Every month, we gather data insights drawn from the millions of signals we collect on Flexa. This month, three numbers stood out. Each one challenges a common assumption. Together, they make a case for rethinking how you construct and communicate your EVP.

Early careers candidates are +116% more likely to prioritise great office perks than the average Flexa user

The assumption that younger candidates are indifferent to their physical workspace is not just wrong — our data suggests that it’s almost precisely backwards. Early-career candidates on Flexa are more than twice as likely as the platform average to flag great office perks as a priority. They are not choosing the office reluctantly: they are actively seeking it out and evaluating it critically.

It’s worth noting that this sits in an interesting tension with broader candidate trends. Our Talent Insights Report 2026 found that across the general candidate population, office perks rank near the bottom of benefits priorities, with dog-friendly offices cited by just 7% of candidates. The most popular benefits leaned towards structural flexibility and financial support, not environment. What the early careers data tells us is that this group is a genuine outlier. They are bucking the broader trend, and that makes the signal more significant, not less so.

The Times' Generation Z project also found that younger workers value the social life and collaborative energy of the office, even when they also want home-working flexibility on other days.

What is shifting is not whether early-career candidates want to be in the office, it’s the standard they are holding the office to. For a generation that has seen remote work normalised, a commute needs to be justified. The office is no longer the default; it is a choice. And they are choosing based on what it actually offers them: collaborative spaces, social infrastructure, the informal learning that happens in proximity to colleagues, and the practical perks that make the journey worthwhile.

For Talent Acquisition teams and employer brand professionals, the implication is direct. If your office environment is genuinely strong, you are not shouting about it loudly enough in the channels where early-career talent is looking. If it isn’t strong, that gap is now a competitive disadvantage with a significant and growing part of the candidate market.

What to do with this: Make your office a specific, visual, concrete part of your employer brand for graduate and early-career audiences. What does it look like? What happens there on a Tuesday afternoon? What makes the commute worth it? 

Parents on Flexa are prioritising time flexibility 22% more than the average user

Parents on Flexa are prioritising time flexibility 22% more than the average user. On the surface that looks like a clear, unified signal from a well-defined group. Dig one level deeper, though, and a more complicated picture emerges: mothers are almost twice as likely as fathers to select it.

That gap matters. Not because it tells us that mothers care more about flexibility, but because it tells us that fathers have learned not to say they do.

Time flexibility is a practical necessity for parents managing childcare, school runs, and the unpredictable rhythm of family life. The fact that parents as a group over-index on it so clearly reflects how central it has become to the way working families evaluate potential roles. Employers who fail to articulate what time flexibility actually looks like in practice are losing parents, and particularly mothers, before the conversation has even started.

But the near 2:1 ratio between mothers and fathers is where the real story lies. It’s not that fathers do not need or want time flexibility; the preference is there. The signal in the job search is not. That gap is the suppression effect of flexible working being framed, marketed, and culturally positioned as something only mothers need, for so long that fathers have simply stopped flagging it.

And that framing has consequences that extend far beyond the job search. When fathers do not feel that time flexibility is available to them, they don’t ask for it. When they don’t ask for it, the default distribution of caring responsibilities at home stays exactly where it has always been. 

Our Talent Insights Report 2026 highlights that schedule flexibility is becoming just as important as location flexibility across the entire candidate population. The future of work is not just about where people work — it’s about when. The organisations that get ahead of this will be the ones that treat time flexibility as a universal offering, and communicate it that way from the very first touchpoint a candidate has with their employer brand.

Time flexibility needs to become the norm for all parents, not a concession granted to mothers and quietly withheld from fathers. The data shows that parents overwhelmingly want it. The near 2:1 ratio shows that not all parents yet feel equal permission to ask for it. Changing that starts with how employers talk about flexibility, who they show using it, and what signals they send about who it is really for.

What to do with this: Audit every piece of flexible working content in your employer brand. Is it mothers in the imagery? Women in the case studies? If so, you’re not just missing fathers — you are actively telling them this is not for them. Feature fathers, partners, and male employees at all levels talking openly about time flexibility. Make it visible, make it normal, and make it clear that time flexibility in your organisation is for every parent who needs it.

Neurodivergent candidates are +70% more likely to choose part-time working than the average Flexa user

This is the data point that most directly exposes a structural barrier in how most roles are advertised. Neurodivergent candidates on Flexa are 70% more likely than average to select part-time working as a preference. This signals what sustainable employment looks like for a significant portion of this talent pool.

Our Talent Insights Report 2026 adds to this conversation. Neurodivergent candidates prioritise diversity 46% more than average, and core hours flexibility 44% more than average, reflecting the need for schedules that accommodate varying energy levels and focus patterns. Mental health support is 39% above average as a priority for this group. Notably, they are 24% less likely to want set hours and 24% less likely to prioritise office-based work. Taken together, this is a picture of candidates who need genuine autonomy over how and when they work, not a standardised version of flexibility.

The report is also clear on the direction of travel: demand for part-time roles and job sharing is increasing across the platform. Neurodivergent candidates are at the leading edge of a broader shift towards what the report calls structural flexibility, arrangements that are built into the role itself rather than bolted on as an afterthought.

For many neurodivergent individuals, full-time employment carries costs that are not visible to hiring teams: the energy required to manage sensory environments, to navigate social dynamics, to mask behaviours that would otherwise risk attracting negative or critical attention. Part-time hours are not about working less, they’re often about working at all.

Employment data from the UK government highlights this urgency. The employment rate for autistic people in the UK stands at just 31%, compared to 54.7% for all disabled people. These are not abstract statistics. They represent an enormous pool of experienced, skilled people who are structurally locked out of roles that default to full-time as a non-negotiable requirement, often without that requirement ever being genuinely examined.

If your default is to advertise every role as full-time unless there is a specific reason not to, you are making a hiring decision. Just not a deliberate one.

What to do with this: Before publishing a role as full-time only, ask whether that is a genuine requirement of the work or simply the inherited default. Where part-time is feasible, say so explicitly in the job description, not as a footnote, but as a named option. For neurodivergent talent in particular, the visibility of that option in the posting itself is what determines whether they apply.