits bill” is a “blight on our society” – and reports suggest that chancellor Rachel Reeves is planning to slash disability benefits in the upcoming Spring Statement.

This is likely to drive people further into poverty and away from work, experts have told the Big Issue. Return to office mandates do the same thing, said Florrison.

“A recent government study showed that a quarter of those out of work and claiming health and disability benefits state they might be able to work if they could do so remotely,” she explained.

“Yet recent calls by employers to return to the office overlook the critical perspectives and experiences of disabled workers who now account for almost one in four working age people in the UK.”

If the government concentrated on just halving the disability employment gap, researchers claim, it would reach its 80% employment target and deliver on its promise to get two million more Britons working.

Hybrid working is an important part of this, said Dr Paula Holland from Lancaster University.

“To start to close the disability employment gap, policymakers and employers must commit to the design of inclusive, high-quality jobs that remove barriers for disabled workers,” she added.

Labour has committed to making flexible working the “default from day one for all workers, except where it is not reasonably feasible”. The Employment Rights Bill legislation – that will enshrine this right in law – is currently making its way through parliament.

Questions remain over how much employers will be able to leverage this “reasonably feasible” definition to stop workers conducting their roles from home.

To strengthen the rights of workers, the study authors have called on the government to explore a legal duty to publish flexible working options in job advertisements, and to strengthen disabled workers’ ability to access remote and hybrid work as a reasonable adjustment.

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