• Areas of Expertise:
  • Business and society
  • Diversity
  • Employment status
  • Gender
  • Health
  • Human capital
  • Industrial change
  • Industrial relations
  • Labour market
  • Participation at work
  • Population and society
  • Quality of life
  • Quality of work
  • Social cohesion
  • Social protection
  • Time
  • Work-life balance
  • Work organisation

Reorganisation of time over the life course

Key findings

• The 'education-work-retirement' pattern remains the norm but the trend is decreasing due to more flexible working time and employment practices.
• Duration of working life has fallen significantly due to extended education and early retirement trends.
• Flexible working time arrangements in Europe increased from 25% in 1988 to 29% in 1998.
• A growing number of men now have a typically 'female' work pattern, i.e. truncated periods of work activity.
• Flexible arrangements apply more to younger than to older people.
• 14% of full-time workers have made efforts to move into part-time work.
• Half of all employees want to reduce the working week by an average of about 10%.
• Over 20% of employees say they would opt for a three-month sabbatical without pay.
• 40% of older working women are considering retiring to care for older family members.
• About 10-15% of the workforce indicate a desire to reduce lifelong working hours.

Changes to traditional gender roles and the labour market are forcing a rethink of conventional work- life patterns. Individuals are calling for a better quality of life, while employers require greater flexibility in the workplace. The idea of reorganising time over the whole course of working life is one possible response.

Phase 1 of the Foundation’s research in this area offers a conceptual framework to consider time arrangements over the course of working life, linking this to measures to improve quality of life. Issues of lifelong learning, intergenerational solidarity, employment rates, sustainable pensions and care for children or dependent adults are all addressed in the 'life-course perspective'.

The research report A new organisation of time over working life is presented as a contribution to the debate on time policies and quality of life. It reviews changing patterns and preferences for time use. It also considers a range of measures, such as the accessibility of more paid leave during the 'stress phases' of life, in order to compensate for raising the retirement age, and the introduction of social security structures to fit new time arrangements.

A summary of the report and an information sheet are also available.

Phase two research, completed in 2004, provides a significant input to the emerging debate on employment, social security and care over the life course. Using existing cross sectional and longitudinal data as well as relevant case study results the research:

• provides new empirical data on changing work biographies, the legal regulation of life course, relevant working time options and their diffusion, practice and up-takes;
• examines these working time arrangements in relation to the interests, preferences and needs of employees, companies and national governments both in specific life phases and over the working life course;
• analyses traditional and new time arrangements as well as related income provisions, specifically social protection measures.