Measuring the telework potential of jobs: evidence from the International Standard Classification of Occupations

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has triggered and accelerated the shift of firms and businesses to adopt flexible alternative work arrangements such as teleworking or working from home (WFH) set-ups. To effectively transition to the ‘new normal’ of work, this paper measures the telework potential of jobs or the degree to which a job can be feasibly done at home or offsite. Using the task-based framework, this paper constructs continuous ‘teleworkability’ indices by implementing a classification process of the occupational tasks listed in the International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008 (ISCO-08) and based on the telework indicators in the literature. The correlates of these indices are estimated. Also, the indices are applied to Philippine occupations. The primary contribution of this paper is the set of ‘teleworkability’ indices for all 427 occupations (4-digit ISCO) to describe the telework potential of jobs in countries which pattern their local occupational codes to ISCO-08.

A Word of Caution to Students: Public Accountant Perceptions of Alternative Work Arrangements

This study provides updated insights regarding attitudes and beliefs about alternative work arrangements (AWAs) in public accounting so that educators are equipped with current empirical analysis to advise students on how to successfully navigate work-life balance in public accounting. We examine current attitudes and beliefs about AWAs by surveying public accountants from firms of various sizes on different dimensions of AWA support and asking firm partners to provide advice for students. Respondents indicated more agreement with the benefits of AWAs than they did with the perceived costs to the organization and the perceived costs to the participants’ future career. Collectively, results suggest attitudes regarding AWAs may be more positive than in the past. Results identify significant differences in the perceptions about AWAs between females and males, as well as AWA participants and non-participants. Qualitative results are consistent with general support for AWAs but also provide cautionary advice to students.

How Labor Market Institutions Matter for Worker Compensation

Labor markets deviate substantially from the competitive ideal, and policies and institutions affect workers’ outcomes. Over the last 45 years, the dramatic increase in compensation of high earners and weak or stagnant growth for low and middle earners have shone a spotlight on the ways in which labor market institutions sometimes work to the detriment of lower-paid workers. In this article, we survey several institutions—minimum wages, private sector unions, noncompete agreements, and occupational licensing—considering how they have evolved in ways that affect workers’ outcomes, given that the labor market is characterized by uneven distribution of market gains. We describe the modern labor market as one that substantially features alternative work arrangements and labor market concentration, and we consider the implications of this for public policy. Those policies, along with the surveyed institutions, are the focus of our final section that discusses key options for improving worker outcomes.

Job Satisfaction and Work-Life Balance of Workers of a Manpower Agency in a Highly Urbanized City

The rapid growth of industrialization and diversification worldwide diverted the trend in the labor market to be shifted towards alternative work arrangements, also known as Non-standard Employment (NSE). In the Philippines, these alternative forms of employment of NSE can be greatly observed. Workers can be under different employment types, namely, regular, probationary, fixed-term or contractual, casual, project, or seasonal. The majority of workers under NSE arrangements fall under a fixed-term or are contractual employees. This enticed the researcher to investigate how alternative work arrangements influence or affect workers' overall job satisfaction and work-life balance, specifically for workers under contractual arrangements or those hired by service contractors or manpower agencies. Thus, the study described and correlated the level of job satisfaction and work-life balance of the manpower agency workers in a highly urbanized city in Negros Occidental.

Alternative Work Arrangements

Alternative work arrangements, defined both by working conditions and by workers’ relationship to their employers, are heterogeneous and common in the United States. This article reviews the literature on workers’ preferences over these arrangements, inputs to firms’ decisions to offer them, and the impact of regulation. It also highlights several descriptive facts: The typical worker is in a job where almost none of the tasks can be performed from home, work arrangements have been relatively stable over the past 20 years, work conditions vary substantially with education, and jobs with schedule or location flexibility are less family friendly on average. This last fact explains why women are not more likely to have schedule or location flexibility and seem to largely reduce their working hours to get more family-friendly arrangements.

Alternative Work Arrangements and Cost of Equity: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment

I examine whether firms’ use of alternative work arrangements, particularly temporary agency workers, affects their cost of equity. Exploiting a major labor-market deregulation in Japan that induced manufacturing firms to increase their employment of temporary agency workers, I show that the cost of equity decreased in manufacturing firms, relative to nonmanufacturing firms, after the deregulation. Further analysis using variations within manufacturing firms provides corroborating evidence. The rigidity in labor expenses and the cost of debt also decreased in manufacturing firms. Overall, alternative work arrangements increase the flexibility in labor costs, leading to lower operating leverage and cost of capital.