Flexible Working Time Research Articles

Flexible work: Right solution or fallacy

Flexibilization of labor is one of the most common ways to increase the efficiency and adaptability of the economy and companies in times of crisis and globalized economy. Flexibility of work can be internal, external, micro, macro, functional, numerical, financial. Ways of flexibilization can be quite diverse, ranging from deregulation of labor law regulations, through wider use of atypical forms of employment, flexible working time and work organization, etc. Although labor flexibilization brings numerous benefits, it is also accompanied by many negative aspects. Flexibilization of labor may be harmful if it is carried out haphazardly and if it is not balanced with measures intended to preserve social security for workers during periods of change.

Changing Work, Changing Health: Can Real Work-Time Flexibility Promote Health Behaviors and Well-Being?

Changing Work, Changing Health: Can Real Work-Time Flexibility Promote Health Behaviors and Well-Being?

Rezension zu: European Commission (Hg.): Flexible working time arrangements and gender equality. A comparative review of 30 European countries. Luxemburg: Publications Office of the European Union 2010.

Die Flexibilisierung der Arbeitszeitgestaltung und die Gleichstellung der Geschlechter sind zentrale Bestandteile europaischer Direktive. Der Expertenbericht der Europaischen Kommission bietet nun eine Zusammenfassung uber die gegenwartigen Praktiken flexibler Arbeitszeitmodelle in den 27 EU-Landern und drei EWR-EFTA-Staaten und stellt deren Auswirkungen auf die Gleichberechtigung der Geschlechter dar. Besonderes Augenmerk liegt hierbei auf der internen Flexibilitat, was einesteils die flexible Gestaltung der Arbeitsdauer beinhaltet und anderenteils die flexible Organisation der Arbeitszeit. Die Ergebnisse lassen darauf schliesen, dass beide Grosen wichtige Voraussetzungen fur den wirtschaftlichen Aufschwung darstellen. Es zeigt sich allerdings auch, dass eine zunehmende Flexibilisierung der Arbeitszeitgestaltung den Frauen auch zum Nachteil gereichen kann.

Rewarding rush-hour avoidance: A study of commuters’ travel behavior

Spitsmijden, peak avoidance in Dutch, is the largest systematic effort to date to study, in the field, the potential of rewards as a policy mean for changing commuter behavior. A 13 week field study was organized in The Netherlands with the purpose of longitudinally investigating the impacts of rewards on commuter behavior. Different levels and types of rewards were applied and behavior was tracked with state-of-the art detection equipment. Based on the collected data, which included also pre and post-test measurements, a mixed discrete choice model was estimated. The results suggest that rewards can be effective tools in changing commuting behavior. Specifically rewards reduce the shares of rush-hour driving, shift driving to off-peak times and increase the shares of public transport, cycling and working from home. Mediating factors include socio-demographic characteristics, scheduling constraints and work time flexibility, habitual behavior, attitudes to commuting alternatives, the availability of travel information and even the weather. The success of this study has encouraged adoption of rewards, as additional policy tools, to alleviate congestion, especially during temporary road closures.

A clinically focused discussion of luting materials

A luting agent's primary function is to fill the minute void between an indirect restoration (definitive or provisional) and tooth (or implant abutment) and mechanically lock the restoration in place to prevent dislodgement during function. The purpose of this paper is to provide a clinically focused discussion on the broad spectrum of luting materials currently available to help the general practitioner make appropriate choices. Resins are typically formulated for a specific function or restoration and offer strength, aesthetics, flexible working times, and very low solubility yet are technique sensitive, expensive and often hard to clean-up. Glass-ionomers offer good strength and optical properties plus the potential for fluoride release/recharge but may have short working times, are sensitive to moisture or dehydration early on, and take time to fully set. Resin-modified glass-ionomers are hybrid, dual-phase materials which are manipulated like glass-ionomer but set quicker and are stronger. Zinc phosphate cement, used successfully for over a century to lute well-fitting metal and metal-ceramic definitive restorations, is a very inexpensive, rigid material which displays very high early compressive strength yet acidity and solubility can be problems. Polycarboxylate cement (a hybrid of zinc phosphate) has lower compressive strength but high tensile strength and may be less injurious to the pulp. Zinc oxide eugenol and zinc oxide non-eugenol cements typically have good sealing abilities but their relatively low compressive and tensile strengths, inherent brittleness, and high solubility limit usage to provisional restorations or implant supported crowns. Claims for multi-purpose or universal use by manufacturers can be somewhat confusing and overwhelming. Even so, the busy general practitioner must have sufficient knowledge to help choose an appropriate luting agent for each unique clinical situation.

Fathers and work‐life balance in France and the UK: policy and practice

PurposeThis paper seeks to focus on the role of organizations in mediating the impact of national work‐life balance (WLB) policy on employees, in particular fathers.Design/methodology/approachIt presents existing research about WLB policy implementation in organizations as well as the findings of empirical work in insurance and social work in France and the UK (questionnaire survey, case study analysis, interviews with national and sector‐level trade union officials).FindingsThese indicate that fathers' take‐up of WLB policies is the outcome of a complex dynamic between national fatherhood regimes, organizational and sector characteristics and the individual employee. They suggest that fathers tend to use WLB measures to spend time with their families where measures increase their sense of entitlement (state policies of paternity leave) or where measures offer non‐gendered flexibility (reduced working time/organizational systems of flexi‐time). In line with other studies it also finds that fathers extensively use informal flexibility where this is available (individual agency).Practical implicationsThese findings have implications for the way WLB policies are framed at national and organizational level. At national level they indicate that policies work best when they give fathers a sense of entitlement, by giving specific rights linked to fatherhood (e.g. paternity leave or “daddy month”‐type arrangements), and or by providing universal rights (e.g. to reduced working time and/or flexible working time); however, where measures are linked to childcare they are often framed as mothers' rights when translated to the organizational level. The research also shows that informal flexibility is used and valued by fathers within organizations, but that such informal arrangements are highly subject to local variation and intermediation by line managers and co‐workers; hence, for effective and even coverage they would need to be backed up by formal rights.Originality/valueCross‐national comparative research into WLB policy and practice at national and organizational level is very rare. The empirical work presented in this paper, although exploratory, makes a significant contribution to our understanding of WLB policy and practice, particularly as it relates to fathers.

Beschäftigungs- und Lohnwirkungen von betrieblichen Reorganisationsprozessen

Organizational change is characterized by different measures of business policy, work organization and personnel policy, e.g. delayering, teamwork, job rotation, further training and education, incentive payment and flexible working time. These measures work both, alone and in combination, on employment and remuneration of employees of different skill levels. Relocation of responsibilities, team work or close customer contact call for communication skills, social competence, judgment, initiative, creativity and even the individual capacity to work in teams. If these skills are rather attributed to highly qualified workers, an enterprise may be strived to establish a higher qualification level after an organizational change. Against this background the hypothesis seems to be justified to assume, that organizational change causes adverse employment effects for low skilled workers.Based on linked employer-employee data of the Institute of Employment Research (IAB) Nuremberg, built with the IAB Establishment Panel and the employment statistics register, positive effects of organizational change on labour demand can be shown. No empirical evidence could be found for a skill bias caused by organizational change in this respect. The demand functions, deducted from the generalized „Leontief“-cost function, have been estimated for four skill levels as seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR). Our results indicate a significant influence of these variables, which measure reorganizational change. Evidence for a skill bias of reorganizational measures could not be found.Moreover positive effects on wages and stabilizing effects on employment appeared more often among middle or highly educated employees. This result corroborates the hypothesis of a skill biased organizational change. Clearly destabilizing effects on employment for low skilled workers could not be found in this study, despite using alternative methodological approaches.

Health among hospital employees in Europe: A cross-national study of the impact of work stress and work control

This article analyses the effect of working conditions on the health of hospital employees across Europe. Hospital employees often have demanding jobs that increase their stress levels and, consequently, their risk of health problems. Work control - typified by employee autonomy and working time flexibility - helps them cope with high levels of work stress. Researchers have traditionally studied the relationship between working conditions, coping strategies and occupational health from an individual perspective. We argue that the individual work-health relationship is closely connected with the social and institutional context. This study explores how work stress and work control influence the health of hospital employees and aims to understand cross-country differences in this respect. Using data on over 1500 hospital employees who participated in the study 'Quality of work and life in a changing Europe' (2007) in eight European countries, we used ordinal regression analyses to test a range of hypotheses. The results show that work stress has a negative effect on the health of hospital employees, while work control is not found to have any effect on their health. Comparative analyses reveal that the effects of working conditions on health vary across European countries. While working overtime is more closely related to poorer health in Eastern European countries, we found evidence of a positive relationship between job autonomy and health in Western Europe only, indicating that circumstances in the working environment have differing effects on employee health in Eastern and Western Europe.

Employee-Oriented Leadership and Quality of Working Life: Mediating Roles of Idiosyncratic Deals

Leader consideration has long been suggested to be conducive to quality of working life experienced by employees. The present study links this classic leadership dimension with more recent research on idiosyncratic deals, referring to personalized conditions workers negotiate in their employment relationships. A two-wave survey study (N = 159/142) among German hospital physicians suggests that authorizing idiosyncratic deals is a manifestation of employee-oriented leader behavior. Consideration had consistent positive effects on idiosyncratic deals regarding both professional development and working time flexibility. These two types had differential effects on two indicators of the quality of working life. Development related positively to work engagement, flexibility related negatively to work-family conflict. Cross-lagged correlations supported the proposed direction of influence between consideration and idiosyncratic deals in a subsample of repeating responders (n=91). The relation between development and engagement appeared to be reciprocal. Longitudinal results for the association between flexibility and work-family conflict were inconclusive.

The Effects of the Recent Economic Crisis on Social Protection and Labour Market Arrangements Across Socio-Economic Groups

The Great Recession did not only affect European countries to a varying extent, its impact on national labour markets and on specific socio-economic groups in those markets also varied greatly. Institutional arrangements such as employment protection, unemployment insurance benefits and minimum income support, working time flexibility and wage setting played a crucial role in determining to what extent the economic crisis led to higher unemployment, wage cuts or income losses and rising poverty. As the crisis gained momentum, the action of automatic stabilisation mechanisms built into the national tax-benefit and social protection systems was accompanied by heterogeneous sets of discretionary policy measures. While these factors can explain cross-country variation in labour market developments, they also lead to an unequal distribution of economic risks associated with the crisis across socio-economic groups. The present paper aims to investigate and assess to what extent the financial and economic crisis that hit the global economy in 2008-2009 impacted these labour market developments and to what extent different socio-economic groups were affected.

Innovative Work Practices, Information Technologies, and Working Conditions: Evidence for France

We investigate the impact of new work practices and information and communication technologies (ICT) on working conditions in France. We use a unique French dataset providing information on individual workers for the year 1998. New work practices include the use of quality norms, job rotation, collective discussions on work organization, and work time flexibility. Working conditions are captured by occupational injuries as well as indicators of mental strain. We find that individuals working under the new practices face greater mental strain than individuals who do not. They also face a higher probability of work injuries, at least for benign ones. In contrast, our results suggest that ICT contribute to make the workplace more cooperative and to reduce occupational risks and injuries.

Working time management and SME performance in Europe

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the management of working time flexibility and firm performance, measured by operating hours, in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe.Design/methodology/approachThe paper analyses the European Capital Operating time, Work and Employment Survey (EUCOWE), designed to collect workplace information on operating hours. With data on more than 17,000 establishments in six European countries – France, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the UK – the paper analyses working time patterns and operating hours.FindingsThe authors show the positive relationship between company size and operating times and how SMEs make more limited use of more advanced forms of working‐time organisation that may allow them to extend their operating hours. The use of less complex working time measures such as overtime does not have the same positive association with operating hours. However, the results also highlight that smaller establishments can still benefit from the adoption of certain working time practices. The results suggest that the influence of the regulatory environment on the use of working practices or the duration of operating hours is not straightforward, and as such the impact of national regulatory frameworks cannot be discounted in the country‐specific differences identified.Originality/valueThe paper uses the first comparable data on operating hours and working patterns to demonstrate the limitations on SME operating times across European countries.

Flexible working times: effects on employees' exhaustion, work‐nonwork conflict and job performance

PurposeThe aim of this study is to provide a useful conceptualization of flexible working times and to examine the relationships between flexible working times and employees' well‐being and peer ratings of performance. It is supposed that an employee's “time‐autonomy” would be positively related to performance and well‐being. On the contrary, an unfavorable effect of “time restriction” on well‐being is expected.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire‐study was conducted among 167 German employees from 17 different organizations. Information about in‐role and extra‐role performance was also obtained via peer evaluations.FindingsThe data support a two‐factor structure of flexibility. The time restriction factor adds to the degree of exhaustion and the work‐nonwork conflict, while time autonomy diminishes these outcome variables. However, the flexibility dimensions are unrelated to performance.Originality/valueThe multidimensional conceptualization of flexibility allows for the detection of advantages and drawbacks regarding the effectiveness of flexible working time models.

Sleep Well to Stay Safe: Ready for Primetime?

Sleep Well to Stay Safe: Ready for Primetime?

Function based manning and aspects of flexibility

The aim of the article is to examine the concept of flexibility from a shipping perspective. Flexibility is examined in order to develop strategies, theoretical and applicable, in the field of Function Based Manning (FBM), for achieving optimized manning, which is not the same as reduced manning, with a healthy crew. This is a complex concept in many aspects. Based on research on working life and work organizations conducted by social scientists, two aspects of flexibility are examined; functional flexibility including job enrichment and competence training, and working time flexibility. These issues are analyzed from a shipping perspective. The concept is double-edged in the sense that it entails both having flexibility and being flexible. Does flexibility only serve the interests of the employer? Or, do workers also benefit from flexibility? By combining these two aspects of flexibility, a win-win situation benefiting both employers and employees can be achieved. This article highlights and discusses strategies intended to promote the implementation of a model of optimized manning.

Os trabalhadores e suas vivências cotidianas: dos tempos de trabalho e de não-trabalho

Este artigo é um estudo das vivências cotidianas de trabalhadores em relação aos tempos de trabalho e de não-trabalho. O locus de análise privilegiado é o espaço da fábrica, a Volkswagen do Brasil, em sua unidade de produção do ABC - São Paulo, exemplo emblemático de iniciativas e negociações dirigidas a flexibilizar e intensificar a jornada de trabalho. A análise concentra-se no período compreendido entre 1995 e 2005, quando foram intensas as mudanças com respeito à organização e gestão do tempo de trabalho. O artigo inicia com uma breve discussão sobre os modos de construção social do tempo de trabalho nas sociedades contemporâneas, apresentando o debate recente na sociedade brasileira. A seguir, aborda o contexto da Volkswagen do Brasil, analisando as vivências temporais cotidianas dos trabalhadores, dentro e fora do local de trabalho.

Aging, Economic Insecurity, and Employment: Which Measures Would Encourage Older Workers to Stay Longer in the Labour Market?

In the present context of aging populations, the question of how to support older workers who want to stay in employment longer is of particular importance, especially from a social justice perspective with regards to income. The challenges faced by organizations and governments are unprecedented. Interesting conclusions can be drawn from our research with regard to these challenges. First of all, the perception of retirement appears more or less unchanged over the years and remains very positive. Consequently, one of the barriers to the employment of older workers may be the image of retirement itself, since it is still perceived as a gift or a right. Secondly, our results confirm that forcing people to stay longer in the labour market is a largely unpopular measure. Consequently, if public retirement plans offer limited income, governments and organizations should adopt a more voluntary approach to encourage older workers to stay in employment longer for a better income. Our results highlight the importance of the sector and type of job in the measures or incentives that could encourage older workers to stay in employment longer. Consequently, governments and organizations will probably have to adopt a contingent approach; i.e., all incentives do not necessarily fit all jobs or all sectors and social justice would require this be taken into account. We identified three sets of measures that could encourage older workers to stay in employment longer, and thus have access to better economic security: the reduction of working time, the flexibility of working time, and the individualization of retirement options and working time. The progressive reduction of their working time appears most interesting to our respondents. These measures appear to favour social justice in terms of income and right to employment at the end of active careers.

An entropy-based measurement of working time flexibility

Abstract Working time flexibility is of major concern to companies, and must be established by reaching arrangements with workers. Comparing flexibility arrangements is far from easy. Measures of flexibility that assume a probability distribution of future demand are not really measuring flexibility, but rather risk. We define a space of states made up of possible working hours over several periods, and apply three measures of flexibility to it: the proportion of feasible states, the average cost and a new entropy-based measure of flexibility (EMF). The EMF is based on Shannon’s entropy. We propose the use of three measures simultaneously for comparing the flexibility provided by a working time arrangement. Two examples are given: one that assesses the flexibility generated by using time accounts and overtime in a working time accounts (WTAs) modality, and one that compares the WTAs and hiring and firing (H&F) modalities.

Globalization and Working Time: Working Hours and Flexibility in Germany

This article challenges popular wisdom that economic globalization uniformly increases working time in industrialized countries. International investment and trade, they argue, have uneven effects for workplace bargaining over standard hours and over work-time flexibility, such as use of temporary or fixed work contracts. The authors explain how such globalization will tend to more substantially decrease standard hours than it does work-time flexibility. And they explain how works councils and union-led collective bargaining alter the way globalization affects both aspects of working time.The analysis of German enterprise data supports these expectations. Measures of globalization diminish standard working hours but yield more temporary work, fixed-contract work, and flexible working arrangements. Works councils and collective bargaining, however, mediate these effects in contrasting ways. Among enterprises without works councils or collective agreements globalization triggers more standard hours, but among firms with such representation globalization triggers fewer hours. With respect to flexibility, however, globalization increases use of temporary or fixed-term contracts more strongly where works councils or collective bargaining are present than when they are not. In short, economic openness has uneven consequences for working time, and firm-level labor representation channels those consequences in ways that highlight political agency in how people respond to globalization.

The Role of Gender in Varying Forms of Flexible Working

In this article we present empirical data from a research study investigating the implementation of the flexible working policies that emanate from the improving working lives standard in a National Health Service Trust in the UK. We argue that gender is accorded insufficient focus in the literature, considering the barriers that create a take‐up gap in formal flexible working practices. We further argue that gendered perceptions render unworkable attempts to portray flexible working as a gender‐neutral issue and demonstrate that such perceptions mean that formal mechanisms for flexible working continue to be considered to be a women's issue. We present data on informal flexible working mechanisms and suggest that a greater focus on combining these mechanisms with formal flexibility may help provide working time flexibility for a greater proportion of the workforce.