UNIVERSITY OF VAASA 

 
SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Henri Juhana Aleksanteri Nyberg 
 

Employee perceptions of flexible working agreements 
 

An investigation of the dark sides of teleworking 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

 

 

 

Master’s Programme in International Business 

 
 
 

VAASA 2019 





1 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

page 

TABLE OF FIGURES AND TABLES	      Page 3	

ABSTRACT: 5	

1.	 INTRODUCTION 7	

2.	 FLEXIBLE WORKING AGREEMENTS 11	

2.2	 Flexible working agreements and why are they used 12	

2.3	 Disadvantages of flexible working agreements 17	

2.3.1	 Negative effects for the employer 18	

2.3.2	 Dark outcomes for the employee 21	

3.	 RESEARCH METHOD 30	

3.1	 Method 30	

3.2 	 Sample 31	

3.3 	 Interviews and interview design 32	

3.4 	 Analysis of the data 33	

4.	 EMPIRICAL FINDINGS 34	

4.1	 FWAs and career advancement 34	

4.2	 How FWAs effect working hours 35	

4.3	 FWAs and productivity 37	

4.4	 FWAs and workplace isolation 41	

4.5	 FWAs and knowledge transfer 43	

4.6	 FWAs and work life balance 44	

5.	 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 48	

5.1 Practical implication 50	

5.2 Limitations and suggested future research 52	

LIST OF REFERENCES 54	

 

APPENDICES APPENDIX 1. Structured interview questions              68 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  



3 

 

TABLE OF FIGURES AND TABLES      Page 

 

Figure 1. Law of diminishing returns 29 

  

Table 1. Flexible working agreement types 11 

Table 2. Interview sample 31



 

 



5 

 

__________________________________________________ 
UNIVERSITY OF VAASA 
School of Management 
Author:     Henri Juhana Aleksanteri Nyberg 
Topic of the thesis:  Employee perceptions of flexible working agree-

ments: An investigation of the dark sides of tele-
working 

Degree:  Master of Science in Economics and Business 
Administration 

Master’s Programme:  International Business 
Supervisor:    Jennie Sumelius 
Year of entering the University: 2016  
Year of completing the thesis: 2019      
Number of pages:    68 
___________________________________________________________________ 
 
ABSTRACT: 
 
An increasing amount of work these days can be done digitally. Furthermore, employees are increasingly 
working as part of virtual teams where their coworkers can be in a different city or even in a different 
country. These things are among the many drivers that have made an increasing number of workers and 
companies to start using flexible working agreements to give employees some autonomy to choose when 
and where they work. 
  
There has been much research about the positive effects of flexible work both for the employee and the 
organization. However, one can already see that extensive digital communication and 24/7 connection to 
social media have had some negative effects on people’s lives. It is likely that these negative effects can 
manifest themselves in peoples’ working life as employees are moving away from the workplace to more 
autonomous and increasingly digital workspaces. The aim of this thesis is to explore the negative out-
comes, sometimes referred to as ‘the dark outcomes’, of flexible work. The thesis first explores the pros 
and cons of flexible work for the employee and organization as identified in previous literature. The em-
pirical part of the research focuses on employee perceptions of flexible work, and on shedding light on 
employees’ experiences of potential negative effects of teleworking. 
 
This is a qualitative study. The empirical data was collected by interviewing ten employees who had vari-
ous types of FWA contracts with an option or requirement for telework. The interviews were structured, 
with everyone being asked the same questions. The sample consists of people working in China and Fin-
land, and the respondents/interviewees are engaged in white collar work. The results were analyzed 
against the theory regarding FWAs.  
 
All of the individuals interviewed for this study felt rather positive about their FWAs and would not want 
to decrease the amount of flexibility their organization allows for them. However, some negative conse-
quences were discovered, such as difficulties of switching off from work as one was technically “on call” 
even outside of traditional office hours. Employees also felt that it was sometimes easier to explain or 
discuss topics when they were face to face with their colleagues in the office, rather than working digi-
tally from their home or some other non- traditional working space. Finally, many employees in this study 
had experienced technical difficulties when trying to connect to their employer networks remotely and 
had lost working hours or even days due to the fact of the internet or digital tools not working correctly 
when they were teleworking.  
 
 
______________________________________________________________________ 
KEY WORDS:  Flexible working agreement, dark outcomes, telework, employee per-
ception



 



7 

 

1. INTRODUCTION 

 

A growing number of employees have grown up during the internet age and are now 

entering the workforce as so called “digital natives” who are used to communicating 

and working with the help of information technology (Colbert & Yee & Geroge, 2016). 

Furthermore, the same study notes that in 2015, 64% of the American adults were con-

stantly connected to the internet with their smartphones. Technologies such as faster 

internet connections, video calls and better data sharing have made it possible to transfer 

an increasing amount of work outside the office, with 20% of workers globally doing 

some or all their work at home (Greenfield, 2017). Flexible working is a very relevant 

topic, especially in the Nordic countries that have been in the forefront of implementing 

flexibility in working schedules. According to an OECD study Finland, Denmark, Swe-

den and Norway were among the top five EU countries in the amount of flexible work 

offered to employees by their employers, with around 60% of the workforce having 

some or total control of their daily working hours (OECD, 2016).  

 

There has been a lot of research regarding the positive effect of flexible working agree-

ments (FWAs). Studies have found that workers feel more satisfied when they feel that 

they have more control over their working hours and that the company cares for their 

wellbeing (McNall & Masuda & Nicklin, 2010). In many cases FWAs have also been 

linked to a decrease in turnover (Caillier, 2016; Thomson, 2008; Stavrou & Kilaniotis, 

2010). However, most complex issues are multifaceted. Research on the topic of FWAs 

has already identified several dark outcomes of FWA usage which range from profes-

sional isolation to stifled career advancement (Bloom at al. 2015; Davis & Cates, 2013). 

However, one should avoid making generalizable claims just based on one study and 

context. There are several things which affect both the employee and the employer 

when implementing FWAs. This paper aims to further research on these dark outcomes 

by looking at the employee perceptions towards telework and its possible hazards.   

 

A study examining the variance between employer and employee centered FWAs across 

21 EU countries found that the Nordic countries use both types extensively (Chung & 



8 

 

Tijdens, 2012) Therefore, it is important to recognize if there are any negative outcomes 

that stem from this shift towards more flexible work in the Nordic countries.  

 

Colbert, Yee & George (2016) have argued that more research needs to be done on how 

digitally mediated communication influences the empathy, communication and relation-

ship quality in the modern workplace where an increasing amount of communication is 

being done digitally. FWAs are among the drivers of this change where people have a 

decreasing amount of actual face time. Sias (2005) has identified that workers who have 

weak ties to their peer network at the workplace, are at an information disadvantage, 

which in turn has a negative effect on knowledge sharing. This makes it important to 

consider how FWAs affect the workplace dynamics and friend networks within the 

workplace. Tech giant companies such as IBM and Yahoo have begun rolling back their 

liberal FWA policies as they have observed that FWAs, which limit fact to face interac-

tion have a negative effect on the collaboration and innovation (Spector, 2017). Digital 

communication tools have made it possible to connect with almost anyone at any time 

around the world. Despite these advancements in digital communication there are cases 

where workers feel more lonely and isolated from their peers in the workplace. For ex-

ample, in the US in 1985, 50% workers reported that they had a friend in their work-

place, and in 2004 the number had fallen to 30% (Grant, 2015). However, digitalization 

also brings new possibilities for forming social ties over long distances, and it is possi-

ble that workers have a greater number of virtual friends than ever before. It seems that 

even though we are more connected than ever at work we are also at a higher risk of 

feeling isolated from our immediate surroundings. 

 

Organizations need to be able to balance the benefits FWAs can give to the individual 

with the possible dark outcomes that they might have on the collective work force and 

the individual employee. Research has identified that strong ties between employees 

have a positive effect on job satisfaction, and organizational commitment (Lee et al. 

2017). A meta-analysis of the telework literature by Gajendran & Harrison (2007) ar-

gued that telecommuting has no negative effect on workplace relationships unless the 

telecommuting is extensive and the worker spends more than 2,5 days a week outside of 

the workplace. In the case of high intensity teleworking where the worker spent more 



9 

 

than half of their day outside of the workplace deterioration of the peer to peer relation-

ship of workers was observed. Furthermore, the same study stated that the positive ef-

fects of teleworking, including perceived autonomy and the feeling of having control 

over one’s work life balance did not increase when moving from low intensity telework 

to high intensity telework. 

 

FWAs have been studies extensively as tools to improve work life balance. The results 

of these studies are mixed as workers do feel that FWA’s help them balance their work 

and personal life (McNall & Masuda & Nicklin, 2010; Leigh, 2000) but simultaneously 

feel that FWA’s bring the work home and blurring the line between work and free time 

(Olson-Buchanan & Boswell, 2006; Peetz & Allan, 2005, Noonan & Glass, 2012). A 

study comparing the amount of control men and women of different social classes have 

over their work and home found that both men and women middle level employees, as 

well as low level male employees, were at greater risk for depression when they had a 

low control over their work (Griffin et al. 2002). 

 

This paper will examine how employees in various companies perceive FWAs, focusing 

on potential negative effects that FWA usage causes for themselves or the working en-

vironment. 

 

The main research question for this paper is formulated as follows: 

 

(1) What are potential dark outcomes of FWA usage for a) the organization and 

b) the employee?   

 

There are several types of employment forms that fall under the term “flexible working 

agreement”. The broad definition by Catalyst (1997) defines an FWA as a negotiated 

contract between the employee and employer over the time/and or place of work. Typi-

cal FWA types include telework, part-time employment, compressed work week and 

flexi-time (Timms et al. 2015). The definitions of these FWA types are included in table 

2 (see page 11).  

 



10 

 

A World Economic Forum report (2016) predict that in the next five years 7.1 million 

jobs will be lost world wide mostly in the white-collar industries due to redundancy, 

automation or disintermediation. Therefore, it is important to study people affected by 

this change, and technology that both allows more FWA usage, and is driving this 

change.  This research will focus on the possible dark effects of flexible work that is 

done outside of the traditional working space/time ie. office or co-working space. In this 

type of flexible work, the employees have a certain degree of freedom to choose when 

and where they work, and they have the chance to work fully remotely at least part of 

the week. Most of this type of flexible work falls under teleworking which will be the 

focus of the empirical part of this research. 

 

Finally, this research has been partly done in Finland where the word FWA is often 

translated as “etätyösopimus”, or which directly translates as “distance work agree-

ment”. This word has the implication that the work is being done somewhere outside of 

the traditional working space. However, it is equally important that FWA and especially 

teleworking break the notion of “working time”. FWAs not only concerns where you 

work but also when you work. Many of the dark outcomes resulting from FWA usage 

are related to the fact that people are not able to separate work from their free time 

(Ojala & Pyörälä, 2013; Smith & Karavattuveetil, 2004). On the flip side the companies 

can benefit from having their workers on call outside the traditional office hours. 

 

Next the paper will go on to discuss previous research on flexible working agreements. 

The first part of the theory looks at why flexible working agreements are used from the 

employer/employee point of view. The later part of the theory will examine the litera-

ture on the negative effects of FWAs. Following that the paper presents the methods and 

findings of this study and the paper continues by comparing the findings of the qualita-

tive interviews to the exiting theory. Finally, the paper lists some of the limitations of 

the study and give suggestions to future research on this topic.    

 

 

 

 



11 

 

2. FLEXIBLE WORKING AGREEMENTS 

 

This part of the thesis explores previous/existing research on why flexible working 

agreements are used and what dark outcomes of flexible work have been identified. As 

previously mentioned there are several flexible working agreement types. Furthermore, 

some FWAs are not part of just a single category but a hybrid between two are several 

FWA types. The following FWA definitions are from the research of Timms et al. 

(2015). 

 

Flexitime Flexitime refers to an arrangement 

where the employee can choose the start 

and finish time of their work. For exam-

ple, a person who likes to work in the 

mornings could come to the office very 

early and be able to leave earlier. 

Compressed work week Compressed work week refers to an ar-

rangement where the employee chooses 

to work their allocated working hours in 

four or less days leaving them more free 

days in a week than the traditional Sat-

urday and Sunday. 

Telecommuting/telework/teleworking This is an agreement where the employ-

ee does some or all their work in a dif-

ferent place than their office. Some-

times, this work can also be done out-

side of the traditional office hours. In 

this kind of agreement there is a lot of 

variability between agreements and it 

hard to define a typical telecommuting 

agreement. Telecommuting most com-

monly refers to work that one does from 

home by using their computer, tele-



12 

 

phone and other electronic tools.  

Part-time work Part-time work refers to the employee 

having less working hours than a full-

time employee. The definition of part-

time work varies but according to Inter-

national Labour Organization (ILO) it is 

when an individual works less than 35-

30h per week (Messenger, 2018) 

Table 1 – Flexible working agreement types 

 

2.2  Flexible working agreements and why are they used 

 

Organizations are offering FWAs over for several reasons, some of which the reasons 

are employer driven and others are employee driven. This part of the paper begins by 

examining the former, employer driven reasons for FWA usage, these reasons include 

decreased turnover, increased productivity, decreased costs on office space and in-

creased unpaid overtime work.  

 

2.2.1. Employer driven reasons for FWAs 

 

The history of the modern FWA began in the 1970 in the US as a way for companies to 

limit the travel of their employees between work and the office, which would cut down 

the car emissions that were then plaguing many US cities. As electronic communication 

tools improved, companies could in the 1990s start saving money on the office costs by 

renting smaller spaces and saving on utility costs, as the workforce present at the work-

place would be decreased by FWAs. In the 21st century flexible work has increasingly 

become a job perk that can be offered to entice or retain employees in the so called “war 

for talent” that many companies must engage in. (Greenfield, 2017) 

 

As the use of FWA become more prevalent in the western world, studies began to 

emerge stating that FWAs could decrease turnover (Thomson, 2008 ; McNall, Masuda 

& Nicklin, 2010 ; Caillier, 2016). There are two types of turnover, voluntary- and invol-



13 

 

untary turnover. In voluntary turnover, the employee leaves because he/she choses to do 

so for financial, carrier, personal or any other reason. Involuntary turnover is indicated 

by the employer for performance, financial or other reasons (Stavrou & Kilaniotis, 

2010). Companies with skilled employees are always trying to decrease voluntary turn-

over since employee turnover is a significant cost for a company. Stavrou (2005) esti-

mates that a loss of an employee costs 150% of his/her annual salary for a company. 

Employee turnover is calculated by examining the rate of attrition a company has during 

a year. The link between FWA usage and turnover is a complicated one. Research 

seems to indicate that just offering workers the option to use FWAs does not decrease 

turnover (McNall, Masuda & Nicklin, 2010 ; Timms et al, 2015). However, turnover is 

reduced if the FWA program is delivered in a manner that makes the employee feel that 

the employer cares for the satisfaction and well-being of the employee (Caillier, 2016).  

 

Companies are always searching for ways to get more out of their employees as increas-

ing productivity can be the difference between making a profit or suffering a loss. Flex-

ible working agreements have been linked to increased productivity by several studies 

(Ruth & Chaudhry, 2008 ; Bloom et al., 2015 ; Pyöriä, 2011). However, a meta-analysis 

on the FWA performance literature reveals that many of the studies rely on self-reported 

performance which can be argued to be a bad proxy for actual performance (Shin, 

Sheng & Higa, 2000). Employees tend to overestimate their own performance by up to 

40% compared to their actual performance (Cascio, 1998). Fortunately, recent increases 

in FWA usage have made it easier to acquire large datasets on worker performance. 

These datasets and the studies made from them provide a more scientific view on FWA 

use in relation to performance. In a 10 month, longitudinal study by Bloom et al. (2015), 

Chinese call centre workers were divided into two groups with one group working in the 

office and the other working from home. The comparison of productivity between group 

showed that the employees working from home were 13% more productive than their 

peers at the office. Furthermore, the employees who worked from home reported on av-

erage higher satisfaction to their job than the office bound workers. A similar random-

ized study conducted in the US echo’s these findings. Phyllis Moan & Erin L. Kelly di-

vided 867 information technology workers from an US fortune 500 company into two 

groups. The experiment group was given training and freedom to arrange their work in a 



14 

 

manner that was more suitable for them personally, and they could heavily relay on 

flexible working agreements such as teleworking and electric communication. The 

managers of this experiment group were trained to support their subordinates in their 

family/personal life and professional development. The control group was using the pre-

existing policies of the company. The studies (Moen et al. 2016; Kelly et al. 2014) pro-

duced from this dataset which was gathered for one year observing these two groups, 

found that the experiment group of employees were more productive than the control 

group because flexible employees had less instances of burnout, stress and psychologi-

cal distress, which lead to lower rates of absenteeism and presentism according to the 

study. Furthermore, the employees in the experiment group reported being more satis-

fied with their work than the workers in the control group. The finding from these two 

experiments seem to indicate that offering workers more flexibility can increase produc-

tivity (American Sociological Association, 2016).  

 

As flexible work has become more common so have open and multipurpose offices 

without assigned working stations (Jezard, 2017). Flexible work has been shown to in-

crease worker satisfaction and productivity of workers who work in these kinds of envi-

ronments (van der Voodt, 2004). This is mainly due to open offices can being noisy and 

distracting places, with a lack of privacy needed for some tasks (Kim & Dear, 2013) and 

employees who have the ability to work outside the office can find work spaces with 

privacy on low noise levels. Furthermore, permeant offices and their upkeep is a signifi-

cant cost for employers and flexible working agreements can be used mitigate these 

costs. For example, some companies are renting smaller office spaces and expecting that 

a part of their workforce is always teleworking which results in lower office costs 

(Petch, 2017). 

 

Finally, there is a certain time dimension that FWAs touch. The increased use of FWA’s 

such as teleworking have not only changed where we work but also when we work. 

Many employees can free up certain parts of the day for their personal time and finish 

their work when it is convenient for them. This is often a selling point which companies 

use when recommending flexible working agreements to their employees. However, 

there is also a benefit for the employer.  Flexible working agreements can be a way to 



15 

 

extend the working time of the employees which would benefit the organization, espe-

cially as this can often be done without having to pay for overtime work. A study exam-

ining the difference between employer and employee initiated flexible work in Germany 

found that the employer has more leverage in deciding the job role and the amount of 

unpaid overtime work an employee with a FWA does (Zapf & Weber, 2017)   

 

2.2.2. Employee driven reasons for FWAs 

 

FWA have been observed to have a positive effect on worker satisfaction. However, 

unlike productivity, satisfaction cannot be quantifiable measured in a reliable way. It the 

FWA employee satisfaction literature one must rely on the feelings and perceptions of 

employees to evaluate the success of a FWA policy. Furthermore, it seems like the type 

of FWA and how/why it is implemented plays a role in the perception of satisfaction 

employees feel. Especially policies which are designed and implemented in a way 

which make the worker perceive that they are valuable and that the employer cares for 

the employee’s wellbeing. For this “being cared for” effect to occur, both the formal and 

informal policies and signalling inside the company need to be in line with the intent of 

the FWA policy (Timms et al, 2015). Some of the current FWA research tends to be 

against sweeping top down initiated FWA policies which treats every employee as the 

same (Stavrou & Kilaniotis, 2010). Stavrou & Kilaniotis found that the same FWA pol-

icies had an opposite effect on different GLOBE cultural dimensions. More work flexi-

bility increased turnover in the Anglo cluster but decreased turnover in the Nordic clus-

ter. 

 

Another major reason why employees want more flexibility in their work is the conflict 

that work has with one’s family and free time. For example, many organizations offer 

FWAs to improve the work-life balance of their employees (Galinsky, Bond & Sakai, 

2008; OECD, 2016). Furthermore, Shockley and Allen (2007) have identified that FWA 

reduce the stress which employees sometimes experience when they try to balance their 

work and their family life. This is especially true when examining the conflict that exist 

between work and one’s children. A FWA helps one to better schedule their work 

around the requirements of childcare (Sullivan and Lewis, 2001). However, even people 



16 

 

without children benefit from FWAs in the form of increased free time and more time to 

run errands and the increased possibility attend non-work-related events (Sharpe & 

Hermsen & Billings, 2002). However, a meta-analysis by Allen et al. (2013) work–

family conflict and flexible work literature argues that the effect of flexible working 

agreements on the work family interference are less than assumed by prior research and 

that workplace and supervisor work-family support has twice the effect as FWAs do in 

reducing work family conflict. What the finding of Allen et al. (2013) seem to indicate 

is that just like in the case of employee satisfaction, the intent and implementation of the 

FWA program matters in how workers see experience it. This interpretation is support-

ed by Mcnall, Masuda & Nicklin (2010) who argue that the availability of FWA prac-

tices signal to the worker that the organization cares about to employee which in turn 

positively influences the work life balance of the employees.  

 

Lastly as touched upon in the previous paragraph flexible work can be a benefit for par-

ents to cope with the demands of balancing work childcare. A US study found that or-

ganisations were more willing to offer flexitime and flexplace contracts because of 

mother- and fatherhood than other reasons (Munsch, 2016). The same study observed a 

so called “fatherhood bonus” which made men appear more “respectable, likeable, and 

committed” when they were using flexible working agreements to balance work and 

childcare. The same bonus did not appear to impact mother using flexible working 

agreements possible because there are still different expectations to men and women 

regarding childcare.  

 

As ICT technology has become increasingly prevalent the old limitations that tied one 

to their working place have in many cases disappeared. Furthermore, the new generation 

of employees that have grown up during the age of constant internet access and mass 

internet communication have very different views and needs than their parents. An 

Ernst & Young study (2015) found that 33% of millennials found balancing their work 

and life increasingly difficult and many of them would like more flexibility in their 

work hours. This result is echoed by various studies predicting the future of work which 

indicate that the line between work and free time will become increasingly blurred 



17 

 

(Pedersen & Lewis, 2012). As this transformation of work continues to happen new pol-

icies to regulate when and where people work must be adapted by companies.  

 

2.3 Disadvantages of flexible working agreements 

 

Looking at the advantages of flexible working agreements one could argue that compa-

nies should start implement more flexibility to capture all the benefits ranging from im-

proved productivity to more satisfied workers. However, workplaces and networks be-

tween people are complex systems with several interconnected variables. Changing the 

way and place people work can have many unintended negative consciences for both 

the employer and the employee. Philosopher Nichols Nassim Taleb (2018) has argued 

that it is impossible to predict how a complex system behaves when you add to it. A 

FWA policy that works in one organization can fail in a different organization. This part 

of the thesis explores the so called “dark outcomes” of flexible work that have been ob-

served from both the employer and the employee point of view. The majority of re-

search on FWA’s tends to focus on the positive effects of FWAs but it is important to be 

aware of the possible negative consciences implementing FWA can have.   

 

As with some positive effects of FWAs such as improved employee satisfaction, some 

negative effects fall into the realm of perception which can be hard to measure accurate-

ly. An interesting peace of research done by Maruyama & Tietze (2012) compared the 

expectations and the actual outcomes of 394 teleworkers and found that employees 

tended to overestimate the negative outcomes and underestimate the positive outcomes. 

However, the employee’s role in the organization played a part in how they felt about, 

in this case, telework. For example, sales and marketing employees who switched to 

teleworking were reporting loss of visibility in the workplace and slower career devel-

opment.  

 

Similarly, to the part about positive FWA affects, we begin by first analysing the theory 

for any negative effects that can affect an employer who is providing FWAs to their 

workforce. The explored dark outcomes are decreased productivity and deceased 

knowledge transfer. After which the same was done from the employee point of view by 



18 

 

exploring possible dark outcomes in stifled career growth, workplace isolation and loss 

of work/life balance that can result from FWA usage. 

 

2.3.1 Negative effects for the employer 

 

Decreased productivity 

 

One might be surprised to find that FWAs can have both a positive and I negative effect 

on productivity. If this is indeed the case as some research seems to indicate it would 

strengthen the hypothesis of Timms et al. (2015) which states that it is not to policy it-

self that solely determines to success of the initiative but also how you implement it and 

what kind of signaling the organization gives to its employees. Furthermore, the FWA 

policy can influence the productivity of the employees who themselves are not using 

FWAs but are working with people who do. A study examining how formal and infor-

mal flexible working practices effect productivity found that FWA policies that are only 

ceremonially adopted, and which are not available for all employees had a negative ef-

fect on the productivity of employees who were left out of the FWA program. (Yang & 

Zhang, 2011). This effect was mitigated when FWA practices were more informal and 

available for all employees. Another study compared the physical resources one had at 

the office and at home and found that workers who forced to work from home without 

the needed resources were less productive than at the office (Fan Ng, 2010). Companies 

can control in what kind of environment their on-site workers work in, but once their 

employees can or have to choose where they work outside of the office the possibilities 

of working environments are limitless. Studies have shown that complex tasks which 

require a lot of concentration are best done in a silent and peaceful environment (Mark, 

2008 ; H. Jahncke et al. 2013). The same is true for work that requires privacy such as 

talking on the phone. These environmental factors are not available for every employee 

at home or outside of the office. Therefore, it is hard to argue that FWAs increase the 

productivity of every employee type in every situation.  

 

Another issue that FWA employees face regarding productivity is that in order for re-

mote employees to access secure company networks, an employee might need an en-



19 

 

crypted company laptop/phone (Stevens, 2008). According to Stevens cybersecurity is 

an increasingly important issue for corporations and having employees handling confi-

dential data with their home computes is a liability. However, providing one’s employ-

ees with the sufficient ICT tools to protect their data is an expensive option which is not 

financially feasible for most organizations. In 2006 in the US the Veteran Affairs De-

partment of government banned telework after personal information on 26,5 million ac-

tive and retired military personnel were stolen from a remote employee’s home office 

(Riccucci & Naff, 2007). This is not a single case example for workers losing something 

valuable. Apple has lost two prototype iPhone when worker have been working on them 

in public areas (Sandoval & Mccullagh, 2011) and several prominent MNC such as 

Home depot, Pfizer and AOL have had to pay damages to workers and/or customers 

whose information were leaked due to carelessness with company laptops, USBs and 

cell phones (Vance, 2008). From these examples one can see that remote work intro-

duces some new challenges that have the possibility to create in some cases massive 

harm to the organization. Furthermore, the impact of these remote communication tools 

that let workers access their work systems from home did not have any effect on the 

perceived productivity of flexible employees when compared to the employees who 

work in the office (Staples, 2001). As a caveat to the finding by Staples, one must keep 

in mind that perceived productivity is not the same as actual productivity and more em-

pirical research needs to be done how the increasing use of IT to communicate and work 

effect productivity. 

 

Along the same lines there seem to be cases where too much flexibility with working 

time/place can have a negative effect on the efficiency of a company. A German study 

examining the efficiency of flexible work in private German firms between 1999-2003 

found that while moderate flexibility increased firm level efficiency, highly flexible 

working hours had a negative effect on the efficiency of firms (Wolf & Beblo, 2004). 

This would be in line with the finding of Gajendran & Harrison (2007) who argue that 

the negative effect of telework manifest as the days spent outside the workplace in-

crease over half of the workweek. However, Wolf & Beblo (2004) are careful to draw 

causality from their results and remind readers that the data may be skewed, since 

struggling firm have a tendency to increase flexible work as a cost saving device.  



20 

 

 

Some literature on FWA effect on productivity has found that task performance can suf-

fer from inconsistency in cases where two part-time time workers are sharing a task 

(Stennett, 1993). However, one can argue that when two people or a group are sharing a 

task there always exists a possibility of “free riding” regardless of where the work is 

being done. Interestingly, a Swiss study on telecommuter productivity found that tele-

work did not increase free riding, instead free riding was strongly tied to the employee’s 

perception of their teammates productivity (Dutcher & Sarel, 2012). In other words, 

employees will only work as hard as they see their peers working. Dutcher & Sarel 

(2012) argue that managers need to be selective who they allow to telework, and they 

need to ensure that the team members of teleworkers perceive that the teleworker is 

working as hard as the office employee to ensure that productivity remains the same af-

ter teleworking is introduced as a job option. 

 

Decreased knowledge transfer  

 

For years tech giant companies in the US have been in the forefront of implementing 

flexible working agreements but in recent years a growing trend among the Silicon Val-

ley giants such as Google and Yahoo is to limit how much work their employees can do 

outside of the office. A senior executive at Google, Dr. Vint Cerf has emphasized the 

that it is important for co-workers to have frequent opportunities to have casual interac-

tion with one another (Crabtree, 2014). Dr. Cerf argues that the benefits of remote work 

taper off at a certain point similarly to what research by Gajendran & Harrison (2007) 

suggests. Cerf also points out that many creative ideas come up while workers are in-

formally engaging with one another. According to him companies must find a balance 

between the advantages online communication and telework bring and the need for face 

to face interaction that boosts cohesion at the workplace. The research data by “State of 

the American Workplace report” backs up this claim, 28% employees who never re-

motely work are engaged with their work compared to the 35% of employees who 

spend up to 20% of their time outside of the workplace. However, the engagement level 

of employees who work remotely drops below their office bound peers as the time spent 

outside of the workplace increases (Crabtree, 2014). Google along with its tech compa-



21 

 

ny peers works in the creative industry which brings a unique set of challenges when 

examining the effect flexible work has on their performance. There are some interesting 

research findings on the topic of virtual vs face to face communication in relation to 

creative performance. Wu et al. (2016) found that for workers who were emotionally 

closer to one another were more likely to use virtual tools to creatively work together 

but more emotionally distant peers needed face to face contact to effectively work to-

gether. This makes intuitive sense as almost everyone under the age of 60 is sharing 

their life with their friends using social media and we are used to communicating with 

friends by electronic means on a 24/7 basis. Wu et al. (2016) findings seem to indicate 

that this same phenomenon is present at the workplace and that we are more likely to 

collaborate and share knowledge the closer we emotionally. Furthermore, higher de-

grees of media richness such as face to face interaction are preferable when sharing 

complex and new knowledge (Klitmoller & Lauring, 2013). However, the same study 

found that for mundane and repetitive tasks lower degrees of media rich communication 

performed as well as their rich counterpart in delivering the required information. This 

all would indicate that the complexity of the task performed by the flexible worker has 

an impact on how well it can be done remotely. For creative and complex work which 

requires knowledge sharing a certain degree of face to face interaction is required to 

achieve the best result.   

 

2.3.2 Dark outcomes for the employee 

 

This section of the paper examines the possible dark outcome that that the employee can 

suffer from using FWAs. The dark outcomes are stifled carrier growth, workplace isola-

tion and loss of work/life balance. These variables were chosen as they were appearing 

commonly in the literature describing the possible negative effects of FWAs.  

 

Career implications of FWA’s 

 

Similarly, to many other aspects of FWAs career advancement remains a contentious 

issue among researchers. In an extensive study examine the promotions of 249 call cen-

tre workers it was observed that while workers working from home were 9% more pro-



22 

 

ductive they had a lower chance of being promoted than their peer at the office (Bloom 

et al. 2015). The researcher’s suspected that there is a so called “out of sight, out of 

mind.” bias against employees who spend extensive time out of the workplace. Interest-

ingly, when asked about why employees chose not to work from home the most com-

mon answers were loneliness of telework and the lack of opportunity to socialize with 

their colleagues during and after work. Studies indicate that workplace relationships in-

fluence career advancement (Colbert, Bono, and Purvanova, 2016), Cultivating these 

relationships from outside the workplace might be difficult to some employees using 

FWAs which might result in the loss of work advancement opportunities. 

 

Conversely, there is also research that disputes the claim that FWAs have a negative 

effect on career advancement. McCloskey & Igbaria (2003) examined 225 professional 

employees and managers in the US and found that telecommuting had no effect on the 

career advancement of these employees. A noteworthy fact about this study is that only 

6% of the sample worked more 2 days a week outside of the office. Gajendran & Harri-

son (2007) have argued that the negative effects of FWA start to manifest when the time 

outside the office becomes more than half of the time per week. Both of these studies 

argue that telework can be done at a certain level without harming the career advance-

ment prospects of an employee.   

 

Studies looking at the perception of career advancement in regard to FWA usage have 

found that managers as well as employees are often reluctant towards telework because 

they believe it has a negative impact on career advancement (McCloskey & Igbaria, 

2003; Bridgeford, 2007). Bridgeford (2007) looked at the perceptions senior executives 

have towards telework and 61% of them believed that teleworkers are less likely to ad-

vance in their career than traditional workers. The same study noted that three fourths of 

the same executives believed that teleworkers are equally or more productive than their 

none teleworking counterparts. Again, it seems that the social aspect of being seen and 

interacting with the work community is possibly a requirement in career advancement.  

 

In many organisations office politics play a significant role in career advancement.  

Employees who spend significant time out of the office have an increased chance to 



23 

 

miss opportunities to advance in their careers (IOMA, 2005). Furthermore, many man-

agers and organizations are not trained, or they do not have the capability to monitor the 

employees outside the office. This can possible result in the often-false assumption of 

managers that the employees who is not in the office is somehow “slacking off” which 

will have a negative effect on how that employee is seen by the managers, hampering 

his or her career advancement (IOMA, 2005).  

 

Motherhood can be a hurdle for carrier advancement and FWA practises are often be-

lieved to help parents to balance their work and childcare responsibilities. However, this 

seems not always be the case and there is research arguing that mothers using FWAs 

can suffer some harm to their carrier development. A US study examining the percep-

tion of career harm of 441 mothers who use FWAs have found that one fifth of the 

mothers perceived their career was harmed by FWA usage (Crowley & Kolenikov, 

2014). The study found that women who work in jobs where most of their co-workers 

are men, are more likely to feel that motherhood related FWAs had a negative impact on 

their career. Interestingly, there was a significant drop in career harm perception as the 

percentage of women workers at the job went over 75%. One of the interesting discus-

sion points of the study was while FWA do provide mothers a way to balance their work 

and family life, mother using FWAs felt that the job was equally demanding and stress-

ful regardless of doing it in or outside of the workplace. The job requirements remained 

the same so workers naturally they are entitled to the same career advancement oppor-

tunities as fixed time workers. Furthermore, when mothers were using time-off from 

work they perceived much lower rates of career harm than mother who were using 

FWAs. It is possible that from the employees point of view the perceived “toughness” 

of work has an impact on how much money, promotions and good job evaluations they 

deserve.  

 

FWA usage among fathers has also been linked to perceptions of carrier harm (Brandth 

& Kvande, 2001). The study done in Norway found that fathers were apprehensive in 

using their voluntary flexible working options because of the fear of it having a negative 

impact on their carrier. If flexible work is individual option, the employer taking these 

options has an increased risk of becoming marginalized and seen as someone who does 



24 

 

not “put in the same time” as the rest of the workers (Epstein et al. 1999). From a deeper 

psychological point of view, people are highly susceptible to social mirroring and it can 

be very difficult for workers be the only one who is using their parental leave when oth-

ers are not.  

 

FWAs can also be seen as a form of signalling for organizational commitment which 

has an impact on career success. Managers perceive FWAs user differently depending 

on the policy of the corporation. If the corporation implements FWAs to increase 

productivity FWA usage has no negative career implications but if the company imple-

ments FWAs for greater work family balance they do negatively affect how managers 

see their users, which has a negative impact of worker career success (Leslie et al. 

2012). This is an important thing to note when examining FWA usage in corporations. 

The same FWA policies can be seen by managers either as forms of low or high work 

commitment depending on the policy and culture of the corporation (Leslie et al. 2012). 

Productivity is something which effect the bottom line of the corporation and it is easily 

quantifiable. Work life balance is more subjectivity and the benefits of that can be hard 

to directly observe on the financial report of the corporation. However, the authors of 

this study note that this is not universally the case and there is variance across studied 

corporations. FWA usage is only one of the things that explains how a manager per-

ceives their employee and one needs to be careful not to make too large conclusion on 

weather FWA usage alone will harm someone career growth.  

 

Workplace isolation 

 

From a psychological point of view isolation is one of the worst things one can do to a 

person. Social isolation has been shown to increase stress hormone levels, compromise 

one’s quality of sleep, weaken the immune system and facilitate cognitive decline 

(McAndrew, 2016).  These are extreme examples but for many, the social ties they have 

at work constitute a major share of the time spent with other people. As flexible work-

ing agreements become more common this time spent with one’s peers decrease which 

can be a negative development for some workers. In a UK study 60% of teleworkers 

named social isolation as the biggest problem with telework (Huws, 1984). Further-



25 

 

more, workplace isolation is not only bad for the individual but for the whole organiza-

tion. A study found that loneliness at work resulted in weaker task, team role and rela-

tional performance (Ozcelik & Barsade, 2011).  

 

FWAs, especially virtual work, have been linked to workplace isolation. (Marshall et al. 

2007; Mulki & Jaramillo, 2011). A study examining the effects of team virtuality and 

task virtuality found that task virtuality was a better predictor of workplace social isola-

tion than team virtuality is (Orhan et al. 2016). The same study found that face-to-face 

interaction with people is not by itself an explaining factor in feeling of social isolation. 

Instead, it was the face to face interaction with people who have an impact on one’s per-

formance and who give input that is required to perform any given task which influ-

enced the social, physical, and informational isolation at work (Orhan et al. 2016). Fur-

thermore, the social stress remote employees suffer from being excluded from the social 

interactions and banter of the office leads to mental ill health in some FWA users (Mann 

& Holdsworth, 2003). Most people need face to face interaction in order to maintain 

good mental health which would speak against extensive telework.  

 

A study examining the workplace isolation of 227 virtually working pharmaceutical 

sales representatives found that self-efficacy was a significant mitigating factor in the 

feeling of workplace isolation (Munir et al. 2016). The study argues that self-efficacious 

employees are better able to cope with the stress of having less organizational and su-

pervisor support than a traditional office employee who has face to face support from 

their peers and managers. The findings of this study indicate that virtual work does not 

fit every personality type and people who require more support in their work will feel a 

high degree of workplace isolation when pushed to work virtually. Similarly, Cartwright 

& Cooper (2009) point out that extroverted people who like human contact will likely 

become bored by telework and the lack of human contact. Chatting in the office at work 

is an important source of social contact for many people. Many people spend more time 

at work with their colleagues than they do with their family and friends. Losing this 

time or changing it to electronic communication can be a negative change to some peo-

ple. The same phenomenon was observed in telework study conducted in China. Some 

employees in the telework research group had to discontinue the experiment and return 



26 

 

to the workplace because they felt bored and missed social contact with their colleagues 

(Bloom et al. 2015). 

 

Managers of teleworkers and the teleworkers themselves are often undertrained by the 

organizations for telework which may cause misunderstandings and miscommunication. 

(Cooper & Kurland, 2002). The duration and frequency of telework significantly in-

creases the feeling of workplace isolation (Cooper & Kurland, 2002). Moreover, a study 

about the teleworker perceptions found that some teleworkers believe that they get less 

feedback from their supervisors because they are not present at the office (McNaughton 

et al. 2013). The study cited cases where teleworkers would work days without getting 

any emails or calls from their employer which had a negative effect on the employee. 

Furthermore, according to the study it was harder for teleworks to attend the informal 

work gathering such as having beer after work with colleagues, which made them feel 

isolated. 

 

Loss of work life balance 

 

FWA’s are often implemented with the idea that they will increase the work life balance 

of the employees that use them. However, FWAs have been shown to blur the line be-

tween work and free time and it is not uncommon that the flexible worker ends up 

working more than their traditional counterpart (Ojala & Pyörälä, 2013). Studies have 

shown that when working at home it is hard to decouple work from one’s own time 

(Smith & Karavattuveetil, 2004). The same study states that for many employees it is 

important to separate work and home activities. The link also works in the other direc-

tion as flexible workers are more likely to bring their home problems to work (Takiya & 

Archbold & Berge, 2005). The mindset transformation one has when moving between 

work and home does not occur in the same manner when doing flexible work. The 

commute between one’s home and office can actually serve as an important function 

which primes a person to a certain mindset (Lyons & Chatterjee, 2008).  

 

Flexible work has also been linked to difficulties leave work. Employees working re-

motely have a danger of “being on call” on a constant basis. Workers may end up work-



27 

 

ing increasingly outside of the traditional office hours which can have a damaging effect 

on one’s social and family life (Hope, 1997). However, this is not only a problem re-

garding flexible work but work in general. As more and more of our work is being done 

electronically, there is nothing stopping us from answering a few more emails at home 

after our day at the office. That said, workers using FWAs are at an increased risk of 

this behaviour since without traditional working hours they are never “done” with their 

day and the barrier between one work and free time is more muddled. Ojala & Pyörälä 

(2013) argue that in order for flexible employees to avoid feelings of “being short of 

time” and work stress, it remains the organisations responsibility to ensure that the same 

working hours are being used regardless of where to work is done.  

 

Flexible work also requires far more self-management from an employee that can be an 

added stress factor some. Employees have themselves set up boundaries when work 

starts and ends. This is not possible for every employee as we all differ in our capacity 

to manage ourselves. There is class of employee who will be unable to work effectively 

without the structure and discipline of a traditional workplace environment (Smith & 

Karavattuveetil, 2004). Furthermore, employees will not be able to automatically bal-

ance their job when moving to use FWAs, they still need organizational and managerial 

input to work and manage their time effectively (O’brien & Hayden, 2008).   

 

In some cases, FWAs have also been shown to increase family stress. (Ojala & Nätti & 

Anttila, 2013) found that working at home was a strong predictor of feelings that home 

life is being neglected due to work demands. Furthermore, the same study found that 

spouses of teleworkers suffer from telework. The effect was stronger on men as tele-

working women did not receive as much criticism for their spouse as teleworking men 

did. The negative effect on the spouses increased as job demands went up. A possible 

psychological explanation why the family suffers from telework could be the WYSIATI 

“What you see is all there is” bias that Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky discov-

ered. When one’s family members sees, that teleworker is not engaged at home due to 

work they are more likely to draw a conclusion that the teleworker is choosing work 

over family. Employees cannot simultaneously do effective paid work and engage with 

the family even if they are working at home (Mirchandani, 2000). Furthermore, proxim-



28 

 

ity of ones paid work and housework is especially problematic for women who some-

times end up doing these two things at the same time (Mirchandani, 2000). The same 

study stats that men won’t engage in more housework even if their time spent at home 

increases.  

 

2.4  Summary of the theory 

 

To summarize one can see from the theory that it is very hard to draw simple cause and 

effect conclusions when implementing FWAs. As more and more employees have the 

opportunity to use FWAs while simultaneously the different kinds of work one can do 

remotely have increased, it is increasingly complicated to evaluate how to best imple-

ment flexibility in a certain organization. There are many gains to me made if an organ-

ization manages to implement flexibility correctly. Studies have shown that for organi-

zations it is possible to decrease turnover, increase productivity and even cut costs from 

salaries, work related travel and office overheads when they implement flexible working 

policies. Flexible work also has been shown to be a great benefit to the employee who 

seem to be more satisfied, less stressed, more able to take care of their offspring.  

 

However, there are numerous possible negative consequence regarding flexible work 

for both the organization and the individual. For the organization, the productivity might 

suffer which naturally sound confusing since other studies argue that it should increase. 

This is just one of the examples which shows implementing FWAs seems to be context 

specific and just giving one’s workers more freedom without any afterthought how one 

is going to manage it can prove to have an adverse effect than the desired one. Further-

more, we seem to be quite far from the futuristic sci-fi society where most work is done 

remotely. Many studies have shown that workplace flexibility seems to follow a law of 

diminishing returns meaning initially as workers gain more flexibility one can quickly 

catch the positive effects for FWAs but as flexibly increases and the worker spends less 

time at the office and face to face interacting with their colleagues the dark outcomes 

start to rear their ugly head. Also, flexible work has been linked to some challenges 

such as sluggish carrier advancement mainly due to “out of sight out of mind bias”, 



29 

 

worse knowledge transfer as face to face communication carriers some advantages, 

workplace isolation and lastly the increase difficulty to separate work and personal time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1 - Law of diminishing returns 



30 

 

3. RESEARCH METHOD 

 

Research can be defined as a scientific and systematic search of knowledge about a cer-

tain topic (Kothari, 2004). It is important to choose the appropriate methodology to en-

sure the objectivity and validity of one’s study. This research is a qualitative study. 

Qualitative methods are appropriate when the research is trying to examine the why and 

how of decision making. Qualitative studies are well suited for exploratory research 

where the aim is to uncover what is happening and gain some new insights. Qualitative 

research methods are often used for exploring human behaviour for example why do 

people think in a certain way (Kothari, 2004). Qualitative studies are well suited to ex-

plore the experience, meaning and perspective from the study individuals/groups own 

viewpoint (Hammarberg & Kirkman & Lacey, 2016), therefore for this study, which 

explores the perceptions of FWA users, this method is suitable. Based on the finding of 

qualitative studies more specific research problems can be identified and studied with 

various other methods including quantitative studies which are better suited to exploring 

the truth of a certain hypothesis (Kothari, 2004) 

 

3.1 Method 

 

The method of collecting data for this study will be structured interviews that will be 

recorded and fully transcribed. Qualitative research interviews are used in cases where 

meanings, emotions, experiences and relationships are hard to observe (Rossetto, 2014). 

Structured interviews are often used for descriptive studies as they are economical, pro-

vide results that are easily generalizable and do not require a skilful interviewer (Ko-

thari, 2004).  The participants were interviewed individually since it will allow them to 

be more candid about what they think about their FWA and the possible negative effects 

of them. Individual interviews are the appropriate choice when the research is trying to 

uncover the individual experiences and feelings of the research subjects (Bauer & Gas-

kell, 2000). This research is especially interested in any dark outcomes of FWA’s and 

the interviews were conducted in a way that the participants are willing to share them if 

there indeed are any. The interviews were conducted in Finnish and English depending 

on which language it is easier for the participant to express their full views of the topic.  



31 

 

3.2  Sample 

 

To ensure the validity of one’s research the sample should be chosen in a way that it 

accurately represents the “population” that the research is attempting to study. Bias in 

selecting the sample and other sampling errors might increase or decrees the number of 

certain observations from the true rate that the appear in the population (Kothari, 2004). 

The sample of this study consists of people who are using an FWA and who are work-

ing in an environment where their colleagues are using them. Employees who work re-

motely full time and had no office did not qualify for this research as they would not 

have the same contrast between remote work and work at the office. The study is lim-

ited to white collar work as FWAs are more common for white collar employees and 

they have possibility to do most if not all their work remotely. The sample consists of 

10 individuals are working in different jobs. Five of the respondents were women and 

five of them were men. Two of them worked abroad in China and the rest work in Fin-

land. Two of the eight people working in Finland are expats.  

 

Nationality Gender Type of work Type of FWA FWA time 

Finnish Male Software tester Custom. One applies to 

work remotely from the 

manager. 

3 years 

Finnish Male IT developer Standard. 2 days per week 1,5 years 

Finnish Male Tax authority Standard. 2 days per week 1 year 

Finnish Male Medical PhD re-

searcher  

Custom. Free to do the 

work wherever. Home or 

office. 

2,5 years 

Finnish Female Government re-

searcher 

Standard. Full time FWA, 

employee has full control 

over place and time of 

work. 

3 years 

Finnish Female Customer rela-

tions 

Custom. 1 compulsory 

day per week at the of-

fice.  

10 months 



32 

 

Chinese Female VAD manager Standard. Full time FWA 6 months 

Chinese Female Customer service Standard. Full time FWA 6 months 

Chinese Female Business PhD 

researcher  

Custom. Free to do the 

work wherever. Home or 

office. 

9 months 

South African / 

Finnish 

Male Global marketing Standard. Hour’s not 

counted, you can leave 

when the work is done, 

there also is a “etäpäivä” 

(teleworking) option. 

2,5 years 

Table 2 – Interview sample 

 

The word standard in the “type pf FWA” column refers to the fact is the FWA is a 

standard contract that is issued to several employees in the same organization. The days 

per week refers to the amount of days one is allowed to telework per week. In the case 

of custom, the employee has orally agreed with their manager or by themselves decided 

the time they must be at the office and the time they are allowed to work remotely.  

FWA time refers to the duration the employee has had the current FWA contract. 

 

3.3  Interviews and interview design 

 

Before each interview the respondents were informed that the interview will be record-

ed, and their answers will be kept anonymous from their employer to ensure that they 

could freely speak their mind. It is important to put the interviewee at ease so that they 

can be frank with their answers (Bauer & Gaskell, 2000). There is a tendency for an in-

terview to follow the lines of an everyday conversation and the interviewee limiting 

their answers to things which they consider relevant information (Grice, 1975). Consid-

ering this fact, the interviewees were informed that there are no so to speak “right or 

wrong answers” and that they should answer from their own point of view and percep-

tion to the posed questions. However, psychological research has shown that even in the 

cases where people are informed beforehand about the free form of the interview, any 

leading questions will sway their answers to some direction (Swann & Guiliano & 



33 

 

Wegner, 1982). Furthermore, there was a discussion about the interviewees general 

views of the topic of work and FWAs and some idle talk about their life before starting 

to ask the interview questions. The interviewer sometimes needs to ask clarifying ques-

tions or further probe the reasoning of a specific answer since there is always a risk that 

the interview might only provide surface level knowledge with little or no scientific in-

terest. The interviews were around 15-25 minutes long and there were 9 questions that 

were asked from every participant. Depending on the answer further questions were 

asked to clarify or inquire about their answer and view on a said question. The questions 

for the interview were chosen based on the theoretical part of this thesis. Furthermore, 

there were two questions where the sample were asked to describe their job and FWA 

type to provide distinguishing variables between the respondents. The aim of the ques-

tions was to get answers that would provide a view to the perception the FWA users 

have on the possible dark sides of their FWA use if there indeed were any.  

 

3.4  Analysis of the data 

 

The collected data was analysed against the theory. The same six variables that were 

examined in the theory on dark FWA outcomes were examined based on the interview 

answers and the themes which were present in the interview answers. These six varia-

bles are career advancement, working hours, productivity, workplace isolation, 

knowledge transfer and work life balance. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



34 

 

4. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS 

 

This part of the paper examines the perceptions the study group had about the five 

commonly identified negative effects of FWAs that were examined in the theoretical 

part of this study. They are stifled career advancement, loss of work/life balance, loss of 

productivity, workplace isolation and decreased knowledge transfer. The empirical part 

of this study features quotes from the interview transcripts which best illustrate the per-

ceptions said employees have about these FWA issues. The quotes are mirrored against 

the existing literature on the topic of FWAs. Although the focus of this paper is to iden-

tify any negative perception employees have about their FWAs, this part also includes 

some of the positive perception that the study group expressed in their interview an-

swers.  

 

4.1 FWAs and career advancement 

 

None of ten interviewed employees thought that their use of FWA would cause serious 

if any career harm. On the contrary, it was more common that the sample believed that 

FWA can actually help them in career advancement, since they could show that they are 

working hard wherever they are. Furthermore, many people felt that they would not 

want to move to a new position if it would not have the same flexible benefits as the old 

one. Here is a translated quote from the software tester (ST) and VAD manager (VM) 

when asked if they see FWA’s having an effect on their career development: 

 

ST: I don’t really see it having an effect, perhaps it nonetheless good that you do it (tel-

ework) so that you know how it feels because you could someday get a work opportunity 

that is 100% telework, in that case you know better if it fits you or not. 

 

VM: Carrier development… Umm. Yeah. Yes, I think in my next job or my coming ca-

reer, flexible working agreement will be one of the factors that impact me to choose that 

job or not. 

 



35 

 

These answers bring up a larger point which is that once workers get a taste of “free-

dom” in the form of an FWA it can be hard to make them work regular hours again 

without damaging the moral of the worker. The so-called endowment effect is well doc-

umented in psychology and behavioural economics, it states people will put extra value 

on things which they own (Thaler, 2015). This means that the equation whether to allow 

or disallow flexible work is not a balanced one. In plain speak the employee seems to 

suffer more from the loss of their flexible work than the benefit they gain from getting 

to work flexibly. As Greenfield (2017) stats organizations are competing against each 

other to attract the best talent by using FWAs as an incentive to make their workplace 

stand out. The data from the interviews support the claim of Greenfield (2017) as it 

seems it is hard to fit a flexible worker back to a more structured eight hour office day 

once they have tasted the freedom FWAs offer.  

 

4.2 How FWAs effect working hours 

 

Most of the interviewees worked the same hours regardless of if they were at the office 

or working remotely from home. However, in the case of three people they felt that they 

could not effectively leave work and they were expected to be “on call” even after the 

traditional office hours. Interestingly all three of these employees worked for private 

multinational companies and they had a working agreement that did not count the work-

ing hours effectively removing the concept of overtime work or any possibility of ac-

quiring so called plus hours that could be used to extend vacations in the future. Here is 

a quote from the VAD manager (VM) interview. 

 

VM: “One more thing, If I have a flexible working agreement, I don’t know in other 

countries but in China that means no extra payment for overtime. Nothing is described 

as overtime in our working agreement, because you work flexibly. When duty calls, you 

have to respond” 

 

This would indicate that FWAs are a considerable cost cutting device for companies as 

they can be used to eliminate overtime payments as well as decrease the duration of va-

cations the employees can keep. Furthermore, it seems that the large multinationals are 



36 

 

also using FWA in this manner and not just small struggling firms like the research of 

Wolf & Beblo (2004) argues. The employees themselves see it as a double-edged sword 

as the FWA’s give them more flexibility to do other things along with their work but the 

time “total freedom” where one has no responsibility over work decreases. The follow-

ing quote is from the global marketing (GM) employee 

 

GM: “Yep, because in the past when we were counting hours you could make up extra 

hours, so you could actually extend your vacations by a week at least every now and 

then. But now that that’s away it is not that nice but then again it gives you a little bit 

more freedom to do other things. If you really need too, you can be away from the office 

for a while.” 

 

From the employee perspective, this could be kind of a “raw deal” as the amount of 

work they do, especially after hours increases and on the flip side the amount of vaca-

tion they have each year decreases. Furthermore, all three of the employees with this 

kind of FWA reported that they regularly must answer work related calls and do as-

signment late at night. However, all three employees who had this kind of an FWA were 

happy with their current arrangement. Every one of them responded that their satisfac-

tion towards their work would decrease, if they were not allowed to work flexibly, two 

of the three also said that the FWA helped them to take care of their family at the same 

time as they worked. In this way one can argue that the FWA contract which does not 

count the hours of the worker and lets the worker him/herself decide where they work is 

a “win-win” where both the company and the employee benefit.  

 

For the rest of the seven interviewees the amount they worked in or outside of the office 

was more standardized. For example, the 4 of the 6 Finns interviewed followed the 

same office hours even when they were working at home. For one it was due to habit 

but for three of them it was due to the fact that it was company policy to enforce the 

same working hours regardless of place of work, furthermore as these three people 

sometimes require team input to achieve their goals it is only natural to enforce that 

people work at the same time. Here is a translated quite form the tax authority (TA): 

 



37 

 

TA: Yes, one should try to, when working at home to always do a full working day as it 

is a policy of the organisation. You naturally can’t use the flexible starting and ending 

times (“liukuma” in Finnish) when working at home, however it could be that some-

times you take longer breaks or a longer lunch but then again, the coffee pauses can be 

longer in the office when you are talking with colleagues. 

 

Many of the interviewees felt that they were working the same number of hours regard-

less of if they were at the office or working from home. However, as (Cascio, 1998) 

notes, workers are very poor at estimating their own performance and it would be advis-

able to objectively verify these claims before trusting the self-evaluation of flexible 

workers. That being said, from the interviews one could observe that in the case of three 

employees who worked for MNC’s the FWA’s made them work more hours as they had 

to work at night and while they were traveling.  

 

4.3 FWAs and productivity 

 

As predicted by Stavrou & Kilaniotis (2010) the Finnish (Nordic) workers felt benefited 

from the flexible work. All of them felt they were either equally or more productive 

when working at home. What is noteworthy that many interviewees mentioned that it 

was easier to focus at home because there were less distractions. Here are translated 

quotes from the tax authority (TA) and IT developer (ID) when asked about productivi-

ty at home: 

 

TA: Yes, I think that that I can get as much done at home maybe even more depending 

on the task I’m doing and how challenging the tasks are. If it’s something that requires 

a lot of concentration it might be even better to do it at home. 

 

ID: …At the workplace there are two colleagues very close, pretty much in the same 

table so at the workplace you tend to talk about all kind of things, also none work relat-

ed things as you work. Also, you at the same time you need to sometimes help your col-

leagues in some work-related things, so you own concentration breaks more often at the 



38 

 

office than at home where you can put on noise cancelling earphones and focus on your 

own tasks more effectively. So, I see myself being more effective at home.  

 

The quietness of home came up in several interviews as a positive thing regarding flexi-

ble work. Many of the respondents felt that that they were more relaxed at home and 

could perform better on tasks, especially difficult tasks that require concentration. This 

is consistent with the findings of Mark (2008) and H. Jahncke et al. (2013) who argue 

that silence is something that makes performing complex cognitive tasks easier. Fur-

thermore, many respondents reviled that their workspace was a so called “avokonttori” 

open-plain office where it was hard to be totally in peace from the passive noise of the 

office. Just like van der Voodt, (2004) argued, flexible work seemed to be a good solu-

tion to workers who do not have the possibility to work uninterrupted and in silence in 

the office.  

 

Continuing this point, silence is not the only thing respondents mentioned as a positive 

aspect of flexible work regarding productivity. For some respondents, the work com-

mute was a considerable “waste” of time and they felt working from home they could 

use the commute time to work which effectively gave them more free time and gave 

them an opportunity to sleep more. Sleep is often undervalued in our society and studies 

show that well slept employees perform better in almost every aspect of work than one’s 

that have not got enough sleep (Saari, 2015). However, flexible work does not guarantee 

more sleep as people might just go to sleep later as they know they can afford to wake 

up later when working from home. This being said, flexible working lets the employees 

avoid the often-tedious process of getting up and commuting to work early in the morn-

ing.  Here is what the VAD manager (VM) and software taster (ST) had to say about 

how flexible work affect their commute and how they start work. 

 

VM: Yes Yes, I can, like I said, if I need to get to the new office from my old apartment 

by nine, I need to get up at six to prepare and be in the car at seven to be on time. But 

you see I waste two, three hours to get ready to work. But if I work at home, that three 

hours totally, I can use it at work 

 



39 

 

ST: Not really, I work pretty much the same way. Mostly it (flexible work) only effect 

when I start and stop working, because when I go to the office I need to pack up early in 

the morning. But when I’m working from home I usually turn on my computer one mi-

nute before working time and then at the evening if I’m in the office it sometimes goes 

long but at home mostly when the clock hits 16 I just turn off my computer. 

 

According to Duke professor Dan Ariely, most people only have two productive hours 

in a day and for most, they are in the morning (Ariely, 2017). Not “wasting time” on the 

commute and other working rituals like getting dressed and putting on make up to work 

can be a partial explanation why many respondents of this of this study felt they were 

more productive at home. The results echo the finding of Moen et al. (2016) and Kelly 

et al. (2014) which found that productivity increased as flexible workers were able to 

customize their schedule to fit their own life situation and way of working.  

 

However, there were some issues that the interviewed flexible workers faced in regard 

to their productivity, especially when it came to technical problems or the lack of work 

resources at home. Many respondents had stories of sometimes having problems con-

necting to the workplace networks which made working from home effectively impos-

sible. This was especially true in the case of the two study respondents who work in 

mainland China where companies need to use VPN (Virtual private network) connec-

tions to connect to their company network and access foreign websites In China the in-

ternet connectivity is not very good or fast, especially for private individuals, so work-

ing from home was not always convenient to those respondents as evidenced by these 

quotes about the issues regarding flexible work:  

 

VM: Poor network… Yeah, so far it is. Because I have many many times that when I 

call in but the network connection is bad and.. you know that video conference, when 

you call in it will say “***** has joined the conference” yeah that will tell everybody 

that ***** is “in” and (laughs) if I lost my connection the system will just say “***** 

has left the conference” and sometimes that is just really really bad, it will become like 

“***** has joined, *****has left…” Pretty annoying. 

 



40 

 

CS: (Laughing) the big problem is the internet… I think if they don’t need to use VPN 

maybe it’s almost the same but if you use VPN it’s fucking bad. 

 

It would be recommendable to access the network situation of the flexible workers es-

pecially in countries where the private networks can be unstable. It is of course also 

possible that the company networks fail in which case it is not possible to work regard-

less of where one is located but that seems to be a rare case. The network issues were 

also raised up by the Finnish tax authority in whose case the lack of information regard-

ing the network problem proved to be a frustrating problem when working from home: 

 

TA: It (the day) goes pretty much to waste especially because when you get an error 

message that there is some problem with the network and they are now fixing it, you 

don’t really know when it will be fixed etc. Then after an hour you get a new message 

that the same problem in continuing and you don’t know if it will work or not. So yeah, 

in those cases it’s frustrating but it’s very rarely something like this happens. 

 

From the tax authority quote we can see what Fan Ng (2010) argued about the work re-

sources sometimes being inadequate at home. The same issue was raised by the soft-

ware tester (ST) who preferred to work as much as possible in the office because the 

work ergonomics and the computer screens were better at the office than at home. Here 

is a translated quote from him: 

 

ST: So for me it is the location, in which kind of apartment I live, is perhaps the biggest 

reason why I don’t particularly want to work from home. I don’t have a worktable, so I 

have to create space on my own table, so I can fit my work laptop there, or then I can 

work from the sofa but that is not really good, and the ergonomics are not great. Also, 

another thing is that all the coffee pauses and other things are done alone at home. 

 

So just like in most cases regarding FWA usage we can observe positive and negative 

effects on productivity. Yet again one has stress the fact that self-evaluated productivity 

is not always accurate. However, it seems that there is some positive effect on produc-

tivity especially in cases where the home or some other place outside the office can be 



41 

 

used as a quiet/private space where one can work in silence and uninterrupted. On the 

flip side, it seems that the so called “home office” is more susceptible to bad connection 

and the worker not having the right tools to work effectively.  

 

4.4  FWAs and workplace isolation 

 

Only three of the then respondents of this study had the possibility to totally control 

their workweek meaning that they could spend a whole week or more at home if the de-

sired. The seven others had certain amount of days they were required to be at the office 

per week, possible making it less likely they would suffer from workplace isolation due 

to flexible work and being away from their work community. Several respondents men-

tioned that when working at home they missed the so-called coffee table talk that they 

would regularly have at the office as predicted by the study of Mann & Holdsworth 

(2003). Furthermore, when asked none of the respondents would want to be totally 

without a physical office where they can go to meet colleagues. The respondents often 

argued that some aspects of their work require face to face communication and seeing 

the other persons none verbal ques that can be missed when using lower levels of media 

richness in communication. Face to face communication was mentioned as a tool to 

build trust and solve problem as evidenced by these quotes from the business PhD re-

search (BPR) and customer relations (CR) persons when asked about not having an of-

fice and just working from home. 

 

BPR: Yeah that would be bad because face to face communication is very important. 

Yes, it can build trust and you can fix some problems very efficiently, so we need this 

 

CR: So it’s just that all the information which you get at the office does not reach the 

teleworker and also the team spirit and the unity of the work environment is something 

that one misses in my opinion if one does a lot of telework 

 

The respondents commonly reported that there was a higher threshold to contact your 

colleagues when working from home and one only did it regarding work and not to so-

cialize. However, some respondents had weekly or even daily video or audio confer-



42 

 

ences with their team or workplace where the worker had a chance to interact with their 

team and supervisors. According to Mulki & Jaramillo (2011) frequent contact with the 

supervisor when teleworking was a factor that mitigated the feeling of workplace isola-

tion. This seemed to hold true regarding the subjects of this study, although many sub-

jects told that they prefer face to face meeting to virtual ones and that one subject even 

admitted that she was sometimes just pretending to listen the virtual conference and do-

ing something else at the same time.  

 

Some of the respondents could also see telework possible harming the “sense of com-

munity” of the workplace if done extensively. They felt electronic communication does 

not give the same feeling as talking with someone face to face. Here are two translated 

quotes from the tax authority (TA) and IT developer (ID) when asked about negative 

aspects of telework. 

 

TA: I guess one possible thing is that the sense of community suffers if all the people 

always are teleworking, I or we of course have the restriction at our workplace of being 

able to only telework two days per week that of course mitigates this problem, but it 

could be possible to experience this… 

 

ID: I’m personally of the opinion that people become a bit more distant when you can’t 

spend time face to face and like I just said you cannot really communicate with someone 

effectively by phone if you are only acquaintances. Communication is somehow more 

deep and easier when you are doing it face to face. That is one thing I think. 

 

The comment from the IT developer would support the finding of Wu et al. (2016) 

which states that employees who are emotionally closer to one another are better able to 

collaborate with the use of electronic communication. The interviewed employees 

commonly could use Skype for business, Whatsapp and Microsoft Teams to contact col-

leagues in their workplace while they were teleworking. Naturally the same tools are 

used even at the workplace, for example the software tester said that because most of 

their work is best done in silence people often send chat messages instead of talking 

even though they are physically in the same room. 



43 

 

 

4.5 FWAs and knowledge transfer 

 

Many respondents of this study reported that when working from home they sometimes 

missed the interaction they had with colleagues. Furthermore, it was common that re-

spondents said that there was a bigger threshold to call or contact someone when you 

were working from home. When people did call someone while teleworking the calls 

were work related and thought out beforehand rather than spontaneous decision just to 

talk to someone. Here are translated quotes from the medical PhD researcher (MPR) and 

customer representative (CR) about communication while teleworking: 

 

MPR: Maybe there is that, that for your co-workers there is a bigger threshold to con-

tact you although you are easily available, but because there is this threshold, people 

tend to think about their problems more by themselves and they might find the solution 

before trying to contact someone. 

 

CR: Certainly, if you are physically in the office and you have anything to ask from you 

supervisor or they have something to tell you, that happens instantly. Then when you 

are working from home it might be through email or phone and I would say it feels eas-

ier to go ask something face to face, just bother them quickly compared to calling them 

because there is a bigger threshold to call because you feel like you are bothering the 

other person with making them answer a phone call etc. 

 

From these quotes one could imagine that FWAs, especially telework could influence 

knowledge transfer. Form many members of the millennial generation making a phone 

call can be an anxious experience. For example, in the UK 25% of smart phone users 

never make calls with their device (Buchanan, 2016). If an increasing number of work-

ers are teleworking and they have this similar mindset that making a phone call is a 

chore the amount of contact between co-workers will decrees.  

 

For some of the respondents, it was difficult to explain problems or questions while 

calling and the needed to be face to face with their counterpart to effectively communi-



44 

 

cate what they wanted. As predicted by Klitmoller & Lauring (2013) workers had some 

complex problems or parts of their work they wished to do face to face with their col-

leagues. For example, the medical PhD researcher who is trying to create a new way to 

assess the health of the human knee using spectrometry said that the complex parts of 

the research were hard to explain by phone or some other electronic communication. 

Furthermore, the two people interviews working with computer code said that when one 

works in the office one often askes their colleagues “hey, what do you think about 

this?”, but when one is alone at home one tends to just get their task done without ask-

ing other people’s help or opinion. This lack of casual interactions between employees 

can have a detrimental effect on idea creation as argued by Google executive Dr. Vint 

Cerf (Crabtree, 2014) when defending the idea of limiting the amount so called “crea-

tive” people can telework. However, at least the subjects of this study had an intuitive 

sense that they needed to do some things face to face and they would not want all of 

their work to be remote. 

 

4.6 FWAs and work life balance 

 

All ten respondents felt that FWA helped them in balancing their work and personal 

life. Furthermore, all of them reported that their satisfaction towards their current job 

would go down if they were not allowed to telework. There was various reason why 

flexible work helped the respondents depending on their life situation and age. Especial-

ly for the older respondents FWAs proved a valuable asset in balancing their life and 

work as evidenced by these two quotes from the global marketing (GM) employee and 

government researcher (GR) when asked how FWAs help them to balance their work 

and personal life. 

 

GM: I think it helps it a lot actually. Cause the fact is, OK I’m studying with you (at the 

University) I’m in the office the whole day, I’m a single dad I have kids running around 

so it gives me that freedom being able to say “Ok I can go pick up the kids from 

school”, I don’t have to be in the office exactly the time that is allocated I can, if things 

happen I can have a “etäpäivä” and work from home . So those types of things make it 

very flexible and easier for me to handle and work things out in my personal life. 



45 

 

 

GR: …you don’t need to dress up for work and if you are not 100% healthy you don’t 

need to go to the office, but you still can be working from home. So, if I didn’t have flex-

ibility I would probably have more sick leave now during my old age. 

 

From these quotes, we can see FWAs working as intended helping people to balance the 

needs of childcare and helping elder employees extend their careers by making work 

less “demanding” on one’s health. Many of the respondents said that working from 

home was more relaxing than being in the office. Furthermore, even respondents with-

out children or a spouse were able to give examples of FWAs giving them more time for 

their personal life and many reported that they multitask while working at home. Some 

would run random errands such as going to the bank or dentist and others would take 

care of the house while working. It seems like employees have many ways they use 

their flexibility. Stavrou & Kilaniotis, (2010) argued against FWA practices that treat 

every employee as the same. However, most respondents had a standard FWA contract 

that was issued by the organization they worked for which had no room for negotiation 

of the terms. Regardless of this fact the respondents were happy with their contracts 

possible partly due to the fact that even if they had a standard contract they could them-

selves decide how to best implement the extra freedom they had. 

 

There were also negative aspects associated with FWAs regarding work life balance. 

Two of the most common “dark outcomes” were the blurring line of work and home 

and the distraction that work at night brought to one’s personal life. For the first point of 

blurring the line between home and work some of the respondents argued that working 

at home could be too relaxing and one would end up doing less as evidenced by these 

translated quotes from the medical PhD researcher (MPD) and the tax authority (TA): 

 

TA: …Of course there is that if one takes their home environment too relaxed so that 

the line between work and free time gets muddled one probably won’t get so much 

things done, and it probably does not fit everyone. 

 



46 

 

MPD: …The employee needs  to have a certain amount of self-discipline when working 

from home so that the work doesn’t become just assing around …Maybe it becomes a 

bit blurred that is actual work time and what isn’t so one ends up working just the re-

quired amount to always reach the set targets.  

 

Interestingly both of these responses imply that flexible work does not fit everyone, and 

workers need to take more responsibility of their own work and getting things done 

when working from home. Just as Smith & Karavattuveetil (2004) argued it can be dif-

ficult for some employees to know where the line of work and free time is when work-

ing from home. Some employees, especially the three who worked in large multination-

al corporations also felt that work sometimes followed them home and they had to be on 

call even after hours. The often had to answer work related calls or do assignments on 

their “free time” although as their contracts were flexible it could be hard to classify a 

part of the day as “work time” or “free time”. Here are two quotes from the global mar-

keting (GM) and VAD manager (VM) regarding this issue: 

 

GM: I don’t know. Ok the one thing maybe is that if you have flexible hours there is a 

different expectation of you and deadlines might be different because now you… It’s 

basically about when the job is getting done and not so much on how much hours you 

are spending, so in that sense, you know you could get a call or you could get some kind 

of assignment that you need to work through the night or in the evening to get some-

thing done for the next day. Where if you had the other hours (regular working hours) 

the hours which… then you wouldn’t have to do that, you could do that when you are at 

the office. So in a way I think that you know the productiveness of flexible is better than 

the productiveness of fixed hour in my opinion. 

 

VM: …(laughs) So far it is the network is the biggest problem otherwise it’s OK but… 

Ah, one more thing. I need to pay attention to my phone, my email all the time… All the 

time, I need to check it all the time…. Yeah, it’s kind of a distraction when I was cook-

ing or doing something else. That is a… Nah I can’t say my job is a distraction. That’s 

not right (laughs) 

 



47 

 

What must be addressed is that this is not only a problem regarding flexible work 

agreements. It is also possible that a worker who has regular working hours at the office 

brings some of his work back home. However, as the quote from the global marketing 

manager illustrates some flexible workers may have a tendency to work more than their 

office bound counterparts as the research of Ojala & Pyörälä, (2013) argues. Interesting-

ly Ojala & Pyörälä, (2013) argued that it is the organizations responsibility to make sure 

that the regular working hours are followed even while working from home. The re-

spondents whose organization did this and enforced the same office hours while tele-

working, did not seem to suffer the same way from the distraction of work during their 

personal time. The three MNC employees whose organizations were not providing any 

guidelines when to switch off one’s work computer and phone were also the ones who 

ended up working the most outside the traditional office hours. a few qualitative inter-

views are not enough to draw any generalizable conclusion but, in the future, it might be 

worth studying if the work culture of MNC’s exposes their workers to a higher degree 

of work distracting their personal life.  

 

Only two of the ten interviewed employees had something to say about FWA’s and their 

effect to their family life. For both the FWA’s were a positive thing that helped one re-

spondent to take care of their kids and for the other respondents it let her visit her par-

ents who lived far way more often, as she could keep working remotely while she was 

in another city visiting her parents. As a caveat one has to add that only one respondent 

had young kids which naturally limits the chance to get responses regarding child rear-

ing and FWA usage in this study. However, there is research that indicates that employ-

ees perceive that they are better at taking care of their family needs if they are working 

flexibly (Doble & Supriya, 2010) that would be in line with the perception the two re-

spondents of this study had.  

 

 

 

 

 

 



48 

 

5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 

 

The aim of this thesis was to uncover some of the possible negative perceptions em-

ployees had about flexible work as well uncover if there are some dark outcomes with 

can affect the organization. The findings were mostly in line with the theory although 

none of the workers felt that flexible work has an impact on their career development 

opposite to what Bloom et al. (2015) argued. Instead many of the interviewed employ-

ees felt that as they advance in their career, the amount of telework they do will in-

crease. None of the ten interviewed would want to return to a work contract that did not 

offer flexible working options, and many said that they want their next job to also have 

a FWA. The sample size of this study is not large enough to make any sweeping gener-

alizations but it is possible that due to the increase of advanced IT solutions and subse-

quent teleworking, employee and manager attitudes towards FWA’s have changed to-

wards more positive ones.  

 

The link between FWAs and an employee work life balance is a complex one. In this 

study, there were some contradictions to the previous theory. For example, in the case 

of negative effect to work/life balance (Hope, 1997) argued that FWAs can make em-

ployees work outside the traditional office hours and sacrifice time with their family. 

However, some of the employees of this study used FWA’s to increase the time they 

can spend with their family by for example visiting their parents or taking care of their 

kids at home while they telework. However, many of the same respondents said that 

they often must work late at night on their work projects. This is in line with the find-

ings of (Ojala & Pyörälä, 2013; Smith & Karavattuveetil, 2004) that FWAs increase the 

time spent working outside traditional office hours. However, it is possible that people 

who overwork extensively at the cost of their family time would do this despite having 

no FWA. More research on this topic would be needed, especially on the point how 

much FWAs affect or change employees’ behaviour.  

 

The interviewed employees had experience of both increased and decreed productivity. 

The study participants reported that that the perceived they were more productive at 

home teleworking because they could focus uninterrupted on their task. This is con-



49 

 

sistent with the findings of van der Voodt (2004). The decreased productivity while tel-

eworking happened, according to the study individuals, due to poor electronic connec-

tions, inability to reach or work with colleagues needed for the task or being distracted 

by something none work related. As Timms et al. (2015) argues, FWAs do not seem to 

guarantee an increase or decrease of productivity. As the responses of this study show, 

there are multiple factors that effect on how productive the employees perceive their 

working time.   

 

Workplace isolation was a feeling that none of the participants felt but all of them rec-

ognized, that if they would not visit the office and have face to face interaction with 

their colleagues, they would not enjoy their work as much. Furthermore, the participants 

of this study wanted to have a face to face relationship with at least some of their col-

leagues and they missed interacting with their colleagues while teleworking just like the 

research of Mann & Holdsworth (2003) predicts. Just as the participants were not will-

ing give up their possibility to telework, they also did not want to give up the chance to 

go t