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This colloquium paper is based on a two year empirical research project investigating the ways in which flexibility is worked within the context of two further education colleges in England. The discourse of flexibility has been identified as one of the governing metaphors of change within the workplace. Educational institutions have positioned doubly in relation to this discourse. On the one hand, they themselves have to become more flexible organisationally, adopting the management and employment practices often associated with notions of the flexible firm and learning organisation. On the other hand, in their role as provider of learning opportunities, they are required to provide more flexible forms of learning to service the requirements of the economy and demands for lifelong learning. However, while organisations and those within them are subject to these discourses, they also work on and with them. It is to an examination of the ways in which flexibility is worked by managers, lecturing staff and students and the work that this does that is the focus for this study. The colloquium paper offers a brief overview of the project and identifies key themes emerging from the analysis. The four themes focus on the ways in which flexibility: (a) produces an ethos of bus(y/i)ness; (b) promotes a dissolution of boundaries and roles; (c) invests the past with a nostalgic stability; and (d) reconfigures the relationships between work, home and leisure.