The Impact of Flexible Working Arrangements on Work–life Conflict and Work Pressure in Ireland

Abstract

Recent rapid economic growth in Ireland has been accompanied by a strong surge in the number of women in employment, and this has led to a significant increase in the proportion of dual-earner families. These changes have brought the issue of reconciliation between work and care commitments to the fore. Flexible working arrangements in firms have been identified as one important means of balancing work and other commitments. In this article we investigate the relationship between four flexible working arrangements; flexitime, part-time hours, working from home and job sharing, and two key employee outcomes; work pressure and work-life conflict, using data from the first national survey of employees in Ireland in 2003. Our results show that while part-time work and flexitime tend to reduce work pressure and work-life conflict, working from home is associated with greater levels of both work pressure and work-life conflict. We conclude that it is important to distinguish between flexible working arrangements to discover their potential for reducing work pressure and work-life conflict.

The Effect of Family Relationships on Technology-Assisted Supplemental Work and Work-Life Conflict among Academics

“…Consistent with previous research, the findings of this hypothesis also suggest that married individuals experience more WLC than individuals who are single (Russell et al, 2009). This is attributed to the increased responsibilities associated with being married.…”

“…For example, the responsibility and role demands of academics (in particular women academics) are further known to increase with having a child or a number of children (Russell et al, 2009;Venkatesh & Vitalari, 1992;Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2004). This therefore increases the WLC experienced by academics (Jones & McKenna, 2002;Russell et al, 2009;Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2004). Academics with children are less likely than others to engage in TASW at home due to family responsibilities (Venkatesh & Vitalari, 1992).…”

“…For the purposes of this study, marital status and children are taken into consideration in examining the relationship between TASW and WLC. With regard to marital status, Russell et al (2009) reported that married couples experienced more WLC than single individuals, and that both genders experienced equally high levels of WLC as a result of having young children in their family. Contrary to this, Hamilton, Gordon and Whelan-Berry (2006) found no statistical difference in the amount of WLC experienced by both, married and unmarried individuals without children.…”

The nature of work family conflict: A review and agenda for future research

“…Numerous studies found that working longer hours or longer days can seriously boost work family conflict (e.g., Shamir, 1983;Greenhaus et al, 1987;Carlson and Perrewe, 1999;Grzywacz and Marks, 2000;Nielson et al, 2001;Fagan, 2001;MacInnes, 2005;Boyar et al, 2008;Russell et al, 2009;Allen and Finkelstein, 2014). Moreover, work family conflict was found to be predicted by greater work demands (e.g., Yang et al, 2000), a greater time commitment to work (e.g., Parasurman and Simmers, 2001), rotating shifts (e.g., Shamir, 1983), higher organisational loyalty (e.g., Tenbrunsel et al, 1995), greater autonomy at work (e.g., Parasurman and Simmers, 2001), inequity rewards at work (e.g., Greenhaus et al, 1987), and working weekends (e.g., Shamir, 1983).…”

Relationships Between The Flexible Working, Intention To Leave And Subjective Well-Being

“…Graham (2014) in her study found that, flexible approaches to retirement and to part-time work are linked to higher levels of well-being, at least in labor markets where flexible work is a choice. The flexible working arrangements' ability to reduce work pressure and work-life conflict has important implications for employees' physical and mental well-being and potentially has utility of reduced absenteeism (Russell et al, 2009). …”