National family policies and the association between flexible working arrangements and work-to-family conflict across Europe

Abstract

Objective: This paper explores how national family policies moderate the association between flexible working arrangements and work-to-family conflict across countries. Background: Although flexible working is provided to enhance work-family integration, studies show that it can in fact increase work-to-family conflict. However, certain policy contexts can help moderate this association by introducing contexts that enable workers to use of flexible working arrangements to better meet their family and other life demands. Method: The paper uses the European Working Conditions Survey of 2015 including data from workers with caring responsibilities from across 30 European countries. It uses a multilevel cross-level interaction model to examine how family policies, such as childcare and parental leave policies, can explain the cross-national variation in the association between flexible working arrangements, that is flexitime, working-time autonomy, and teleworking, and work-to-family conflict. Results: At the European average, flexible working was associated with higher levels of work-to-family conflict for workers, with working-time-autonomy being worse for men’s, and teleworking being worse for women’s conflict levels. In countries with generous childcare policies, flexitime was associated with lower levels of work-to-family conflict, especially for women. However, in countries with long mother’s leave, working-time-autonomy was associated with even higher levels of work-to-family conflict for men. Conclusion: The results of this paper evidence how flexible working arrangements need to be introduced in a more holistic manner with possible reforms of wider range of family policies in order for flexible working to meet worker’s work-family integration demands.