A.G. van der Lippe

The effects of time-spatial flexibility and new working conditions on employees’ work–life balance: the Dutch case

Part-time work, flexible working hours, and home-based teleworking are HR instruments which are used to facilitate reconciliation of work and family life. It can be questioned, however, whether these arrangements really enhance work–life balance. This paper examines whether time-spatial flexibility reduces negative work–home interference, and if so, whether this also holds true for the category of ‘New Employees’ working under so-called ‘New Working Conditions’ which are characterised by professional job autonomy, team working by project, management by objectives, and strict deadlines. Employing survey data collected in 2003 among 807 Dutch employees, it is concluded that time-spatial flexibility does affect the work–life balance of workers positively, also under New Working Conditions. Generally, employees holding a smaller part-time job (12–24 contractual working hours per week) experienced a better work–life balance. In particular, female workers gained from more control over the temporal location of their work. Home-based teleworkers and employees holding larger part-time jobs (25–35 hours per week) did not experience a better work–life balance. In the concluding section, the results of the study are discussed in the context of contemporary Dutch labour market developments.

Family Involvement and Helping Behavior in Teams

Helping behavior at work has become increasingly important, with organizations making more and more use of cooperative work practices. The difficulty is that employees are facing growing demands beyond the workplace. This study investigates the mechanisms by which family involvement (family structure, family tasks, family support) affects helping behavior in teams. Based on a sample of 495 team members, the results show that having a supportive partner and performing care tasks increase helping behavior via enhanced fulfillment and skills. Having young children is directly and negatively related to helping behavior. The authors also conducted separate analyses for men and women.

Parental work characteristics and time with children: The moderating effects of parent's gender and children's age

This article investigates the association between work characteristics and parent–child interaction time. In addition to studying the commonly considered working hours, the authors investigated the effects of job demands and resources such as job insecurity, autonomy and non-standard hours. Moreover, they analysed whether these associations were different for fathers than for mothers and for parents with young vs adolescent children. The authors analysed self-collected data on 2593 Dutch parents and found that parents participated more in parent–child activities when they worked shorter hours, experienced more autonomy, could be reached by their children at work and worked during non-standard hours. Nevertheless, the work characteristics had little explanatory value additional to the working hours. The association between working hours and parent–child time was weaker for mothers and for parents with young children. Moreover, the beneficial effect of non-standard hours was stronger for mothers and autonomy more relevant for parents with adolescent children.

Working status and leisure An analysis of the trade-off between solitary and social time

Paid labour is often said to come at a price. Using time-budget information on 9063 Dutch respondents and their partners, we investigated whether couples working full time economize on their solitary and social time budget. Results show that individuals who are part of a full-time working couple spend a smaller share of their available time budget on social interaction with relatives and friends than individuals from single-earner families or combination households. Instead, in full-time working couples, partners prefer to spend a relatively large share of their leisure time on institutionalized social interaction, such as volunteering, cultural participation and attending sports events.