“It's All About Time”: Time as Contested Terrain in the Management and Experience of Domiciliary Care Work in England

Abstract

Drawing on a multilevel study of commissioning, employers, and care staff, this article explores the role of time in the management of domiciliary care work for older adults in England and the consequences for the employment conditions of care staff. An index of fragmented time practices among 52 independent-sector domiciliary care providers reveals widespread tendencies to use zero-hours contracts and limit paid hours to face-to-face contact time, leaving travel time and other work-related activities unpaid. Care staff interviews reveal how fragmented time creates insecurities and demands high work engagement. Time management practices are shown to derive directly from strict time-based local authority commissioning. Subcontractors, both independent small fi rms and those belonging to national chains, can at best adopt human resource (HR) policies that are partial routes to failure, as evident in widespread recruitment and retention problems. Informal HR practices to accommodate working-time preferences help to retain individual staff, but adjustments are often marginal, adversely affect other staff and fail to expand the recruitment pool for social care. Labor shortages are likely to persist as long as workers are required to adapt to a regime of fragmented time and to work more hours than are paid, even at pay rates close to the national minimum wage.

Care in a Time of Austerity: the Electronic Monitoring of Homecare Workers’ Time

“…Although the research did not focus on electronic monitoring, its final report noted that if electronic monitoring was to become widespread in home care it might reduce pay by ‘restricting paid work time, to time actually spent in people's houses’ (Rubery et al , , p. 4). A more recently published examination of working time based on data from the same study characterized HR practices as relying on the ‘goodwill’ of homecare workers to work more hours than those for which they are paid (Rubery et al ., ; see also Bolton and Wibberley, ).…”

The Feminization of Body Work

“…As it has expanded the UK domiciliary sector has therefore seen a relatively small workforce of permanent public sector employees (district nurses and home helps) almost entirely replaced by a much larger number of workers employed by private firms and voluntary sector organizations (who do not have the same social and contractual obligations as public sector organizations). Workers are often on zero‐hours contracts (Rubery et al , ), and many are not paid for the time spent travelling between clients (Wibberley, ). Thus, labour has been externalized to achieve extreme temporal and spatial ‘fragmentation’ (Rubery et al , ; Ungerson, ).…”

“…Workers are often on zero‐hours contracts (Rubery et al , ), and many are not paid for the time spent travelling between clients (Wibberley, ). Thus, labour has been externalized to achieve extreme temporal and spatial ‘fragmentation’ (Rubery et al , ; Ungerson, ).…”

A survey on the training needs of caregivers in five European countries

“…In a recent study on nurses led by Halcomb and Ashley (), time constraints were found to be one of the least satisfying aspects of their profession. In the UK, much care work is domiciliary, where care workers are given insufficient time resources to travel and deliver care services (Fleming & Taylor, ; Rubery, Grimshaw, Hebson, & Ugarte, ; Ungerson & Yeandle, ). This time‐related working pressure for caregivers in Europe may be reflected in our data, and while structural issues such as staffing levels may be the main issue, it is nevertheless also identified by caregivers as an aspect of their work which they feel could perhaps be improved by training.…”