Assessing the impact of different workplace flexibilities on workplace stress in the presence of varying degrees of job control

ABSTRACT

We apply probit and propensity score matching to 1667 respondents from the 2008 National Survey of the Changing Workforce to quantify how workers’ self-reported stress levels vary under two different workplace flexibilities and varying degrees of job control. The first workplace flexibility considered is the ability to easily take time off for personal and family matters; the second is the option of a compressed work week. Our findings suggest that the first flexibility correlates with lower stress reports regardless of job control level. The second flexibility, however, correlates with lower stress levels only for workers with low levels of job control. This suggests that a compressed work week does not reduce stress for workers that already have high levels of job control. The more general conclusion is that some flexibilities are substitutes for job control whereas other are not, assuming the larger goal is the reduction of workplace stress and the various maladies exacerbated by stress.

KEYWORDS:

• Job control
• workplace flexibilities
• stress
• job satisfaction

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I10
• I18
• J28
• J31
• J81

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Source: www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/99-101.

² The value of decreasing workplace stress is not limited to health outcomes, but can also improve turnover, absenteeism, productivity and work–family conflicts (Baltes et al. 1999; Baughman, DiNardi, and Holtz-Eakin 2003; Bloom and van Reenen 2006).

³ The sampling weights are based on the overall sample, not on the restricted sample we examine. We do so because the sample weights provided by the National Study of the Changing Workforce deal with over/under sampling by adjusting for household size, education, race and age; however, because we do not restrict the sample by any of these measures, the use of the sample weights based on the entire sample should be sound.

⁴ Sensitivity checks of the underlying stress variables were investigated; results prove robust.