The rapid shift towards flexible working during the Covid-19 pandemic has left its legacy in many parts of the world. Today, more than half (51%) of employees in the UK have flexible working arrangements in their role and this is expected to increase (CIPD, April 2022).
For Professor Heejung Chung – labour market sociologist based in the University of Kent’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SPSSR) – this shift has been of particular interest. Driven by her passion to address deep rooted labour market issues with a goal to enable workers a better work life balance whilst maintaining productivity, she was researching flexible working and its impact on gender equality and work-life balance long before it became widespread practice.
Pre-pandemic, there was widespread stigma towards flexible working of the Government’s 2011 Work-Life Balance Survey suggested that 1/3 of all UK workers believed those who work flexibly create more work for others, while 29% of respondents to a British Social Attitudes 2018 survey thought that asking for a flexible working arrangement would have a negative impact on their career prospects. Similarly, according to the 2018 Eurobarometer, 29% of those surveyed in the UK agreed that flexible working is badly perceived by colleagues. Yet there is evidence to suggest that normalising flexible working across all positions and levels of seniority can help close the gender pay gap.
In 2018, Chung’s research found that enabling women to work flexibly prevents them from dropping out of the labour market after childbirth. This may allow them to stay in more senior positions, but how does it affect their productivity and how they are perceived by their colleagues? This is what Chung’s research sets out to examine, with the aim of providing evidence to challenge long-standing beliefs and assumptions about how work and workers should behave.
Her work has shed some light on the negative impacts of flexible working. Her recent collaborations with other Universities have found that working from home can increase feelings that work and family demands conflict with one another, and that working from home can result in mothers doing more housework and childcare. However, Chung urges that we should not perceive working from home just as a work-family arrangement mainly for women. “When working from home becomes more of a norm, and when we change the norms around whose responsibility it is to care for children – namely that both men and women should take part, we will see that homeworking will result in a more equitable division of housework and childcare.” She also argues that working from home should be seen as a productivity tool, as she evidences in her recent book.
Thanks in part to the Covid-19 pandemic, views on flexible working are shifting in favour of it becoming the norm. The Work Autonomy, Flexibility and Work-Life Balance Project, led by Chung in partnership with the Equal Parenting Project at the University of Birmingham, discovered that post-pandemic, fewer managers believe that presenteeism and long working hours are essential to career progression within organisations. Meanwhile, the 4-day workweek trail is underway in the UK, which Chung supports as an opportunity to positively impact workers and their families’ wellbeing, improve social cohesion and reduce social inequality.
As the title of Heejung Chung’s recent book ‘The Flexibility Paradox’ suggests, reaping the benefits from flexible working is not as straightforward as it seems. That’s why Chung’s evidence-driven research is so important. It has significantly contributed to the policy directions of International governmental organisations, governments and advocacy groups across the world, and helped build capacity for policy proposals in promoting good flexible working practices. Read more about the impact of Dr Heejung Chung’s work.
For 30% off on Dr. Chung’s book use this discount code POTFP22 with this link: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-flexibility-paradox