An Interview with Lonnie Golden, Pennsylvania State University
Scanlon: The term “flexible work schedules” can mean different things to different people. For your research, how did you define the term? Were you able to differentiate “formal” flexibility arrangements from “informal” flexibility arrangements?
Golden: I relied on the Current Population Survey’s definition of flexible work schedules, which is having “the ability to vary the beginning or ending time of work.” This question is followed with the query, “Is this part of flextime or some other formal program offered by your employer?” Therefore, we can assume that people who can vary the beginning and ending of their days but who do not have a formal flexibility program by default have an informal arrangement.
This information is very useful in trying to get a benchmark about the extent of formal flexibility. The 2001 Current Population Survey indicates that about 28% of respondents answered that they do have the ability to vary the beginning or ending time of their workday, and about 1/3 of these (or 11% of the total workforce) has a formal program such as flextime. Thus, informal arrangements are actually more pervasive. Almost 2/3 of workers with schedule flexibility have it as part of an arrangement with a supervisor or team, but typically it is not part of a formal flextime workplace program.
Scanlon: Can you explain why you have used data from the Current Population Survey?
Golden: About every 4-5 years, the CPS has included a Supplement with questions regarding starting/ending times of work and about flexible hours, and it has done this 6 times since 1973. The May 2001 Survey, which is the latest available dataset, for the first time CPS also asked the participants, “Is this part of flextime or some other formal program offered by your employer?”
Over the years we have always been concerned about what the CPS means by flexible schedules, so, these terms were a little more clarified in 2001. I was able to take advantage of the follow-up question so that we can now better distinguish between people who said they had flexibility in their daily timing of work and the subset of those who identified this as part of an employer-offered formal program, such as flextime.
One of the advantages of the Current Population Survey is that the dataset is really large and carefully weighted so that it is reliable and yields nationally representative estimates. It also allowed me to separate the results by gender. The Current Population Survey has detailed information about characteristics of employment, such as respondents’ reported average weekly hours of work and shift times, and importantly, respondents’ detailed occupational and industry classification of employment. Another advantage is that it is pretty consistent with at least some other surveys that ask people about flexibility in their daily work schedules. For instance, there is a one-time survey done by the Work in America Institute in 2002 called Time Is of the Essence and the Quality of Work Life module of the 2002 General Social Survey.
One disadvantage of analyzing the Current Population Survey is that it can be challenging to manage because it is so large. Another weakness is that we would like to see some more follow-up questions, such as “Why don’t you have flexibility?” For instance, some people have the type of job which renders flexibility difficult to implement while others might have a formal program available but they do not take advantage of it. Of course, we are very interested in why some people would choose not to avail themselves of this. A logical explanation is that some people might fear the repercussions from supervisors or co-workers, or maybe that this just saddles them with more responsibilities at home. Therefore, a major flaw of the existing Current Population Survey is that we need more follow-up questions regarding access and usage. For example, the National Study of the Changing Workforce [a different survey, conducted every 5 years by the Families and Work Institute] asks the question, “Is this something you use on a daily basis?” This question probes not whether the person might be able to use this but whether they actually do use it. We are interested in promoting both availability and use, but if we can promote the actual usage of flexible work schedules, that has a lot more bearing on people’s well-being.
Scanlon: Why is it important to identify groups of individuals who have access to flexible work schedules and those who don’t?
Golden: I think everybody agrees and understands the growing value to employees’ of having more control or influence over their schedules and the daily timing of work hours. It is important to almost all employees – particularly those in dual-earner households, workers with multiple responsibilities including caregiving responsibilities – to have some influence over the timing of work on a daily basis. People can experience “crunch times” at different points during the day – late afternoon or first thing in the morning. For employees that work shifts other than the regular day shift, the crunch can occur at other times, as well.
Most people understand that there is a growing premium on flexibility because the more days, weeks and years that people participate in the paid workforce and also try to do other activities, such as caregiving, the more they simply need more control over the timing of their work to fulfill all their responsibilities reasonably well. The research literature documents the many benefits to individuals, as well as to organizations in the long run. But, what I think that most people don’t realize, is that there is quite a bit of variation in access across different workers and types of jobs.
Scanlon: What did you find when you looked at groups who have or don’t have access to flexible schedules?
Golden: In terms of trends, the availability of flexibility almost doubled from 1985 to 1997.
Looking at precisely “who” has access to flexible work schedules, Whites have more than African-Americans even when controlling other factors, as do men slightly more than women and parents more than non-parents. And, managers, administrators, professionals and most sales people have relatively more access to flexible schedules than other occupations, particularly blue collar and service.
The variation by gender might be surprising. When the data are separated by informal versus formal flexible schedules, it turns out that the reason that women have less access than men is entirely because of less access to informal types of flexibility. Women might even benefit from or get slightly more advantage than men from formal flextime programs, but because informal is much more pervasive they actually suffer somewhat of a relative disadvantage. Again, we are just talking about the distribution.
That flexible work schedules are more prevalent among males than females begs some theoretical
explanation, which I am now working on with a behavioral economic theorist. Often, flextime is not set up to target employees who need it the most. Instead it is targeted to individuals employed in industries where there is a need to recruit people, or to occupations where flexibility is inherently compatible with parts of the job so that it won’t cost employers much to institute flexibility. Whereas in other occupations or industries it might be more costly to administer or riskier on the employer’s part to move to that. We are trying to explain why there might be this persistent segmentation where some firms or some workers get flexibility and others don’t based on what the cost is or the expected return of providing flexibility.
The primary thesis is that flexibility is probably being used more as an employee benefit rather than a tool to promote productivity. Flexible work schedules might promote productivity in the long run, yet the reason it is being adopted is to reward employees who deserve it or prove their value in the organization - employers can’t give them a raise but can give them some flexibility in their schedule, either formally or especially, informally. If you look at it through this lens, maybe it is not surprising that men have a slight advantage over women in terms of access because it is considered to be part of compensation for past contributions rather than an across the board improvement of working conditions. Informal arrangements seem to be deployed as a reward for an employee that has been there for a few years or an employee who works very long hours. The distribution of flexible schedules suggest they are being issued as an employee benefit at least as much, if not more, than as an innovative tool to promote greater productivity.
An additional interesting finding in terms of access to flexibility among groups is that marital status has no effect, but parental status does increase access. Parents whose youngest child present in the household is age 5 or less have a greater likelihood of schedule flexibility. Parents of kids age 6 to 17 do as well although to a smaller degree. Parents’ advantage is entirely attributable to their greater access to informal arrangements. Yet, parents’ access is no greater than those who have no or fully grown children to formal flexibility programs. This suggests that formal flexible schedule programs are instituted with little regard to the parental status of employees. In addition, parents with children who lack access to formally available flexible work schedules may be hampered both at home and at work. So there is some but still mixed evidence regarding whether workplaces and the labor market deliver additional flexibility to the people who probably need it and value it most, those with children in school, particularly preschool.
Another reason for the inequality of access to flexible work schedules among certain groups is that from a macroeconomic view, some industries or occupations go with times with a much more pervasive labor shortage and others have a labor surplus. A major motivation for employers to offer flexible work schedules is to recruit or retain valued employees. Thus, some employers are less compelled than others to offer flexibility. There may be little impetus for an employer to offer flexible work schedules particularly formal programs for its entire work force, unless there is a real consequence that their employees will quit, leave the workforce, change jobs or be more absent or tardy. Thus, the general availability may have a lot to do with the underlying economics of the labor market and the labor shortage or surplus. Yet, the happy fact is that during recessions, most employers have not outright eliminated flexible scheduling. I believe this speaks to how inexpensive flexibility is to maintain once the workplace has gone through the transformation toward more flexible scheduling.
Scanlon: What tradeoffs are employees making to gain access to flexible schedules?
Golden: We cannot observe this directly, but a major tradeoff appears to be the daily volume of hours. Those who work 50+ hours per week gain greater access. But those who work 41-49 hours per week don’t get any greater access to flexibility than those who average between 35-39 hours. Those who report a usual workweek of exactly 40 hours actually get less access than those in the 35-39 hours range. It looks as if employees willing to put in longer days or more days per week get more flexibility in the timing of hours in return. At the other extreme are people on a part-time schedule, which is officially defined as working 34 or fewer hours on average per week, who don’t necessarily go to work everyday or have shorter workdays. Part-time employees actually have more flexibility in the timing of their daily work, relative to those who work 35-39 hours. However, it is well known that when you work part-time in the U.S., that doesn’t just mean reduced hours. Part-time work also means lower status in the workplace, it means not having certain employee benefits that full-timers get, and it means less access to promotions and a lower future trajectory of earnings. If flexibility is really valuable to an employee, it is ironic that they have to put in not just 8 or 9 hours a day, but 10 or more hours a day on average or alternatively, work 6 or fewer hours per day. Those still caught in the standard 9-5 workday, the majority of workers, get less flexibility in scheduling. One group has to sacrifice their time and another group sacrifices compensation (employee benefits or long run earnings) in order to gain access to flexible work schedules.
Scanlon: How can employer policies and the public sector address this issue?
Golden: In terms of the public sector role, this is the trickiest. The federal government has been out front in providing formal flexibility in schedule for federal employees, and indeed its positive effect shows up in the data. But I think there can be on the part of the government some changes in the underlying economic incentives, such as creating innovative tax incentives and tax penalties. If there was a way to allow firms to write off an estimated cost of adopting and implementing flexible work schedules, like they do the cost of health insurance, for instance, it would increase employees’ access to flexibility, particularly for those who need it most. In addition to a carrot there could be a stick if organizations don’t offer flexibility that is verifiably used by their employees then there needs to be some sort of sanction. Some of the other developed countries of the world are much more forward-looking about this, not only in the form of supporting paid leaves. In the UK, if an employee is anticipating needing flexibility in the future he or she can apply for a shorter hour status. In that case, unless they can come up with a really good reason not to, the employer has to grant the employee a reduced, standard 35-hour standard workweek. There are ways to do this in the United States with a slight tweaking of public policy or even the tax system, through tax penalties or tax rewards that will involve a little more creativity than the benefits that have a direct monetary value. There are indirect ways to achieve more flexibility as well. For instance, there could be a regulation that employers of a certain size have to give employees a total of 24 hours short- notice leave in a year that employees can take advantage of as long as it is for parenting or time for other caregiving activities. It might not necessarily mean that they don’t make up the hours and it is not paid time off, but it would provide flexibility in timing. More businesses will be driven to start providing more flexible scheduling options when the economy creates more jobs and the demand for workers is greater than the supply. Finally, the younger generation of workers is contributing to change in this area, since more of them presume that flexibility in starting and ending times in the workday is a minimum standard at workplaces.
Currently, many private employers use flexible scheduling options to reward certain valued employees or top performers or as a retention strategy during times of tight labor markets. It remains, however, individualized, too often a practice that they are reluctant or hesitant to implement company-wide. This may be for fear of people using it more than they can accommodate, or abusing it, which is not founded in the research literature. Many employers still harbor the fear of “I don’t want to make it available or advertise that I am doing this for one or two people, because then everyone else will flood the gates in order to get it”. But that usually doesn’t transpire.
We need to continue to demonstrate to recalcitrant employers that flexible schedule policies do work and they offer benefits to the workplace, maybe not by next week, but eventually, when you look at reduced turnover or higher job and life satisfaction and morale. We can also more thoughtfully use the tax system and champion the federal sector modeling of appropriate behavior. The most encouraging research is that the data indicates that once employers adopt flexible work schedules, they usually don’t pull the plug on them opportunistically, just because there is a recession or cost-cutting initiative. The question is how to keep access on the upward trajectory so that the 7 in every 10 workers that currently are lacking it and probably wanting it at least some time gain access in the near future.
To contact Lonnie Golden, please e-mail him at Lonniegolden@psu.edu.
See also Chart: Percentage of Employees with Flexible Work Schedules by Ethnicity, 1985-1997 and Additional Resources Related to Access and Equity of Flexible Work Schedules.
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