Managing Flexible Working Time Arrangements: Negotiations between Mothers and Managers in a Canberra Hospital

Abstract

The interviews with mothers and managers and other employees are used in this paper to show how they negotiate and manage flexibility in their working time arrangements within the context of their respective goals: for managers to meet various workplace objectives; and for mothers to meet their family responsibilities. The extent to which the mothers have ‘room to move’ in terms of their working time arrangements depends on the attitudes of their supervisors, the use of management discretion and the practice of informal policies such as self-rostering. These informal influences on mothers’ working time arrangements, while operating within a context of formally specified working conditions, show that mothers need to do additional labour at work simply to manage the ongoing flexibility in working hours that their family responsibilities require. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 mothers who worked at a Canberra hospital. In addition, a range of interviews at the hospital were conducted with managers, supervisors, union delegates, and several group employee interviews.