Time-use data and work-life policy development.

• Author: Callister, Paul

Abstract

Work-life balance is a relatively recent social policy concern in New Zealand. This research note illustrates how the New Zealand Time Use Survey can provide an understanding of the way New Zealanders manage their work and family lives. It shows that while a significant proportion of individuals undertake some paid work outside of core Monday-to-Friday daylight hours, New Zealand is still far from becoming a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week society. Equally, while many workers undertake some work at home, home has not become the primary workplace for most New Zealanders. The data also show that, for some workers, long hours of paid work do not automatically mean little time spent with children. Using these and other examples, the paper demonstrates that there needs to be some caution when developing simple indicators of work-life balance. Finally, some suggestions for further time-use research are set out.

INTRODUCTION

Work-life balance discussions are increasingly coming to the fore in most industrialised countries. In New Zealand, work-life balance has been a key component of research in the Future of Work programme run by the Department of Labour, and, in late 2003, the Department of Labour initiated the New Zealand Work-Life Balance programme. Similarly, the Ministry of Social Development has undertaken a Work, Family and Parenting Study project. The Ministry of Women's Affairs has also had a long interest in the broad areas of family-friendly work practices and work-life balance, and was the key government agency behind the development of New Zealand's Time Use Survey.

The Time Use Survey was a nationally representative survey that collected data on both paid and unpaid work, and time spent on personal care and leisure activities. It thus provides a useful source of information on how New Zealanders integrate their paid-work commitments with other aspects of their lives. Yet, despite the richness of this data source, New Zealand work-life balance researchers and policy makers have overall made little use of the information collected.

This research note has two aims. The first is to show how a number of work-life issues can be investigated using time-use data. Three issues that are commonly discussed in the work-life balance literature have been chosen as examples:

* Has New Zealand become a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week society?

* Has the workplace become "home" for many white-collar workers as suggested by Hochschild (1997)? Alternatively, has the home become a workplace for a significant number of workers?

* Do long hours of paid work necessarily mean less time with other family members?

The second aim is to demonstrate that, while there is an obvious attraction in developing simple indicators of work-life balance (for instance, the proportion of employees working 50 or more hours per week), such single-variable measures can be misleading.

Finally, some suggestions are made for further work-life balance research that would use time-use data.

This research note draws on three papers: Callister and Dixon (2001), Callister (2003) and Singley and Callister (2004).

NEW ZEALAND HAS NOT BECOME A 24-HOURS-A-DAY, SEVEN-DAYS-A-WEEK SOCIETY

Despite the extension in recent decades of retailers' trading hours (facilitated by legislative changes) and the growth of the hospitality industry, we are still far from having paid work spread across 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Yet, for some groups of people, work outside "core" hours is important. As a basic summary statistic, we calculated the proportion of work recorded in the time diaries that was undertaken during Monday to Friday between 8am and 6pm. If work was evenly spread over the whole week, including the weekend, and across 24 hours, then just under 30% of work would be undertaken in these "standard" hours. In fact, 74% of work was undertaken in this time. There was surprisingly little variation in this figure when gender, household type and parental status were considered. Of the remaining working time, 10% was carried out on weekends between 8am and 6pm, and the remaining 16% during evenings, nights and the early hours of the morning.

However, this figure of approximately one-quarter of paid working time being undertaken outside conventional business hours is just one way of measuring out-of-core-hours work, that is, as a proportion of the total amount of work carried out over a day. We can also look at the proportion of workers who do some of their paid work outside these times. In fact, more than 60% of working diary-days from Monday to Friday involved some work outside the core period. However, most was carried out on the boundaries of the core. Very few people work solely during evenings or nights. On weekdays, only 1.7% of working days conformed to this type.

Nor does the international research literature support the notion that, in recent decades, there has been a dramatic shift to a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week society. There are certainly some studies in the 1990s that do show a small growth of aspects of non-standard hours, such as working in weekends or evenings (e.g., for Britain, Harkness 1999; for the European Union, Evans et al. 2001). Using a number of Canadian time-use surveys, Harvey (1996) shows a growing dispersion of start times, with work starting both earlier and later in the day. This view is supported by research in the United States (Hamermesh 1995). However, further studies show a slight decline in other aspects of non-standard work, such as evening or night work (e.g., for the United States, Hamermesh 1999). Longer-term studies in the Netherlands also question any significant shift in when work is carried out (Breedveld 1998).

While these are broad statistics, the Time Use Survey allows in-depth investigation of issues around core hours that are important for the development of work-life balance policies. For example, the Time Use Survey shows how occupational...