Work, Aging and Retirement, 2015, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 214–226
doi:10.1093/workar/wau012
Advance Access publication January 6, 2015
Article
Is Workplace Flexibility Good Policy?
Evaluating the Efficacy of Age Management Strategies
for Older Women Workers
Catherine Earl and Philip Taylor
Federation Business School, Federation University Australia, Northways Road, Churchill VIC 3842, Australia
A b st r a ct
A combination of age and gender factors shape older women’s workplace experiences. Age advocacy groups, together
with many academic commentators, argue in favor of workplace flexibility, pointing to benefits for both older workers and their employers. But knowledge about the policies of organizations and how they are enacted by managers
is still rudimentary. What do managers understand flexibility to mean and how do they implement flexible working
options? What are the perceived benefits and costs of flexibility for organizations and for older women workers?
Drawing on qualitative interviews conducted with 58 human resource managers, this article considers the provision
of flexible working arrangements targeting older women in Australia within 3 industry sectors: financial services,
public sector, and higher education. Interviews revealed a gap between policy and practice regarding the management of older women workers. We argue that the efficacy of line managers and their willingness to innovate are
crucial in managing such workers and prolonging their working lives.
I n t ro d u ct i o n : F l e x i b i l i t y f o r
Whom and How
Recently, a policy consensus has emerged around the need to prolong
working lives. A combination of demographic and economic changes
has generated a new landscape, centered on older workers’ recruitment, retention, and flexibility. Individuals are becoming healthier and
living longer. Life phases and lifestyles have become more variable,
blended, and integrated. Furthermore, at the corporate level, labor
shortages are anticipated, with a perceived need to attract and retain
older workers (Hedge & Borman, 2012).
Organizations have recognized they will need to address the
needs of an aging workforce (Brooke & Taylor, 2005). It is essential
for them to consider the differing needs of older men and women,
as a combination of age and gender factors shape experiences in the
workplace. Flexibility is often promoted as a solution to meeting the
needs of aging workers, particularly older women, by advocates and
commentators (e.g., Loretto, Vickerstaff, & White, 2007; Siegenthaler
& Brenner, 2001). However, employers may find flexibility problematical to implement in daily working and may rely on “ad hoc” strategies (Taylor & Walker, 1998). Stemming from their orientation to a
business agenda rather than an equity and diversity agenda, this may
not meet the perceived needs of modern workplaces.
There is a limited but growing literature on managers’ attitudes to
flexibility (e.g., Beck, 2013; Johnson, 2011). In the context of an aging
population and aging workforce, a more pressing deficit is the lack of
literature from an employer perspective that investigates the implementation and day-to-day management of flexible working arrangements as an age management strategy for prolonging the participation
of older workers across the labor market. Recent research has revealed
that flexible working arrangements are implemented by managers as
a way of dealing with equity and diversity issues, such as gender, disability or age, in the workforce (Furunes & Mykletun, 2005, 2011;
Gardiner & Tomlinson, 2009), and these line managers are competent
working with older workers when they have the support of senior management (Leisink & Knies, 2011). This article focuses on flexibility as
a gender-conscious age management strategy in primarily office-based
work in the three industry sectors of financial services, public sector,
and higher education. We aim to contribute to knowledge in the age
management literature by asking managers in workplaces where older
women make up a large proportion of the workforce: What do they
understand flexibility to mean and how do they implement flexible
working options? What are the perceived benefits and costs of flexibility for organizations and for older women workers?
While full-time hours remain the most prevalent type of employment arrangement, new work patterns have been emerging since the
1990s (Vaiman, 2010). These emergent patterns of work have been
called “nontraditional,” “contingent,” “periphery,” or “ancillary” work
and are usually defined in juxtaposition to “core” or “traditional”
© The Authors 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. For permissions please e-mail: [email protected]
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Catherine Earl, Federation Business School, Federation University Australia, Northways Road, Churchill VIC
3842, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
Decision Editor: Hannes Zacher, PhD
• 214
Is Workplace Flexibility Good Policy? • 215
employment (e.g., Jenkins, 2004; Lyon, Hallier, & Glover, 1998).
Flexible working options, such as those offered in contingent and
periphery jobs, are assumed by policymakers internationally to be
good for women as they enable them to achieve a work/life balance.
Flexible schedules, in particular, are promoted as a means of retaining female workers (Zeytinoglu, Cooke, & Mann, 2009). Yet, as Casey,
Metcalf, and Millward (1997) warn, employers’ use of flexible working is influenced by their assumptions about the needs of their workforces which may result from gender (and age) stereotyping. Employer
attitudes include assuming that changes in time, such as part-time and
temporary work, may be more suitable for women across sectors but
that changes in pay, such as responding to labor shortages by increasing pay, may be more suitable for men. Formal flexible working policies
continue to be regarded primarily as women’s issues (Atkinson & Hall,
2009).
Flexible working arrangements may be a solution to retaining
women in the workforce, although their abilities to access these may
be limited by a manager’s attitude to flexibility or to the capabilities
of staff. Advocates of employee-oriented flexibility, argue Heron and
Charlesworth (2012), have overestimated the positive effect of flexible
working on work/life balance particularly for women and that, rather
than offering flexible schedules to some employees, organizations
would be better served by modifying the standard working hours of the
entire core workforce. Some employers have been reluctant to implement flexible working arrangements, as they are no less complex and
challenging for managers than managing standard working patterns
(Marler, Barringer, & Milkovich, 2002) and the needs of employees
working in different work patterns may not actually differ significantly
(Vaiman, Lemmergaard, & Azevedo, 2011).
While workplace flexibility is generally viewed as positive, it
is also regarded as important in prolonging the working lives of
older workers and benefiting organizations (Furåker, Håkansson, &
Karlsson, 2007; Gursoy, Chi, & Karadag, 2013). Yet it is an assumption, argues Johnson (2011), that older workers seek flexibility in
the forms of reduced working hours and less demanding positions as
they approach retirement due to increased care demands, declining
health and physical stamina, or a preference for leisure. Many of the
part-time and reduced hours positions available to older workers are
not quality jobs in that they involve physically demanding or difficult
working conditions and meaningless, monotonous tasks that lack
opportunities for learning or for recognition. Such jobs are not conducive to working longer (Sweet, Pitt-Catsouphes, Besen, & Golden,
2014; Taylor, 2008). Moreover, Cebulla, Butt, and Lyon (2007) usefully point out that the influence of flexible working schedules extends
beyond the workplace to the home.
While it has long been established that a lack of flexible working
options force older women workers with elder care responsibilities
out of the workforce prematurely (Mooney, Statham, & Simon, 2002),
not all older women workers face these issues. Also, the needs of carers
may not be the gender issue it is assumed to be. There is a possibility,
raised by Barnett, Gareis, Gordon, and Brennan (2009), that the needs
of female and male older workers are similar concerning elder care
responsibilities and using flexible working options as a means to avoid
workforce exit. Furthermore, it should not be assumed that flexibility
is only suited to meeting the needs of older workers or of carers in the
workforce. Gursoy and colleagues (2013) take a generational approach
to highlight that various groups of workers put forward a range of
reasons for requesting flexibility. They found that groups of younger
workers—those labeled as “Generation X” and “Millennials”—seek
flexible working options to enable a better work/life balance and
employers can attract and retain talented staff by developing policies
and practices about flexibility. Employees need access to flexible working options and career development throughout a career, not simply in
line with a traditional age- and gender-biased life course.
In this article, we argue that the availability of flexible working
arrangements is not sufficient. It is the efficacy of line managers and
their willingness to innovate that are crucial in managing and retaining older women workers. Our discussion analyses the assumptions
made about older women workers and about flexibility, manager interpretations of flexibility, their views about benefits of flexible working
options for organizations and employees as well as the costs for organizations and employees, and the pros and cons of flexibility as a business
innovation rather than stemming from an equity and diversity agenda.
T h e o r et i c a l Ba c kg ro u n d : Ma n a g i n g
F l e x i b i l i t y i n a n A g i n g W o r k f o rc e
Central to considerations of the efficacy of line managers in genderconscious age management is an understanding of workplace flexibility. Managers and employees do not necessarily share the same
understanding of flexible working arrangements. Furåker and colleagues (2007) note that even though the concept of flexibility is
widely used and it is a positively charged term, it remains incongruous and confusing. The meaning of flexibility is often unclear or indistinct and it retains an ambiguity. Zeytinoglu and colleagues (2009)
suggest the ambiguity of flexibility is due in part to the diversity of
subjects it covers, the variation in its meaning for different employee
and employer stakeholders, and its use to reflect an ideologically laden
“value” of work. With its breadth of meanings, flexibility has the potential to offer both organizations and employees a solution of one kind or
another to their respective needs.
Flexibility is drawn upon by organizations as a means of reducing
early workforce exit and prolonging the working lives of older employees (Taylor, McLoughlin, Brooke, Di Biase, & Steinberg, 2013). In the
context of managing older workers, flexibility usually refers to reduced
hours and part-time work patterns that enable them to maintain their
employment and achieve a work/life balance by having greater control over their time. It can also refer to a reduction in job demands in
the forms of different tasks and reduced levels of responsibility which
enable an older worker to continue working in challenging, stressful,
or physically demanding jobs. Some of these arrangements are offered
in the form of a pre- or post-retirement contract. In our discussion,
we are primarily concerned with flexible working schedules and other
arrangements typically implemented to retain older women workers in
the workforce and we question whether these forms of flexibility are
necessarily good for these workers and for their organizations.
While flexibility may be requested by employees, it is generally
instituted and controlled by their employers (Beck, 2013; Phillipson,
2002). Organizations exercise substantial choice over combinations of
flexible working options that might incorporate or substitute timing
of work, permanency of contracts, and task mix of jobs (Casey et al.,
1997). Sweet and James (2013) stress that managers hold a range of
perspectives about flexible working options and, while these attitudes
are more likely to be favorable than not, they also express reservations
216 • C. Earl & P. Taylor
about benefits and costs associated with flexibility. Managers who
view one flexible working option positively are more likely to view
other options positively also but perhaps for different reasons. Taylor,
McLoughlin, and Earl (2014) found that employers who implement
a flexible work practice to prolong the working lives of their older
employees are also more likely to implement other flexible practices.
Nevertheless, Karlsson (2007, pp. 26–27) stresses that not all line
managers regard flexibility positively and warns that if workers are “not
handled right” flexibility is not favorable.
Employer decisions about flexible working options are also influenced by their attitudes to the efficacy of forms of flexibility, on the
one hand, and to the perceived productivity of older workers, on the
other. Kelly and Kalev (2006) found that human resource (HR) managers across industry sectors negotiated flexible working options (such
as flex time, compressed working weeks, telecommuting, and reduced
hours) as perks for valued workers of any age and they were determined
at the discretion of the manager even when there were formal policies
in the organization. Manager decisions, as Karpinska, Henkens, and
Schippers (2013) contend, are affected by their own discriminatory
attitudes toward older workers, particularly perceptions of their low
productivity. Managers also appear to have fixed views of the potential
of flexibility and of older workers to meet business demands. Furunes
and Mykletun (2005) point out that in customer-oriented industries,
such as hospitality, managers feel that flexible working options are difficult to organize and that, due to the high physical demands of the job
and customer orientation of positions, flexibility centered on reduced
working hours rather than a change in job tasks or job rotation is preferable. These options involve lower wages and, for older workers particularly, impact on retirement security.
Flexibility may entrench discrimination. As Platman (2004,
p. 185) notes, flexible working options have an “irresistible attraction”
in an aging society but various forms of flexibility can leave older workers and other marginal groups vulnerable as they are often faced with
poorer conditions and protections than full-time and permanent staff.
She observes that “By advocating flexible routes out of the labour market, governments may be encouraging forms of work which exacerbate,
rather than alleviate, job insecurity and poverty among older people.”
This approach may intensify age stigmatization that portrays older
workers as marginal, dependent and unable to contribute (Turner,
1989). In this regard, flexibility may be an avenue to exacerbating
discrimination against older workers rather than one that is more
accommodating of the varying needs of a diverse employee group.
Older women workers may be particularly vulnerable, as flexibility
has also been found to reinforce line managers’ stereotypical thinking about gender roles (Yeandle, Phillips, Scheibl, Wigfield, & Wise,
2003). Notably, however, line managers who deal with older workers
on a daily basis do not seem to be influenced by stereotypical attitudes
(Leisink & Knies, 2011).
To effectively manage flexibility, Furunes and Mykletun (2011,
p. 113) suggest that managers need “room to manoeuvre” in organizing work for older workers as well as sufficient human and budget
resources that enable them to combine age management with demands
on organizational effectiveness and acceptance by co-workers. Yet,
Powell and Mainiero (1999) established that low level managers often
resist innovative flexibility programs and policy adopted by top management. Furthermore, focusing on innovation over a diversity agenda
implies taking a single approach to the workforce that may overlook
the needs of many workers, particularly older workers, contingent
workers, and other vulnerable groups. Flynn (2010) warns that policymakers who take a “one size fits all” approach to age management
and retirement planning risk overlooking the diversity of attitudes,
experiences, and plans among older workers. To mitigate such risks,
Eaton (2003) introduced a concept of “usable flexibility.” This reflects
that, whether policies are formal or informal, if an employee cannot
use them then they are not helpful. But, if they are useful then they generate positivity among workers regarding work/life balance and can
be associated with high productivity. In the following discussion, we
build on this literature to question the value of flexibility as a genderconscious age management strategy implemented by organizations
to resolve the issue of prolonging working lives and retaining women
in the workforce. More precisely, we are concerned with how “good”
flexible work schedules and other arrangements are for older women
workers and their employers in an Australian context in which flexible working policies and practices are general and apply to all but are
widely interpreted by managers as catering, firstly, to women, particularly those with caring responsibilities, and, secondly, to older workers
at the later stages of working life.
M et h o d
This research is part of a larger project “Retiring women:
Understanding older female work-life transitions.” The project aimed
to explore, firstly, transitions into, within and out of the labor market from the perspectives of older women workers, their employers
and industry stakeholders; and, secondly, the development of policy
related to the recruitment and retention of older women workers in
the Australian workforce.
Sample
In 2011 and 2012, telephone interviews were undertaken with 58 HR
directors and managers, including equity and diversity managers, in the
financial services sector (19 interviews); public sector (17 interviews);
and the university education sector (22 interviews). Recruitment
involved a three-stage process that identified a wide range of organizations in industry sectors, placed them on a continuum based on their
existing policy responses (for older workers, women workers, flexible
working conditions, etc.) and by geographic location representing
all states across Australia. Individuals representing a range of these
organizations in the public sector and university education sector were
invited to participate by the researchers and a standard snowballing
technique was used to broaden participation also. Individuals working
in the financial services sector were recruited by a national financial
services employer from its employee database, representing a broad
range of services and locations. The collection of interview data continued until it was considered that saturation had been achieved (Mason,
2010).
Additionally, in order to capture broader perspectives on public
policy and issues facing female employees and older workers, telephone interviews were conducted with 39 key external stakeholders,
including representatives of trade unions, advocacy groups for women
and seniors, job recruitment agencies, and industry bodies. Individuals
representing a diversity of stakeholder organizations were invited to
participate and a standard snowballing technique was used to broaden
participation.
Is Workplace Flexibility Good Policy? • 217
While the approach to data collection adopted in this study may
have some limitations compared to face-to-face interviews, it enabled
the collection of data across a large geographic area efficiently and at
low cost. The 97 manager and stakeholder interviews ranged in length
from 10 to 60 min, with most lasting from 30 to 40 min. All interviews
were digitally recorded.
to do so might be perceived to be discriminatory. Their claims drew our
attention to the issue of gender-conscious age management strategies.
We draw on these data to report on the efficacy of age management
strategies that enable Australian organizations to retain older women
workers for longer.
Measures
HR Managers’ Approach to Managing Flexibility in
Australia
The scope of the semi-structured interviews covered the effectiveness
of existing policy and practice in a range of organizations with a particular focus on flexible working options and work/life balance; workplace age management; and transitions to retirement. The interview
schedule for managers included the following questions:
1. At the points at which women leave organizations, what
does your organization do to hold on to them? What does
the organization do to retain the person’s knowledge? Is
this effective?
2. What does your organization do to help women manage
work/life balance?
3. What are the pros and what are the cons of flexible working
policies from an organizational perspective? Does it work
effectively in your organization at an operational level?
4. What does the organization do to support women returning to the workplace in terms of skills development?
5. How much progress has been made at managing the culture of age diversity within your organization?
6. Does your organization have any formal or informal policies on age of retirement?
7. Are older women’s retirement transitions managed effectively by workers and managers? Are there incentives to
retire earlier or later than they otherwise would?
8. Is there conflict between HR policy and what really happens on an operational level? How does the organization
tackle this?
The interview schedule for stakeholders took a slightly different
approach in that it focused on meeting the needs and aspirations of
older women workers in the workplace; mitigating discrimination
against older women workers; government and organizational initiatives to prolonging working lives; and the barriers to making a successful transition to retirement.
Analyses
Interviews were transcribed and coded thematically using NVivo
software. Employer responses were closely aligned in that they identified a similar set of issues faced by women workers and older workers, although they rarely specified issues for older women workers.
Employers were very conscious of antidiscrimination legislation and
this was reflected in their responses in the language they used and
in the claims they made about their practices. In particular, the vast
majority of employers claimed to cater fairly and equally to all employees. Most often they referred directly to older women workers in their
workforces as “people,” which is highlighted in the quotes below.
Consequently, the managers did not single out any one equity group,
such as older women workers, and explained this on the grounds that
R e s u lts
Australia is one of a progressively larger number of countries which
are expected to experience a substantial aging and, simultaneously,
shrinking of their labor forces, bringing to the fore issues of the sustainability of labor supply and managing aging workforces (Per Capita,
2014). Driven by perceived economic imperatives to contain costs
arising from population aging, the Australian government is recommending increased participation in the workforce by older workers (Commonwealth of Australia, 2010). For more than a decade
Australian policymakers have responded to population aging by implementing a raft of measures aimed at pushing out the final age of withdrawal from the labor market, the latest of which was a proposal in the
2014 Federal Budget for an increase in the pension age to 70 (Taylor,
Ralston, & O’Neil, 2014). The approach taken by Australian policymakers deals with older workers—labeled as “mature-age” and defined
as those aged over 45 years—as one employee group. This approach
demonstrates gender blindness. Yet as Loretto and Vickerstaff (2013)
argue, the retirement pathways of women and men typically differ, so
age management strategies should be framed differently for women
and men.
While HR managers in Australian organizations have grown
increasingly aware of the issue of workforce aging as well as the prolongation of working lives, their approaches to age management seem
to be lacking gender consciousness. Flexible working arrangements
are regarded by HR managers as a tool to be used at the discretion of
the employer to encourage any employee to maintain a manageable
work/life balance. In this sense, flexibility is understood by managers as something available to, and desired by, all workers for a range of
individualized reasons. The HR managers in our study tended not to
regard flexibility as a specific strategy to managing an equity and diversity agenda that targeted a specific occupational group, such as older
women workers. Consequently, they did not think about their workforces in terms of individual differences, such as gender differences or
age differences, but rather in terms of the similarities of their workers’
needs. One HR manager articulated how gender and age differences
are overlooked in her organization. Firstly, when asked about what
her organization did to support women returning to the workplace in
terms of skills development, she stated:
It’s probably no different. I mean, they’re not treated any differently to anybody else coming back, or anybody else in the
workforce. I guess a manager would sit down and talk to them.
I guess the challenge would be if they’re in a new role […]
We’re investing a great deal of effort into development of our
people, so yes, it’s really very much the manager sitting down
and having that conversation with the individual around what
they need to do the job […] and then identifying what’s the
learning and development plan. So, it’s not necessarily any
218 • C. Earl & P. Taylor
different to how normal employees are treated. (Interview 47,
HR manager, public sector)
Secondly, when asked about what is done within in her organization to
manage a culture of age diversity, she stated:
There was lots of talk a few years ago about Gen Y […] and
there was this acknowledgement [...] “They want different
things”, but when you think about it […] there’s all this big
fuss […] and they’re not different. The things that they want
really aren’t that different to what older people are wanting. So
we’ve moved away from that. (Interview 47, HR manager, public sector)
The risk with this “flexibility for all” approach is that it potentially overlooks the needs of specific groups of workers, particularly older women
workers. Earl, Taylor, Williams, and Brooke (2015) confirmed that the
specific work/life balance needs of older women workers are diverse
and may include a combination of grand-parenting, elder care, spouse
case, acute medical condition, chronic health condition, travel/commuting, sabbatical/late career break, and insufficient funds to retire.
Their needs regarding caring responsibilities, for example, may be less
likely to be met by their employers through a standard approach to
flexible working options. Goñi-Legaz and Ollo-López (2014) point
out that flexible working does not necessarily lead to a better work/
life balance. Thus, a lack of employer policy that targets older women
workers may compound their vulnerability as an employee group and,
perversely, increase the risk of their early exit from the workforce.
However, flexibility, although applied across the workforce, is
widely believed by the HR managers we interviewed to be a solution
to avoiding early exit and retaining older women workers. Common
types of flexibility offered in Australian workplaces center on restructuring time and task. Typically managers interpreted flexibility to refer
to flexible scheduling and contracts, which were the most widely used
measures in our study, but reallocating tasks and locations were also
quite common. However, the flexible working options managers mentioned implementing were responses to dealing with women workers, and in some cases older women workers in a caring role. These
measures included: a variety of flexible schedules (flex time, 3 days a
week, 4 days a week, individually negotiated work pattern, 9 day fortnight, split shift or early start to enable afternoon school pick up, job
share); several types of flexible contracts (48/52 to enable leave during school holidays, phased retirement, part-time senior manager); the
possibility of flexible tasks (restructuring workload for part-time or
swap to pre-retirement mentoring role); and the option to work in a
flexible location (teleworking, use a regional office close to home or
school, working from onsite children’s room). The use of these flexible
measures varied little across industry sectors, although availability and
access did vary, as discussed below. With the majority of older women
employed in the organizations in our study working in office-based
environments, physical modifications such as adaptive equipment and
technologies were seldom identified by managers in terms of flexibility.
We suggest that employers and employees do not necessarily agree
on an idea of what flexibility entails and there may be differences in
the expectations of managers and older workers regarding, for example, their capacity to continue in cognitively demanding and physically
demanding jobs. Furthermore, the needs of older women workers are
not differentiated by managers from the needs of older men workers,
on the one hand, nor from the needs of younger women workers, on
the other hand. The majority of the flexible working options managers
listed as available to older women workers centered on flexible schedules to better accommodate caring for older, school-aged children. In
this regard, the flexibility options they outlined applied to all workers,
and particularly targeted younger women, even though we questioned
them about their workplace practices for older women workers. Thus,
the managers in our study seemed to deal with factors of gender or age,
but rarely gender and age, in their workplaces.
The HR managers who supported flexible working options for
older women workers were keen to point out benefits in terms of
making a business case for their recruitment and retention. They saw
benefits not only for their organizations but also for their employees
and teams. This indicated that some managers were proud of their
organization’s approach to age management and were willing to adopt
strategies for prolonging working lives. This was especially true of the
Australian university sector, which has an aging workforce and continues the employment of highly valued academic staff aged in their 60s
and 70s. A university HR manager explained:
I think you’ve got to be flexible. They do slow down. They do
get tired […] Most people, when they’re coming up to their
60s and 70s, are looking to do things differently […] As an
organization, you have got to be able to deal with that [...] If
you want to keep them, you come up with some arrangements
to keep them when they tell you they’re leaving. (Interview 26,
HR manager, university education)
The above employer view notwithstanding, organizations may benefit
from recognizing that the work/life balance issues of older women
workers are diverse and that they do not share the same issues, nor
that all older workers are “slowing down.” Similarly, more effective
policy may result from not assuming that every older woman worker
wants part-time work, rather than an alternative arrangement such as
a varying way of working full-time hours, project or contract work, or
part-year work. Moreover, many organizational responses to the needs
of older women workers involving flexible working have focused on
their needs on the basis of gender rather than age. For example, British
research has found that employers rarely encounter older workers
seeking to reduce their hours or redesign the nature of their work due
to their age. Instead, control over working time, but not reducing working hours, is viewed as a benefit for workers that potentially overcomes
gender barriers (Atkinson & Hall, 2009; Barnes, Smeaton, & Taylor,
2009).
While there is still a myth circulating among some employers
that certain jobs or industries cannot support flexibility, particularly
in the form of part-time work or working reduced hours, managers
may need to consider the potential for developing career pathways for
older workers, including older women employees working reduced
hours. Older women workers, as Loretto and Vickerstaff (2013) point
out, regard job quality and job satisfaction as incentives to continuing
working. Adding responsibilities, such as mentoring, to a part-time
job can help keep work interesting and enable promotion opportunities. Furthermore, such age friendly initiatives may generate a culture
change in an organization. Rethinking flexibility around the issues
Is Workplace Flexibility Good Policy? • 219
of job quality and job satisfaction may make it even more usable for
employee as well as the organization. It is not only new schedules and
new locations that make flexible working possible; the role of management is central to generating cultural change within organizations and
reconceptualizing work to meet the needs of older workers, particularly
older women workers (Reday-Mulvey, 2005; Siegenthaler & Brenner,
2001). Additional to cultural change in organizations, greater regulation may also protect workers seeking more manageable work/life balance from the negative consequences of flexible working arrangements
(Goñi-Legaz & Ollo-López, 2014).
Benefits of Flexibility for Organization and Workforce
In Australia, flexibility is positively charged and relied upon as a business solution primarily to the retention of so-called vulnerable occupational groups, including women returning from maternity leave, older
women workers entering or re-entering the workforce, and pre-retirees,
whose needs may not be met within the core workforce of an organization. Across the literature, flexibility is viewed as a win-win for both
the organization and the workforce. Gardiner and Tomlinson (2009,
p. 680), for example, point out that in the U.K. organizations view
flexibility through four inter-connected perspectives as “an individual
employee benefit, as a means of improving operational effectiveness,
as an integral part of organisational strategy and as a means of addressing structural social inequalities.” Many organizations in Australia have
devised broad generic policy and rely on their managers to interpret
this and translate it into effective practice. In these organizations, the
competence of line management is crucial.
In our study, we found HR managers were readily able to outline
a range of positives for an organization that implements flexibility for
older women workers, including greater employee retention, enhancing team harmony, creating culture change, making the organization
attractive to recruits, reducing absenteeism, increasing productivity,
and retaining skills and knowledge. This range of issues focuses on the
increased recruitment, retention, and engagement of older women
workers in line with government policy promoting the prolongation
of working lives. Unlike the United States, where most workers in most
industries have limited access to flexible working arrangements (Sweet
et al., 2014), older women workers in the office-based employment
in our study generally had sufficient access to usable flexible working
arrangements which were regarded positively and used by employers
as a lure to attract, or retain, older women workers. Rather than using a
quota to target women, flexible working arrangements offer Australian
employers a way to recruit women, particularly those with caring
responsibilities, regardless of their age. A clear benefit of flexibility for
an organization centers on recruiting the right staff for a position or
industry sector which may have specific requirements. This is especially important when the most talented staff—who may be younger
women or older women—have additional responsibilities outside the
workplace that can be managed through opportunities to work flexibly,
as this HR manager suggested:
It allows you to attract and retain staff that otherwise you
wouldn’t cater to […] If you want somebody who’s experienced and might be coming back from a baby break, you want
to have that flexibility in your budgeting and how you set up
your positions. So it’s quite deliberate in many ways that we set
up part-time positions to attract certain kinds of people or to
maintain that flexibility. So that’s the key advantage […] You
know, she’s a great asset and it would be a shame to lose her if
we can come up with a part-time arrangement that would work
well. (Interview 21, HR manager, university education)
Another benefit of flexibility for the organization is the ability to retain
the right staff. It was suggested by HR managers across the three industry sectors we studied that offering flexible working arrangements
reduced employee stress which improved team relationships and overall productivity. Numerous HR managers highlighted a connection
between reduced hours and increased productivity as a key advantage
of working with part-time staff who worked between dropping children
at school and picking them up at the end of the day. Others specified
examples of older women in their workforces who engaged in flexible
schedules to meet their caring responsibilities for a spouse, elderly parent, or grandchildren. All of these managers focused on removing gender barriers by avoiding early workforce exit and prolonging working
lives by retaining women employees. Noting the references to “people”
in the workforce, a financial services HR manager stated:
One of the pros is to retain people that might otherwise have
to leave because they just simply can’t work full-time or on
standard hours […] The people I work with who work flexibly
are probably a lot more engaged and productive in the sense
of what they achieve in the reduced hours. So I actually think
if you looked at productivity per hour people who are working flexibly probably actually perform higher. (Interview 3, HR
manager, financial services)
In addition to increasing recruitment and retention, enhanced
employee engagement was also regarded by HR managers to be a positive associated with an organization offering flexible working options.
Managers reported that offering flexibility not only to younger parents
but to all their employees opened up career opportunities for them,
although some employees may perceive access to flexibility as a personal reward (Kelly & Kalev, 2006). Overall, managers felt flexible
working made work/life balance easier for older women employees
and this has additional benefits for the organization. Enabling staff to
take up flexible working options helped build and maintain a positive
and productive relationship between the employee and her manager.
Not only did HR managers regard flexible working arrangements as
making an organization more attractive to employees, particularly
older women who juggled a range of paid and unpaid commitments
in their lives, but they also believed flexibility increased an employee’s
intrinsic motivation to work, her investment in the organization, and
her productivity by enhancing trust between herself and her manager.
A public sector manager, who worked in an education institution in a
combined role comprising HR, equity and diversity, and line management, explained the role of trust in older women workers, the “people,”
in her workplace:
In terms of looking to have people inspired to work for our
school and for the children, I prefer to see that coming from
within the person, rather than being dictated from the outside
[…] A top down model doesn’t work particularly well […] You
220 • C. Earl & P. Taylor
need to empower people to be able to operate independently
but know that the support is there. You need to be able to trust
people and show people that you do trust them. Now the positives of having a flexible work set-up is that. One of the things
that comes out of that is it does show trust. The people understand that you are trusting them to get their job done properly.
(Interview 46, HR manager, public sector)
In Australian industry sectors flexibility is positively charged and the
perceived benefits HR managers identify for organizations and employees are wide-ranging, although they center on the needs of women
workers of any age who have caring responsibilities. A major drawback
for organizations offering flexibility is that managers often find flexible
working arrangements difficult to manage. For some employers the difficulty of managing flexibility outweighed the benefits it offered, and
they overlooked potential increases in productivity and retention of
the right people. Added to this, their approach to overcoming gender
barriers to increasing (older) women’s labor market participation may
have unintentionally disadvantaged some older women workers, especially those who were noncarers or whose caring responsibilities did
not adversely affect their paid work commitments. Such a focus may
also exacerbate an historical culture of early retirement by failing to
consider pertinent age-based issues around maintaining performance
such as conserving and enhancing skills, or health and wellbeing.
Challenges for Managing Flexibility in Organizations
Effective age management requires sufficient resourcing from the
organization. Investment in the training and upskilling of line managers may provide career development opportunities that enable them
to build their capacities to manage older women workers more effectively, particularly if successful age management were to be made a key
performance indicator. Such an approach may offer a way forward for
organizations to overcome the reluctance some line managers have to
implementing policy and practice innovations embraced by their leaders and to pioneer new initiatives and policy innovations (Gardiner &
Tomlinson, 2009; Powell & Mainiero, 1999).
The HR managers in our study identified a series of challenges
line managers face in managing flexible working arrangements.
A small number stressed that flexible working arrangements in their
organizations were not an entitlement and requests for flexibility
could be refused, although the majority reported that requests were
rarely, if ever, rejected when the arrangement requested seemed reasonable and could be facilitated without disruption in the workplace.
However, many of the managers we interviewed specified that certain types of job, or their industry in general, could not accommodate part-time or nonstandard working. This response was especially
widespread in customer-facing jobs, particularly schools and banks.
Concerned either with implementing flexible working without disruption to the workplace, or in compliance to antidiscrimination legislation by avoiding treating some employees differently to others,
these managers were unable or unwilling to recognize the potential
of their lack of action to disadvantage older women workers seeking
flexibility in order to prolong their labor market participation. It is
also important to reiterate that the availability of flexibility may indicate unpredictable and unstable work rather than quality jobs (Sweet
et al., 2014).
Meeting the perceived needs of clients and customers is a central
concern of managers. Karlsson (2007) identified customers as the
third party in the relationships between employers and employees. The
HR managers in our study identified this as a challenge to implementing flexibility for employees. They reported line managers as tending
to have fixed views about the needs of their clients which limited the
possibilities for them to offer flexible working options. These managers
felt that part-time work did not suit their particular clients, or that it
restricted their organization’s ability to deliver a service. In particular,
accommodating requests for reduced hours, job sharing or teleworking in reception and other customer/client-oriented positions, such as
classroom teaching and retail banking, was deemed to be not possible
on a basis of customer/client need. Among the other arrangements
managers across the three industry sectors complained most about
managing were job share, early or late starts, and part-time work patterns, particularly for those in positions of responsibility or in a team
comprising mostly full-time workers. Rather than reflecting a business
need, or the disadvantage of higher costs, the responses of managers in
these cases seems to indicate a lack of willingness to engage in arrangements that might require additional effort to manage. According to one
HR manager:
Part-time arrangements can be difficult to accommodate for
some managers. Some managers just think, “Oh, it’s too hard.
Trying to arrange this is too hard—the planning of it all.” It’s
just easier for them to just to say no […] I think some of this
is challenging ourselves in thinking, yes this can be a flexible
arrangement, or this can be part-time. (Interview 6, HR manager, financial services)
Atkinson and Hall (2009) regard flexible working to be gendered in
nature as its demand is driven by employees managing their caring
responsibilities. Managers in our study were aware that arrangements
for flexible scheduling were mostly taken up by women returning from
maternity leave or older women workers with other caring responsibilities, such as elder care or caring for a spouse or an adult child
with chronic illness or disability. While they recognized the gendered
nature of flexible working, they did not regard their reluctance to
approve arrangements in terms of gender (or age) discrimination and
reiterated that flexibility was available to all employees. Meeting the
needs of individual employees can be perceived to be unfair favoritism
and managers across sectors repeated that they did not discriminate in
any way, shape or form. Rather they used other words—such as “disillusioned”—to describe employee responses to decisions that may be
considered discriminatory, as this HR manager did:
Women in [our organization] are very appreciative of the flexible working policies. The only time when it doesn’t work for
them is where they would like to perhaps work flexibly but
the job that they’re doing doesn’t allow for that, so their manager has the right to refuse a flexible work arrangement. Then
women can become a little bit disillusioned because it’s not an
entitlement. It’s not a right. It’s actually an option if it suits the
workplace […] You can’t have a flexible work arrangement in
some of our work locations, so people would say it’s not equitable across the organization. If you work in an office-based job
Is Workplace Flexibility Good Policy? • 221
you’re more likely to get a flexible work arrangement agreed,
than if you’re in a customer-facing job. (Interview 45, HR manager, public sector)
In an organization such as that described above which incorporated
multiple job types, older women workers experienced differential
access to flexible working options. Despite an awareness of an equity
and diversity agenda in the context of antidiscrimination legislation,
the manager explained that access to flexibility in her organization in
terms of a business rationale centered on customers and service delivery. What this highlights again is that flexible working requests are
firmly controlled by the organization (Beck, 2013; Phillipson, 2002).
Moreover, policies and practices on flexible working were applied by
the managers in our study generally across the workforce even though
the arrangements they offered were mostly taken up by women with
caring responsibilities (a gendered dimension) or by older workers at
the later stages of working life (an age dimension). The three industries
these managers represented comprised a large proportion of women
employees and an aging workforce, yet the managers identified surprisingly few initiatives that drew on flexibility specifically to target
prolonging older women’s working lives. A stakeholder outlined the
limitations of this approach:
At the moment we’ve got a system where they [employers]
don’t even have to justify it. If they say, “No, we don’t think we
can do it,” that’s enough and the employee’s got no recourse. So
what we’re finding is that they just leave because it’s either work
full-time or don’t work at all. Then they go into more precarious
employment options because that’s where they can get those
sorts of hours. For a lot of women that that really impacts on
their retirement adequacy. (Interview 96, stakeholder)
The risk of early workforce exit, in particular, is an issue connected
to the poor implementation of flexible working arrangements that
remains a challenge for organizations. For older women workers, early
retirement poses a threat to their financial security. In Australia, due
to the historical structure of the superannuation system and the fact
that women on average spend fewer years in the workforce than men,
older women are especially vulnerable to having insufficient retirement funds and this risk is exacerbated if they are unmarried, divorced,
or widowed (Hodgson & Marriott, 2013; Speelman, Clark-Murphy, &
Gerrans, 2013). The decisions line managers make in the workplace
with respect to enabling older women to prolong their working lives
may have a much greater flow on effect for older women beyond the
workplace.
The Downsides of Flexibility for Older Women Workers
While many employers assume flexibility is more widely requested by
women and that it is good for those who are seeking to resolve work/
life balance issues, it may also disadvantage them in a number of critical
ways. Employees working reduced hours receive lower incomes which
has a further impact on their retirement savings. They also often have
fewer opportunities to take up positions of responsibility or develop
their career trajectories.
HR managers in our study pointed out that the major disadvantages
older women workers faced as a result of accepting flexible working
arrangements included a loss of benefits, insufficient resources to retire,
under-employment, that their job was not a quality job, a perceived
loss of status, having their commitment questioned, as well as feeling that they were missing out on meetings, workplace social events,
training, and other career development opportunities. Furthermore,
managers pointed out that employees who work in flexible schedules,
particularly reduced hours, job share or part-time patterns, often faced
some degree of stigmatization or social exclusion (Turner, 1989). The
view among employees that they were being stigmatized was evident
according to managers, such as this university HR manager:
There would be some views that I can’t get promoted or I can’t
be advanced because I’m not full-time or because there is a
stigma attached to me because I’ve asked for this. Yes, all of that
does occur. I can’t shy away from the fact that that’s the perception of staff. So there are some downsides […] The other one
I hear a lot of is I’m reluctant to ask for it because then I will be
identified as a troublemaker […] I think that most of our preretiree people are highly valued to the organization and we’ve
been trying to lock them in for as long as they possibly want
to give us. But that’s not to say that some people’s perception
would be they’re winding down and they’re not as committed
(Interview 22, HR manager, university education)
The stigma that HR managers recognized is attached to flexible working
stems from dimensions of age (e.g., for pre-retirees) and gender (e.g., for
carers) and can have a significant impact on workplace morale and team
working. Questioning the commitment of noncore workers, who are
not always physically located in the workplace, also affects individual
morale and that of the team. Pervasive negative connotations of parttime working contribute to making flexible arrangements un-“usable”
(Eaton, 2003). Moen and Sweet (2004) observe that in Europe and
the United States organizational and cultural practices preserve a “lockstep” approach to the life course that fails to view careers as embedded
in existing gender, temporal, and labor market regimes. In Australia also,
the persistence of stigma attached to flexible working indicates there is
a need to recast the two dichotomies of work and family and of mature
age and employment activity. However, our study reveals that negative
connotations of flexible working are not necessarily an insurmountable
obstacle for managers, as a financial services HR manager suggested:
There is a perception that sometimes people that work flexibly—
work from home, work part-time or work different hours—don’t
put in as much as those who are in the office […] which I don’t
actually think it’s true, but it’s a perception in the organization
that some people have […] We need to do to work with our
leaders and work with our employees to dispel that myth […]
It just means that there needs to be more organization and there
needs to be more communication and somebody needs to be
right on top of it, because it is a little bit more difficult to manage
[…] Having said that, I think the rewards probably outweigh
[…] the time you may spend on somebody to support flexible
working. (Interview 10, HR manager, financial services)
HR managers who recognized stigma and negative perceptions as
a downside of flexible working arrangements for employees also
222 • C. Earl & P. Taylor
recognized a need for organizations to engage in culture change to
expand age management strategies to limit early exit from the workforce and enable prolonged working lives. This may suggest that in
Australia there is a more favorable attitude toward equal age practices across female-dominated sectors, as there also is in the United
Kingdom (Barnes et al., 2009). While managers reported doing little to
mitigate workplace stigma directly, they suggested that the workplace
culture needed to be adjusted to enable flexibility without stigmatization, although they argued that doing so involved business innovation
rather than meeting an equity and diversity agenda. They proposed
that training and upskilling line management was a more workable
solution to effectively managing flexibility than using a “top down”
compliance approach. Nevertheless, some HR managers suggested
that senior management should lead by example and take up flexible
options themselves in order to facilitate a positive culture change in the
organization. A university HR manager suggested:
Allowing all sorts of flexibilities for people to have a reasonable
balance, I think, is fabulous. It brings a lot of commitment back
into the organization. It keeps people fresh and alive. Having
another part of your life is clearly—the research is overwhelming on that—a healthy thing to do, both mentally and physically.
I think the benefits are fabulous. I think one of the downsides is
as you move into senior positions, organizations can judge you
about whether you’re somebody who accesses flexible arrangements. So from my view, it’s really important that senior staff
model flexible arrangements, so that it can be seen that, yes, it
is fine for people at the most senior levels in an organization
to exercise flexible arrangements. It sends a message, then, to
other people. But unfortunately, that’s often not the case. Most
senior staff work night and day (Interview 23, HR manager, university education)
HR managers such as this one were aware of a need for culture change
and that many organizations have been slow to adopt new or different
ways of working. For example, some of the managers we interviewed
noted that flexible working hours and job restructuring were unusable
options for senior roles. Moreover, senior managers who opted for
flexible working arrangements might also be subjected to the various
stigmatizing perceptions associated with flexible working that plagued
other staff in organizations.
Despite being a positively charged concept, flexibility has a number of critical downsides for employees. The disadvantages that managers consider older women workers face contribute to undermining
the business case they present for flexible working as a means of not
only recruiting and retaining older and women workers, but also for
enhancing their engagement in the organization.
Di s c u s s i o n
Weighing Up the Benefits and Costs of Flexible Working
Arrangements
Overall, the benefits of flexible working arrangements appear to outweigh the costs from the perspective of Australian HR managers,
even though the costs can be high, especially for older women workers. On the one hand, flexibility is believed by managers to increase
employee motivation, engagement, productivity, and retention. On
the other hand, managing flexibility can generate problems for managers centered on stigmatization of employees, lowering of morale and
disrupting team working as well as for meeting the needs of clients and
customers and ensuring continuity of service. A willing organization
can address these downsides through upskilling line managers and
strategically investing in resources to facilitate flexibility.
Different HR managers found different benefits or costs in weighing up the efficacy of flexible working arrangements in their workplaces. While some found that flexible working made teams unstable,
others found that it built harmonious teams as employees were less
stressed, more engaged, and more productive. Some mentioned how
easy it was to promote flexibility in their workplaces, but others found
it difficult to achieve. Managers reported perceptions that older women
workers felt they were missing out on something, on the one hand, or
not missing out, on the other hand, if they took up flexible working
options. The difference in this example centered on the competence
and communication of the line manager regardless of the industry sector. Managers across sectors also highlighted a range of positive and
negative perceptions about any employees who worked part-time and
about part-time work. This reflects the complexity of managing flexible working arrangements and highlights that managers are aware of
a range of issues challenging the successful implementation of flexible
options in workplaces that are concerned with the organization’s needs
as well as those of the employees in general. Flexible working, although
not considered a formal entitlement by HR managers in our study, was
recognized as an expectation of employees in office-based working
environments and used to recruit and retain highly valued staff. A public sector HR manager advised:
From an organizational perspective there can be problems with
continuity of work. If there’s a large proportion of people who
are working flexible hours […] it makes it a bit more difficult
to manage […] So it really requires a new and fairly sophisticated set of skills, from a manager’s perspective, to be able to
do it. Having said that, the information technology that we
have available to us really makes it quite easy now. People can
work from distance without any problems. It’s really attitudinal in some cases. Some people believe in this way of working
[…] Naturally if you can reach a satisfactory sort of arrangement then that helps the engagement of the individual with the
organization and also their psychological wellbeing and their
motivation to work. (Interview 50, HR manager, public sector)
While competent line managers more readily support older workers,
resourcing by organizations can help line managers become more willing to support and more effective in implementing flexible working
arrangements (Leisink & Knies, 2011). What many managers in our
study failed to acknowledge was the detrimental effect of poorly implemented flexible working arrangements on the ability of older women
workers to prolong their working lives.
Flexible working arrangements have been widely promoted as a
means to avoid early workforce exit, especially of older women workers. When older workers exit the workforce prematurely, this generates a loss of knowledge and skills that may not be resolvable due to
insufficient talent coming in to the organization. Many organizations in Australia facing skills shortages and workforce aging issues
Is Workplace Flexibility Good Policy? • 223
are developing serious responses and investing significant time and
resources into producing solutions, including targeted recruitment
programs and strategies to retain older women workers. A financial
services HR manager recommended:
You’re often likely to pick up people with experience—life
experience and also industry experience. So, there are commercial benefits there. The challenge with commercial benefits is
that they take a few years to flow through […] The downsides,
there are a few. There is an absolute cost. There is no doubt
about it […] When you’re hiring one person, you’re hiring two,
often. The other sort of downside is […] in managing expectations, because you have to respect that there will never be a
common definition of flexibility. (Interview 15, HR manager,
financial services)
Recognizing the skills and experience that older women offer to a
workplace is an essential aspect to effective gender-conscious age management strategies (Barnes et al., 2009). Even though flexible working
arrangements can be difficult to manage and may require that line managers undergo specialist training, the HR managers in our study viewed
flexibility positively as a strategy that enables organizations to retain
older women workers and prolong their working lives. These managers
tended to focus on a dimension of gender, rather than age, in making a
business case for flexible working arrangements. Over the last two decades employees, particularly women working in the public sector, have
come to expect access to flexible working options as an entitlement
rather than a favor (Atkinson & Hall, 2009). However, as Gardiner and
Tomlinson (2009) point out, it is private sector organizations that are
more likely to offer a flexible working policy as part of a business strategy, while the public sector regards flexibility to be part of an equity
and diversity agenda. Yet, the managers across the three sectors of our
study were able to identify the needs of their female staff, particularly
those with caring responsibilities, and of their older staff in the lead up
to full retirement, but they seldom drew attention to the needs of their
older women employees and what specific programs and strategies
they had implemented to retain them in the workforce. Their silence
about issues of age coupled with issues of gender in a study about older
women workers reveals that, while HR managers are aware of the need
to implement flexibility to meet an equity and diversity agenda, on the
one hand, or a business strategy, on the other hand, they struggle to
deal with issues stemming from a combination of age and gender factors faced by older women in their workforces.
Limitations and Future Research
A number of limitations can be identified in this study. One limitation
is that as the data centered on older women workers it was not possible
to make comparisons between workforce experiences of older women
and older men. However, given the relative lack of specific research
on older women workers, the focus of this study on women was justified. Another limitation is that the study was based on three industry
sectors, so that the findings cannot be generalized further. Additional
sector specific research would assist in building upon our findings in
this regard. Also, there are potential limitations in relying on telephone
interviews over face-to-face interviews. However, as noted above,
this method enabled the collection of data across a large geographic
area efficiently and at low cost. A further limitation is that the study
results are based on self-reporting by HR managers and stakeholders. These limitations have been addressed in a further element of our
research which involved a large scale survey and interviewing of older
women about their late career and post-career working experiences.
Nevertheless, we believe the current study offers potentially new
insights into the role of line managers in gender-conscious age management policies and practices.
Co n c lu s i o n : T h e o r et i c a l a n d
P r a ct i c a l I m p l i c at i o n s
Recognizing that flexibility is widely assumed to be positive for employees as well as for organizations, we set out to explore its value for older
women workers. In particular, we asked what do managers understand flexibility to mean and how do they implement flexible working options? What are the perceived benefits and costs of flexibility for
organizations and for older women workers? Drawing on interviews
with HR managers, our study revealed that while the individual needs
of older women workers differ to those of men and of younger women,
all workers need access to “usable” flexibility for a range of reasons
throughout their working lives. With or without guidance from policymakers, older women workers are reliant on the discretion of their
managers. However, managers have varying capacities to understand
and implement policy and to develop effective practice in lieu of policy.
Their skills become a central issue in organizational age management.
Flexible working arrangements can be difficult to manage and managers’ attitudes can become a barrier to organizations implementing flexibility for older women workers. Many managers need upskilling not
only to develop a more nuanced understanding of policy but also to
build strategies for how to actually negotiate flexible working options
and work/life balance with employees. Moreover, managers’ decisions
can be influenced by their own attitudes and beliefs which may involve
stereotyping of women workers, older workers, and particularly older
women workers. Thus, the needs of older women workers, and other
potentially vulnerable occupational groups in the workforce, may go
unrecognized by their managers and this has been identified previously
in the literature as a reason for their early exit from the workforce.
In response to early exit, policymakers have encouraged prolonging working lives, which organizations have aimed to achieve through
flexibility and primarily through flexible working schedules. Reduced
hours or part-time work patterns for older workers have been implemented by organizations as an age management strategy and a means
to avoiding redundancies and early workforce exit in an aging workforce. For older women workers, consensus thinking suggests that
flexibility enables them to achieve work/life balance by offering them
greater autonomy and control over their time. Thus, flexible working
arrangements center on time and, in some cases, task. However, from
the perspective of the organization, flexible working schedules do not
demonstrate a rethink but a response to meeting the perceived needs
of older women workers. This approach as gender-conscious age management does not target the core workforce nor does it conceptualize that the core workforce may be an aging workforce. In this regard,
when managers deal with the needs of older women workers, they do
not treat them as part of the core workforce.
Ideas about flexibility evolve over time and develop with respect to
the context in which they are implemented. Consequently, managers
224 • C. Earl & P. Taylor
and employees do not necessarily share the same ideas about what
flexibility is and their views may be further complicated when the perceived needs of customers are incorporated. Effective age management
depends on the flexible practices that are implemented being “usable”
for the organization and its employees, and this appears to center on
the capabilities of line managers. Line managers have a critical role in
age management, yet organizations may have unrealistic expectations
of them, leaving a proportion of them unable to fulfil these expectations. Training is believed to be part of the solution. However, unrealistic expectations will not be overcome easily without a rethink of age
management practices and a shift away from regarding this as an issue
for the periphery rather than core workforce. Organizational culture
change may be also required to broaden managers’ views about what
is possible and to filter new attitudes through workplaces, particularly
concerning the needs of women in the workforce at different stages
of life.
Rethinking flexibility in terms of innovation might widen its applicability across employee groups at the same time as maximizing business benefits. To do so might involve shifting organizational thinking
away from an equity and diversity agenda that caters to some designated employee groups and toward an innovation agenda that better
serves the organization by balancing demand for labor with issues of
labor supply. Focusing on innovation, productivity and profitability
could offer traction for aging workforce management in a way that
catering to equity and diversity issues of older workers as peripheral or
marginal workers has not. This reflects what managers say when they
suggest flexibility is not regarded as a right or entitlement but as an
option that must meet their business needs.
Nevertheless, care must be taken in managing flexibility and the
efficacy of line managers should be called into question. Flexibility
risks becoming a source of age stigmatization and it may entrench discrimination, particularly for marginal or potentially vulnerable workers such as older women. While flexibility is readily available for older
women employees in nonmanagement, noncustomer service, and
nonclient-oriented roles, in our study we found it was only usable if
line managers discerned that there would be no adverse effect on business. Furthermore, older women working in a flexible schedule often
experienced a lack of career development and a lack of access to training and few, if any, opportunities for promotion. Consequently, older
women workers may receive lower salaries and they may accrue insufficient resources to choose when to retire. While many managers were
aware of these issues, their decisions were often discretionary and drew
from their own attitudes to women and older workers. They assumed
flexibility was good for older women workers and that they desired it,
assumptions which risk entrenching both gender and age stereotypes
associated with a traditional life course approach to women’s work and
later life employment that regards both as supplementary or marginal.
Although it has been assumed that flexibility is good for both
employees and organizations, we have questioned if this does apply
to all organizations and to all workers in the context of gender-conscious age management. We have found that for older women workers, organizations continue to posit the merits of flexibility. But the
materialization of benefits for older women workers seems to depend
on the attitudes and capabilities of their line managers. The perceived
challenges line managers face in implementing flexibility coupled
with a reinforcement of age stigmatization and gender stereotyping
are among the unfavorable outcomes of flexibility for older women
workers. Other unfavorable outcomes center on limited career opportunities and financial disincentives. Overall, the significance of unfavorable outcomes for older women workers strongly suggests that
flexibility is not necessarily effective as a gender-conscious age management strategy and we call for organizations to rethink age management in terms of innovation in order to meet organizational and
workforce needs.
A c k n o w l e d g m e n ts
This research was supported by a grant titled “Retiring women:
Understanding older female work-life transitions” from the
Australian Research Council and three Australian industry partners
[LP0990703], and carried out by the research team from Federation
University Australia, Monash University, and Swinburne University of
Technology.
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