\/\/<\/p>\n
The third\u00a0meeting of the Policy Advisory Board will bring\u00a0together\u00a0members from key national and international\u00a0organisations representing both employers and employees, and non-governmental organisations. WAF Project Principal Investigator, Heejung Chung, will present\u00a0initial findings of the research, and will discuss with the group plans for the final dissemination conference.<\/p>\n
Heejung Chung will present on a number of findings from the WAF project.<\/p>\n
Heejung Chung will be presenting two papers based on the WAF project\u00a0 “Flexible Working and Consequence for Work-Life Balance: Importance of Gender Occupation and Family Context ” and “Schedule Flexibility and Work-Family Conflict: The Importance of Country Contexts”<\/p>\n
Mariska van der Horst will be presenting a paper based on the WAF project “Gendered discrepancies in the outcomes of flexible working: the case of overtime and income in the UK”<\/p>\n
Heejung Chung will present a paper based on the WAF project\u00a0 “Schedule Flexibility and Work-Family Conflict: The Importance of Country Contexts”<\/p>\n
Mariska van der Horst has presented a paper based on the WAF project “Labour market intensity of mothers after childbirth on use and access to flexible working arrangements” Heejung Chung has organised two sessions “Symposium: The Economic and Public Policy of Work and Family” \u00a0and “Thematic Session: Consequences of Flexible Working” and presented two papers based on the WAF project “Flexible Working and Consequence for Work-Life Balance: Importance of Gender Occupation and Family Context ” and “Schedule Flexibility and Work-Family Conflict: The Importance of Country Contexts”<\/p>\n Mariska van der Horst presented a paper based on the WAF project “Impact of access to flexible working arrangements on labour market intensity of mothers after child birth” in the Eastern ARC Workshop at University of Kent (link to ppt<\/a>)<\/p>\n Heejung presented a paper based on the WAF project \u00a0– “High performance or family friendly strategies? Explaining the use and provision of flexitime across Europe”\u00a0in the Leed’s Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change Seminar Series<\/a>.<\/p>\n Heejung\u00a0will present several papers, including “Crowding in or out of occupational welfare: Explaining the variation in the access to flexitime across 27 European countries” and “Inclusion of company level provision in the study of family policies: the case of schedule flexibility across Europe”.<\/p>\n Heejung\u00a0will present “Crowding in or out of occupational welfare: Explaining the provision of flexitime across Europe”.<\/p>\n Heejung presented her papers ”\u00a0Explaining the provision of flexitime in companies across Europe (in the pre- and post-crisis Europe): role of national contexts”, and “Gendered nature of the provision and use of flexitime: when do women get access to flexitime?”<\/p>\n Heejung organised a symposium “The Gendered nature of flexible working” during this conference. The syposium consisted of papers from Heejung “Gendered nature of the provision and use of flexitime”,\u00a0“Gendered nature of the cost and benefits of flexitime and autonomous hours ” Yvonne Lott (WSI), “Gender nature of the use and influence of part-time work on job satisfaction” Clare Lyonette (University of Warwich) and Tracy Warren(University of Nottingham), and “Working time regimes and gender inequality” Rosella Cicca(Queens University Belfast).<\/p>\n The second\u00a0meeting of the Policy Advisory Board brought\u00a0together\u00a0members from key national and international\u00a0organisations representing both employers and employees, and non-governmental organisations who research, advocate and implement labour market policy. WAF Project Principal Investigator, Heejung Chung, presented initial findings from the first phase of the research, examining\u00a0provision of flexitime in companies across Europe and\u00a0the gendered nature of flexitime.<\/p>\n 14 November 2014 – University of Leeds, UK<\/strong> 4-6th September 2014 – Oslo, Norway<\/strong> There is an increasing demand for a better balance between work and life for workers. Given the negative consequence of the lack of a better work-life balance can have on the individual, their families, company as well as for society (Blau, 1985; Dex and Scheibl, 2001; Greenhaus et al., 2006; Hammer et al., 2003) this is a demand that cannot be ignored. One way of simultaneously increasing work-life balance while keeping costs down for both governments and companies, is the use of flexible working-time arrangements (flexi-time). Flexi-time is gaining a major role in occupational welfare, but not much is known about its provision, especially at a cross-national comparative manner, due to lack of data.<\/p>\n This paper will examine the provision of flexi-time in companies across 30 European countries using the European Company Survey<\/a> for 2004 and 2009. It will apply a multilevel modelling technique where companies are considered to be nested in countries and national and company level characteristics are included in the model simultaneously. The first question asked in this paper is which employers are the ones that provide flexi-time, and whether it can be explained by structural and\/or agency factors. Due nature of the work done in the company as well as the financial and administrative capacity of the company, the provision of flexi-time will vary across companies of different sizes, sector and workforce composition (Chung, 2009; Golden, 2009). However, industrial relations systems within the company such as the existence of an employee representative body, social dialogue practices, and manager\u2019s attitude towards work-life balance issues may better explain the provision (Seeleib-Kaiser and Fleckenstein, 2009). National context such as institutional frameworks, union strengths, cultural norms on work and gender relations and economic cycles can explain the cross-national differences in the extent to which flexi-time is provided (Berg et al., 2003; Chung, 2008). From this the question arises what can explain for the current level and the changes in the provision of flexi-time over the past 5 years.<\/p>\n Preliminary analysis results show that on average more than half of all companies with more than 10 employees have some sort of flexi-time arrangement in place in 2009. As expected both structural factors such as the sector of activity, whether it is a public sector, the size and workforce composition, as well as agency factors, existence of an ER and industrial relations characteristics can explain the provision of flexitime to certain degree. (The paper will go on to examine which factors can best explain the provision).<\/p>\n There are large cross-national variances in the number of companies that offer flexi-time and the number of workers covered by the scheme. There is evidence to show that the use of flexi-time has increased from 2004 to 2009 although the proportion of workforce covered within each company did not seem to increase dramatically. This indicates that there seems to be a limitation to applying flexi-time to certain sub sections of the workforce. The paper will go on to examine the role of the crisis, the development trends of family policies at the country level, and other factors in explaining the expansion of flexitime provision across countries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n 8-9th September – Helsinki, Finland<\/strong>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n2016 Work, Family Researcher’s Network Conference on\u00a0“Careers, Care, and Life-Course ‘Fit:’ Implications for Health, Equality, and Policy”<\/a><\/em><\/h3>\n
23rd -25th June, 2016 – Capital Hilton hotel, Washington DC, U.S.A.<\/h4>\n
Eastern ARC Gender Role attitudes Workshop<\/a><\/h3>\n
31st of March – 1st of April 2016 – University of Kent, United Kingdom<\/h4>\n
CERIC seminar series<\/h3>\n
25th November 2015 – University of Leeds, United Kingdom<\/h4>\n
2015 Annual ESPAnet Conference: THE LOST AND THE NEW WORLDS OF WELFARE<\/a><\/h3>\n
3-5 September 2015 \u2013 University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark<\/strong><\/h4>\n
AIAS Lunch Seminar Series<\/a><\/h3>\n
27th August 2015\u00a0\u2013 University of Amsterdam, Netherlands<\/strong><\/h4>\n
2015 SASE Annual Conference<\/a><\/h3>\n
2-4 July 2015 \u2013 London School of Ecoomic, London, UK<\/strong><\/h4>\n
2015 6th International Community, Work and Family conference<\/a><\/h3>\n
19-22 May 2015 – Malm\u00f6 University,\u00a0Malm\u00f6, Sweden<\/h4>\n
\u00a0WAF Project Second Policy Advisory Board Meeting<\/h3>\n
13 March\u00a02015\u00a0\u2013<\/i>\u00a0London School of Economics<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Worldwide Universities Network “Flexible Careers Network” Workshop<\/h3>\n
\nHeejung\u00a0presented her paper “Explaining the provision of flexitime in companies across Europe (pre- and post- crisis)”<\/p>\n<\/a>ESPAnet Conference<\/a><\/h3>\n
\nHeejung\u00a0presented the first findings of the WAF project on\u00a0which companies are more likely to provide flexitime to its workers and what can explain for this.
\n[showhide id=”special1″]<\/p>\nEuropean Employers\u2019 Forum for Work-Life Balance<\/a><\/h3>\n
\nThe European Employers\u2019 Forum will bring together employers from the private, public and third sectors to discuss family friendly workplace measures for offering a better work-life balance for their employees. The core focus of the Forum will be on sharing knowledge, developing good practices and identifying ways to take action and drive change on work-life balance strategies as well as programmes.
\nIt was co-organised by Policy Advisory Board members COFACE<\/a>.<\/p>\nWAF Project First Academic Advisory Board Meeting<\/h3>\n