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There is an increasing concern on the quality of jobs and productivity witnessed in the flexible employment arrangements. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between various flexible employment arrangements and the workplace performance.

Home-based working, teleworking, flexible timing and compressed hours are the main employment types examined using the Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS) over the years 2004 and 2011 in Great Britain. The workplace performance is measured by two outcomes – the financial performance and labour productivity. First, the determinants of these flexible employment types are explored. Second, the ordinary least squares (OLS) method is followed. Third, an instrumental variable (IV) approach is applied to account for plausible endogeneity and to estimate the causal effects of flexible employment types on firm performance.

The findings show a significant and positive relationship between the flexible employment arrangements and the workplace performance. Education, age, wage, quality of relations between managers-employees, years of experience, the area of the market the workplace is operated and the competition are significant factors and are positively associated with the propensity of the implementation of flexible employment arrangements.

The insights derived from the study can have various profound policy implications for employees, employers and the society overall, including family-work balance, coping with family demands, improving the firm performance, reducing traffic congestion and stress among others.

It is the first study that explores the relationship between flexible employment types and workplace performance using an IV approach. This allows us to estimate the causal effects of flexible employment types and the possible associated social implications.

Observes that historically, family and work were not separated in pre‐industrial societies in which life was a united whole, but that family and work are gradually becoming separated in industrial societies, as work becomes dependent, production becomes centralized, and the relationship of the individual with work impersonal. In Greece there is still some evidence of close relations between family and work due to the large number of very small family firms and the high proportion of the population working in small family farming lots. However, a large percentage of the population work in full‐time traditional jobs. Flexible working patterns such as part‐time, flexi‐time, annual working hours, parental leaves, job sharing, variable working time, telework, condensed working week, as well as contract, pay and task flexibility are not so extensively used in Greece and it is only since 1990 that they are gaining ground. Flexibility at work is a major tool in enhancing economic performance, fighting unemployment and promoting competitiveness. Apart from that, flexibility is needed because it can prove very useful in harmonizing family life with work obligations, provided it takes into consideration family needs, parental obligations and the right of employees to a better quality of life. Presents the current situation on work flexibility in Greece and examines these aspects of flexibility which can prove useful not only in enhancing economic performance but in providing better conditions for the reconciliation between family and work.

There is considerable debate in both the management and property literature on how human and physical resources can become more flexible in order to be able to respond to the dynamic business environment. Often there is an implication that if staff are working in more flexible ways then the property must also be more flexible. However there are numerous sources of flexibility for both these resources. In terms of staff, flexibility can be defined in terms of contractual, time and location elements. For property, flexibility comes from the financial contracts, physical layout and functional opportunities. There is not necessarily a direct link between the flexibility requirements in these two resources. However, it is clear that the demand drivers for office space are changing. The increase in use of information and communications technology (ICT) has had a direct impact on the underlying business processes and thus the breadth and balance of activities which office space needs to support. ICT has also been key in facilitating the staff flexibility. Together these have led to the development of a new strategy for managing workplaces which differentiates between where the space is located, the way in which the space is designed and how it is used. The challenge for corporate real estate managers is to get beyond the rhetoric of flexibility and understand how space can best support ever‐changing business processes.

There are no guarantees of anything in life except death and taxation and so in the meantime organisations must respond to the dynamic changes thrust upon them in order to ensure a means of survival and continuity. The last century saw many changes in work itself and the practice of work. The trend continues into this century where it is almost impossible to visualise how one will be working and in what areas. Yet one needs to have a vision of the future organisation and the future worker in order to begin to manage the necessary structural, technological and psychological changes involved. This paper explores aspects of the changing nature of work and some of the strategies organisations are using to help manage a more demanding (for leisure time and shorter/flexible working hours) worker. It will also examine the changing role of line managers as they attempt to manage the atypical worker and solicit their commitment. Implications and conclusions will highlight the challenges faced by organisations and their workers.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the underlying conflicts associated with current work‐life balance and travel‐to‐work policies, as employed in organisations in the UK.

A mixed method approach is used to ascertain whether professional work‐group cultures limit the effectiveness of work‐life balance policy, and the extent to which spill‐over is present between work‐life balance and transport preferences, especially car use. These concerns are explored empirically using an in‐depth local level quantitative‐qualitative case study of Greater Nottingham (a regional employment centre in the East Midlands region of England).

The evidence presented in this paper suggests: work‐group cultures prevent employees, especially women, from achieving work‐life balance; there is spill‐over between work and non‐work activities, creating time allocation challenges, and stress, for dual career households attempting to achieve desired work‐life balance; and specific conflicts are reported in balancing work with travel‐to‐work, especially car parking.

The research findings suggest that transport, especially employee car parking, needs to be considered a focal point in the planning and implementation of human resource (HR) policies. Employers also need to reconsider their approach to flexible working to dissolve the negative repercussions that the “choice” to work flexibly has for the careers of highly skilled workers, especially working mothers. Increases in formalised home‐based teleworking, restructuring the gender balance in management, and positive discrimination toward certain groups offer potential routes for change.

This paper provides important recommendations for employers and HR managers, designing and implementing work‐life balance policies. Transport issues, presently considered largely external from the employer perspective, have central relevance.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home (WFH) has become the norm for many employees and their families in Germany. Although WFH has been suggested as a form of flexible work to foster work–life integration (especially for workers with greater care responsibilities), studies have also pointed to its risks when the boundaries between these two life spheres become blurred. To help disentangle these inconsistent findings in relation to work–family conflict, this study focuses on two main concerns: the relevance of additional forms of flexibility for those who work from home (i.e., temporal flexibility, job autonomy, fixed rules about availability) and the implications of WFH for employees’ social relationships with co-workers and supervisors. Based on linked employer–employee data collected in the spring of 2021, the study examined work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC) among a sample of 885 employees who worked from home. The results indicate that three factors – temporal flexibility, job autonomy, and fixed rules about availability as a way to set boundaries between work and family life – are important predictors of fewer work–family conflict. This equally applies to employees with caring obligations who overall experience more work–family conflicts while WFH. For those who cared for relatives, autonomy contributed even to fewer work–family conflicts. Supportive relationships with supervisors and co-workers are certainly directly beneficial when it comes to avoiding conflict, but they also reinforce the positive implications of flexible work, whereas poor relationships counteract the benefits of such flexibility. Thus, employers need to provide additional forms of flexibility to employees who work from home and should pay attention to social relationships among their employees as a way to support families and other individuals.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how the “right to request” flexible working arrangements (FWAs), located in national policy and in organisational policy contexts, are brought to life in the workplace by employees and their managers. The authors seek to understand the nature and content of requests, the process followed in attending to requests, the scope of the arrangements which resulted and the implications for the work of both employees and managers.

The authors employ a case study method, investigating how formal “right to request” FWAs policies translate to practice within two large companies in Australia. The primary data focuses on 66 in-depth interviews with line managers, employees and key organisational informants. These interviews are triangulated with legislative, company and union policy documents.

Most requests were made by mothers returning from maternity leave. Typically their requests involved an attempt to move from full-time to part-time hours. The authors found a considerable knowledge deficit among the employees making requests and a high level of informality in the processing of requests. As a result, managers played a critical role in structuring both the procedure and the substantive outcomes of FWAs requests. Managers’ personal experience and levels of commitment to FWAs were critical in the process, but their response was constrained by, among other things, conflicting organisational policies.

The scale of the empirical research is possibly limited by a focus on large companies in the private sector.

The authors provide insight into the implementation gap between FWA policy and practice. The authors make suggestions as to how to make “right to request” policies more accessible and effective.

The “right to request” flexible working is an issue of critical importance to families, employees, managers, organisations and economies.

“Right to request” FWAs are relatively new in legislation and policy and thus the authors have an incomplete understanding of how they operate and come to life at the workplace level. The authors show a significant implementation gap between policy and practice and point to some of the critical influences on this. Among other things, the authors build new insight in relation to the interaction of formal and informal and the role and place of the direct manager in the process of operationalising the “right to request”.

New Ways of Working seems to change the leadership agenda. Activity-based working and home-based work lead to different behaviors of employees. Supervising styles will change from command-and-control toward goal-setting-and-trust. This chapter describes the trend and provides new data on the actual use and effectiveness of these new supervision styles. It appears to be a mix of different leadership styles, such as leading by vision, setting targets and control on output, providing trust.