Flexible working arrangements

Flexible working arrangements (FWAs) are organisational strategies devised to assist workers in managing their disparate responsibilities. FWAs often appear prominently in company policies where their inclusion signals to prospective employees that the interwoven nature of the domains of their livesare respected, valued and accounted for (Brough et al., 2005; Timms et al., 2015a). In addition, as workforces have increasingly diversified, governments have recognised the need for FWAs to enable successful synchronisation between work and non-work responsibilities. Hegewisch and Gornick (2008) reported that 17 Western countries have granted workers the statutory right to request FWAs. Indeed, under the conditions of the Fair Work Act (Australian Government, 2009), workers in Australia can request FWAs on the basis of parenthood, caring responsibilities, disability, domestic violence or age.

Flexible work arrangements typically encompass: flexitime (i.e., work hours determined by employees), flexiwork (i.e., location or tasks of work determined by employees), job-sharing (i.e., tasks of one job are covered by two or more employees), compressed work week (i.e., a standard number of hours is compressed into a reduced number of days per week), tele-working (i.e., employees work away from their workplace for some or all of the work week, while being electronically linked), direct provision of care-giving and health benefits, and monetary and informational support for non-work roles (e.g., vouchers and referrals (McCarthy et al., 2010)). FWAs can also be categorised according to whether they are longer term, formalised arrangements or short-term/ad-hoc informal arrangements (Townsend et al., 2017). FWAs are now widely implemented across all types of organisations including governmental, private, not-for-profit, large corporations, and small-and-medium businesses in most industrialised countries, and are mostly used by working parents in these organisations (Joyce et al., 2010).

However, there is a troubled history concerning the implementation of FWAs and their expected benefits for employee wellbeing (Blair-Loy and Wharton, 2004; Cech and Blair-Loy, 2014). Research has demonstrated that actual use of FWAs may communicate a negative narrative (e.g., Brough, O’Driscoll and Biggs, 2009; Pocock, 2016). Thus (consistent with Schien’s 1996 prediction), the on-paper existence of FWAs belies the reality of levels of organisational cultures tacitly discouraging their use (see also, Timms et al., 2015a). While Schien (1996) was clearly discussing organisational policies more broadly than FWAs, he did note that tacit assumptions about “how the world is and ought to be” influenced perceptions, thinking and behaviour within organisations, and could well sabotage an organisation’s formal policies. For example, Cech and Blair-Loy (2014) observed that while organisations may attempt to facilitate workers’ needs by providing FWAs, co-workers and supervisors may well regard the need for flexibility as a sign of reduced commitment to the organisation. Cech and Blair-Loy (2014) called this “flexibility stigma”. Such an atmosphere at work inevitably has ripple effects affecting employee wellbeing. Timms et al. (2015a), for example, found a negative relationship they termed a backlash between FWA use and employee engagement over a period of 12 months. Field and Chan (2018), whose participants were all using FWAs (a few worked entirely from home), also found that some knowledge workers made themselves constantly available even after work hours. This was because they felt that virtual displays of

Employees’ psychological health 39 employee engagement had become a proxy for organisational commitment. It is, therefore, observed that hindering cultures (Dikkers et al., 2004) or subcultures (Schein, 1996) within organisations can in reality be dysfunctional and destructive in their attitudes towards FWA utilisation.

Kim and Mauborgne (1998, 2015) also warned that workers who do not experience a sense of inclusion at work will hoard ideas and withdraw cooperation. The logical (and circular) consequence of such worker behaviour being the imposition of punitive measures to ensure compliance with company guidelines and expectations. As the management model involving coercive strategies for enforcing employee compliance is a common one (Albrecht, 2002), it remains difficult to convince organisational managements of benefits gained by enhancing employee wellbeing. However, Fink (2003) observed that a top-down mentality such as this inevitably leads to people working-to-rule, thus effectively withdrawing their voluntary cooperation (see also Kim and Mauborgne, 1998).

FWAs and their effects on workers’ health and wellbeing

Although FWAs are now common in industrialised economies, a thorough understanding of their impacts on employee health and wellbeing is still lacking. Joyce et al. (2010) conducted a systematic review on the effects of FWAs. They found FWAs that increased workers’ control and choice (e.g., flexible scheduling or early/partial/gradual retirement) were shown to have significant positive effects on workers’ physical, mental and general health (e.g., systolic blood pressure, heart rate, tiredness, mental health, sleep duration, sleep quality, alertness and self-rated health status). Moen et al. (2011) also found that a results only work environment (ROWE) that does not restrict workers to where and when they work (i.e., organisation-wide flexible working) enhanced workers’ health-related behaviours (e.g., getting enough sleep, exercising more, going to the doctor when sick, not going to the workplace when ill) through increasing workers’ schedule control and decreasing negative work-to-home spillover.

By contrast, FWAs that were determined by organisational interests (specifically, involuntary part-time employment, contractual flexibility and fixed-term contract) either had no significant effects or negative effects on workers’ physical and mental health (Joyce et al., 2010). In many cases, the nature of the relationship between FWAs and health and wellbeing is also not self-evident. For example, Moen et al. (2011) found that if FWAs were offered to help individual workers on a selective basis, there were no significant effects between these FWAs (i.e., ROWE) and workers’ health and wellbeing outcomes. Further, Rudolph and Baltes (2017) found that access to and use of FWAs were contingent upon workers’ age and health, and they jointly influenced one another, which subsequently had implications for work outcomes. Putting gender into context, Chung and Van der Lippe (2018) consistently found that women were expected to carry out more domestic responsibilitieswhilst using FWAs, while men were expected to prioritise and expand their work spheres. Consequently, women were more likely to fear and face negative career consequences due to their use of FWAs, consistent with Timms et al.’s (2015a) backlash effect. Therefore, future studies examining the influence of FWAs on workers’ health and wellbeing need to be contextualised at both the macro and micro levels.