PROVO, Utah -- Allowing workers more job flexibility enabled employees to work longer hours before workload began to increase the strain on work-family balance, a recent study found.

"Our research found that giving employees varying degrees of control over where their work is done and when it is done proved to be beneficial to both the employee and the employer," said E. Jeffrey Hill of the Family Studies Center at Brigham Young University, lead researcher. "With this kind of flexibility employees felt more harmony between their work and family life. It appears to enable them to both become more involved in family interactions as well as more productive on the job."

Few studies have attempted to quantify how perceived job flexibility is related to work and family life balance or what type of benefits such flexible arrangements may have for individuals and businesses. This study will begin to fill the gap in current data.
The study presents evidence that implementing flexibility programs sufficient to improve employee perception of flexibility by one point on a five-point scale is statistically equivalent to reducing workload by 11 hours per week per employee.

"The fact that flexibility programs offer the promise of enabling employees opportunities to better balance work and family life, thus benefiting both the individual and the business, while requiring little or no expense to the company, makes a strong business case for their adoption," Hill said.

Some common job flexibility programs that might be considered include: flexible work hours, meal-time flexibility, part-time work, job sharing, compressed workweek, telecommuting, and the virtual office.

If flexibility programs are so beneficial and inexpensive, why is it that they are not more widely used? According to Hill, one of the largest obstacles is making flexplace and flextime culturally acceptable. To accomplish this, organizations need to move away from a "face-time" business culture to a "results-oriented" business culture.

"We hear much about the changing nature of families as we enter the 21st century. Less often do we attend to the substantial transformations occurring in the way we work," Hill said. "Just as flexibility in family processes diminishes potential family stress, flexibility in work process can help employees manage the contemporary stresses associated with balancing work and family demands. In fact, this study empirically documents how greater flexibility in the timing and location of work decreases employees' sense of stress in meeting the needs of work and family."

Data such as these can reinforce management's efforts to provide greater flexibility in the workforce, especially when the results are so clear and the costs of such efforts are relatively small. Just as important, these data may help encourage employees to take advantage of the flexibility that is increasingly offered so that they can more effectively care for their families.

"As more companies offer flexibility in the timing and location of work and more individuals use that flexibility, the work-family imbalance that was problematic for employees in the twilight of the 20th century can become the balance so many seek in the 21st century," Hill said.

The Family Studies Center

The Brigham Young University Family Studies Center is dedicated to conducting quality family research and providing valuable information to families that will enhance their lives. The Center has the largest concentration of family research faculty in the world, with 75 members focused on marriage, parenting and family development.

---Brigham Young University

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