Organizations may make the business case for remote-work programs as a way of cutting real estate costs, but at least one researcher says that offering employees choice may be key to unlocking the wider-ranging flex-work benefits of these work arrangements.
“Initiatives that push everyone out of an office or a workspace may not have the same benefits as the initiatives we’ve studied, where individuals know they can work in the office if they choose, but many of them, of course, decide to work more at home and to have a mix of home work and office work,” said Erin Kelly, a University of Minnesota sociologist.
Kelly, along with colleagues Phyllis Moen and Wen Fan, and interdisciplinary collaborators from across the U.S., is behind the recent study “Changing Work and Work-Family Conflict: Evidence from the Work, Family, and Health Network.”
Researchers examined the effects of giving employees greater control over work location and schedule, coupled with greater support from supervisors for family and personal life. Deployed in the IT department of a Fortune 500 company, the six-month study split 700 employees into a control group and subject group in a group-randomized trial.
“A lot of what we know about work-life initiatives is fairly anecdotal,” Kelly explained. “Even if it’s based on research, it is comparing employees or organizations with policies to those without, but we know that those groups may be pretty different to begin with.”
As the study authors note in an American Sociological Review article outlining their findings, work-family conflict has increased with women’s increased participation in the labour force, but employers have not taken any significant steps to recognize this reality. And work-family conflict has knock-on effects for employers, in areas such as turnover and employee engagement.
The study involved a novel workplace intervention dubbed STAR (Support. Transform. Achieve. Results.). Designed to change the social environment, it involved training for both employees and managers. Participants were actively involved in determining how their teams would communicate and co-ordinate in ways that would support their variable work hours and environment, for example holding meetings by conference call.
Among the study’s findings were that employees in the subject group perceived greater schedule control and support for personal life from supervisors as well as reported increased time adequacy with family. Researchers hypothesized that variable schedules might lead employees to log longer hours as an unintended consequence, but the study found this not to be the case.
Kelly’s top takeaway from the study: “These changes are feasible, but they need to be approached as what we call work redesign for better work and better life.”
She stressed that it’s important not to take a selective approach in offering flexible arrangements. Her reasoning is two-fold:
“What happens when you say, ‘This is for parents or people with specific caregiving responsibilities,’ is that you unintentionally hold up the traditional way of working as the standard,” Kelly said. “It reinforces the idea that there’s an ideal worker who can do whatever we ask of him or her and there are these other people we’ll accommodate.”
What’s more, parents and those with other familial obligations were not the sole the beneficiaries of the STAR initiative.
“We do see broad benefits in terms of feeling more control over when, where and how you do your work, even for the people who are single and have no obvious family responsibilities,” she said.
Materials for the STAR intervention in the office are available via the Work, Family & Health Network.
Michelle Ervin is the editor of Canadian Facility Management & Design.
