Does face-time affect your career?

Abstract

Many employees nowadays make use of arrangements which provide them with flexibility in the duration, schedule and location of their work in order to combine work and private life. Previous research has established, however, that working part-time for instance comes at a cost and has a negative impact on career advancement. For schedule and location flexibility this aspect is less clear, because working time is not reduced and human capital thus does not depreciate. Employees who make use of flexi-time or telehomework are less visible at the workplace, however. Their amount of face-time is reduced and employers may therefore perceive them as less committed to their work and be more reluctant to award promotions or paid training to them. In this paper we therefore investigate the consequences of schedule and location flexibility on career advancement in a longitudinal setup. Our results indicate that flexi-time and occasional telehomework do not affect career advancement significantly. A significant lack of face-time due to working at home more frequently, however, is associated with fewer promotions and less employer-paid training and thus adverse effects on career advancement.