Flexible Work, Temporal Disruption and Implications for Health Practices: An Australian Qualitative Study

Ginny M Sargent, Julia McQuoid, Jane Dixon, Cathy Banwell and Lyndall Strazdins
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Ginny M Sargent: The Australian National University, Australia
Julia McQuoid: The University of California, San Francisco, USA
Jane Dixon: The Australian National University, Australia
Cathy Banwell: The Australian National University, Australia
Lyndall Strazdins: The Australian National University, Australia

Work, Employment & Society, 2021, vol. 35, issue 2, 277-295

Abstract: Flexible work provisions are justified as enabling workers to manage their personal lives, including their health, around work. This study deploys social theories of practice to investigate how the temporal characteristics of flexible work can produce, alter and disrupt the health improvement efforts of workers, concentrating on healthy eating and keeping physically active. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 12 Australian workers, the study explores the temporal mechanisms linking flexible work to health practices, focusing on routines, rhythms and rituals (the three Rs). This research finds that work-time arrangements can provide the temporal scaffolding necessary for health practices (through routines, rhythms and rituals), but only when there is day-to-day, mid-term, and long-term work predictability. Australia’s flexible work policies do not provide this requisite temporal predictability. Health promoting employment provisions would have to reinstate employment standards from the 1970s, providing the desired predictability for flexible provisions to benefit workers.

Keywords: employee health; flexible labour markets; flexible workers; health practices; predictable work hours; preventing chronic disease; public policy; time use; worker health; workplace health promotion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:35:y:2021:i:2:p:277-295

DOI: 10.1177/0950017020954750

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