Impact of Working Hours on Work-Life Balance
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To examine the influence of working hours on employees' satisfaction, this article uses a large, representative set of panel data from German households (GSOEP). The results show that high working hours and overtime in general do not lead to decreased satisfaction. Rather, increasing working hours and overtime have positive effects on life and job satisfaction, whereas the desire to reduce working hours has a negative impact on satisfaction. In 2009, nearly 60% of employees wanted to reduce their working hours. The overall number of hours by which employees want to reduce their working time is driven mainly by overtime compensation.Keywords:
Overtime
Working time
Work–life balance
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This paper asks whether moving to part‐time work makes women happy. Previous research on labour supply has assumed that as workers freely choose their optimal working hours on the basis of their innate preferences and the hourly wage rate, outcome reflects preference. This paper tests this assumption by measuring the impact of changes in working hours on life satisfaction in two countries (the UK and Germany using the German Socio‐Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Survey). We find decreases in working hours bring about positive and significant improvement on well‐being for women.
Working time
Labour supply
Hourly wage
Panel survey
Working life
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The present study explored the effects of long working hours and low salary on public employees’ well-being indicators, such as job satisfaction, life satisfaction, and self-rated health. Results showed that having long working hours was not significantly and negatively related to public employee wellness, whereas having a higher salary was significantly and positively associated with employee well-being. Finally, the interaction effects of working hours and salary on job satisfaction and life satisfaction were not supported; however, the interaction effects of working hours and salary on self-rated health were found.
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This paper considers whether unpaid overtime working relates to contracted working hours (i.e. whether an employee works part‐time or full‐time) in Britain. It uses the authoritative 2004 British data set Workplace Employment Relations Survey to derive a sample of 4,530 workers, from 735 workplace establishments, who worked unpaid overtime. It tests hypotheses linking contracted working hours to unpaid overtime, and whether this link is moderated by gender, occupational group and the availability of flexible working arrangements. Part‐time workers were found to work significantly more unpaid overtime hours compared with their full‐time counterparts. Gender, occupation and flexible working practices moderated this relationship, where the extent to which part‐timers work more unpaid overtime than their full‐time counterparts was greater for men than for women, was greater for professional/managerial part‐time workers compared with other occupations, and was more evident in establishments less likely to offer flexible working arrangements. The findings raise concerns about the exploitation of part‐time workers.
Overtime
Unpaid work
Working time
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Background
Long working hours have negative effects on employee health and safety in terms of performance, fatigue, psychological and physiological health, safety, and the work-life balance. As a result of globalization, it has become increasingly common internationally for people to work long hours. Many researchers have investigated the relationships among working hours, work stress, and job satisfaction in Western countries, but little research has been conducted in the Chinese community to determine the relationships between working hours and work stress, especially in different job satisfaction situations. The job nature of textile and clothing merchandising staff in Hong Kong is different from that in Western countries. The large time difference between Hong Kong and its two major markets, Europe and the United States, may result in longer working hours. The influence of these long working hours on the lives of staff members may thus be different from that in Western industries.
Purpose
The main objective of this project is to investigate the influence of working hours on the work stress of Hong Kong textile and clothing merchandising staff with the mediation of job satisfaction.
Methodology
Data from 180 merchandising staff members have been collected by questionnaire for multiple regression analysis.
Findings
The results suggest that people who report longer working hours generally suffer from higher levels of work stress. Although the influence of long working hours on work stress is weaker in high job satisfaction situations than it is in low job satisfaction situations, it is still statistically significant. Lastly, the results also suggest that job satisfaction plays an important role in mediating the influence of long working hours.
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In this paper we set out the economic grounds for restrictions on long working hours and conduct an empirical analysis using surveys from the perspective of behavioral economics. The results of the analysis indicate that, on a year-on-year basis, if state of health improves, the probability of working more than 60 hours per week increases significantly, but that even when state of health deteriorates there is no decrease in the probability of working long hours. Moreover, among male management personnel who had a characteristic tendency to procrastinate in their assignment as a child, the probability of working for long hours of at least 60 hours per week is significantly higher. On the other hand, among female workers and male workers other than management we find no evidence that procrastination encourages long working hours. It is possible that the long working hours resulting from procrastinatory behavior by male managers bring negative externalities to the workplace, and it is therefore necessary to have a commitment mechanism to compel employees to complete tasks during regular working hours.
Procrastination
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Externality
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We investigate the relationship between working hours and working-hour satisfaction and that between working hours and life satisfaction for white-collar permanent employees in Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany. We use data obtained from the International Survey on Work-Life Balance , which was conducted by the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) and the Economic and Social Research Institute, Cabinet Office (ESRI) in Japan. The survey shows that Japan has the highest proportion of workers with long weekly working hours. Also, the unconditional average of both working-hour satisfaction and life satisfaction in Japan is lower than that of the UK, and Germany. We estimate ordered probit models with working-hour satisfaction and life satisfaction as dependent variables. Estimation results show that with other things being equal, working-hour satisfaction decreases as weekly working hours increase in all three countries. Results for life satisfaction reveal similar patterns, although the impact of weekly working hours is smaller than in the case of working-hour satisfaction. We also calculate predictions on the basis of our estimation results in which we control for personal, occupational and other characteristics. The prediction results show that the conditional average of working-hour satisfaction and life satisfaction is not necessarily lower in Japan than in the UK or Germany, unlike what the unconditional results suggest. Phrased differently, working-hour satisfaction and life satisfaction for Japanese workers is not below the satisfaction levels of British and German workers that have the same characteristics. This difference in the conditional and unconditional results can be attributed to the fact that many more Japanese workers have characteristics that are connected with lower satisfaction levels. Our results thus suggest that it would be possible to increase working-hour satisfaction and life satisfaction in Japan if the institutional factors that currently bring people lower satisfaction can be altered. For instance, additional flexibility geared towards bringing actual working hours closer to desired working hours could prove worthwhile in increasing satisfaction levels.
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Abstract Working part-time is frequently considered a viable strategy for employees to better combine work and non-work responsibilities. The present study examines differences in satisfaction with work-family balance (SWFB) among professional and non-professional part-time service sector employees in five western European countries. Part-time employees were found to be more SWFB than full-time employees even after taking varying demands and resources into account. However, there are important differences among the part-timers. Employees in marginal part-time employment with considerably reduced working hours were the most satisfied. Professionals were found to profit less from reduced working hours and experienced lower levels of SWFB than non-professionals. No significant differences in SWFB were found between male and female part-time workers. Keywords: Europegenderpart-time workprofessionalssatisfaction with work-family balance Acknowledgements Research for this study was partly supported by the European Commission through funding of the cross-national collaborative research project Quality of Life in a Changing Europe (QUALITY), within which the data were collected. The authors would like to thank co-researchers in the QUALITY project as well as the Work and Organizations research group at the University of Groningen and an anonymous IJHRM reviewer for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Notes 1. Survey participants provided the occupational title of their jobs. These descriptions were coded using the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO 88), which was used together with the information on supervisor status and number of employees under supervision to assign participants to the Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero (EGP) classes (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992 Erikson, R. and Goldthorpe, J. 1992. Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial Societies, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar]). These classes, generally referred to as the EGP scheme, consist of 11 occupational groups allowing for comparative analyses between different employee categories. In our study, ‘high and low controllers’ were collapsed into a new category ‘professionals’. The EGP classes ‘routine non-manual’, ‘routine manual’, ‘skilled-manual’, ‘semi-unskilled manual’, ‘skilled manual’ and ‘manual supervisor’ were classified as ‘non-professionals’. We did not have self-employed, small employers and farm workers in our sample.
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This article reports on findings from a multi-method study on long working hours and their impact on family life. It draws on data from the New Zealand 2006 Census, a review of the literature, and a small qualitative study involving in-depth interviews with 17 families with dependent children in which at least one partner was working long hours. The study found that parents’ working hours were driven by the requirements of their jobs, income, and the cultures of their workplaces, as well as the satisfaction work provided. Many parents felt unable to reduce their hours, despite believing that their hours had a variety of negative impacts on family life. A number of factors mediated the impact of long hours of work, including the availability of extended family for childcare and support; having flexible work arrangements and control over hours of work (including both the number of hours and when hours were worked); and how satisfied spouses were with both the number of hours of paid work and the impact of these hours on the availability of the long-hours worker to spend time with children and to do a share of the household chores. The article concludes by noting that long hours are just one factor among many that affect family functioning and wellbeing.
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Flexibility of working hours became more prevalent in the 1990s in Finland. According to a representative survey on Finnish wage and salary earners (n = 1790) at the beginning of 2000, a great majority of male (76%) and female (65%) employees regularly worked overtime and/or had irregular working hours every month. These employees were flexible in meeting the needs of their companies/employers. Individual flexibility of working hours was far less common, only one third of male and female employees were able to regulate their working hours. A better balance between company-controlled and individual flexibility would, however, improve the well-being of employees. Employees working overtime without being allowed to regulate their working hours felt more symptoms of distress and had more conflicts in combining workplace and family roles than those who could individually determine their working hours flexibly. An investment in individually determined flexibility, for example by means of participatory planning, would improve the well-being of employees, and thus also improve the productivity of the organization.
Overtime
Salary
Working time
Allowance (engineering)
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Using three different measures for satisfaction, I investigate gender-specific differences in working time mismatch. While male satisfaction with life or job is slightly not effected by working more or less hours, only over-time lowers male work life balance significantly. Women are more sensitive to the amount of working hours. They prefer part-time employment and are dissatisfied with both changes towards over-time and under-time.
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Work–life balance
Work time
Working life
Time Perspective
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