Is the extent to which a job allows an employee to make decisions about scheduling?

Promising Practice 2: Offer Employees More Control over Their Schedules

Schedule control involves providing employees with more say over when and where work happens.2 Changes in communications technology and the nature of work in the twenty-first century mean that employees often face increased work demands and 24/7 work environments. This has left many families struggling to integrate their work and family lives. Given these changes, workers’ ability to achieve greater schedule control is both more challenging yet more imperative than ever before. Stress that results from managing the conflicting needs of work and personal life has well-documented health consequences, including hypertension, sleep problems, higher levels of alcohol consumption, and other mental and physical health problems.4 Work-family conflict experienced by employees also hurts their employers and is associated with lower job satisfaction and higher turnover intentions.6

Schedule Flexibility

One key aspect of schedule control is schedule flexibility, or the extent to which employees can vary their working time (for instance, when they start and end the day) and work location in order to better manage their work and personal lives. Several high-quality studies of initiatives designed to enhance schedule flexibility have shown the value of this approach. One group of researchers found that mental distress decreased in hospital and call center employees who were allowed to choose from a range of scheduling options, including varied shift lengths or starting and ending times, and had the possibility of trading shifts with coworkers. Another high-quality experimental study to enhance schedule flexibility for employees in the IT division of a U.S. Fortune 500 company yielded a range of positive physical, psychosocial, and business outcomes. (See the “Less Stressed and Less Likely to Quit” case study listed below).

Schedule Predictability

Many low-wage workers in today’s economy experience erratic work schedules that change from week to week or even day to day. Increasingly, employers in certain industries, like retail or food service, are using ‘just-in-time” scheduling technologies to routinely cut, extend, or otherwise alter employee schedules with little advance notice. As a result, practices such as on-call or “clopening” shifts (working a closing shift followed by an opening shift), last-minute cancellations, and variable or insufficient work hours are a common occurrence in these industries.8 Emerging research finds that workers exposed to this kind of regular scheduling uncertainty are more psychologically distressed and unhappy, have greater household economic insecurity, poorer sleep quality, higher work-family conflict, and poorer family functioning (which often manifests in children showing heightened anxiety and acting out). Moreover, schedule uncertainty also imposes costs on companies by increasing the risk of employee turnover.

In contrast, schedule predictability provides workers with ongoing schedule stability that makes it possible to coordinate life outside of work and maintain a stable income. To our knowledge, there is only one rigorous experimental study to date of an employer-based initiative to increase schedule predictability for hourly workers. The results of this research provide strong evidence that a shift towards stable schedules can improve both business and health outcomes. (See “Lessons from Gap Inc.” case study listed below).

What is the extent to which a job allows an employee to make decisions?

What is the expectation that successful performance of the task will lead to the desired outcome?

What is the simple model of motivation?

Is the process of building into a job such motivating factors as recognition and achievement?