Who and where are the flexible workers? Exploring the current diffusion of telework in Sweden

Abstract

This study investigates the increased adoption of telework in Sweden between 2005 and 2012. It uses microlevel data from national surveys in order to ask where telework is being adopted and by whom. Results indicate that telework has become routine for over 20 per cent of all gainfully employed. Expansion is explained by a working life in transition: besides enabling information and communication technologies, factors associate with managers’ trust and control; the character of jobs, work tasks and contracts in knowledge‐based industries; and with individual and household work–life balance issues. Telework is connected to permanent employment in the advanced services sector, slowly diffusing into other sectors. It is increasingly performed in the home and is becoming more frequent. Individuals with families and children are overrepresented and among the fastest growing groups. Broadband access at home is an enabler. Larger urban regions strengthen their position in favour of teleworking.

Assessing the growth of remote working and its consequences for effort, well‐being and work‐life balance

“…In the US, for example the share of workers doing some or all of their work at home grew from 19.6 per cent in 2003 to 24.1 per cent in 2015 (BLS, ). In Sweden, too, the prevalence of working partly at home has increased from 5.9 per cent in 1999 to 19.7 per cent in 2012 (Vilhelmson and Thulin, ). The same applies across Europe as a whole.…”

“…Recent newspaper headlines in Britain, for example proclaim that ‘the office is dead!’ ( Financial Times , 30 July 2016), ‘the rise of the home office helping workers escape to the country’ ( Daily Mail , 27 August 2016), and ‘working from home booms as 4 million shun the commute’ ( Daily Mail , 5 June 2015). Nevertheless, more critical reflections have appeared in journals such as this one (Hislop and Axtell, ; Maruyama et al ., ; Sardeshmukh et al ., ; Wheatley, ; Vilhelmson and Thulin, ).…”

Does telework weaken urban structure–travel relationships?

“…Furthermore, though telework has yet to reach the initially expected high levels and has remained at modest levels for several years, there has been a rapid increase in recent years in Sweden and several other countries. According to the Swedish National Travel Survey, 17.4 percent of Swedish workers reported teleworking regularly in 2011 1 , versus 9.8 percent in 2005-06 (Vilhelmson and Thulin 2015). Apart from increasing the relevance of the research issue, this increase allows us to go beyond many previous studies of telework and travel behavior often criticized for their small samples, unrepresentative of an entire workforce (Andreev, Salomon, and Pliskin 2010;Mokhtarian and Tal 2013).…”

Co‐workers working from home and individual and team performance

“…Working from home is firmly entrenched in modern working life and has become routine for many employees (Society of Human Resource Management, ; Vilhelmson and Thulin, ) . Against the backdrop of a growing number of dual‐earner couples, working from home was touted in the 1980s and 1990s as a cost‐effective option for improving employee performance by enhancing their work–life balance (Avery and Zabel, ).…”