Creative Knowledge Employees’ Assesment of Flexitime Utilisability

Abstract

The outcome of creative work in the IT, technology and R&D business depends heavily on the efficient utilization of the knowledge and creativity of the employees. Flexibility in working time arrangements may provide an opportunity to improve the use of individual intellectual capacity through aligning working time better to personal needs. We have performed a survey among Estonian IT and product developers, engineers, applied researchers and other creative R&D employees to find out their standpoints on the possibilities to use flexible working time in their work. This paper presents ordered probit estimates of employees’ perceived utilisability of flexitime in the case of those employees who do currently not have working time flexibility. We find that in the technology industry as well as in public R&D institutes employees perceive the utilisability of flexitime for creative knowledge work particularly highly. Middle level specialists in creative work in the IT, technology and other R&D business appear to have a 16 percentage points higher probability to find that flexible working time could be used to a large extent in their job compared to top and middle managers. Although based on a small subsample, this pilot study reveals the potentially underutilised possibility to enhance knowledge use efficiency in creative R&D jobs in IT, technology and other research and development intensive areas. Employers should consider providing access to flexitime for knowledge employees if the nature of work allows.