Flexibility is not freedom, study finds
New research from the University of St Andrews Business School urges employers to rethink their flexible-working policies, arguing that giving staff flexibility does not, in itself, help them switch off.
The study is led by Dr Giulia Giunti, Lecturer in the School’s Department of Management, with Professor Laura Radcliffe and Professor Rory Donnelly of the University of Liverpool, and Ragnhild Nordset. It appears in the journal Human Resource Management as hybrid and remote work spread and household compositions change.
The research draws on “border theory”, which treats work and non-work as separate territories that people cross every day. It identifies three ways in which the people and policies around us act as “boundary-keepers”: they can prompt someone to stop, help them work out how to stop, and signal that stopping is allowed.
These three mechanisms often fail to line up. A policy might encourage someone to take leave, but a heavy workload can prevent them from doing so. Another might permit time off for caregiving but not for rest, leisure or sport. When the mechanisms pull in different directions, support looks real on paper but breaks down in practice.
The team interviewed 45 academics at UK universities, split evenly between those partnered with children, those partnered without children, and single people without children. Participants also photographed their own work-life boundaries, capturing how porous those boundaries have become.
Parents felt the strain of managing caregiving alongside work. The study also points to groups that workplaces often overlook: people without children, and single people in particular, who reported being handed unsociable hours, given little say over their schedules, and finding their time outside work treated as less legitimate because it did not involve parenting.
These households are far from a minority. In 2025, the UK had 8.3 million couple households without children, 42 per cent of all family units, and 8.6 million people living alone, 30 per cent of all households, a pattern repeated across the European Union.
The researchers also warn of a subtler effect on women. Because caregiving is the most widely accepted reason for claiming time away, and women still carry most caring responsibilities, family-framed policies can tie women to caregiving roles rather than recognising their right to rest, career progression, friendship, sport or a life beyond the home.
Dr Giunti said:
“Flexibility is not freedom, and work-life balance, at the moment, is not for all.”
The researchers call on organisations to audit whether their policies genuinely help people disconnect and whether they work for everyone, not just parents.
Dr Giunti, who is also EDI Lead for the Department of Management, said:
“If organisations are serious about their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) commitments, they should not only identify whether a policy exists or not, but which mechanisms it activates and for whom, otherwise EDI remains rhetoric.”
The paper is available on the Wiley Online Library: Giunti, G., L. Radcliffe, R. Donnelly, and R. Nordset. 2026. “Prompting, Facilitating, and Legitimizing: How Work-Life Flexibility Policies and Relational Others Shape Boundary Management.” Human Resource Management1–20.