The implicit wage costs of family friendly work practices

Working-time autonomy as a management practice

“…Finally, using British linked employer-employee data and applying methods to account for endogeneity, a study investigates the assumed trade-off between family-friendly workplace systems (including flextime and working from home), considered as a fringe benefit, and wages [11]. The results confirm the expected negative impact: workers are willing to accept wage concessions in return for being able to spend more time on family matters.…”

“…The results confirm the expected negative impact: workers are willing to accept wage concessions in return for being able to spend more time on family matters. However, after disentangling the overall system effect, flextime continues to have a negative wage effect, while working from home turns out to be positively related to wages, leading to the conclusion that some but not all practices of family-friendly workplace systems "pay for themselves in increased productivity" ( [11], p. 291).…”

Are Flexible Contracts Bad for Workers? Evidence from Job Satisfaction Data

“…Using US data from the state of New York, Baughman et al (2003) show that employers unable to provide scheduling freedom to employees pay significantly higher entry wages. Using representative UK data, Heywood et al (2007) demonstrate the existence of sizable negative wage differentials both for more generous leave policies and for providing employees choice over working hours. Thus, when the firm retains flexibility in assigning work effort, wages are higher, and when workers gain favourable flexible arrangements wages are lower.…”

“…Indeed, the term flexibility has actually been used to characterize both of these extremes in the contract. Thus, when the firm is being flexible it is often identified as providing a family friendly work practice such as "flextime" (Heywood et al 2007). Yet, when the worker is being flexible as happens with short intensive hires or on call and agency relationships it is identified as a "flexible staffing arrangement" (Gramm and Schell 2001;Houseman 2001).…”

Social Norms and Firms' Discriminatory Pay-Setting

“…If women respond to discriminatory social attitudes by following more traditional gender roles, the relationship between discriminatory social attitudes and gender pay gaps may be a consequence of women self-selecting into different types of firms. Women who follow traditional gender roles may prefer firms with family-friendly work practices that offer lower wages, may invest less in job search, or prefer low commuting costs over high wages (e.g., Bender, Donohue, and Heywood 2005;Heywood, Siebert and Wei 2007;Keith and McWilliams 1999;Pissarides and Wadsworth 1994). As prior studies did not account for the unobserved heterogeneity of firms, it remains unclear whether women who are exposed to discriminatory attitudes indeed receive lower wages than comparable male coworkers or whether those women simply work in firms that pay lower wages to all their workers.…”