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'Flexible' Working Can Keep You Stressed Out For Longer, Lead to Illness (theguardian.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the how-water-coolers-at-killing-you dept.

schwit1 sends news about the effects of flexible working schedules on the people who try them. Research has found that many employees fall into a "grazing" pattern for work — constantly being interrupted while working, and continuing to keep up with work emails when not — which results in having elevated stress levels for a longer period of time. This can make such workers more susceptible to illness, and it shows distinct biological consequences to having a poor work-life balance. Flexible working policies can also raise the risk of poor working conditions, and create resentment among colleagues ... The findings are a blow to advocates of more sophisticated measures for enabling people to achieve a work-life balance in rich economies that tend to overwork some people while underutilising millions of others. With an estimated 10m working days lost to work-related stress in the UK last year, finding a good balance between the demands of home and the job now dominates concerns about the impact of work on health.

2 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Just like being on-call by djb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had a flexi-remote working job for two years and it was the best gig I ever had. Yes I'd reply to emails at all hours of the day, but I also worked an average 6 hours a day and found it easy to maintain a life/work balance. I ended up moving to Barcelona for six months and had my dream life for a while traveling around the world and working from wherever I happened to be that day.

    If you have a job that you enjoy, a good boss and co-workers then it's great. But you have to be someone who can copy with blurred lines in your life and the idea that working/non-working isn't a binary distinction.

    It's the same with being on-call in an IT-support gig. Some people are happy to carry a pager and responded to it now and then, others for some reason that I don't understand get really stressed by it and feel on edge the whole time the pager is on their belt.

  2. Re:Due to management definition of "flexible" by khasim · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And being told to "flex" your hours which means work overtime today (unpaid because you are salaried) and just work fewer hours tomorrow.

    Oops. Not tomorrow. Here's another important thing that requires overtime. You can take 2x time off the day after.

    Rinse and repeat.

    I've had too many managers who think that making everything a "crisis" is an effective means of management.