Opportunities to work at home in the context of work‐life balance

TLDR

Work‑life balance and family‑friendly employment are popular political and business topics, yet their definitions remain vague, especially regarding the role of working from home. The article formally defines these terms, centering spatial considerations, and investigates working from home using theories explaining the rise of work‑life balance arrangements. Twelve hypotheses derived from the literature were tested using data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey. Results show that most hypotheses only weakly hold, and that home‑working is more common in the public sector, large firms, and output‑responsible roles, with such workplaces being less unionised but not particularly feminised.

Abstract

Discussion of ‘work‐life balance’ and ‘family‐friendly’ employment is much in vogue among politicians and business leaders. Often, but not always, working at home is included within such practices. However, the concepts of work‐life balance and family‐friendly are commonly left ill‐defined by researchers and policymakers alike. In this article we outline formal definitions of these terms, which place spatial issues ‐ and hence working at home ‐ at the heart of the debate. This leads us on to examine working at home through the theoretical lens offered by attempts to explain the rise of work‐life balance arrangements. Twelve hypotheses emerge from the literature and are tested on the management data contained in the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey or WERS98. Many of these hypotheses pass weak statistical tests but fail on stronger logistic regression tests. The article shows that the option to work at home is more likely to be available in the public sector, large establishments and work environments in which individuals are responsible for the quality of their own output. These workplaces are typically less unionised but not especially feminised.