What Type of Research and Development Employees Use Flextime?

Abstract

Numerous employers provide flexible working schedules in order to attract a more diverse range of potential employees. However, not all employees use the flextime option provided by their employer. This study seeks to understand what types of employees in creative research and development (R&D) jobs utilize the flexible working time option. We present probit estimates based on data from our original repeated survey of Estonian creative R&D employees on a sample of seventy-two individuals from eleven entities. We find age, residential status, and the number of young children in the family to be associated with the use of flexible working schedules. Those who have families opt for flextime use with a significantly higher probability than those who are living alone. The more under-school-age children the employee has, the less likely it is that he or she uses flexible schedules. Older employees appear to be more likely to use flexible schedules than their younger colleagues. Although the sample for our study is small, these pilot results may provide some background information for employers in the R&D business for making decisions about the arrangement of work in light of employee diversity in flextime use preferences.

Disparities in Knowledge Employees’ Actual, Contractual, and Desired Working Schedules

“…It is also worth mentioning that findings for how young children impact the use of flexitime have been mixed in the previous literature (e.g. Virkebau and Hazak 2017;Sharpe, Hermsen, and Billings 2002), which indicates that the decision to use flexitime or not may be driven by the match between work schedules and family time, with family time impacting the actual start time of the working day.…”

“…Kossek, Barber, and Winters (1999) study the use of flexible working schedules and find that women and younger employees are more likely to take advantage of them. Similarly, Sharpe, Hermsen, and Billings (2002) find younger employees, those who are more educated, and those with young children to be more likely to use flexible schedules, while Virkebau and Hazak (2017) find the impact to be the opposite for employees with children in the family below school-age, where the daily routine of family life may create a demand for fixed schedules whatever the creative needs of the work. Hazak, Ruubel, and Virkebau (forthcoming) find in a study using data from the same survey of Estonian R&D employees that only one quarter of employees favoured a standard five-day working week, while more than half would prefer a working week concentrated in three or four days, with the differences in preferences explained by gender, education, health, sleeping hours, whether the employee is of morning type or evening type as their inherent circadian rhythms leave them more alert in the morning or in the evening, and the desired share of time spent on creative work.…”

Time Dimensions of Job Autonomy in Estonian R&D Institutions

“…Anttila et al (2005) analyse the experiment of shorter working hours in Finnish municipalities and find the experiment to have had a positive impact on reducing work-family conflict, with employees with children seeing more of an impact. Virkebau and Hazak (2017) find that there are two streams of reasons why R&D employees prefer flexible working time options, these being the expected positive effects on work outcomes, and the positive impact on social and family-related affairs. Similarly, Giannikis and Mikhail (2011) propose that employees are more likely to opt for a flexible working time option if it helps them achieve the work-life balance they desire.…”

Meranie subjektívneho blahobytu pomocou metodológie výskumu využitia času – skúsenosti zo Slovenska

“…The age of the employees plays also an important role in distribution of the time. Virkebau and Hazak (2017) found that age of the employee is one of the factors (besides residential status, and the number of young children in the family) that infl uence requirement of employees in Estonia for fl exible working time. Spieler et al (2018) conducted two studies (in the fi rst one, they analysed 298 bank employees; in the second one they analysed 608 workers) focusing on the relationship between the age and work-life balance.…”

“…Hypothesis H2 is based on the fi ndings that paid work (in case of employees in productive age) is mostly perceived as a means to ensure livelihood and preferred way of life, therefore, it is more an obligation and not a pleasure (Major et al, 2002;Virkebau and Hazak, 2017;Spieler et al, 2018). Based on this idea, positive emotions are more concentrated in the fi eld of unpaid work in households, where it is possible to utilise the results of paid work by purchasing and meeting the needs of family members.…”