While limiting the number of hours of work to protect workers’ health has been an important issue for more than a century, the emergence of work–life balance as a significant social goal came much later, stemming from policymakers’ increased awareness of the difficulty workers faced in reconciling their personal lives with their paid work. The number of hours worked, the way in which they are organised, and the availability of rest periods can significantly affect not only the quality of work, but also life outside the workplace.
Working-time patterns and developments around the world
The topic of working time can be divided into two main components: (a) the number of hours of work; and (b) the organisation of those working hours, which is more commonly known either as working-time arrangements or work schedules.
Want to work from home (WFH)?
Employers in Singapore will have to consider flexible work arrangements (FWA) such as work-from-home (WFH) days, where formally requested by employees when a new set of guidelines kick on 1 December 2024. Announced by the Tripartite Workgroup on Flexible Work Arrangements – comprising representatives from government, unions, employer and human resources groups – on Tuesday (16 April), the Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests covers FWAs such as four-day work weeks, working from home and staggered work timings.
What are the different types of Flexible Work Arrangements (FWAs)?
FWAs include:
* Flexi-place, where employees work flexibly from different locations aside from their usual office location (e.g. telecommuting, work from home).
* Flexi-time, where employees work flexibly at different timings with no changes to total work hours and workload (e.g. flexi-hours, staggered hours, flexi-shift, compressed work schedule).
* Flexi-load, where employees work flexibly with different workloads and with commensurate remuneration (e.g. job sharing, part-time work).
Working-time arrangements and their effects on work–life balance
The most common form of working-time arrangement is the standard workweek, which consists of fixed hours of work during each workday for a fixed number of days. The standard workweek provides stable and predictable work schedules, the rigidity inherent in such fixed, unchangeable schedules can make balancing work and personal commitments challenging for workers with family responsibilities, especially women.
Flextime, including time-banking arrangements
Flextime is perhaps the most common form of flexible working-time arrangement. Basic flextime arrangements (also known as «flexible schedules» or «flexible hours») allow workers to choose when to start and finish work, based on their individual needs and preferences (within specified limits) and in some cases even the number of hours that they work in a particular week.
Compressed workweeks
Compressed workweeks involve scheduling the same number of hours of work over fewer days than is typical in a standard workweek, resulting in longer workdays. Typically, they extend the workday beyond 8 hours and reduce the number of consecutive workdays to fewer than five. For example, a compressed workweek reduces a 40-hour workweek that is normally worked as five 8-hour days to four 10-hour days. This is called a “4 x 3” compressed workweek arrangement (four consecutive workdays followed by three consecutive days of rest).
Hours-averaging schemes, including annualized hours
Hours-averaging schemes, including annualized hours, allow for variations in daily and weekly hours of work within specified legal limits, such as maximum daily and weekly hours of work, while requiring that hours of hours either achieve a specified weekly average over the period in which the hours are averaged or remain within a fixed total over the reference period.
Conclusions and implications for policy
A fundamental challenge for everyone to ensure that atypical forms of employment, including part-time employment with very short hours, are characterised by responsible collaboration, social inclusion and parity of rights and benefits.
To this end, the following are some specific policy suggestions:
Apply the principle of equal treatment of full-time and part-time workers working in comparable jobs, as enshrined in Convention No. 175.
Introduce basic guarantees of minimum hours of work, including appropriate penalties for non- compliance.
Adopt regulations that mitigate some of the vulnerabilities of part-time work with very short hours, such as premium pay for short hours, a fixed minimum compensation rate for “on-call” times notworked and/or favourable unemployment/social benefits.
Provide workers with adequate advance notice of their work schedules in order to allow them to be able to properly plan their personal lives, including their family responsibilities.
Provide for paid leave (such as sick leave, annual leave and parental leave) on a pro-rata basis compared with full-time staff.
Promote workers’ awareness of their labour rights under these arrangements, in order to prevent discrimination – particularly against women and young people, who are over-represented in this type of part-time employment.
Provide these workers with equal access to career development and skill training opportunities, compared with full-time staff, in order to help position them to make a success.
Based upon both international labour standards related to working time and workers with family responsibilities, as well as the findings of recent research on working time and its effects, the ILO identified five significant dimensions of decent work in the area of working time or “decent working time”. Working-time arrangements should: promote health and safety; be “family-friendly” and improve workers’ work–life balance; promote gender equality; increase the productivity and sustainability of enterprises; and offer workers a degree of choice and influence over their hours of work.
The two main components of working time – hours of work and workingtime arrangements (work schedules) – are key factors in determining how well workers are able to balance their paid work with their personal lives, including their family responsibilities and other personal needs.
For example, long hours of work (> 48 hours per week) have a negative effect on workers’ work– life balance, while shorter hours of work may help to facilitate work–life balance and may also promote increased productivity at the same time. Working-time arrangements with predictable schedules and a degree of working-time autonomy may also help workers to achieve a better work–life balance, while arrangements with unpredictable work schedules have the opposite effect. By developing and implementing progressive policies and practices in line with the principles of decent working time, both workers and employers can reap the benefits of a healthy work–life balance.
Jeevan Thiagarajah