The flexibility penalty: How it’s impacting women’s career progression and what leaders must do next
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The flexibility penalty: How it’s impacting women’s career progression and what leaders must do next
The flexibility penalty: How it’s impacting women’s career progression and what leaders must do next
Author: Hays Talent Solutions | Updated: April 2026
Flexible working didn’t stall women’s progression. But the way organisations implemented it did. What was intended as a structural change designed to level the playing field has, in many organisations, introduced a flexibility penalty: reduced visibility, slower advancement and fewer leadership opportunities.
Research by the World Economic Forum shows the scale of the challenge: 95% of women believe that requesting or using flexible working arrangements would negatively affect their chances of promotion.
What was designed to enhance opportunity has, for many women, become a hidden career tax.
In this blog, we’ll explore:
- What the flexibility penalty is - and why it’s increasingly linked to slower progression for women.
- Why the flexibility penalty represents a strategic risk for the C-Suite.
- How technologies risk reinforcing existing bias, especially without clear governance.
- What forward‑thinking organisations are doing differently.
What is the flexibility penalty?
The flexibility penalty, sometimes referred to as flexibility stigma, is the persistent belief that employees who work flexibly are less committed, less ambitious or less valuable to their employer.
While this stigma can affect anyone who deviates from the “always‑on, always‑visible” model of work, the evidence shows it disproportionately impacts women.
Research from Lean In identified that just one-third of women working mostly remotely received a promotion in the last two years. For on-site female workers, this number rose to over 50%. Crucially, promotion outcomes remained relatively similar for men - regardless of where they chose to work.
The result is a structural drag on women’s progression, impacting leadership diversity, succession planning and long‑term organisational performance.
How organisations embedded the flexibility penalty
For many years, “there was a natural momentum building behind flexible work”, states Lisa Morris Chief Customer Officer, Hays APAC. “It was slow, but for the right reasons – driven by meaningful conversations around what these changes would mean for equality and access to opportunity.”
Then, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the largest work-from-home experiment in history. It was “a real moment for flexibility”, recalls Lorraine Twist, National Specialism Director, Hays UK&I, “but decisions were driven by necessity, not deliberate design”.
While ways of working changed almost overnight, the systems governing progression did not. Performance assessments and promotion criteria, as well as sponsorship and reward mechanisms, largely remained anchored to pre‑pandemic norms. And as office mandates sharpen, presence has once again become a proxy for performance.
The result is a paradox: flexibility is now normalised, but those who rely on it most are quietly penalised by outdated assumptions about their commitment and contributions. “We lost the momentum of earlier discussions”, Lisa concludes, “including the healthy debates around why flexibility is beneficial to both organisations and individuals”.
Why the flexibility penalty is a rising leadership risk
The flexibility penalty cannot be dismissed as a cultural footnote. It is a strategic risk. Organisations are losing experienced women at precisely the point in which leadership pipelines need strengthening.
The data already points to a growing retention challenge:
- In the technology sector, one in five women plan to leave their employer within the next year, with 41% citing a need for more greater flexibility.
- In Engineering and Manufacturing, 39% of respondents to our global Salary Guide surveys plan on changing organisation in the next year. In Life Sciences, this climbs to nearly 1 in 2 (45%) of women planning to leave their current employer.
These trends point to a slow erosion of future capability, driven not by a lack of ambition, but by systems that continue to penalise ways of working.
What forward-thinking organisations are doing differently
Leading organisations recognise that flexibility cannot remain an informal benefit negotiated behind closed doors. To eliminate the penalty, flexibility must be intentionally designed into the operating model.
1. Move from ad‑hoc to intentional design
Flexibility should be treated as a leadership behaviour, not a benefit. When senior leaders, particularly men, visibly model flexible working patterns, they challenge expectations about what high performance looks like.
However, signalling alone is insufficient.
True progress depends on embedding flexibility into how work is structured. This includes clearly defined outcomes, role‑appropriate flexibility frameworks, and performance metrics that reward impact rather than visibility.
Crucially, a one‑size‑fits‑all approach rarely works. Lisa cautions against defaulting to ‘catch-all’ policies. “What flexibility means for a working mother returning to her role is very different to large parts of your working population. The conversation needs to take on a different flavour each time.”
Flexibility must be contextual, reflecting the realities of differing life stages and responsibilities across the workforce.
2. Actively sponsor your star performers
Women working flexibly are less likely to be put forward for stretch assignments and have fewer organic interactions with senior leaders. Over time, these small gaps compound into significant progression deficits.
Sponsorship is the corrective mechanism.
Unlike mentorship, sponsorship requires senior leaders to actively advocate for individuals when they are not present. It ensures high-performing women remain visible in moments that shape careers – from pay decisions and succession planning to leadership appointments.
For Lorraine, deliberate sponsorship is essential to building stronger organisations:
"As a senior leader, you need to put the ladder down and actively demonstrate that you want people with different backgrounds and different voices at all levels of your organisation. Because if there is nobody at the table that looks or acts or works like them now, they’re going to find it hard to move up into that space.”
3. Govern Artificial Intelligence (AI) with intent
The progression gap between men and women remains significant. Studies show that just 30% of entry-level women have received a promotion in the last two years, compared with 43% of men at the same level.
This disparity points to more than just performance. And research shows that when promotion decisions are made, men are more likely to be assessed on perceived potential, while women are judged on proven outcomes.
Without clear governance, AI risks codifying these inequities into automated decision‑making. Guardrails are essential to determine where AI should support decision‑making, how data must be interpreted and when human judgement should prevail.
At a time when only one in 10 organisations have formal policies governing AI’s role in performance and progression, the danger is no longer hypothetical – it is imminent.
What does the future look like for flexibility?
For Bianca Herbst, Business Director, Hays New Zealand, organisations are moving beyond the first phase of flexibility, in which “organisations and individuals were experimenting, redrawing and testing boundaries, finding new rhythms.
“Now, we’ll move into a second stage – defining what actually works for productivity, collaboration and wellbeing”, she explains.
Organisations that fail to address the flexibility penalty will continue to lose top performers from leadership pathways. Those that act decisively have an opportunity to redesign work in a way that supports both performance and equity. Ready to strengthen your culture? Speak to our team today.
Looking for more insights? Here's your next read:
- Is this the end of skills-based hiring?
- Human skills: The strategic imperative for workforce transformation.
- The cost of change: Balancing human emotion and strategic ambition.
Flexible working: FAQs
Q: Does flexible working reduce promotion chances for women?
Yes, when promotion systems prioritise visibility over outcomes. Evidence shows women working flexibly are promoted at lower rates than on‑site peers, while men’s promotion rates remain relatively stable.
Q: Is the flexibility penalty about individual choices?
No. The penalty is created by organisational systems, including performance metrics, sponsorship models and leadership norms, not by flexibility itself.
Q: How can organisations remove flexibility stigma?
By designing flexibility into roles, measuring outcomes instead of presence, actively sponsoring flexible workers and governing AI decision‑making.
Q: Is this relevant to all industries?
The risk is most pronounced in professional and knowledge‑based roles, but the underlying dynamics apply wherever hybrid work exists.