Improvements in technologies, shifting labour markets, and evolving worker preferences are fundamentally changing the way in which work is organised and performed. Recent years have seen the increasing normalisation of a growing variety of remote and distributed work arrangements. Increasingly, companies are adopting flexible work policies such as hybrid work arrangements and Work From Anywhere to access and attract distributed talent and to enhance employee wellbeing and productivity. 

While researchers around the world have begun to examine the effects of these policies on outcomes for employees and companies, the implications of novel work arrangements have not yet been comprehensively studied. Researchers have also previously lacked a comprehensive, reliable, and regularly updated dataset of company policies and practices to facilitate this work. 

Flex Index is a public dataset provided by academics at LSE and IE to share and democratise information about the flexible work policies of thousands of employers. The dataset is provided as a resource for the public, and in particular for researchers studying topics such as flexible work practices and the future of work.

Flex Index

Flex Index sources information on flexible work policies from job descriptions, information on company websites, press releases, and newspaper and media reports. We use an AI classifier to assemble relevant job postings and other data sources and make an initial evaluation of the company policy, which is then manually checked by a trained researcher. The data available for each company is regularly reviewed and updated.

We are currently revising data quality to ensure accuracy. Data will be made available from an online repository on this page once we conclude the process. Work will continue to keep the dataset regularly updated and to complete missing information using historic job postings data.