Work and Leisure

The economics of work and leisure 93Overtime and part-time working are two major expressions of flexibility oftime allocation between work and leisure. However, flexibility is concernednot just with the quantities of work and leisure but also when they occur. Anincreasing proportion of the labour force is not working a standard, nine-tofive,Monday to Friday working week. Two of the most common forms ofvariation from the standard working week are shiftwork and flexible workinghours (including flexitime, a compressed work week, and annualised hours).Hogarth et al. (2000) reported for the UK that 21 per cent of employeesworked shifts, 24 per cent worked flexitime, 6 per cent worked compressedwork weeks and 2 per cent worked annualised hours.A key distinction between these non-standard work/leisure allocations isthat whereas shiftwork is primarily the preference of the employer, flexitime isprimarily the choice of the employee. An extreme demonstration of thedemands of the modern service economy was reported by the Department forEducation and Employment (DfEE 2000) with data on the extent of workingon bank holidays – most likely a choice of the employer not the employee. Inthe period from December 1998 to August 1999 over 31 per cent of all fulltimeworkers and nearly 29 per cent of part-time workers in the UK workedon at least one bank holiday. The occupations with the highest figures were‘personal and protection’ services for full-time workers and ‘selling’ for parttimeworkers. In the Hogarth et al. (2000) report on work–life balance therewas a considerable latent demand for more flexible work time arrangementsby employees: 47 per cent of employees not using flexitime would have likedto do so; 35 per cent of employees not working a compressed work weekwould have preferred it; and 21 per cent of those not working annualisedhours would have preferred them.Preferred work–leisure time allocationsSurvey evidence has provided a consistent picture that the amount of workand leisure time being experienced is often not what individuals actuallywant. In the Institute of Management survey (Charlesworth 1996) 60 per centof British managers found it difficult to find enough time to relax, forhobbies/interests and time for their partner. Another survey, commissionedby the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (Compton-Edwards 2001) researched a sample of 291 people who worked longer than 48hours in a typical week in 1998 and continued to do so in 2000. The resultssuggest that most of such ‘long hours’ workers feel that they have struck thewrong work–life balance, 56 per cent saying that they have dedicated toomuch of their life to work; 54 per cent claiming that they suffered from mentalexhaustion or always feeling drained and 43 per cent experiencing difficultysleeping. Less than half the sample (47 per cent) claimed working long hourswas entirely their own choice, with 43 per cent sometimes working long hoursreluctantly and 10 per cent working long hours reluctantly most or all of the