According to an ILO study, flexible working hours, such as those practiced during the Covid-19 pandemic, can bring benefits to companies and employees, including increased productivity and a better work-life balance.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) report “Working time and work-life balance around the world”, published today, analyzes different working time regimes, including shift work, prevention of on-call time), concentrated schedules and average working hours/day.
The study reports that in 2019, more than a third of the world’s workers regularly worked more than 48 hours per week, while one fifth of the global workforce worked less than 35 hours per week, with a standard schedule of 40 hours per week.
Flexible arrangements offer “improved work-life balance” and “significant benefits for both employers and employees” according to the report.
The classic standard work week of eight hours a day, five or six days a week “provides stability for workers,” but such fixed hours “are often too rigid to allow time for family needs,” the ILO says.
According to the study, flexible hours allow employees to arrange their own work schedules according to their individual needs, within set parameters, to balance paid work and personal commitments.
This flexible regime “has positive effects on workers’ mental health, but could exacerbate gender inequality if only women use it,” warns the ILO.
Shift work, according to the ILO, can give workers more flexible hours to help them balance work and commitments, but on the other hand, “it may require workers to work atypical hours, which has been associated with significant health risks and disruption to family life.”.
Part-time work (less than 35 hours per week), with predictable schedules, gives employees more time for personal responsibilities and/or free time, “leading to a better balance between paid work and personal life,” the report reads.
On-call work, on the other hand, based on highly unpredictable schedules, seriously disrupts work-family life balance and negatively impacts workers’ health.
The concentrated schedules allow for longer weekends to spend with family and friends and thus “improve work-life balance,” the study reads, indicating that there are also signs of positive health effects.
The study also states that measures to respond to the pandemic crisis, such as short-time work, helped prevent job losses and showed that “the large-scale implementation of telecommuting in almost every place in the world where it was viable changed the way the nature of employment, probably in the near future”.
Teleworking helped preserve employment and created new opportunities for workers’ autonomy, but the ILO argues that this and other types of flexible regimes should be regulated “to contain their potential negative effects, through policies such as the so-called ‘right to to disconnect. ” from work”.
Source: DN
