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Work-life Balance and Flexible Working Arrangements

Work-life Balance and Flexible Working Arrangements. Věra Kuchařová, Research Institute For Labour and Social Affairs. Contents. Basic questions about the use of f lexible w orking a rrangements - FWA Demand- supply relations (E-ers x E-ees) Expectations and reality of FWA

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Work-life Balance and Flexible Working Arrangements

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  1. Work-life Balance and Flexible Working Arrangements Věra Kuchařová, Research Institute For Labour and Social Affairs

  2. Contents • Basic questions about the use of flexible working arrangements - FWA • Demand- supply relations (E-ers x E-ees) • Expectations and reality of FWA • Positives and negatives of flexibility

  3. Data sources • Primary data: • GGS – Generation and Gender Survey (2005) • FEE – Family,Employment, Education (2006-2007) • Published data: • Eurostat • European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

  4. Basic questions on incidence and extension of flexible work arrangements • Where – which spheres of labour market • Who I – which groups of employees or social groups use/can use particular forms of employment • Who II – which employers (sector, branch, type of ownership) • When I – in what life situations employees/groups of employees use FWA • When II – under what conditions the employers introduce FWA •  Possibilities of interrelationship of employees’ and employers’ interests – a distribution of tensions

  5. Forms of work flexibility (main) • Flexibility of place: regular/irregular,working from home • Flexibility of time: • Part-time jobs(based on daily or weekly basis, or organised as changing weeks or as temporary work) • Flexitime(flexible starting and finishing time, compressed work week, working time account) • Work sharing(job sharing, job splitting) • Work on call • Negative flexibility: work overtime, shift-work, work in unsocial (unusual) time

  6. Prevailing place of work(GGS)

  7. Features of work from home • Homeworking – manual work prevails,more often demanding lower skills, which corresponds with people’s demand – namely among caring people and people coping with unemployment, those who are repetedly on maternity/[parental leave; disabled people; foreigners, those who need to lower „side costs“ of their employment (e.g. on commuting); • Teleworking – connected with IT→ higher education – people’s interest is growing There are not significant differences by gender in general, more important is current individual situation

  8. The pros and cons– work from home • Under questions: Extend of free choice, impacts on further career, adequacy of financial remuneration and other forms of evaluation • Positives: free working hours, work close to family, compatibility with other activities • Negatives: social isolation, inaccessibility of benefits, employee bears a part of costs Risks: often non-use of contracts, (un)certainty of employment + ambivalence ofadvantages and disadvantages

  9. Advantages/disadvantages for employers and employees – work from home

  10. Part-time job • The most frequent form of FWA, although it is used by 8 % of women and 2 % of men • Complicated relations between supply and demand : • employees: strong reasons bothin favour (family, health, style of living, life-cycle) and against (finances, career) • for employers most important are characteristics of a working position (differences by occupations, branches etc.), employees’ needs reflected to a different extend

  11. Advantages/disadvantages for employers and employees – part time jobs

  12. Influence of the phase of family cycle – family conditions Share of women working full-time according to number of children and age of children(GGS, %)

  13. Part-time jobs – experience by position in a family(FEE) Reasons for refusal/non use of part-time jobs: • Lone mothers: not interested (31%); not possible at the current employer (11%); finances (40%) • Married mothers: not interested(47%); not possible at the current employer (21%); finances (17%) • Married fathers: not interested(45%); not possible at the current employer (7%);finances (43%)

  14. How partners combine full-time and part-time work, age 20-49, at least one of them employed(Eurostat)

  15. Flexible working time • Has beeen becoming more demanded, prefered to part-time work – it reduces risks of PTJ (financial, social, career) • Organisations offer less often than PTJ • Main risk for employees: difficult predictability • Not used according to employees’ preferences , but rather the employers’needs(GGS)

  16. Usual work schedule by gender(GGS)

  17. Advantages/disadvantages for employers and employees – flexible working time

  18. Extend of satisfied interest in a length of working time – men and women - parents of children up to 7 years (FEE)

  19. Job sharing • Very rare form • Employers do not see advatages, find it complicated (difficult organization), do not understand the principle • Employees – neutral/ambivalent attitudes (as those concerning part-timer jobs)

  20. Advantages/disadvantages for employers and employees – job sharing

  21. Negative flexibility • More ferquent than ther types of flexibility • Work overtime: 19 % women, 27 % men • Shift work: 27 % women, 24 % men • Work in unusual time-e.g. on Saturdays (most often): 35 % women, 47 % men (Source: regular Sample survey of labour fource)

  22. Work overtime • Longterm high incidence in Europe incl. CR • Employers – a measure of flexibility • Employees – source of higher income vs. worse quality of life – interest in WO has been decreasing • May be misused by employers, but also mixed with „positive“ flexibility measures

  23. Work in unsocial/unusual time • Ineterests of employees: financial, variable time arrangements, work-life balance (less effective than other forms), possibility of a second job • Impacts: exhaustment, health, family life • Inerest of employers: ekonomy in investments, technological changes

  24. Summary • High declared interest of employees • Diskrepancy of expectations of employers and employees is sometimes dificult to get over • Insufficiant knowledge of employees about cosequences of flexible regimes

  25. Summary– continues • ¾ employers find the extend of a supply of FWA as sufficiant from the point of view of organisations • and 1/5 of them find the extend of a supply of FWA as sufficiant from the point of view of employees’ interests; only 5 % plan changes • Employers’ refusal sometimes based on little practice and information

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