Flexible Work Arrangements and Health in White-Collar Urban Professionals

Abstract

Although some research has examined health implications of flexible work arrangements, little is known about job flexibility and health in the context of modern working life, characterized by intensification. Grounded on the Job Demand-Resource model, this article explores access to flexible work arrangements and organizational climate on the health and well-being of white-collar, urban professionals in downtown Toronto. A qualitative content analysis of eight semistructured interviews with white-collar, urban professionals between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-two revealed three domains—intensity of work life and demands, coworker and managerial relations, and the boundaries between work and home—where demands outweighed resources to limit workers’ ability to practice flexibility. Thus, an emerging trend where workers need to be flexible within flexible work arrangements emerged. Findings point to the need for organizational commitment and activities to address unhealthy behaviors in the context of modern working life.

Keywords

flexible work workplace health white-collar worker Canada

Introduction

Flexible work, an array of workplace practices that facilitate flexibility over when and where individuals work, has increased substantially in most industrialized countries.¹ It serves as an important and effective strategy employed by employers seeking to attract and retain talent and, more notably, is an important resource for workers. Such arrangements are typically formal, requiring employer permission, and can include modifying work hours (e.g., compressed work weeks) or location (e.g., work from home) and have been found to increase worker satisfaction, work–life balance, and organizational commitment.² For instance, in longitudinal assessments among Canadian workers aged eighteen to sixty-four, having some degree of job flexibility was associated with higher job satisfaction in men and women.³ As well, there are a number of studies that provide evidence that flexible working relieves work-to-family conflict.^4,5

It is no surprise then that flexible work is beginning to look like the norm rather than the exception in many professional jobs. In the United States, for instance, national census data revealed that nearly three quarters of survey respondents strongly considered flexibility in the workplace when looking for a new job.⁶ Similarly, across the European Union, a quarter of workers had access to flexible schedules in 2015,⁷ while in Canada, more workers were provided flexible work arrangements as part of informal work practices.⁸ Here, informal practices are considered variable and allow workers to exercise control over their day-to-day or week-to-week schedules based on changing demands. Employers thus do not need to implement formal arrangements with workers. Some have argued that the underlying premise of both formal and informal workplace flexibility is that organizational attempts to promote flexibility will result in elevated perceptions of flexibility among workers.⁹ In this context, employer governance is hidden, and responsibility is placed on the worker to balance work with other domains in their life.

While flexibility has been tied to several worker and organizational outcomes, the evidence base linking workplace flexibility to worker health is limited. Existing research tends to focus on single dimensions of flexibility and often relies on self-report, cross-sectional quantitative surveys.^10,11 For instance, cross-sectional telephone surveys with workers in four Missouri cities found that greater flexibility, measured as flexibility of their time at work, was associated with higher rates of exercise.¹² As well, Moen et al.¹³ found that implementing a results-only work environment, where work tasks were prioritized and subsequent flexibility followed, was associated with healthy behaviors including less drinking and smoking among employees. Finally, there has been some research that has addressed the relationship between job flexibility and burnout¹⁴ and subjective health^6,15 although findings have been somewhat mixed. For example, Galinsky et al.⁶ found that 39 percent of employees with high job flexibility rated their health as excellent yet the health effects diminished along spectrums of flexibility (e.g., moderate flexibility).

As shown, research examining job flexibility in the workplace highlights both positive and negative effects on worker health. However, the literature reflects an idealized view of the workplace and work conditions as the typical “9 to 5” job that was standard for many years. Modern working life, characterized by longer working hours, intensification of work, and individual adaptability remains an undertheorized area in the context of job flexibility. Therefore, the purpose of this pilot study was to explore job flexibility as experienced by white-collar workers in Toronto, Ontario. White-collar workers exemplify an accelerated and intensified working life and often are provided with flexible work arrangements to mediate demands.¹⁶ A particular focus was to examine the link between access to workplace flexibility and organizational climate on worker health in the context of white-collar work.

Theoretical Framework

The Job Demand-Resource (JD-R) model states that a balance between job demands and job resources within the work environment is associated with greater employee health and well-being.^17,18 Job demands refer to those “physical, social, or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical or mental effort and are therefore associated with certain physiological and psychological costs.”¹⁹ Job resources, on the other hand, refer to those

physical, psychological, social or organizational aspects of the job that may do any of the following: a) be functional in achieving work goals; b) reduce job demands at the associated physiological and psychological costs; c) stimulate personal growth and development.¹⁹

According to Schaufeli and Taris,²⁰ job resources are considered health-protecting factors that counterbalance job demands.

Unlike the Job Demands Control²¹ and Effort Reward Imbalance²² models which are commonly used in occupational health research, the scope of the JD-R is much broader because it includes any demand and any resource as affecting health and well-being.²⁰ Practically, this implies that the model can be tailored to a specific work setting. Here, white-collar workers’ specific demands (e.g., work overload, time pressure), resources (e.g., access to flexible work arrangements, financial rewards), and health-related behaviors and outcomes (e.g., healthy eating, work–life balance, stress) are included. These outcomes are both negative and positive, allowing for a balanced approach but also providing a snapshot of associations where little is known.²⁰ Given the exploratory nature of this study, the generality of the JD-R is appropriate.

Flexible Work in the Context of White-Collar Employment

Labor market norms and structures have changed in the last few decades with rises in technological advancements and increased international competition. Workers are struggling to meet employer demands in a fast-paced, deliverable-driven environment. This widespread trend is especially apparent among white-collar occupations in business and finance, information technology, and trades and banking. Offshoring to third parties in India and China is common to meet demands and places pressure on workers to perform.²³

Adverse health effects are often unintended consequences as work demands increase.²⁴ Stress, for instance, is persistent and commonly reported^25–27 especially as workers engage in longer working hours to meet deadlines. As well, stress has been found to influence other health behaviors including physical activity levels, diet, and smoking/alcohol consumption.²⁸,²⁹ Evidence suggests that greater flexibility in work location, such as being able to work from home, may actually allow workers to arrange their day accordingly and make more time for exercise especially as commute time decreases.^2,30 Flexible work arrangements are particularly attractive to employees with extra-work commitments such as childcare, with studies finding reduced work–family conflict³¹ and satisfaction and motivation resulting from enhanced work–life balance.³²

The positive effects of flexible work arrangements on a worker’s experience of the job itself and the boundary between work and nonwork underlie associations between flexibility and positive health outcomes.³³ Perceived schedule flexibility has been associated with fewer symptoms of physical ill-health,³⁴ better psychological well-being,³⁵ and fewer sickness-related absences.³⁶ Conversely, the opposite is true when workers perceive a lack of control over work schedules and, in turn, flexibility. For instance, in their survey of working men and women across fifteen European countries, Costa et al.³⁷ found that lack of flexibility (measured by ability to set working hours) was associated with lower health and safety measures including injury, backache, headache, and sleep problems. Similarly, Butler et al.³⁸ found that employees in a large pharmaceutical company self-reported poor physical health when flexibility at the intersections of work, personal, and family commitments were not met. Finally, when lack of flexibility was compounded with increased work intensity, employees from a Spanish consultancy firm reported physical (e.g., headaches), psychological (e.g., anxiety), and social well-being impacts.³⁹ Accordingly, the JD-R model suggests that access to flexible work arrangements, such as flexitime (e.g., compressed work weeks, changes to hours), can provide workers with greater autonomy in work schedules to help manage work demands and is seen as an employee resource.¹⁷

Flexible Work and Organizational Climate

Flexible work arrangements are in large part dictated by organizational climate. Organizations that have a supportive organizational climate value nonwork aspects of people’s lives and seek to accommodate the multiple needs of employees to create a positive work environment and enhance organizational productivity.⁴⁰ Conversely, a hindering organizational climate requires that employees prioritize work over nonwork activities which can mean putting in extra time to get the work done or the embedded understanding within the organization’s practices that nonwork activities may negatively impact career progression.⁴¹ Given that supportive and hindering organizational climates affect a worker’s response to work and nonwork activities, scholars consistently draw parallels with psychological climate within an organization where relationships (coworkers, management), work role, and job requirements impact work outcomes.⁴² For example, studies on psychologically safe workplace climates suggest that they encourage collaboration between peers, including information and knowledge sharing,⁴³ and support disclosure of ideas.⁴⁴ Thus, both concepts overlap significantly and are often used interchangeably.

Within the context of white-collar employment, some research has demonstrated the importance of supervisory support in facilitating uptake of flexible work arrangements in organizations,^45,46 while other supervisory practices are less conducive. For example, MacEachen et al.⁴⁷ found that management used strategies to orient workers to withstand excessive working conditions by providing comfortable, recreational, and casual work spaces, thereby maintaining the boundaries between flexibility and health. Under some circumstances, flexibility can be associated with the breakdown of work and nonwork boundaries. In particular, when workloads are high, employers may exert pressure on workers to restructure their personal time to work.⁴⁸ Timms et al.’s⁴⁹ study on workers in the Information and Communications Technology industry, for instance, revealed that management often brought in fast food to meet tight deadlines after hours, but this was not in line with nonwork responsibilities of women and perceived to hinder career advancement. More recently, management policies toward flexible work have been used for performance-enhancing purposes—increasing work intensity and working hours for higher rewards through income premiums and promotion.⁵⁰ For instance, in their study on employees of a Fortune 500 company, Leslie et al.⁵¹ found that managers attributed higher productivity through flexible work as a signal of organizational commitment and thus career success. Here, career success is driven by managers’ perceptions, not just employee behavior. When workers experience insufficient rewards in the form of recognition or salary, however, feelings of devaluation may appear offsetting their contribution in the workplace.⁵² Thus, a supportive organizational climate where employees are able to communicate and use flexible work arrangements, at their discretion, is considered a job resource because employees do not fear reprisal from supervisors, managers, or peers, thereby enhancing psychological health and associated health behaviors. Conversely, there is a risk that workers who exert flexible arrangements, albeit supported by informal managerial practices, may impose on themselves tiring work routines in order to get more done in shorter work weeks or increase earning potential. This could, in theory, result in poorer health or greater risk of injury.³³

Overall, these bodies of literature on flexible work and health in the context of professional workers indicates that providing employees with flexible working arrangements and control over their working time is associated with better health behaviors and health and well-being outcomes. Yet, flexibility is contingent on the organizational climate where, generally, there is an overarching goal to meet deadlines. This can be at the cost of health and well-being, although workers appear to see this as a means to bigger gains.

Methodology

Participants and Data Selection

This study employed an exploratory, qualitative research design to achieve study goals and objectives. The analysis was based on eight semistructured interviews conducted between November 2015 and March 2016 with white-collar, urban professionals working in downtown Toronto. White-collar, urban professionals were defined as individuals working within the central business district, also known as The Financial District, of downtown Toronto in occupations within an office or other administrative setting. The Financial District was selected given its wide reach, with more than one hundred thousand commuters entering and leaving daily, and breadth of employers. This densely built up area is home to the “Big Five” banks, corporate headquarters, stockbrokerages, legal and accounting firms, and the like.

A convenience sample of participants was used. Workers were recruited through the researcher’s own networks and using the snowball approach, whereby participants are asked to identify colleagues. Workers were included if they had at least one year of experience as a white-collar, urban professional, were over the age of eighteen years, and were fluent in English. Interested participants were informed about the purpose of the study, their role, and time commitment and assured that participation was voluntary and anonymous.

Interviews with workers consisted of six males and two female urban professionals between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-two. Three were in junior management positions, and the remaining had early career roles mainly in the banking sector. Three of the participants were married, one with a child, and the remainder were single or in a committed relationship (Table 1).

Table 1.

Participant Characteristics.

Pseudonym	Gender	Age	Occupational industry
Raj	Male	30	Financial Analyst
Siva	Male	32	Engineer Program Lead
Anu	Female	29	Business Analyst
Connor	Male	31	Foreign Exchange Trader
Oviya	Female	25	Research Analyst
Hank	Male	29	Manager
Pete	Male	32	Engineer Program Lead
Joe	Male	30	Business Analyst

Data Collection

The method of data collection was in-depth, semistructured interviews with the participants. An interview guide was developed based on the study’s purpose and research questions. The guide covered broad themes including participants’ perceived access to flexible work arrangements in their role, work–life balance, organizational climate including the role of other workplace actors such as management and peers, and impacts of these relationships on their health behaviors, habits, and outcomes. By health outcomes, we seek to understand whether access to or lack of access to flexible work arrangements had an impact on the workers perceived psychological health (e.g., stress) but general health as well (e.g., sleep problems, sickness absence, headaches).

Interviews lasted anywhere between thirty to forty-five minutes and were carried out at a location of the participant’s choosing such as cafes in and around the downtown core. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and entered into NVivo qualitative software. An iterative process between data collection and data analysis was employed for refinement of analytic focus over time. This back-and-forth process allowed for issues arising in one interview to be integrated in future interviews. Detailed field notes were also written for each interview to capture contextual dynamics and record analytic insights.

Data Analysis

A qualitative content analysis of interview data was carried out. This approach focuses on the visible components and underlying meaning of text data and is especially appropriate when existing theory or research is limited on the topic of interest.⁵³ Thus, knowledge is generated and emerges from the data itself rather than informed from preconceived notions.⁵⁴

The analysis process was performed in several steps. First, each interview was read in its entirety to immerse in, and get a sense of, the data as a whole. This allowed generation of codes that were descriptive of the data such as workplace relations, work schedules, changes in health habits and behaviors, and general health. In the next step, related codes were linked and organized into meaningful subcategories, and quotations were added with the aim of illustrating context. Finally, subcategories were examined within and across the interview data in order to identify a categorization and thematic structure of the data that was well grounded in participant accounts.

This study received ethical approval from The University of Waterloo Research Ethics Board. The study took into account basic ethical principles concerning informed consent, confidentiality, and anonymity. No personal identifiers were used, and each participant was assigned a pseudonym.

Findings

Participants described three key domains relating job flexibility in urban, white-collar professions. They described job intensification in their roles that required more time and effort than anticipated, managerial and coworker influence, and perceived use of job flexibility to enhance work–life balance. These associations manifested themselves in unique and pronounced ways to have effects on participants’ health behaviors including physical activity and food choices as well as their need to “fit in” in their fast-paced, changing work environment.

Job Flexibility Dependent on Workload

Participants’ level of job flexibility—their ability to choose when, where and how long they engage in work-related tasks⁵⁵—was impacted by their respective workloads. Workloads were typically based on needs and deliverables within their company, and for many, fluctuated in the year, with some quarters being busier than others or even particular points of the day, week, or month experiencing heavy workloads. Higher job demands which include not only the work overload but also time pressure coincided with feelings of stress. Participants described how, while they were able to come and go as they please, when workloads were heavy, priority was to get the job done at any cost. Increased demands of current working life had resulted in there being limited room for flexibility. For some, this meant working outside of normal business hours:

Right now, the current project I’m on is kind of in a red zone where we’re not meeting timelines . . . we’re going over budget essentially so basically everyone’s in a lot of pressure to get things done. That’s essentially expected of us . . . so, if you care about the job you will be putting the extra effort to work outside of regular business hours. Me personally I’ll work the extra hours . . . like 10 to 14 hours a day even . . . to try and get my task completed on time and not hold up the rest of the members of my team. (Joe, Business Analyst)

Vacation time was also affected during heavy work periods. Many of these companies had generous vacation allocations (e.g., four weeks); however, participants described how time off was dependent on company needs versus their preference. For example, Joe detailed how vacation approval required three-month notice since there was a dependency on him for specific work tasks that no one else could cover. By the end of the year, he found that he had hardly taken vacation.

Working from home was an option for many participants provided that they did not have any scheduled meetings or prior appointments at work. Some participants liked this option as it allowed them to save on commute time and spend time with family, while others practiced it less as they felt it would present a bad impression on their managers and coworkers, as explained by Hank:

In my particular role, I’m allowed to take a break whenever, I’m allowed to work from home whenever I want . . . the only thing that stops me . . . the number one thing again that goes to my mind is what will people think of me if I take, you know, all these breaks. Even though I’m allowed to do it, but nobody else is doing it or you know you have that feeling that people may look down on you . . . (Hank, Manager)

Alternatively, a number of participants found that working from home actually equated to working longer hours than going into the office. Raj, a Financial Analyst, for instance, explained how he would receive after-hour calls on his cell phone which he was expected to pick up regardless of what he was doing. The presumption here is that there is an expectation to be readily available throughout the day if a worker decides to work from home and aligns with the notion that recognition is afforded to “visible” work rather than that conducted off site.⁵⁶

All participants reported having typical desk jobs which kept them relatively sedentary throughout the day. This was especially the case when work demands were high and workers described lower perceived flexibility with breaks or schedules (e.g., leaving work early). Prolonged sitting was coupled with poor eating habits which included consuming easy to grab, greasy, convenience foods, meal skipping, or stress eating. For instance, Connor, a thirty-year-old Foreign Exchange Banker, described how “stress eating” played out in his role:

If it’s a busy day, I might get a doughnut one day, I might get something else like chocolate, you know. That’s really bad, stress eating you know. Extra coffees, double sometimes I’ll have, if it’s really that bad, I’ll have a coffee in the morning, they do have Keurigs at my work, so just reload on that halfway through the day again. That’s also very unhealthy.

Participants further described a “catered lunch culture” where employers provided fast-food lunches to meet project deadlines. Anu, a Business Analyst, found not only was she gaining weight, but there was an underlying expectation that providing lunch would keep people at their desk and doing work.

They [employer] would order each day from a different place and at the beginning it was okay but then it started getting repetitive like so every Monday you would have the same kind of food . . . and I even kind of started to gain weight cause like even though I was eating the same portions I was never getting up. . . .Even if I got up my boss would be like where are you going? Not in a serious way but in a joking way but it’s like, no one gets up. . . .So, in that sense they do have an influence – they tell you what you are going to eat everyday. . . .It seems like it’s a good idea because they pay for it but then it’s not because you’re eating the same thing every day, you’re not choosing what you want to eat so in that sense I think like that’s kind of a strain.

One participant went on to say that corporate lunches were not enough to help deal with the stress of a high-paced environment and tight deadlines. For Pete, a Program Lead at an engineering firm, coping with stress instead came in the form of alcohol and substance use.

The organization is heavily politically driven . . . so it’s a high stress environment, so if you’re having a bad day, you’ll turn to junk food or Burger King . . . we deal with large amounts of money, public money so it is a lot of kind of ethical issues so I’ve seen, people deal with it poorly, they drink a lot at work I think there’s a lot of alcoholics probably at work and possibly even drug use I would say. . . .Like, I drink, I smoke weed . . . to deal with stress levels.

He explains that he’s trying to manage stress levels better by going to the gym and actually taking advantage of compressed work weeks.

As work demands outweighed access to flexibility, it seemed the workers became aware of the informal processes within their organizations (e.g., “visible” work at work rather than from home) which adjusted their work and health behaviors.⁵⁷

Collegial Support

Interview data strongly reflected the intensity of working life, where participants frequently described working conditions as demanding, and discussed how they employed different coping mechanisms. A key mechanism was coworker and managerial support and interaction. Participants generally were able to take as many breaks as they wanted throughout the day and for as long as they wanted (sometimes upwards of two to three hours), and this was innately tied to their coworkers. “You do have this pressure . . . to do things together,” as one participant described it. In this context, workers underlined how taking breaks with coworkers built collegiality in the workplace and increased work engagement. Here, engagement is tied to psychological climate; workers feel a sense of fulfillment from work and so, time passes quicker and with more ease.⁵⁸ When collegiality was lacking in the workplace, some participants found it harder to meet time lines. For instance, Oviya, a Research Analyst, described being unable to detach from work because she felt like a one-person team:

[There is a] lack of communication . . . it makes me more stressed in the sense that they like . . . is there anyone I can engage [with]?. . . .If I wanted to grow within my field I want to be able to communicate with people in my field as well, in my workplace. . . .[Also] what responsibilities may be for a project. So who is leading the project, what tasks are mine and what task is my coworkers’. . . .In those events, coworkers have to work together and figure that out.

Participants in this study experienced the need to “fit in” with coworkers and upper management which meant engaging in after-work activities including dinner or drinks. At times this was to relax following a long day and other times to simply catch up with coworkers who they now considered friends. Some, however, felt compelled to make time for socializing if management was present as in Hank’s case:

. . . for me personally it’s seeing who’s participating in these activities. If it’s you know my bosses or you know my peers I would say that I look up too, I am more inclined to participate . . . it’s almost a social pressure. . . .I want to know how it affects me work wise and if I think it will, you know, if I think it will deter me from that promotion or getting recognized.

In this context, workers found themselves extending flexibility outside work-related tasks and at times, conflicting with homelife to demonstrate organizational commitment as a means to career advancement. Participants related getting home late and exhausted only to wake up in a few hours and start the workday and related after-work activities over again.

Managerial respect and admiration further transpired in the way workers composed themselves. They felt the corporate culture, at times, required them to dress a certain way to blend in or required them to eat out often to network and “show face” with senior leaders.

Flexible Working and Work–Life Balance

Flexible work arrangements are meant to allow for a balance with different spheres of workers’ lives. Flexibility in scheduling, in particular, was important to participants in this study and provided some level of control over boundaries between work and homelife; allowing for a higher degree of psychological detachment from work to participate in activities and relationships important to them.

A caveat, however, was that flexibility relating to work and home balance did not interfere with work demands. In these cases, management was less receptive to accommodating worker needs. Anu describes how this played out with respect to her coworker:

. . . at my work place, one of the ladies she got let go because she wasn’t flexible . . . she always had to leave at 5 o’clock to pick up her kid from day care, and they [management] said that she wasn’t flexible, so they let her go . . . it’s unfortunate that happened, she was okay with coming in early [but not staying later].

Given that many of the participants did not have children, they did not experience these negative judgments by management as acutely, as seen elsewhere.⁴⁹ However, it was also the case that workers were not necessarily open to disclosing concerns unrelated to work unless it was of immediate concern:

My managers are very understanding, if there are things that I need to do or if all of a sudden I really did have to leave they’re fully understanding and will try to manage and work with me not against me. Like . . . things are happening in my life that are unforeseen . . . my work environment is definitely like willing to work around. (Joe, Business Analyst)

This mismatch in time management where participants felt compelled to work longer and harder was excessively fatiguing and did not allow for adequate rest. Some described the mad dash out the door in the mornings that inadvertently infringed on a healthy diet:

I really value my time more so that if I were to make breakfast I would spend too much more time than I am willing to and I end up just buying breakfast and same with lunch. I feel I don’t really have that much time to make it myself. (Hank, Manager)

And still others suggested a need for corporate responsibility to promote healthy activities when work–life balance was not achieved:

. . . not everyone has the time to make lunch and prepare meals throughout the week, let’s be honest. So, I would say employers and maybe even corporate landlords should start incorporating healthier choices in their food courts and cafeterias, meaning more low carb options, less oily stuff, not the regular Tim Hortons and pizza. [It is easy to] go down and then have to access something fast. (Connor, Foreign Exchange)

. . . instead of just sitting at a desk . . . [especially] during the winter time it’ll be hard for us to walk around . . . so if there’s a gym available that we can at least have like half an hour walk or run. (Siva, Engineer Program Lead)

Discussion

A substantial body of evidence indicates that flexible work arrangements are associated with positive outcomes in terms of health and well-being for employees as well as beneficial organizational outcomes (e.g., productivity) that are important to employers. This study differs from existing research focused on job flexibility and health and well-being in two ways. First, we focus on flexibility as both experienced by white-collar workers (perceived flexibility) and embedded in the organizational climate (informal processes). In doing so, we found that white-collar urban professionals pose a contrast to the traditional “9 to 5” workplace as flexibility was contingent on work demands and influenced by organizational resources such as collegial support. Second, the intensification of modern working life left little room for workers to practice flexibility, even when present, especially given the fact that career success was a priority to most. In this context, health behaviors and habits fluctuated as workers navigated through their changing days and routines.

In this exploratory, category-specific group of workers, flexible work was not a tangible resource. Although workers described autonomy over when and where to work, a closer examination of their access to flexibility revealed opposing realities. Completing time-sensitive tasks and meeting project deadlines were discussed as the organization’s bottom line which meant a worker’s time both within and outside work were used.⁴⁷ This was reflected in workers’ accounts of being out of office and working and answering work-related calls outside of typical work hours. In turn, many workers felt largely unable to disengage from work whether self-imposed or more likely due to expectation and/or obligation.^59,60 Exhaustion, stress, and fatigue were commonly reported issues under high-pressure situations with little space for rest or recuperation. While stress and fatigue are associated with a number of safety-related (e.g., accidents and injuries) and chronic health outcomes,³³ this study was unable to examine the mechanisms underlying these associations, suggesting the need for further research to delineate the link between perceived flexibility, stress, and fatigue in the context of work demands imposed on professional workers. Along these lines, however, a few workers were cognizant of the fact that the aforementioned workplace health issues were not recognized by management. This may be due in part because white-collar work is nonphysical and thus perceived as harmless but also because employers may be unwilling to invest in health promotion initiatives.^61,62 On the other hand, workers did describe informal managerial practices such as providing fast-food corporate lunches with the aim of completing time-sensitive tasks. These findings are in line with previous research on employers’ production-oriented strategies that prioritize organizational success.^49,63–67 The “catered lunch culture” compounded on the workers’ already sedentary workday and unhealthy eating habits (e.g., stress eating) during high workloads.

A collective responsibility for work tasks emerged as a positive resource to flexibility when present in the workplace and, unsurprisingly, a deterrent when absent. Several workers expressed the need for collaboration for an efficient operation especially in the case where allocation of work tasks was unbalanced or some individuals fell behind. This is important given that work group belonging has been shown to be beneficial to health and job satisfaction.⁶⁸ As well, linked by common practices, white-collar workers see networking in the workplace as a means for exchanging information of work-related tasks, processes, and expectations and, in turn, maintaining long-term employability.⁶⁹ In our study, this collegiality and networking was a flexible and ongoing process that extended to all aspects of the workday from multiple coffee breaks, lunches, and after-work drinks. Participants further compared the perceived commitment of colleagues and management to the job (e.g., did not work from home, skipped meals) to their own and felt compelled to follow suit, unless nonwork responsibilities were of immediate concern. The use of flexible work arrangements seemingly acted as a burden on workers when considering organizational commitment, career stagnation, and potential backlash from coworkers.⁵⁶

As seen, a supportive organizational climate occurred in parallel with expectations to govern use of flexible work arrangements. While this study did not find that work encroached on family life or contributed to work–family conflict, it is possible that workers perceived nonuse of flexible work for family responsibilities as increased job security.⁴⁵ From a critical point of view, this can be described as adherence to the “ideal worker norm” where work is privileged above nonwork activities.⁷⁰ This is particularly salient in men given normative societal views that expect men to take on a breadwinning role while women are prescribed to the home and taking care of children. As seen in the example of Anu’s coworker, use of flexible arrangements for childcare came at the cost of her job. In line with this purview, the pressure on white-collar urban professionals became a matter of a worker’s motivation to fit other spheres of their life to the job. Particularly, most participants framed flexible work arrangements as a privilege and correspondingly family and social activities as an individual responsibility as opposed to something that should be readily supported within the organization. This is consistent with other research which reported similar descriptions by employees that flexible work should be earned.^71,72 A corollary, as voiced by a few participants, was corporate responsibility to promoting healthy initiatives in the workplace such as gym memberships and better food options. Here, workers’ suggestions for health promotion seemed to be a means to withstand their busy schedules that inadvertently prevented uptake of flexible work.

Conclusion

An analysis of eight white-collar urban professionals in this pilot study provides insight into access to and use of flexible work arrangements, the conditions that support or hinder flexible work arrangements, and health behaviors and outcomes that emerge in these contexts.

This study found that an informal understanding existed between workers and workplace actors (management, coworkers) where workers needed to be flexible enough to allow work demands to encroach on life outside of work and, only secondarily, to practice flexible work arrangements where work permitted (e.g., during nonpeak season when demands were lower). While workers were somewhat aware of this loosening of boundaries between home and work, many reconciled working longer and harder with career advancement and recognition. This may partially be explained by the age range of the sample, with workers in the early stages of their careers and thus willing to overextend themselves.

Additionally, existing studies of flexibility and workplace health have centered on psychosocial outcomes such as job strain and stress as well as health and safety-related outcomes such as injuries and illnesses. This study, however, found that the aforementioned conditions (high workload, informal practices) presented unique challenges to worker health and well-being in the form of unhealthy eating, alcohol and substance abuse, physical inactivity, and fatigue, which have been examined to a lesser extent in the literature. Although we were unable to examine these associations in-depth, the findings are suggestive of a trend where workers were oriented to unhealthy behaviors to cope with excessive work and limited flexibility.

The findings of this study should be considered in light of a few factors. First, this study used a small, convenience sample of white-collar, urban professionals within a single jurisdiction, Toronto, Canada. However, it is a pilot study with workers from a range of occupations and an understanding that views expressed here may not be transferable to all white-collar workers in a metropolitan city. The sample included only two women and a narrow age range between twenty-five and thirty-two. Many of the participants had not yet experienced a full range of demands that may make flexible work arrangements important including spousal relationships or care for children, elderly parents, or other family members. As well, a younger working sample may also suggest that these individuals are less likely to have developed chronic conditions inherent to age, which may also affect the degree of uptake of flexible work arrangements. The two included women in the sample were racialized women; however, their racialized experience was not fully addressed in the study (e.g., differences in earnings, promotion, discrimination). Finally, the use of the JD-R model allowed us to investigate specific demands, resources, and health behaviors relevant to a group of white-collar workers. However, to understand the mechanisms underlying these associations (e.g., why collegial support would increase flexible arrangements), a larger sample is needed as well as additional explanatory theoretical frameworks.

Thus, this research raises several issues for further study at the intersections of flexible work, health, and white-collar employment. Triangulation with the use of manager and supervisor interviews would help compare and contrast managerial policies and practices with white-collar workers accounts. A study of workers who were not able to make it into this pilot study (older workers, racialized and gendered perspectives, workers with different family composition) would provide a more substantive analysis on work–life balance and work–family conflict. Finally, a comparative study across white-collar jurisdictional districts (Financial district in Toronto versus Vancouver) may shed light on variance in flexible work practices and workplace health and well-being.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Sonja Senthanar

Author Biographies

Sonja Senthanar is a postdoctoral research fellow at The Partnership for Work, Health and Safety at The University of British Columbia. She works on a program of research that examines the return-to-work outcomes, trajectories, and access to medical and rehabilitative services following a work injury or illness, of immigrant workers compared to Canadian-born workers within British Columbia. Her primary research interests include employment outcomes, gender, and work disability relating primarily to immigrant and refugee populations as well as how these relationships change within the context of new forms of work such as precarious employment.

Sharanya Varatharajan is a PhD candidate with the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo and a lecturer at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College. Her doctoral research focuses on how health privacy is managed during return-to-work facilitation. Her research interests are mainly in work disability research and systematic review methodologies. Prior to her doctoral studies, Sharanya worked at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology-Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College Centre for Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation, where she helped develop guidelines for the management of minor injuries after a traffic collision for Financial Services Ontario.

Philip Bigelow is an associate professor in the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo and an adjunct scientist at the Institute for Work & Health in Toronto. He has a background in risk assessment and occupational epidemiology. His research interests include understanding and reducing occupational exposures as well as chronic disease risk factors in vulnerable employee populations. His recent work has focused on finding ways to improve the implementation and uptake of health interventions in workplace settings.

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