Balancing work and family is an ongoing struggle for many working parents. Evidence suggests that one in three Australian parents experience work-family conflict – a statistic that will come as no surprise to anyone doing the regular dash to daycare or school pick-up.
Associate Professor Amanda Cooklin, ARC Future Fellow at La Trobe’s Judith Lumley Centre, with colleague Dr Stacey Hokke, Research Fellow, are researching flexible work arrangements and how they do, and don’t, support working parents.
“In Australian workplaces, flexible work is often heralded as the solution to the work-family juggle,” says Associate Professor Cooklin.
“Australian employees with caring responsibilities have the right to request flexible work arrangements at work. Internationally, however, there is mixed evidence on the effectiveness of flexible work to help parents meet competing demands.”
There have also been few studies that consider how parents combine multiple flexible work options to balance work and care, and whether this ultimately helps parents reduce strain, time pressure and work-family conflicts.
Associate Professor Cooklin’s study examined the interplay of both formal and informal flexible work arrangements.
“Formal arrangements are those provided by an employer often with pay implications, whereas informal arrangements are the daily acts that parents do to manage work and care, often ad-hoc or unplanned. These can include for example taking family calls at work, working through lunch to leave early, or catching up after hours,” she explains.
“We also aimed to identify the combinations of arrangements Australian parents are using and whether these helped with their overall sense of work-family balance.”
Associate Professor Cooklin and her team surveyed more than 3000 Australian parents, and analyses revealed that there were low, moderate and high users of formal and informal flexibility arrangements.
Overall, they found that workplace flexibility is a valuable resource in parents’ lives.
“As expected, parents who were low users had the poorest work-family experiences. They reported higher work-to-family conflict, lower work-family satisfaction, and less work-family balance than moderate or high users.”
“However, high users experienced the highest family-to-work conflict, suggesting that formal arrangements are not always meeting parents' needs for support.”
Surprisingly, Associate Professor Cooklin found no difference between the groups when it came to time pressure.
“All parents, regardless of their arrangements, reported feeling rushed and pressed for time, suggesting that flex work doesn't help ease time strains for parents.”
“This means that while flexibility can improve some work-life experiences, it does not reduce parents’ perception of time pressure and may have intensified, or permitted, family demands to encroach on work.”
“Parents are still making lots of informal adjustments, even when they can access formal flexible work - and this is linked to more feelings of work interfering with family.”
The good news, Associate Professor Cooklin said that the study found that flexibility has benefits for both mothers and fathers.
“We found little evidence of a gendered effect of flexibility at the work-family interface. Consistently, women and men showed comparable improvements in work-to-family conflict, balance and enrichment. This highlights the value of promoting and supporting flexibility for both mothers and fathers to improve the health and working lives of Australian parents.”
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