Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World Report

International Labour Organisation (ILO) has recently published Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World Report. The report provides a comprehensive review of both main aspects of working time – working hours and working time arrangements (also called work schedule) and their effects on the work-life balance.

Key highlights of Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World Report

• Uneven distribution of hours of work
  • Substantial portion of the global workforce work either long hours or short hours.
  • Although the average hours of work globally fell (43.9 hours per week), 35.4% of world’s workforce work more than 48 hours per week, while 20.3% workforce work less than 35 hours per week.
  • From a gender perspective, men are more likely to work long hours, while women are more likely to work short hours and experience time-related underemployment.
  • Workers in the informal sector are more likely to work both long hours and short hours than those in the formal sector.
• Working-time arrangements or work schedules
  • Classical standard workweek (8 hours per day, five or six days per week) provides stability for workers, yet fixed hours are often too inflexible to allow time for family needs.
  • Shift work can provide greater flexibility to workers, but it requires workers to work during atypical hours which has been linked to significant health risks.
  • Flextime enables workers to organise their other own work schedule based on their individual needs and it has positive effects on workers’ mental health.
  • Compressed workweeks provide employees with longer weekends to spend with family, thereby improving their work-life balance.
• Working time match and mismatch patterns
  • High-income countries tend to have a slightly higher rate of overemployment and a lower rate of underemployment compared to upper and lower-middle-income countries.
  • Self-employed workers report a higher incidence of underemployment than employees on a payroll.
  • Women have greater rates of both overemployment and underemployment.
  • Correlation of increasing occupational skill level with higher overemployment and lower underemployment.
  • Working-time mismatch has negative effects, not only on work-life balance but also other indicators related to well-being including their life and job satisfaction, physical health and mental health. It generally results in reduced productivity, poorer job performance, and absenteeism.

Recommendations given in the report

• For Public Policies
  • Apply the principle of equal treatment of full-time and part-time workers working in comparable jobs.
  • Introducing basic guarantees of minimum hours of work, including appropriate penalties for noncompliance.
  • Promote worker’s awareness of their labour rights in order to prevent discrimination, particularly against women and young people.
• For Enterprise/Organisational Policies
  • Working-time arrangement should:
    • promote health safety;
    • be family-friendly and improve workers’ work-life balance;
    • promote gender equality.

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