The Health Effects of Flextime and Telecommuting

Flexible working arrangements, such as flexitime (self-scheduled work shifts) and telecommuting (working from home), are becoming more commonplace in the US and other industrialized nations.  Claire Bambra, of Durham University (United Kingdom), and colleagues reviewed ten controlled before-and-after studies involving 16,603 participants, which evaluated a variety of flexible working arrangements for the impact on employee health and wellbeing.  Flexible working arrangements were found to improve employees’ physical health parameters (including systolic blood pressure and heart rate; tiredness; mental health, sleep duration, sleep quality and alertness; and self-rated health status) and/or wellbeing (co-workers’ social support and sense of community), with no ill health effects observed.  The team concludes that:  “the findings…  suggest that flexible working interventions that increase worker control and choice (such as self-scheduling) are likely to have a positive effect on health outcomes.”