Employer flexible workplace practices and FWA provision
Employers adopt various flexible workplace practices, each aimed at specific outcomes. Numerical flexibility refers to the ability of employers to alter the number of employees or work hours in response to fluctuating customer demand (Roca-Puig et al., 2008; Stavrou & Kilaniotis, 2010; Valverde et al., 2000). Employers may do this by engaging employees on part-time, casual or short-term contracts, on-call ‘as needed’ basis or on shift work. They may also take on temporary workers who are paid by labour hire firms. Employers may use these numerical flexible positions to meet employees’ FWA needs (Whyman et al., 2015). Functional flexibility provides employees with job enrichment through job sharing, job rotation, participation in decision-making, training, long-term development and autonomy (Voudouris, 2007). In addition to motivating employees, functional flexibility allows development of a
Employee FWA needs and employer provisions 215 multi-skilled and innovative workforce. It ensures employees with relevant skills are available as needed and can generate new ideas to move the organisation forward as they broaden their skills and knowledge of operations (Whyman et al.. 2015; Roca-Puig et al.. 2008; Valverde et al., 2000). Employers also use various remuneration structures to match employee performance with organisational outcomes and motivate employees to high performance (Whyman et al., 2015). Numerical and functional flexibility practices are relevant to employee flexible work needs and are expanded below.
Drawing from Atkinson’s (1984) work, Valverde et al. (2000) identify three groups of employees associated with numerical flexibility, based on permanency of their positions and level of employer commitment. The first group comprises employees on permanent and standard contracts, responsible for the core activities of the organisation, and to whom employers direct their high-performance work practices (HPWPs), including functional flexibility practices, and provide long-term commitment (Kalleberg, 2001; Osterman, 2000). This core group constitutes an important source of competitive advantage as their capabilities and competencies become aligned with employer needs over time (Voudouris, 2007; Barney et al., 2011), and employers seek to retain them.
The next group includes employees with non-standard contracts such as part-time, casual or short-term, apprentices and those job-sharing (Valverde et ah, 2000). Although the organisation has administrative responsibility for this group (Kalleberg, 2001), their inability to participate fully in functional flexible activities due to their absences from the workplace may limit any long-term commitment to their development and motivation (Valverde et al., 2000). Nonetheless, organisations may draw from this group to meet vacancies in the core group. Moreover, in Australia casual employees have the right to request permanent employment if they work the same weekly hours consistently over a year (Skinner et al., 2016). A third group, engaged temporarily from labour hire firms or as contractors, are not considered employees of the organisation (Kalleberg, 2001) and are excluded from its HPWPs (Voudouris, 2007). Organisations use non-standard contracts for specific purposes such as to:
- • Address fluctuations in customer demand,
- • Reduce labour cost,
- • Fill temporary vacancies in the core group, or
- • For short-term projects.
Their use protects core employees from involuntary employee turnover and enhances their internal job mobility by limiting competition for higher positions within the organisation (Kalleberg, 2001).
Research indicates that employees on these non-standard contracts tend to be more productive than those on standard contracts, as they have capacity to work intensively within the relatively short hours available to them (Valverdeet al., 2000). Non-standard contracts also allow employers to access skilled and experienced workers who may otherwise not be available to them, and the effective integration of skilled professional contractors with core employees facilitates innovation (Voudouris, 2007).
Despite the advantages, numerical flexibility may cause problems that require careful management of employees in the various groups. In particular, non-standard employees may respond to the limited development opportunities with disinterestedness, disaffection and less-than-optimal performance (Kleinknecht et al., 2006). Moreover, highly specialised contractors and short-term professionals may demand high pay, defeating the aim of reducing labour costs. Poor communication, conflict with core employees and inadequate attention to safety may also significantly increase the cost of employees on non-standard contracts (Kleinknecht et al., 2006). Organisations therefore, tend to allocate specialist functions to core employees to whom they direct their HPWPs (Osterman, 2000).
Available statistics indicate that non-standard employment is on the rise while full-time permanent positions are decreasing; a situation attributed to increasing féminisation and ageing of the workforce (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2019a). Katz and Krueger (2019) also confirm a gradual rise in the share of workers in non-standard jobs in the United States since the early 2000s. The OECD 2019 Employment Outlook suggests that job stability has decreased over the past two decades, especially among the less-educated workforce (OECD, 2019a). It attributes this to employee mobility rather than to involuntary separation for countries such as Sweden, Germany, France, Great Britain and Hungary. However, for Italy, Australia, Denmark, Spain and Latvia, the excess of involuntary separations over job-to-job movements poses real risk and uncertainty to stable employment.
The above trends, together with increasing automation and polarisation of labour markets (with a declining share of middle-skilled positions) explain the decrease in full-time employees (OECD, 2019a) to whom employers direct HPWPs. Employers are likely to focus FWA provisions on these full-time, usually skilled employees (OECD, 2019a; Thevenon et al., 2016). The implications are that employers may overlook employees outside these demographics for FWA provisions, particularly FWAs such as job sharing that may add to labour costs.
Employees may seek part-time or temporary employment to manage their non-work commitments themselves, while employers may accommodate the flexible work needs of core employees in order to retain them. The literature is unclear as to whether and how employers use flexible workplace practices to manage employee flexible work needs and the extent to which employees avail themselves of numerical flexible positions to self-manage their flexible work needs. The various types of FWAs are explained next so they can be matched with the flexible work needs of employees in various age groups.
