People at work Week 3
Reading:
Flexible working
•
Flexible working is defined as working arrangements which allow employees to vary the
amount, timing, or location of their work, usually to the mutual benefit of the individual and
organisation.
•
Flexibility helps more people access the labour market and stay in work, manage caring
responsibilities and work-life balance, and supports enhanced employee engagement and
wellbeing.
•
It emerges at a time of labour market deregulation with a reduction of legal protections and
weakening of collective bargaining as neo-liberalists ‘solution’ to reduced economic activity
and it seen as the ability of organizations to cope with the dynamics and the uncertainty of
their environments by rapidly changing their organizational routines or resource bases.
Defining Workplace Flexibility
Workplace flexibility is an arrangement between employees and employers in which both
parties agree on when, where and how the employee will work to meet the organization’s
needs. Flexibility can be formal and officially approved through organisational policies, or
informal and available on a discretionary basis. It may include:





Policies and practices governing the time, scheduling and location of employees’ work.
Alternative work arrangements and HR policies such as flextime, telework, leaves and
part-time work that an entire work unit or a subgroup of employees uses.
Changes to job design and job autonomy that permit employees more control of when
and where they work.
Informal practices such as occasionally or regularly using flextime to come in late or
leave early or to work from home with supervisor permission.
Mobile work, such as working at a client’s workplace.
Using technology to communicate and work outside the confines of the primary worksite.
Atkinson’s flexible firm model (1984)
Flexibility: A ‘very flexible term’
(Rubery et al., 2016)
Benefits of flexible working
Flexible work arrangements offer numerous benefits to both employers and employees.
Such benefits include:








Assisting in recruiting efforts (Croucher & Kelliher, 2005)
Enhancing worker loyalty and engagement; increased organisational
commitment; and improving retention of good workers (Anderson & Kelliher
2009)
Managing employee attendance and reducing absenteeism
Boosting productivity (Michie & Sheehan, 2003)
Creating a better work/life balance for workers (Field & Forsey, 2018; Casper&
Harrris 2008)
Minimizing harmful impact on global ecology. Certain flexible work
arrangements can contribute to sustainability efforts by reducing carbon
emissions and workplace "footprints" in terms of creation of new office
buildings
Allowing for business continuity during emergency circumstances such as a
weather disaster or pandemic
Better mental health and stress reduction (Shapiro et al. 2009)
Types of flexibility
The term ‘workplace flexibility’ was introduced in the 1980s (Atkinson, 1984), yet it has been
developed differently in separate literatures such as Strategic Management (e.g., Sanchez, 1995) and
Strategic HRM (e.g., Wright and Snell, 1998; Chang et al., 2013).
•
The literature distinguishes four types of flexibility:

organizational flexibility (Hill et al., 2008; Phillips and Tuladhar, 2000; Schreyögg
and Sydow, 2010),



employee flexibility (Bhattacharya et al., 2005; Beltrán-Martín and Roca-Puig,
2013),
flexible work (Sparrow, 2012; Wilson et al., 2008; Wright and Bretthauer, 2010 ),
and
flexible work arrangements – FWAs (Allen et al., 2013; Hill et al., 2008; Sweet et
al. 2014).
offering Flexible working
• The proportion of jobs offering flexible working as an employee benefit
rose to 17% at the start of 2020, before the impact of Covid-19.
• This represented a small increase on 2019 (15%) – continuing the steady
but painfully slow progress in flexible recruitment over the last 6 years.
• During national lockdown in Spring 2020, the rate increased to 22% and
remained the same as lockdown eased. 1 in 5 jobs were now offering
flex.
Variation in Flexibility by role
• In the pre-Covid period (as in all previous index reports), medical/health
and social services were significantly ahead of all other categories for
flexible recruitment. During and since lockdown, all categories have
seen an increase in flex.
• The biggest winner is IT, where the ratio has risen by more than half,
making it the third best role category for flexible jobs. Admin, finance,
HR, legal, and marketing also saw large rates of increase. These are, all
jobs that are relatively easy to do from home.
• The lowest rates of increase tend to be in ‘frontline’ roles that cannot
easily adapt to home-working: education, manufacturing, medical/
health, operations/logistics and social services.
Flexible working and gender
 Hofacker& S. Konig (2013) states that men see flexible working
practices as a way to develop their organizational commitment, while
women associate flexibility with the work-life balance improvement.
 The evidence suggests that flexible working practices fit women more
then men and are more likely to be employed by women due to the
ideology beliefs of motherhood (Lewis & Humbert 2010).
 Research also assert that women request and access the flexible working
hours more frequently then men Skinner & Pocock (2011).
 However, due to the changing family patterns and gender norms, as well
as rise of women workforce, flexible employment is slowly starting to be
utilized by more men (Hofacker & Doing (2013).
Flexibility for whom?
Prevailing policy orientation – Deregulation of standard employment
contract
• Employers: capacity to adjust staffing levels
• Employees: capacity to change jobs.
Ambiguity: Flexibility means different things for employers and
employees.
Also…Reduced welfare dependency
• Easier job creation also means easier job destruction
• Stuck in a low pay cycle between flex jobs and unemployment
• Low wages means low tax revenues (public services)
(Bobek, Pembroke and Wickham, 2018)
The gap between promise and reality
EMPLOYEES
• Perception of insecurity
• Identification with firm
• Loss of career opportunity
• Stress
Balance: flexibility and security
EMPLOYERS
• Turnover
• Commitment
• Quality
• Innovation
Balance: costs and performance
OECD Employment Outlook (2019
• There is an issue of job quality
• Flexible workers, in some countries, are 40-50% less likely than standard
employees to receive income support when they are out-of-work.
• Increasing divide between people with high-skills and low-skills – access
to training.
• Increasing exposure to risks and precarity.
A dilemma of the Employment Relationship
Precarious work
• Kalleberg (2008) defines precarious work as employment that is
uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker.
• In practice, this captures situations where workers are not aware of their
employment status, lack an employment contract, and have no access to
basic employment rights such as paid leave or breaks. More seriously,
this includes workers who are paid cash in hand, below the National
Minimum Wage, and who may inadvertently be working on the black
market.
• Beck (2000) describes the creation of a "risk society" and a "new political
economy of insecurity.“ Precarious work is the dominant feature of the
social relations between employers and workers in the contemporary
world.
• Bourdieu (1998) saw precarity as the root of problematic social issues in
the twenty first century.
The precariat:
The presidency is characterized by short jobs, low incomes, difficult relationships, low social security
and / or the lack of political voting. In addition to a threat of increasing poverty (such as in the
temporary industry and temporary and flex work)
Overqualified – people have degrees doing work below their knowledge
- people put in poverty trap – if they get access to means based benefit then
moving frothat to a low wage job means they would lose as much you had on
benefits