Working time flexibility in the EU countries

  • Received October 8, 2021;
    Accepted November 15, 2021;
    Published December 3, 2021
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.19(4).2021.27
  • Article Info
    Volume 19 2021, Issue #4, pp. 338-351
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

The study aims to identify the EU’s trends in the use of flexible forms of working time and to determine the specifics of individual EU countries. The study monitors the flexibility of working time based on the following indicators: persons employed part-time (as a percentage of the total employment); involuntary part-time employment as % of total part-time employment; the share of employed persons by the flexibility to decide on working time by a country; the share of employed persons who can easily take one or two days off at a short notice by working at home. The paper uses descriptive statistics, analysis of the development of time series using the growth rate, sigma convergence, and weighted sum approach. All analyzed indicators were taken into account to express one value, based on which it is possible to compare countries. Thus, the study expressed the overall benefit using the weighted sum method. The maximum value of the total benefit expressed using all the indicators among the EU countries was reached by the Netherlands. One of the reasons may be the short period of parental leave and the large share of women working part-time for a long time. The second reason is the large share of young people working part-time. On the contrary, Bulgaria, where women spend a relatively long time with their children after birth and then start full-time employment, ranked the last. This should be justified by the fact that flexible forms of work are mainly used by women and their prevalence is largely dependent on the length of maternity and parental leave.

Acknowledgment
This paper is created within the project funded by the Scientific Agency of Slovak Ministry of Education VEGA reg. no. 1/0689/20 “Digital economy and changes in the education system to reflect labour market demands”.

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    • Figure 1. Persons employed part-time in EU countries
    • Figure 2. Involuntary part-time employment as % of total part-time employment
    • Figure 3. Employed persons by the flexibility to decide on working time by a country – persons can fully decide as % of employed persons
    • Figure 4. Employed persons who can usually easily take one or two days off at a short notice by working at home, by countries in %
    • Figure 5. Total benefit
    • Table 1. Descriptive statistics on the indicator “persons employed part-time”
    • Table 2. Sigma-convergence of indicator log
    • Table 3. Descriptive statistics on the indicator “employed persons by the flexibility to decide on working time by a country”
    • Table 4. Descriptive statistics on the indicator “employed persons who can easily take one or two days off at a short notice by working at home”, by counties
    • Conceptualization
      Eva Grmanová
    • Formal Analysis
      Eva Grmanová
    • Project administration
      Eva Grmanová
    • Resources
      Eva Grmanová
    • Writing – review & editing
      Eva Grmanová
    • Data curation
      Eva Ivanová
    • Funding acquisition
      Eva Ivanová
    • Investigation
      Eva Ivanová
    • Methodology
      Eva Ivanová
    • Writing – original draft
      Eva Ivanová
    • Visualization
      Eva Ivanová