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In the days of high unemployment we probably thought it was good to have a job at all, and rather petty to be arguing about the time of day the work had to be carried out. But there are serious issues relating to the time of day and the days of the week (or year) employees have to carry out their work. These issues relate to the need to fulfil other responsibilities of life but also the need to rest and have breaks from work, retrain, or engage in lifelong learning. The timing of work can affect levels of stress as well as personal and family relationships, not least in the world of global time zones, work intensification and fragile families. As important as paid work is to having a life at all, it also has to be balanced in its quantity, its quality and its timing in order to have good health, good relationships as well as appropriate opportunities. Research has shown that greater employee flexibility as well as more autonomy over the timing and organisation of work and working hours have helped some employees with this balance. In addition, studies have not found any significant ill-effects on the bottom line. Flexibility about working time is something workplaces should offer and extend to all employees, in the context of a recognition that the business’s bottom line has to worked around and as a partnership between employer and employees. This can be argued to offer equity between employees over a lifetime rather than at a single point in time. It places rights along side responsibilities and as such may be a more genuinely collective response.
Is there enough working time flexibility?
In the days of high unemployment we probably thought it was good to have a job at all, and rather petty to be arguing about the time of day the work had to be carried out. But there are serious issues relating to the time of day and the days of the week (or year) employees have to carry out their work. These issues relate to the need to fulfil other responsibilities of life, being a father as well as a worker, keeping an eye on your mother when she is old, or keeping in touch with relatives and friends at a time when they are also not at work. Should having and maintaining good relationships or even good health in life take second place to paid work? Most people would think they have to be balanced along side paid work. In an era when studies have found the intensification of work and the DTI’s calculations put the costs of sickness absence from work to be £11 billion per year, it is important to think about a rebalance of work and life. Few want their tombstone to summarise their life as ‘I wish I had spent more time at work’. As important as paid work is to having a life at all, it also has to be balanced in order to have good health as well as good relationships.
A lifetime perspectivePaying attention to parents’ or carer’s needs among all employees is sometimes described as divisive and inequitable – hence something trade unionists should avoid. Alternatively, these are seen as women’s issues. But who among us does not have parents? Many of these will some day need care or assistance. Who does not have ill health from time to time? It is the case that the majority of workers will, over their life, require some flexibility to cope with their family’s needs and their own needs. Studies show that as many employed men as women, 15 per cent of the workforce at any one time, have caring responsibilities for older adults, although women do spend more hours than men in doing this type of caring. Seen over the life time, this is majority issue. The other factor to bear in mind is that the children of today’s parents are the workers of tomorrow whose taxes and contributions will pay our pensions. For this reason, we all have a stake in children’s care, and are bound into an implicit intergenerational contract.
Access to allAlternatively, people may want to take a break from work to recharge their batteries, or fulfil a life project. Greater flexibility to choose when you work over a week or a year can often offer such opportunities – to address the immediate crisis, to engage in lifelong learning, to work less after you reach retirement, to fulfil the life project, or visit your friends. It may be reduced hours for carers at some point in their life, but equally it can be a month of unpaid leave, working from home occasionally or regularly, having Friday afternoon off to make a long weekend to go on holiday…and so on. If flexibility of working time is a majority issue, equity has to be seen and judged in a lifetime perspective, rather than focussed at a point in time. This may also help to pull employees back from a sole pursuit of their individual rights to a sense of collective responsibility and of care for each other.
The business and partnership caseResearch has shown that all of these types of flexibility are in evidence in one or other workplace across the UK and working well. There are cases where the introduction of flexible working has improved productivity, and cases where performance has stayed the same but the workforce are happier. But what is the secret of successful flexibility? One element drawn out from a review of a number of studies is that flexibility is more successful when employees get more autonomy to decide about their work and how it is organised along side the offer of flexibility. Other studies have demonstrated that introducing flexibility as a partnership with the workforce, rather than a top down solution has many benefits. This way, flexible options can be customised to the workforce needs and concerns.
Different employersAre all employers receptive to offering greater flexibility to their employees? Not all are open to this but maybe more than you think are. Employers fall into one of three main groups; those who embrace flexibility because it makes sense; those who allow it when particular employees need some assistance but do not roll it out to the rest; and those who think an employee’s life is nothing to do with the workplace. The largest group is probably the middle one. It’s not just large employers facing recruitment, turnover or retention issues who are open to allowing greater flexibility. However, it is the case that these business pressures do cause employers to rethink their human resource strategies and workplace policies and practices. There are opportunities to move employers from a sympathetic response to one individual, to a response that is open to all. Research also shows that, in the UK but not the USA, there are greater opportunities for employee flexibility in unionised than in non-unionised workplaces. So unions in the UK have been at the forefront of introducing greater flexibility of working time. This is good tradition to maintain.
Things to bewareThere are things to beware. If only one group of workers are offered flexible working arrangements, this could give the opportunity for direct or indirect discrimination in future. Workers rights after taking up flexible working options need to be protected and agreed and possibly their right to return to earlier working arrangements in future. The greater the spread of employees that have access to flexible working arrangements, but also make use of these options, the less the potential for disadvantageous career or promotion side effects later. The same problems can arise between workplaces if workplaces tend to employ mainly women, or mainly men, as many do. While it is unhelpful as well inaccurate to see workplace flexibility as a women’s issue, it can require a strategy and careful choice of terminology to get all workers interested. In the USA, more men saw the potential benefits of flexibility when they were addressed as ‘fathers’ rather than ‘parents’. Being called a parent or ‘family-friendly’ was seen as code for ‘women’s issues’. Similarly, in one of my research projects to introduce more flexible working to a male dominated engineering workplace, men came on board with enthusiasm when they saw the potential for sabbaticals, retraining and lifelong learning opportunities, or longer holidays and weekends from time to time. There was also a single young man who wanted flexibility to visit and give care and attention to his ill parents more often. It is important not to stereotype carers as solely women.
Customised is bestDevising off-the-peg flexibility solutions might seem attractive and less time consuming where there are none already in existence. But richer benefits result from examining the organisation of work and why it leads to employees feeling pressured, taking worries home and missing sleep. In some workplaces employees were found to stay longer because they didn’t feel they had achieved anything by 5.30 pm due to constant interruptions all day. In this case the introduction of blocks of uninterrupted time helped achieve target deadlines and led to shorter hours. In an insurance institution, underwriters felt they had heavily pressured workloads and the reorganisation of their duties plus the introduction of a secretary to take on their paperwork helped productivity and work-life balance. Investigating the causes of work pressures helps to identify the type of flexibility that will assist particular groups of workers. Studies show that employees much appreciate such changes and productivity improvements can result.
Better communication neededAlso, failing to communicate adequately within workplaces about the arrangements that are available makes the provisions of less value. It can lead to cynicism among employees. Unions, again, have had a role to play in improving communications between employers and employees within workplaces. It is still the case that communication about employers’ policies is poor across all groups of workers, especially in larger workplaces. Studies show it is not uncommon for 60 per cent of employees to claim they have no idea about their employer’s provisions. Unions can chip away at this along side encouraging employers to do the same, but other routes to communication also need to be found. Providing employees with non- threatening access opportunities to information for example on a workplace intranet, or through named Advisors might help. Clearly, for many people, they only need to know about the provisions and policies when they want to use them. So having a known access point for information may cover many people’s needs. In conclusion, flexible working arrangements are very popular and are meeting a need in many workplaces, helping employees balance their work, family and personal lives. However, they can be extended to al employees who also have needs for lifelong learning, retraining, sabbaticals and fulfilling life projects. They are not a panacea to all problems. Nor are the provisions on offer always the best, or even known about by employees. But greater flexibility in working arrangements can be part of new working arrangements that help employees face some of the pressures of modern living and get the most our of work and life. The potential problems associated with such arrangements will be less the wider is the access to all employees, and the more they are communicated within workplaces. Unions have an important role to play in getting the best type of arrangements in the first place, helping with communication, and addressing issues of equity, but from a lifetime perspective.
References
Dex,S. and Scheibl,F (1999) ‘The business case for family-friendly policies’ in Journal of General Management, 24(4), 22-37.
Dex,S. and Smith,C. (2002) The Nature and Patterns of Family-Friendly employment policies in Britain: Bristol: The Policy Press, and Joseph Rowntree Foundation. For downloadable papers see:
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/5112.asp
http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/research/working_papers/2001/wp0117.pdf
Dex,S. and Scheibl,F. (2002) SMEs and flexible working arrangements, Bristol: The Policy Press. Downloadable summary can be obtained from:
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/5102.asp
Dex,S. (2003) Families and work in the 21st century, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. For free downloadable summary see:
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/923.asp
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/n43.asp
http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/927.asp
Shirley Dex, Institute of Education, University of London.
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