Kümmerling, Angelika

Europe has begun to emerge from the prolonged slump caused by the global financial crisis in 2008 and exacerbated by the euro zone single-currency crisis in 2010–2011. In the last year, aggregate employment levels have risen faster than a...

Understanding how working time is organised and how this is impacting on balance of work versus private life is of fundamental importance. This general statement is very much in accordance with the main objective of the Europe 2020 employment strategy, stating that at least 75% of the population aged 20–64 should be employed by 2020, necessitating in many Member States a significant increase in women’s labour market participation. Drawing on data from Eurofound’s fifth European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), based on interviews with more than 38,000 respondents in 34 countries, this report documents the prevailing working time patterns of employees, the self-employed and lone parents across five country clusters. It also analyses the relationship between paid employment and domestic activities, work–life balance and working time preferences across the life course.

Working time policies, although designed within the national and sectoral framework and the boundaries of institutional regulations, are fine-tuned and implemented at the level of each company, taking account of the environment in which the company operates and the workforce it is employing. Hence, companies have placed more importance on working time organisation in recent years. In light of this, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions launched in 2004 its first Establishment Survey on Working Time and Work–Life Balance (ESWT), covering a large array of working time arrangements such as flexible working hours, overtime, part-time work, work at unusual hours, childcare leave or other forms of long-term leave, and phased or early retirement.

This report analyses the data from the Company Survey on Working Time 2004–2005 to address the issue of extended and unusual working hours, by exploring all aspects of what may be called ‘non-standard working hours’: the extension of working hours through overtime, working at ‘unusual’ times beyond traditional societal standards (such as the ‘9 to 5’ norm), and varying time schedules over the week, month or year involving ‘changing’ working hours. It examines in greater detail the incidence and effects of such working hours across countries, sectors and companies.