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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TELE (DOES IT PROMOTE ECONOMY AND WELL-BEING? THE IMPACT OF TELEWORKING ON ENVIRONMENT AND LABOUR MARKET OUTCOMES)

Teaser

Summary

MAIN PROBLEMS AND ISSUES ADDRESSED
This project explores the effects of teleworking on household production allocation, gender roles, environment and labour market outcomes.

WHY IS IMPORTANT FOR THE SOCIETY
Examining the effects of teleworking on gender roles or household-domestic production allocation, work to life conflict, and well-being can have very useful and beneficial suggestions and policy implications.
â€¢ Employers are less likely to hire individuals whom they expect to have shorter or discontinuous working lives. Pregnancy, maternity period are the main factors create employment spells for women due to their greater responsibilities such as breastfeeding, childbearing/childrearing.
â€¢ Teleworking may encourage a higher number of qualified and skilled women interested in splitting time more equitably between work and family.
â€¢ Since one of the main aims of policy makers and society is the improvement of the well-being of the citizens, teleworking may be another option which leads to work-family life balance and thus in higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction.
â€¢ Improving the air quality, teleworking may have a beneficial impact on the environment and public health.

OVERALL OBJECTIVES

The first aim of the project is to examine the relationship between job satisfaction, employee loyalty and various types of flexible employment arrangements, and the association between firm performance and flexible employment in UK. The flexible employment arrangements include teleworking, compress hours and flexible working hours. The second objective is to explore the effects of teleworking on job satisfaction and employee loyalty.
The second aim of the project is to examine the effects of teleworking on traffic congestion and the environment improvement-in this case air pollution. Through teleworking, people connect by phone or video or over the web instead of commuting or taking a business trip which generates time saving, alleviation in traffic congestion, and therefore reduction of air pollution. Regarding time saving, teleworking can improve the productivity of workers by reducing the stress derived by traffic congestion and commuting time and increasing their job satisfaction. For instance, companies may want to factor the air pollution and climate protection benefit into teleworking programs to help meet community needs to reduce traffic congestion. Applying teleworking, the traffic congestion can be reduced, traffic accidents can be avoided, pressure on transportation infrastructure can be relieved and energy use can be saved resulting to regional air quality improvement and protection of the climate.
The third aim of the project is to examine the relationship between teleworking, gender roles and happiness of couples and to explore whether the spouse, and especially whether women teleworkers are happier when their partner is teleworker. We explore the intra-household domestic production allocation among couples that telework and those who do not.

Work performed

\"We produced one outcome entitled \"\"The relationship between teleworking, traffic and air pollution\"\"
The paper is available at https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201705.0198/v1
Furthermore, is forthcoming for publication in the Atmospheric Pollution Research Journal at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1309104217302003

The first outcome of the second aim and WP2 has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Manpower in 2018 and it is entitled:
Flexible Employment Arrangements and Workplace Performance in Great Britain
The second outcome of the second aim is entitled
\"\"Do the Flexible Employment Arrangements Increase Job Satisfaction and Employee Loyalty? Evidence from Bayesian Networks and Instrumental Variables\"\"
The output is currently accepted for publication in the International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics in 2018
The draft is available
http://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201607.0007/v1

The two outcomes about the third aim and WP3 of the project are entitled as:
The Effects of Teleworking on Housework Division and Well-Being of Couples
Are Women Happier When Their Spouse is Teleworker?
The outcomes have been accepted for publication in the following journals
Journal of Happiness Studies
International Journal of Happiness and Development
and the associated links are:
http://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201701.0020/v1
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-017-9847-0\"

Final results

â€¢ The main impact is that flexible employment arrangements, including teleworking can be an efficient policy, especially when the employees have the option to choose their implementation with various plausible benefits to workplace, including costs saving and improved productivity.
â€¢ On the other hand, the benefits for the employees, besides the plausible performance payments and other related benefits, include job satisfaction improvement, ability to cope with their family demands, resulting to improvement of their work-family balance and their overall well-being as WP3 explores.
â€¢ Additionally, it is hopeful that this research may offer insights to decision makers related to the human resource policies review to adopt and implement them as they may improve the firm performance. This may result from various factors, including employee engagement and loyalty, job satisfaction, work autonomy, work-life balance and others. Therefore, this study proposes to further explore all these interrelationships, accounting for the flexible labour schemes. Having also in mind that their implementation is not very costly is another motivation for the firms.
â€¢ Overall, by implementing teleworking, the number of people driving alone is decreased, which is a key for traffic and air pollution reduction, and a factor that reduces fuel consumption. In this case teleworking can be a viable short- and long-term solution to emissions, fuel consumption and traffic congestion reduction, especially in the urban areas and an important tool for the quality of life improvement. The distance travelled for business can be also lower through the increased use of teleconferencing and video conferencing, which are parts of the teleworking. In addition, the reduction of traffic and air pollution can have positive effects on environment and public health. Moreover, air quality improvement reduces the hospital admissions, through the improvement of health status.
â€¢ Future studies can examine how the couples participate in the leisure, the labour market, and how they share the household expenditures among them and their children. Within the intra-household collective modelling framework, the relationship between teleworking and fertility can be explored. Since, the reduction of fertility is an issue in the western societies, with various effects on the society, such as the increase of an ageing population and burden to the pension and health care system, teleworking may be a solution to fertility.
â€¢ In line with this area, the effects of the teleworking on the job search of disabled people, their labour participation, and overall well-being is another interesting point of research. Studies should investigate whether teleworking offers opportunities for disabled people to participate in the labour market, as they may face discrimination, because of physical and mobility problems.