Employment-related Demands and Resources – New Ways of Researching Stress in Flexible Work Arrangements

Abstract

Research into the relation between flexible work and health and well-being has been inconclusive so far. In this paper, empirical evidence is provided for the employment relationship as a new source of stress in flexible work. Employment-related demands and resources explain additional variance in levels of health and well-being beyond classic task-related aspects of stress. Furthermore, we show that control as a conventional task-related resource buffers the health impact of employment-related demands, highlighting the importance of considering both task-related and employment-related aspects of stress in flexible work arrangements.Key words: stress, health, well-being, employment, flexibility(JEL: I10, J81, O15)1. IntroductionOver the last decades, employment has changed due to the demand for flexible work in a rapidly changing environment. A structural change to make employees' work attendance more flexible is the use of atypical work arrangements. For a long time, the standard employment contract specified permanent full-time employment. This form of employment remains the norm, but so-called atypical forms of employment (e.g. temporary work, fixed-term employment or part-time work) are becoming more important (OECD, 2002, 2010). Compared with permanent full-time employment, some studies reported a negative connection between atypical work arrangements and health (Benavides, Benach, Diez-Roux, & Roman, 2000; Kattenbach, Demerouti, & Nachreiner, 2010; Kivikaki et al., 2003), while others reported a positive relation (Butler, Grzywacz, Ettner, & Liu, 2009; Costa, Sartori, & Akerstedt, 2006; Guest, Isaksson, & de Witte, 2010; Isaksson & Bellagh, 2002). Some even report no relationship at all (Bernhard-Oettel, de Cuyper, Berntson, & Isaksson, 2008; Bernhard-Oettel, Sverke, & de Witte, 2005; Lundberg & Lindfors, 2002).What is clear is that the way we work has changed and that research comparing different forms of employment has thus far produced inconclusive results (de Cuyper et al., 2008). A different approach to studying health and well-being in flexible work is to assess new sources of stress in this kind of work rather than comparing different employment relationships. Specific stress stemming from the employment itself is not covered by classic stress-concepts like the Job Demand-Control model (J DC) (Karasek, 1979), which mainly covers task-related stress. New demands, such as the necessity to search for the next job or to balance multiple employers, and new resources, such as employment control, need to be considered. We propose that stress in flexible work needs to be assessed with regard to both task-related stress as well as employment-related stress.The importance of the employment relationship for levels of health and well-being stems from its potential to influence effort as well as control and support at work in several ways. The employment relationship determines how much effort is needed to (1) search for employment, (2) stay in employment and (3) balance the demands of multiple employers and multiple worksites. It further determines how much control an employee has over (4) access to work itself and (5) the terms and conditions of work. Furthermore, the employment relationship influences (6) the amount of support at work, (7) the ability to satisfy domestic needs, and (8) the relationship between workers and their community through irregular work demands or work schedules (Lewchuck, de Wolff, King, & Polanyi, 2005, p. 2).This paper has three objectives: 1. Building on previous research, we extended the concept of employment-related stress. Specifically, we developed new scales measuring employment relationship demands and resources and empirically tested their relationship to health and well-being outcomes. 2. We tested for incremental validity of employment-related demands and resources beyond task-related aspects of stress. …