Working Anywhere, Anytime: An Experimental Investigation of Workplace Flexibility's Influence on Organizational Attraction

Abstract

Offering workplace flexibility to attract new talent has become a strategic issue for many organizations. Workplace flexibility provides employees with the autonomy to choose when and where to perform their work. Even though there is some evidence of its positive influence on organizational attraction, research that differentiates the influence of temporal and spatial flexibility is lacking, leaving their separate and joint effects largely unclear. Furthermore, whether the principle of distribution influences this relationship is also unclear. Drawing on signaling theory, we perform an experimental study that helps to clarify how workplace flexibility influences organizational attraction. We conduct a randomized vignette-based experiment (N=334) that manipulates temporal flexibility, spatial flexibility and equity-based distribution. The results indicate significant main effects for both dimensions of flexibility, with temporal flexibility having a stronger influence. For the combination of temporal and spatial flexibility, we found an additive effect rather than a significant interaction. The experiment did not detect any evidence for a moderating role of equity-based distribution. The paper provides contributions to research and practice. Finally, we discuss our findings with regard to limitations and make suggestions for future research.

The Impact of New Ways of Working on Organizations and Employees: A Systematic Review of Literature

“…Though NWW has been defined during the past two decades in many ways, the term is still used as an "umbrella term", and a comprehensive definition is still lacking. As shown in Table 1, authors who investigated NWW issues differ in their use of the terms "NWW", "flexible working", "flexible work practices" (Kingma 2019), and "flexible work arrangements" (Blok et al 2012;Brandl et al 2019;Schmoll and Süß 2019;Van Steenbergen et al 2017). An examination of these definitions demonstrated their diversity, commonalities, and differences.…”

“…• five articles on NWW's impact on employees' outcomes, like work engagement or well-being (Gerards et al 2018b;Nijp et al 2016;Peters et al 2014;ten Brummelhuis et al 2012;Van Steenbergen et al 2017); • six articles on NWW's impact on productivity or organizational outcomes (Laihonen et al 2012;Palvalin 2016Palvalin , 2017Palvalin et al 2015;Ruostela et al 2015;Schmoll and Süß 2019); and • five articles on one NWW component's effect, like activity-based working or aspects of private territory on concentration or employee satisfaction (Baek and Cha 2019;Brunia et al 2016;Gorgievski et al 2010;van der Voordt 2003;Vos and Van der Voordt 2001).…”

The Impact of New Ways of Working on Organizations and Employees: A Systematic Review of Literature

“…• five articles on NWW's impact on employees' outcomes, like work engagement or well-being Nijp et al, 2016;Peters et al, 2014;Ten Brummelhuis et al, 2012;Van Steenbergen et al, 2017); • six articles on NWW's impact on productivity or organizational outcomes (Laihonen et al, 2012;Palvalin, 2016Palvalin, , 2017Palvalin et al, 2015;Ruostela et al, 2015;Schmoll & Süß, 2019);…”

“…Though NWW has been defined during the past two decades in many ways, the term is still used as an "umbrella term," and a comprehensive definition is still lacking. As shown in Table 1, authors who investigated NWW issues differ in their use of the terms "NWW," "flexible working," "flexible work practices" (Kingma, 2019), and "flexible work arrangements" (Blok et al, 2012;Brandl et al, 2019;Schmoll & Süß, 2019;Van Steenbergen et al, 2017). An examination of these definitions demonstrated their diversity, commonalities, and differences (see Appendix B for details regarding the different definitions).…”

“…Authors have also linked NWW practices to autonomy (Palvalin, 2017;Schmoll & Süß, 2019;Van der Voordt, 2003;Van Meel, 2011). For example, Ten Brummelhuis et al (2012) stated that "it is important to emphasize that the overarching theme of NWW is providing employees autonomy by giving them control over their work content, time, location and communication" (p. 383).…”