Abstract
As part of the Routledge Research in Employment Relations series, Lewis and colleagues provide a book which coalesces the many themes that drive and distinguish our understanding of work–life balance (WLB). My sense is that this publication is a landmark contribution, not only in the way these themes are brought together but in the opportunity the book offers to scrutinise these themes amidst the contemporary influences of recession and the austerity agenda. The aim of the book is stated as assessing ‘the impact of recession and austerity policies on WLB and support for it, and particularly how they affect our ability to achieve the triple agenda of individuals’ WLB and well-being, workplace effectiveness and social justice’ (p. xvii). It charts how recent cycles of financial turbulence allow phases of recession and prosperity which perpetuate inequalities in societies and how the current commitment to austerity further reinforces these imbalances.
In the introduction, the editors highlight their commitment to extend the ‘dual agenda’, which associates workplace effectiveness with opportunities for increasing gender equity, to champion the ‘triple agenda’. This ‘triple agenda’ broadens the debates on WLB by incorporating the issues of social justice and fairness, expanding our understanding of our relationship with paid and unpaid work, and life. To achieve this expanded triple agenda, the authors incorporate chapters where the white-collar focus of WLB studies is challenged in favour of a working-class lens (Chapter 7 by Warren), the WLB dilemmas facing the self-employed in Spain and the Netherlands are considered (Chapter 8 by Den Dulk, Annink, et al.) and the issues of carers’ WLB experiences (Chapter 5 by Busby and James) are exposed. I found these amongst the most stimulating chapters as they represent vividly how the austerity agenda disproportionately affects the most vulnerable with few other life options outside of precarious working conditions or exclusion from paid work itself.
In other chapters, which appear to embrace the more traditional stakeholders associated with WLB debates, the editors have clearly urged their authors to provoke the readers’ understanding beyond the existing arguments. For example, in Chapter 6, Milner’s exploration of French and British Trade Unions’ different approaches to securing further suitable WLB remedies (amidst recessionary conditions) highlights where large sections of the workforce are likely to face less protection unless they are in larger, commercial organisations. Drawing on qualitative data collected with human resource professionals in the British public sector (Chapter 4 by Lyonette, Anderson, Lewis, et al.), the authors (and editors) account for the tensions of adopting flexible work practices, such as remote working, which may facilitate forms of WLB. These professionals identify how flexible work practices are, in places, being used to fulfil austerity commitments rather than provide better WLB arrangements. Hence, tensions emerged from line managers under pressure ‘to do more with less resource’ and exert remote forms of control (through technology) but also from workers concerned their adoption of flexible working opportunities would leave them vulnerable in the longer term. Such strains are expanded upon (Chapter 9 by Strelitz), where it is considered how the nature of the physical workplace has changed due to organisations’ rationalisation of real estate to save costs, simultaneous development of single, economically and environmentally designed buildings, incorporating multiple leisure and hot desking work spaces, alongside the opportunities to work remotely. The implications for WLB here are complex and fracture our existing associations with our physical workplace, blurring the work–home-life boundaries further. For example, such changes may extend commuting times for workers, lead to issues of social alienation and limited work effectiveness; however, concurrently, the rise in ‘co-work venues’ may ameliorate some of these tensions. While this chapter has weaker empirical foundations, it offers valuable insights which need to be pursued further by academics in the field.
Three of the early chapters use a range of quantitative data sources from European Union and British sources (including the established European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO), European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) and Work and Employment Relations Survey (WERS) studies) to explore working time trends (Chapter 1 by Fagan and Vermeylen), the work–home interface, health and well-being (Chapter 2 by Kinman and McDowall) and employer support for WLB practices (Chapter 3 by Stokes and Wood). Across these three chapters we see a mixed picture emerging where some WLB practices are in decline while others are on the increase, though not solely for the mutual benefit of organisations, their employees or wider society. It emerges that during economic downturns, and directly as a result of austerity measures, employees become reluctant to use flexible working options in fear of jeopardising their longer term earning capacity and job security but also face issues of work intensification. I feel this issue of work intensification is where an omission occurs in this publication, given the topic’s repeated reoccurrence and the underlying mantra of austerity as ‘doing more with less’.
In the final chapters, the ‘dual agenda’ is revisited and the final assessment of WLB approaches and practices are assessed amid austerity and recession. In Chapter 10 (by Kim, Bailyn and Kolb), the rhetoric of companies’ challenges to flexibility, and specifically remote working, are explored and the use of the collaborative interactive action research (CIAR) approach is reviewed. The double-edged nature of WLB practices during recession and prolonged austerity measures are the focus for the final chapter (Chapter 11 by Anderson, Swan and Lewis) and case studies are presented alongside a synthesis of the previous chapters.
Overall this book clearly presents the many reservations from diverse stakeholders regarding WLB and challenges us to reconsider and reconcile the implied gender neutrality, fairness and social justice footings of the WLB discourse during austerity. I highly recommend this volume in its ability to query issues of autonomy, negotiated working times and workplaces, whose agenda WLB truly is, and how its approaches, mantras and practices have been hijacked in ways that perpetuate the neoliberal agenda fostering austerity.