More than three-quarters of leading charities publicly state they offer flexible working as part of their benefits packages, analysis by Third Sector has found. 

Of the 50 charities included in Third Sector’s inaugural Charity Employer Index, a Market Report which ranks charities on their publicly available workplace policies and benefits, 38 made it clear on their websites that they provide flexible working options. 

The 12 organisations that do not advertise a clear flexible working offer on their careers or workplace benefits pages include Diabetes UK, the housing and homelessness charity Shelter, the Donkey Sanctuary and Alzheimer’s Research UK. 

The research showed that 20 of the 50 charities on the index stated they offered hybrid policies, with a combination of time spent in the office and time working from home, while just seven of the 50 charities indexed included job shares in their flexible working options. 

One in five openly offered career breaks.

Matt Smith, managing director of the consultancy Think, said the increase in flexible working seen across industries since the pandemic was a “fundamental and permanent shift in how we think about work”, adding that in the third sector, charities that had embraced the shift were benefitting the most. 

He said one particular area that had been “transformed” was recruitment. 

“Candidates are now hyper-aware of the signals in job ads that show a prospective employer gets it and those that don’t.”

Smith said he expected to see job shares, secondments and career breaks to increase as organisations recognised the value of those benefits in retaining staff. 

“The shift towards greater flexibility is here to stay, and the charity sector is really well-placed to offer people a better work-life balance as we see other sectors return to old ways of doing business,” he said. 

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