Flexible Work Schedules and Their Impact on Employees

Abstract

The timing of employees’ work hours and the degree to which they are able to exercise control over it are increasingly important determinants of workers’ motivation, behaviour and effort at work. More sectors in the global economy are moving toward operating on a round-the-clock service or continuous production. At the same time, dual-income households and annual and weekly work hours (in the US) are climbing. These forces have contributed to a spreading out of the workday, and thus a growing value being attached to the temporal flexibility in work schedules and the timing of work activities (e.g. Fagan, 2001; Hamermesh, 1999; Presser, 1995). Flexible schedules are perceived to help reduce the chronic pressures imposed on workers by time and role conflicts that arise when work and non-work responsibilities overlap in the same block of time. Flexible work schedules are being implemented by organizations in certain sectors as either or both a prized employee benefit to promote employee retention and as a device to curb forms of employee withdrawal, such as absenteeism, tardiness, quits and on-thejob leisure. Flexibility is thus becoming an ever more important tool for improving individual, organizational and national productivity, including indirectly by attempting to curb various employee misbehaviours.