Women in UK Manufacturing 2026: Building flexible manufacturing workplaces

The annual Women in UK Manufacturing report, led by Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy’s Dr Jennifer Castañeda-Navarrete, explores how flexible working can help UK manufacturers attract, retain and develop a broader range of talent while creating more inclusive and resilient workplaces.

Produced by the Women in Manufacturing UK (WiM UK) initiative, Time to flex: Building flexible manufacturing workplaces  examines progress for women across the sector and asks how manufacturers can rethink when, where and how work is organised. Drawing on workforce data, a survey of manufacturing employees and practical case studies, the report identifies opportunities for employers to make flexibility work across a much wider range of manufacturing roles.

Flexible working: a strategic workforce necessity

UK manufacturing is navigating economic uncertainty, technological change, demographic pressures and intensifying competition for skills. Against this backdrop, flexible working is becoming increasingly important to organisations’ ability to attract, retain and develop talent.

Flexibility in manufacturing cannot simply mean working from home. The report considers a much broader range of approaches, including flexible start and finish times, compressed hours, part-time working, job sharing, alternative shift patterns, annualised hours and hybrid working where roles allow.

The evidence suggests that there is often greater scope for flexibility in manufacturing than employers initially assume. Rather than asking whether a role can be flexible, the report encourages organisations to consider what flexibility is possible while continuing to meet operational requirements.

This year’s report draws on a survey of 83 manufacturing employees alongside interviews, focus-group discussions and insights from manufacturing leaders. It finds growing demand for flexibility, but also significant differences in how accessible it is across occupations and workplaces.

Progress has stalled – but important gains continue

Women’s overall representation in UK manufacturing remained broadly stable in 2025, following the significant progress recorded the previous year.

The report highlights a mixed picture:

• Women accounted for 28.2% of the manufacturing workforce in 2025, compared with 28.4% in 2024.
• Women’s representation in manager, director and senior official roles increased from 24.8% to 27.3%.
• Representation in professional occupations reached 28.7%, while women’s share of skilled trades rose from 8.2% to 10.4%.
• The proportion of women in manufacturing from non-White ethnic backgrounds remained broadly stable at 13.7%.
• Representation among disabled women increased from 19.2% to 21.2%.
• The manufacturing gender pay gap narrowed slightly to 14.8%, although it remains above the UK average.

Achieving the government and WiM UK ambition of 35% women in manufacturing by 2035 will require women’s representation to increase by a further 6.8 percentage points over the next decade.

While overall progress has paused, women continued to gain ground in several traditionally male-dominated occupations. The report also highlights how digital transformation is reshaping the sector’s occupational mix, creating new opportunities while potentially affecting roles in which women have historically been more strongly represented.

Why flexibility matters

The findings show that flexible working can make a meaningful difference to people’s experience of manufacturing work.

Flexible start and finish times were the most widely used form of flexibility among survey respondents, reported by around 66%, followed by remote or hybrid working at 55% and informal flexibility based on manager discretion at 42%. More innovative approaches such as job sharing, term-time working and flexible shift arrangements remain much less common.

Among employees who had asked for, or wanted, flexible working, caring responsibilities and work–life balance were the leading motivations.

The survey also found that:

• 57% associated flexible working with an improved work–life balance.
• 40% reported reduced stress or fatigue.
• 56% said access to flexibility was very or extremely important to their decision to remain in their current job.
• 11% said flexible working had enabled them to remain in manufacturing.
• 37% reported that automation or digital technology had increased flexibility in their role.

At the same time, barriers are not purely operational. Respondents identified technical or operational requirements, workplace culture and manager attitudes as the three most common constraints on working flexibly.

This suggests that policies alone are not enough. Leadership, communication and consistency are critical to ensuring that employees feel able to use flexibility without fearing that it will affect their progression.

Rethinking what is possible in manufacturing

The report showcases organisations that are challenging traditional assumptions about how manufacturing work has to be organised.

HEINEKEN UK, for example, uses a portfolio of approaches including part-time working, job sharing, compressed and annualised hours, alternative shift patterns and adjusted start and finish times. Its experience demonstrates how job sharing can help retain experienced employees in shift-based manufacturing roles while supporting knowledge transfer to the next generation.

Arla Foods UK has focused on leadership education, experimentation and changing the conversation around flexible work. Its approach encourages managers to consider how a request could work rather than starting from the reasons it might not, using trials to explore workable arrangements.

The report also draws on examples from Beko, Lush and optashift to show how employee consultation, communication and thoughtful shift design can make flexibility more accessible without losing sight of operational performance.

Together, these examples reinforce one of the report’s central messages: flexibility does not mean offering identical arrangements to everyone. It means understanding the requirements of individual roles and finding ways to give people greater choice and control where possible.

Making flexibility work: six practical actions

The report sets out six practical steps manufacturers can take to build more flexible workplaces:

1. Ask people what would make a difference – start by understanding what employees need rather than assuming what flexibility means to them.
2. Make shifts predictable – providing greater notice, consistency and easier shift-swapping can give employees considerably more control.
3. Look for flexibility in every role – examine which elements genuinely need to be fixed and where alternative arrangements could work.
4. Get ready for the 2027 legislative changes – review flexible working policies and ensure managers are equipped to explore alternatives constructively.
5. Make flexibility part of workforce strategy and organisational culture – ensure flexibility is visible, accessible and supported in practice, not just written into policy.
6. Start with what is possible – test practical changes, assess the results and build on what works.

The report stresses that manufacturers do not need to transform every working arrangement at once. Even relatively small changes to shift patterns, notice periods, start and finish times or shift-swapping processes can make jobs accessible to people who might otherwise reduce their hours, leave the sector or decide not to apply in the first place.

A call to rethink how work is organised

No single model of flexible working will work across manufacturing, and flexibility alone will not solve the structural barriers facing women in the sector. But the evidence suggests that employers often have more room to rethink working arrangements than they realise. Manufacturers should start with their people, reconsider how jobs and shifts are designed and experiment where there is scope to do things differently. The aim is not to choose between the needs of employees and those of the business, but to find better ways of organising work that benefit both.

“The conversation about the representation of women in manufacturing is not only about attraction, but also a lot about retention. We need to focus more on what needs to change in organisations so that women who enter the manufacturing workforce can actually remain in the sector, and not only remain, but progress and reach leadership opportunities.”

 

Dr Jennifer Castañeda-Navarrete, lead author, Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy

About the WiM report

The report is authored by Jennifer Castañeda-Navarrete, Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy, IfM Engage, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge; Nikki Slowey, Flexibility Works; Rose Sargent, Make UK; Eun Sun Godwin, University of Wolverhampton; Laura De Pieri, High Value Manufacturing Catapult; Valeria Ramirez, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge; and Robert Crossman, Director, optashift.

The report provides an overview of progress and continuing challenges for women in manufacturing, with a particular focus on how flexible working can support the attraction, retention and development of talent.

The report is structured as follows:

• Section 1 reviews changes in women’s participation in UK manufacturing during 2025, including developments across occupations, industries, ethnicity, disability and pay.
• Section 2 examines evidence on flexible working and its relevance to manufacturing.
• Section 3 presents findings from the survey, interviews and focus-group discussion with manufacturing employees and leaders, exploring the barriers, impacts and emerging approaches to flexibility.
• Section 4 sets out a call to action and six practical steps for creating more flexible manufacturing workplaces.

About Women in Manufacturing UK

The Women in Manufacturing UK Initiative was founded in 2022 to address the gender imbalance in the UK manufacturing sector. Bringing together academics, practitioners and industry professionals, WiM UK works to create more inclusive workplace cultures, support career development and open pathways to leadership, with the ambition of increasing women’s representation in UK manufacturing to 35% by 2035. The 2026 report continues that work by focusing on how the design and organisation of work itself can help a wider range of people participate, remain and progress in manufacturing.