Flexible working and skill-biased inequality: Causes and consequences

Introduction

Research, across a wide range of disciplines, has examined flexible working, here defined as the level of control that employees have over the timing, location and amount of their work (Allen et al., 2013; Hill et al., 2008). Overall, while findings are mixed and the size of the effects in relation to outcomes for employers is somewhat disputed (Bloom & Van Reenan, 2006; de Menezes & Kelliher, 2011), there is some evidence that providing employees with greater discretion over when, where, how much and for how long they work according to personal needs or preferences may be conducive to the attainment of individual and organizational goals. Despite these potential mutual gains for both employers and employees related to the adoption of flexible working arrangements, current literature signals that there is both a poorly met and a weak demand for more flexible working across the workforce (Kossek & Lautsch, 2018; Sweet et al., 2014; Eurofound, 2017). On one hand, there is a large and documented flexibility gap, i.e., a gap between the demand and supply of flexible working arrangements. Indeed, many employers do not introduce flexible working arrangements at all and/or deliver them to some but not all employees (Eurofound, 2015). On the other hand, a weak demand results when employees perceive flexible working as inaccessible (Budd & Mumford, 2006). In this regard, prior research has widely demonstrated that, even when entitled to flexible working options, employees may be reluctant to use them. A widespread concern is that taking advantage of flexible working arrangements may expose them to the risk of being negatively stereotyped and penalized (Blau & Kahn, 2013), with possible repercussions on career prospects. Hence, the literature reports large variations across different groups of employees in terms of access to flexible work options. Moreover, employees are also becoming more divided concerning the degree of uptake. In both cases, in addition to key demographics such as gender and age, skills are a crucial factor explaining such divides (Chung, 2019; Golden, 2008; Swanberg et al., 2005).

According to diverse schools of thoughts, skills can be broadly defined as human capital endowments, and specifically the qualities (i.e., cognitive, interactive, and physical abilities) employees possess that make them productive at work (Green, 2013). All these qualities, which are typically operationalized by educational attainment (i.e., level of qualification held or duration of education) or requirements needed to carry out job tasks, situate employees in the labour market along different positions or occupations, ranked by income, social status, and power. Within the traditional human capital framework. the main assumption is that the higher employees’ skills are, the better will be their expected returns in both monetary and non-monetary terms. In fact, if employers are demanding more or better knowledge and attitudes to improve the economic performance of the organization, they then have an incentive to invest in skill acquisition and development and provide better working and employment conditions, including flexible working arrangements, to those employees who can best deploy the knowledge and attitudes that are productive of value. Thus, flexible working can possibly reinforce the patterns of inequality that characterize the occupational structure.

Against this background, this chapter addresses the issue of skill-biased inequality in entitlement to and usage of flexible working, and examines, within a multilevel and multifaceted framework comprising structural and cultural or interactional elements (Bourdeau et al., 2019), its main causes and (unintended) consequences. In the skill debate, a considerable amount of the literature does not provide fine-grained accounts of the entire hierarchical structure resulting from the uneven distribution of skills; rather, it usually offers, with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Kossek & Lautsch, 2018), a less nuanced picture built around the dichotomy of “high-skilled” versus “low-skilled” jobs, employees, and/or occupations. Such a simplified framework will be adopted in this chapter for the sake of brevity. However, it may neglect the complexity, variety, and changing nature of skills (Payne, 2017). Moreover, it may also obfuscate the fact that virtually no job or employee should be classified as low-skilled or unskilled (Green, 2013: 25), considering that any personal quality may produce value (depending on the specific requirements of the organization in which it is exercised) and can potentially be improved over time. Accordingly, in the final section of this chapter, we will broaden our narrative and offer some implications for policy and practice that could help organizations ensure a higher, more equal, and effective use of flexible working for the best possible interests of both employees and employers.