Not for everyone: Intra-organisational divides and the stratification...
Transcript of Not for everyone: Intra-organisational divides and the stratification...
Not for everyone: Intra-organisational divides and the stratification of
access to work-life policies
Published as: Ariane Ollier-Malaterre & Cláudia Andrade (2015): Not for everyone:
intraorganisational divides and the stratification of access to work–life policies,
Community, Work & Family, DOI: 10.1080/13668803.2015.1089840
Link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2015.1089840
Abstract
Prior research documented a number of factors pertaining to employees or the organization's
culture that can prevent employees from accessing employer-driven work-life policies (WLP).
Our study focuses on factors originating in the jobs themselves. We conducted 98 in-depth
employee interviews in two multinational companies based in Europe and led feedback sessions
with HR executives. Three mechanisms explained the observed stratification of access to WLP
across jobs: (1) the intra-organisational digital divide prevented “less digital” employees from
collecting information about WLP on the intranet and thus impaired awareness of the policies; (2)
the divide in worksite size prevented employees on smaller worksites from accessing childcare
centres, sports or health facilities; and (3) the divide in job types restricted access to WLP for
specific occupations. The stratification of access to WLP was not strategically driven by human
resources; rather the divides were largely unintentional. Our study uncovers inequalities of access
originating in the jobs themselves and provides a theoretical integration of the various sets of
factors that may promote or hinder employee awareness of WLP. Our findings suggest that
organisations should strive to identify these inequalities and to provide ways to cope for these, for
instance by offering other forms of support.
Keywords: Work-life; Work-family; Awareness; Organisational stratification; Social
stratification; Organisational justice; Human resources management; Digital divide
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Résumé : De nombreux facteurs, propres aux salariés comme aux cultures organisationnelles,
peuvent empêcher les salariés d'accéder aux pratiques d'harmonisation travail - hors-travail
développées par les employeurs. Cette étude porte sur les facteurs propres aux postes de travail.
Sur la base de 98 entretiens approfondis avec des salariés de deux multinationales basées en
Europe, et de sessions de retour d'information avec les directions des ressources humaines, nous
avons identifié trois mécanismes qui expliquent la stratification de l'accès aux pratiques
d'harmonisation travail - hors-travail en fonction des postes de travail : (1) la fracture numérique
intra-organisationnelle empêchait les salariés "moins numériques" de recueillir l'information sur
les pratiques sur l'intranet et réduisait ainsi la connaissance qu'ils avaient des pratiques; (2) la
fracture en termes de tailles de site privait les salariés travaillant sur des petits sites d'accéder aux
crèches, centres sportifs et cliniques d'entreprise, et (3) la fracture en termes de type de postes
restreignait l'accès à certaines pratiques pour les salariés de certains postes. Cette stratification
n'était pas guidée par la stratégie de ressources humaines de ces multinationales; elle était au
contraire tout-à-fait involontaire. Cette recherche dévoile des inégalités d'accès aux pratiques
d'harmonisation travail - hors-travail ayant pour origine les postes de travail eux-mêmes, et
propose une intégration théorique des différents types de facteurs qui peuvent encourager ou
restreindre la connaissance et l'accès à ces pratiques. Nos résultats suggèrent que les
organisations devraient s'efforcer d'identifier ces inégalités au sein de leur population salariée et
de fournir des compensations aux salaries pénalisés, par exemple en proposant d'autres formes de
soutien à l'articulation entre vie professionnelle et vie personnelle.
Mots clés: Vie professionnelle-vie personnelle; Travail-famille; Connaissance; Stratification
organisationnelle; Justice organisationnelle; Gestion des ressources humaines; Fracture
numérique
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Given increasing demands made on employees both in the work and non-work domains
(Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014; Lewis, Rapoport & Gambles, 2003), a growing number of
employers are providing work-life policies as part of their human resources (HR) standard
practices. Work-life policies (WLP) typically include flexible working arrangements, employee
assistance programmes and other resources pertaining to childcare, elderly care, health and
personal development. Organisations develop WLP to offset their employees’ strain and work-
family conflict (Eby, Casper, Lockwood, Bordeaux & Brinley, 2005; Kelly, Kossek, Hammer,
Durham, Bray, Chermack, Murphy, & Kaskubar, 2008) and to increase employee commitment,
satisfaction and performance as well as decrease absenteeism and turnover intention (Kelly et al.,
2008; Butts, Casper, & Yang, 2013).
However, reviews consistently report implementation gaps reducing employees’ access to
WLP and therefore their effectiveness (Allen, 2001; Kelly et al., 2008; Kossek, Lewis &
Hammer, 2010) and social justice (Özbilgin, Beauregard, Tatli, & Bell, 2011). Access to a policy
refers to the ability to use it, and is thus different from utilization to the extent that some
employees may have access to a policy and choose not to use it. Research points to discrepancies
between formal HR policies on the one hand and employee awareness of and access to them on
the other hand (Eaton, 2003; Ryan & Kossek, 2008; Kossek, Baltes, & Mathews, 2011). In
addition, inequalities of access amongst categories of employees have been identified, such that
low-level, blue-collar and part-time employees have lesser access to work-life policies than do
professionals and managers and full-time employees (Golden 2001; Swanberg, Pitt-Catsouphes,
& Drescher-Burke, 2005; Haley-Lock, 2009).
Given that actual access to work-life policies, not formal availability of the policies,
matters for organisational performance, employee well-being and social justice (Baltes, Kossek &
Matthews, 2011; Lewis et al., 2003), it is crucial for scholars and practitioners to understand what
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causes such implementation gaps. Organisational stratification, an approach rooted in the
functional theory of social stratification (Davis & Moore, 1945), focuses on explanations for how
employers allocate opportunities within and across work settings (Lambert & Haley-Lock, 2004).
It further sheds light on how formal HR policies and informal day-to-day practices distribute
opportunities for work-life balance (WLB) across jobs, levels and workers (Lambert & Haley-
Lock, 2004; Lambert & Waxman, 2005). Most research to date has focused either on social
stratification mechanisms stemming from socio-demographic factors such as gender or race
(Golden, 2001; Grady & McCarthy, 2008), from employment-related factors such as employment
status or organisational tenure (Golden, 2001; Lambert & Haley-Lock, 2004) or from lack of
cultural support within the organization (Allen, 2001; Hammer, Kossek, Anger, Bodner, &
Zimmerman, 2011; Thompson, Beauvais & Lyness, 1999). We contend however that factors
related to jobs themselves (e.g. job type, job location) may cause implementation gaps and
inequities, and there is to our knowledge very little theory or empirical research on this.
We therefore investigated employee awareness and access to WLP within two
multinationals that provided broad sets of benefits. Based on 98 semi-directed interviews with
employees of two pharmaceutical multinationals in the US, the UK and Portugal, we investigated
the following research questions: (1) to what extent are employees aware of WLP and to what
extent do they access them? (2) what organisational stratification mechanisms may reduce
employee awareness of and access to WLP and (3) what are the outcomes of stratified awareness
of and access to WLP in terms of organisational performance and social justice?
On the one hand, organisational stratification theory explains inequalities of access to
WLP based on socio-demographic factors such as employees' age or gender, race or social class
(Golden, 2001) and on employment-related factors, in particular the level of the job (e.g.
employees in entry-level and low wage or hourly jobs may have less access), employment status
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(e.g. part-time employees may have less access) and tenure in the organization (Lambert &
Haley-Lock 2004; Haley-Lock, 2009; Swanberg et al., 2005). On the other hand, work-life
research has identified cultural factors that promote or hinder employee's ability to use WLP,
notably the family-friendliness of the organisational culture (Allen, 2001; Andreassi &
Thompson, 2008; Thompson et al., 1999), of its supervisors (Hammer, Neal, Newsom,
Brockwood, & Colton, 2005; Hammer et al., 2011) and its workgroups (Korabik & Warner,
2012).
This research extends and integrates organisational stratification theory (Lambert &
Haley-Lock, 2004; Lambert & Waxman, 2005) and work-life research by identifying a fourth set
of factors that may promote or hinder employees' awareness of and access to WLP. This fourth
set relates to the jobs themselves, i.e. the characteristics of jobs that create inequalities of
awareness and access. We identify three job-related factors that create intra-organisational
divides regarding awareness of and access to WLP. The most important of these divides is the
intra-organisational digital divide which impairs awareness of the policies: the identification of
this divide is a novel contribution of this paper. The two other divides are the worksite size and
the job type divides, for which there is very limited prior empirical evidence (Baruch, 2000;
Golden, 2001; Kossek, 1989; Swanberg et al., 2005) that this research helps to consolidate and
situate at the theoretical level. In so doing, our research contributes to work-family research by
shedding light on structural factors residing in job categories as an important source of
implementation gaps and social inequities, whilst prior research had mainly focused on socio-
demographics factors, employment-related factors and cultural factors as the main obstacles. This
research has important implications for strategic human resource management since inequalities
can seriously undermine the efficiency of HR practices, and for organisational justice, since
inequalities can undermine employee well-being and perceptions of fairness.
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LITERATURE REVIEW
The functional theory of social stratification (Davis & Moore, 1945; Kingsley, 1942)
contends that no society is classless and aims at explaining what factors lead to the varieties of
social inequality that can be observed. It argues that stratification is functional in a society, to the
extent that placing individuals in social positions that differ in terms of prestige motivates them
to perform the duties of their position (Davis & Moore, 1945). Thus, successful competition
between positions of differing ranks is not desirable (Davis & Moore, 1945). Stratification is thus
argued to be functional for the allocation of particular individuals to religious and governmental
roles, as well as for the distribution of wealth, property, and labor (Davis & Moore, 1945).
This theoretical angle was recently chosen to analyze how organisations structure access
to benefits for their employees, which has been termed an organisational stratification of access
to benefits (Lambert & Haley-Lock 2004; Haley-Lock, 2009). Lambert and colleagues’ work
investigates organisational rewards offered to attract and retain employees, such as access to
health and pension benefits and to career opportunities. This stream of research showed that
rewards are not distributed equally amongst employees, but rather they are stratified and this
stratification may be functional for organisations. The main stratification mechanisms are formal
HR policies, such as waiting periods for benefits or reduced access for part-timers, and informal
day-to-day practices, such as scheduling techniques that generate under-worked and over-worked
categories of employees (Lambert & Haley-Lock 2004; Haley-Lock, 2009). In particular,
employees in low-level jobs benefit less from health insurance or tuition reimbursement than
higher-level employees in the same organisation (Lambert & Haley-Lock, 2004; Lambert &
Waxman, 2005).
In this paper we argue that the organisational stratification framework may shed light on
access to WLP for two reasons: (1) inequalities of access have been documented and (2) these
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inequalities might be driven by the business-case rationale that WLP should be to attract talent
and increase employee commitment, satisfaction and performance (Butts et al., 2012; Kelly et al.
2008, Galinsky et al., 2008). Although equal opportunities legislation aims at ensuring that
employers offer the same level of benefits to all employees (Tomlinson, 2006), some
stratification mechanisms can be hypothesized drawing on prior findings in the work-life
literature. For instance, Kossek (1989) observed how childcare centres and gym facilities tend to
be mostly offered on large worksites. In addition, job type also matters: some jobs, typically
white-collar jobs, offer greater autonomy than others to schedule training activities or choose
daily start and end times (Swanberg at al., 2005); some shifts schedules make accessing WLP
possible while others do not (Golden, 2001; Swanberg at al., 2005); some jobs can be performed
at a distance provided that adequate information technology is set up, while others cannot
because they require a presence on site (Baruch, 2000). Likewise, some jobs, such as jobs in
which the pace of work of predictable and in which there is limited client facing activities, may
be construed by managers as being more conducive to working a reduced load than other jobs
where full-time involvement is expected (Kossek, Ollier-Malaterre, Lee, Pichler, & Hall, 2015).
Thus, the size of the worksite where employees work as well as the type of job that they hold are
two likely workplace-related stratification mechanisms of employee awareness of and access to
WLP.
However, we question whether these stratification processes are functional for
organisations, as social stratification theory applied at the organisational level would predict.
According to the business case rationale, the stratification of access to work-life policies should
be strategically driven by HR to improve organisational performance. However, prior research
pointed out that low levels of employee awareness could be observed despite an organisation’s or
government’s will to enable employees to benefit from them (Ryan & Kossek, 2008; Ollier-
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Malaterre, 2010). This suggests that pragmatic differences across categories of jobs within an
organisation, rather than an intentional targeting of WLP to certain jobs, could be driving the
stratification processes. In light of the lack of evidence regarding how and why access to work-
life policies is stratified, we chose a qualitative approach to better understand the stratification
mechanisms at play.
METHOD
Context. Data were gathered in two leading multinational pharmaceutical companies based in
Europe. This industry was chosen because it has been a pioneer for WLP since the mid-1980s. To
comply with confidentiality agreements signed with the companies, we will call them Pharm1
and Pharm2. Pharm1 employs around 100,000 and Pharm2 around 90,000 people globally.
Both companies provide extensive WLP to full-time employees with no explicitly
identified restrictions related to categories of employees or jobs. At Pharm1, WLP were
introduced in the late 1990s and have been coordinated by a full-time work-life officer. They
include flexible working arrangements (subjected to managerial approval), family and personal
leave, employee assistance programmes (EAP), on-site day-care centres and other dependent care
resources, tuition assistance and employees’ support groups. These policies, owned by HR
managers, include grievance processes. Except for the legal and regulatory contexts that give rise
to differences across countries (notably regarding leave), these WLP are potentially available to
all employees. Pharm1 has been distinguished for these policies, winning awards for their health
and wellness employee self-assessments, on-site preventative actions, and “Lunch & Learn”
seminars. Pharm2 has since 1996 provided a broad range of WLP such as flexitime, telework,
extended parental leave, paid leave at short notice, and financial support for family or educational
needs. Pharm2 has been placed among the top companies in its business segment, according to
Fortune Magazine, in the “World’s Most Admired Companies” ranking.
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Sample and data collection. We chose a qualitative approach (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007)
due to the paucity of research on job-related sources of unequal access to WLP, compared with
the existing body of work on socio-demographic, employment related and cultural factors. We
targeted large multinationals to analyse the intra-organisational stratification occurring amongst
categories of jobs, and sampled employees purposefully so that they held different jobs and
reflected different workplace characteristics. We focused on full-time employees to eliminate
inequities stemming from part-time status.
Access to Pharm1 was gained in 2006. The first author contacted the company and gained
key HR executives’ trust by agreeing to analyse an employee survey. She was then invited to
conduct seven site visits and given full access to corporate documentation and the intranet. She
personally conducted 73 in-depth semi-structured interviews with employees in the UK and the
US which were the two most important countries in terms of employees and revenues. She
recruited employees in the UK after attending WLB workshops as a non-participant observer, and
through a letter circulated by HR in the US. She purposefully attended workshops in order to
sample employees from the four main business units - R&D, manufacturing, sales and support
functions (specifically, human resources, IT support, customer service and finance). Interviewees
worked in nine different locations and were all full-time employees, either salaried or hourly.
Table 1 summarises the characteristics of the sample.
== Insert Table 1 about here ==
Access to Pharm2 was gained in September 2010 to take part in a research project focused
on WLB in sales teams. The second author contacted the company’s HR department to gain
access to sales team leaders, who briefed their teams about the research project and got their
employees’ agreement to be interviewed. A convenience sample of twenty-five employees
agreed to take part in the research. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted over five
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months with sales employees and sales team leaders from diverse areas of Portugal. Interviewees
worked in eight different locations and were all full-time salaried employees. The interviews took
place after sales team meetings, with HR managers providing logistical assistance to organise
them. For both sets of interviews at Pharm 1 and Pharm 2, participants were informed that the
confidentiality of the interviews was guaranteed and that only aggregated results would be shared
with HR. Interviewees granted permission to be audiotaped and signed an informed consent in
accordance with the ethical rules of the authors' institutions at the time of the research. The
interviews were then transcribed verbatim.
Although research at Pharm1 and Pharm2 was conducted separately, both sets of
interviews had the same objective of investigating employees' awareness of and access to WLP,
so that the broad prompts of the interview protocols were in fact very close. At Pharm1, the first
author started the interviews by asking general questions about interviewees’ positions and what
they liked or disliked at work. Then she asked: “Would you say you have a good knowledge of
work-life programmes and benefits?” and noted which policies they spontaneously mentioned
and in which order. She asked for details and examples of awareness and access, with questions
such as "How do you collect information about work-life policies", “Which ones in particular do
you know?”, “Can you explain to me how [policy] works?”, “Which ones are you accessing, how
often, and since when?” or “Why are you not accessing them”? The interviews lasted an average
of 36 minutes and were fully transcribed into a total of 602 single-spaced pages.
At Pharm2, the second author used similar questions, namely “Does your company have
WLB policies?”, "How do you know about them?", “Can you name some of your company’s
WLB policies?”, “Which ones do you access?” and "Are there some policies you cannot access
and why"? The interviews lasted an average of 30 minutes. Interviews were recorded and fully
transcribed into a total of 95 single-spaced pages.
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In order to assess to what extent HR at Pharm1 and Pharm2 were aware of the low and
unequal awareness of and access to WLP, we presented our findings at both companies in the
form of Powerpoint presentations to panels of HR officers and executives. Although we were not
able to record their questions and observations, we took detailed notes during and after these
presentations to keep track of their feedback and reactions. We draw on these field notes to report
HR informants' reactions to our analyses as well as the explanations they proposed for the low
and unequal awareness of and access to WLP.
Content analysis. We wrote a memo right after each interview to keep track of the main themes
that surfaced in the interview and of our thoughts as they progressed from interview to interview,
in observance of Eisenhardt's “24 hours rule” which recommends to write interview memos right
within 24 hours of the interview (1989, p. 547). When the interviews were transcribed, we first
assessed employees’ awareness of and access to WLP by listing which policies interviewees had
mentioned. While this research is qualitative and we do not wish to make oval pegs seem round
by analyzing them in a quantitative way (Pratt, 2007), we reasoned that we needed to first
establish whether or not and to that degree employees in our sample experienced the low
awareness and access to WLP that has typically been lamented in prior research. Therefore we
also analyzed the depth and accuracy of employee awareness (programme names, conditions for
access, and provisions), and listed which policies employees accessed to.
To understand how employees became aware of WLP and what job-related factors could
possibly hinder their awareness of WLP and access to WLP, we read the transcripts line by line.
We used open coding to generate the first-order categories stemming from the informants (Gioia,
Corley & Hamilton, 2013; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). At this stage we had to sort through the
categories and focus our analysis for several reasons. First, some informants mentioned personal
factors, such as the fact that they were parents or had experienced health issues, to explain why
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they were aware of some policies such as childcare centers and health prevention initiatives. We
did not however have sufficient information regarding personal factors because Pharm1 had
formally requested us to not ask personal questions and therefore we were not able to prompt
respondents in that regard. We thus decided to focus on work-related factors.
Then we used our knowledge of the literature to classify and reduce the categories that we
had retained, in an axial coding approach, to generate our own second-order categories (Gioia,
Corley & Hamilton, 2013; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). It is in this second step that the concept of
the digital divide emerged as a new and important factor explaining inequalities of access.
Finally, we compared and contrasted the second-order categories and based on theoretical
proximity collapsed them into the three categories that we present in the following section: the
intra-organisational digital divide, the worksite size divide and the job type divide. We did not
need to hire an independent coder as we had reached agreement at this stage. To understand the
linkages between the three stratifications mechanisms and employees’ awareness of and access to
WLP, we applied Miles and Huberman's (1994) recommendation to first code interviews on the
horizontal level to understand the patterns and underlying logic of each interview separately, then
on the vertical level to compare and contrast sub-groups of the sample (employees working in the
headquarters versus smaller sites; employees working in manufacturing versus sales, and so
forth).
FINDINGS
In this section, we will first report our findings regarding awareness of and access to
WLP. Then, we will analyse the organisational stratification mechanisms that explain the limited
awareness of WLP as well as the inequalities of access to WLP. Lastly, we will analyse the
outcomes of organisational stratification on the efficiency of HR practices and on organisational
justice.
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Awareness of and access to WLP. In both companies, employee awareness of WLP was even
lower than what we expected given prior reports of implementation gaps of WLP. Fifty-three per
cent of Pharm1 and 57% of Pharm2 interviewees could cite only one or two policies, most often
the heavily advertised EAPs. Some were completely unaware of employer-driven WLP.
Although most employees mentioned the EAPs, they could not cite any precise service provided
by the programme, and asked questions such as “Does this include legal counselling?” or “Where
can I find a list of time management training?” Some stumbled upon the actual name of the
programme, and others asserted that a specific programme was not available to them, when in
fact it was.
Access was also relatively low as well: 41% and 39% of Pharm 1 and Pharm 2 employees
had never accessed any WLP. However, employees who did access WLP mentioned several
policies. At Pharm1, the most cited policies pertained to health, wellness and sports, followed by
psychological counselling, mostly for personal matters (depression, stress, marital issues,
children and elderly parents), then flexibility of start and end times and occasional telework. At
Pharm2, employees were most aware of flexitime, EAPs, sabbatical leave and telework. The most
accessed policies were flexitime, EAPs, preventive health programmes, sports club and
educational financial aid. Although a large part of the sales job is done through telework (e.g.
meetings with physicians, writing up of sales reports, and online meetings), sales employees still
identified telework as a WLP.
HR informants' explanations for the low level of awareness. We questioned HR informants
about this low level of awareness, which had surprised us given that the two multinationals put
considerable effort into communicating WLP through different channels such as their intranets,
leaflets, on-site benefits fairs and even packages posted to employees’ homes. HR informants
proposed two explanations. The first one is the sheer abundance of policies explained part of the
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gap in employee awareness. Due to the competition for talent and to isomorphic pressures in a
highly regulated industry, and thanks to relatively abundant financial resources, these two
multinationals offered very broad ranges of programmes. Our HR informants were not surprised
that employees simply did not find or invest the time to get acquainted in detail with the
programmes they could access, given the intense pace of work and the culture of urgency that
they explained were at the core of large firms in this competitive industry. The second reason
explaining low awareness and in particular imprecise knowledge of the policies was that WLP
changed frequently. HR-driven programmes changed both through external drivers (for instance
changes in the legal framework) and through internal drivers (such as a new management team,
new HR policies or cost reduction programmes).
Further analysis on awareness. Still intrigued by the low awareness of WLP, we went back to
the interviews and compared employees' awareness across the three countries. This analysis
enabled us to see that UK employees were slightly less aware of WLP than those in the US and in
Portugal, which helped us to identify yet another reason for low awareness. That reason is the
confusion that UK employees make between employer-driven and government-mandated WLP;
since they tend to confound both types of policies, they are less able to state which policies their
employer provides. In the UK, laws and regulations evolved quickly through the European Union
– perhaps too quickly for employees to keep track of what was employer-driven. State-initiated
programmes and discretionary employer-driven policies were particularly difficult to disentangle
for leave and childcare schemes. These are much easier to identify in both the US, where most
policies are employer-driven and in Portugal, where employees called employer-driven policies
“extra” – such as “extra financial aid for children”. Other than that, we did not observe different
patterns of awareness and access between the UK and the US, concurring with the finding that
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multinationals tend to manage their HR policies in ways that do not depend greatly on their host
countries (Brewster, Wood & Brookes, 2008).
Although these explanations give us insights into the low levels of awareness of and
access to WLP, they do not shed light on inequalities of access amongst categories of jobs. We
will now turn to the stratification mechanisms that explain inequalities of access to WLP.
Stratification mechanisms explaining inequalities of access amongst categories of jobs.
Inequalities of access were explained in our data by three emerging stratification mechanisms.
Each of these three factors revealed pragmatic mechanisms creating divides amongst categories
of jobs. The importance of pragmatic considerations that can impair the efficiency of HR policies
and therefore be detrimental to both employee well-being and organisational performance, is a
novel finding uncovered by this study. Specifically, the three stratification mechanisms that
emerged from the interviews were: (1) the intra-organisational digital divide that reduced non-
digital employees’ awareness of WLP, (2) the size of the worksite that employees worked at,
which determined access to a number of WLP and (3) job type which also conditioned access to
WLP.
The digital divide. We define the digital divide as the separation within the organisation between
jobs where employees have easy and frequent access to digital information and communications
technology and job where employees do not. We argue that the digital divide impairs both
awareness of and access to WLP, because the intranet is the major source of information on WLP
in both companies (awareness) and it is also a portal to some of the services, such as the EAPs or
registration for training sessions (access). HR in both companies used the front page of the
intranet to display visual reminders of WLP, for instance dates of forthcoming Lunch and learn
seminars or short descriptions of new work-life trainings. As explained by our interviewees,
registration via the intranet was also required for these seminars and trainings, and information on
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how to access services (e.g. how to apply for a childcare center sport, times when flu shots were
available) was posted on the intranet. In sum, the intranet was not the only communication
channel but it was the default channel, and employees who accessed WLP all mentioned the
intranet.
However, the intranet did not reach all employees. In pharmaceutical companies, R&D
employees working in laboratories and field-based account managers, as well as many
manufacturing employees, do not easily access the intranet when working. This means that,
ironically, populations that are very important to engage and retain in the pharmaceutical industry
are the ones that the intranet misses. Here is how a manufacturing supervisor explains the digital
divide relating to employees on the floor:
“There are terminals that are set aside for that, and it’s just for general use: it’s not
someone’s work station … A lot of people on the production floor don’t realise some of the
things that they could go online and have access to, and I think there’s a lot of help there that the
company provides that’s going wasted.” (Male, Production, Manufacturing, Pharm 1).
The case of field sales employees explains this point particularly clearly, because of the
contrast between Pharm1 and Pharm2. At Pharm1, at the time of the interviews, sales employees
were well equipped, notably with portable computers. However, they did not have easy access to
corporate intranets because they did not often have a broadband internet connection while waiting
in car parks and waiting rooms for their appointments with physicians, and corporate intranets
were not designed for smartphone access. This quotation from a sales account manager at Pharm1
makes this point very clear:
“We seem to have gone very much towards the intranet. If you’re in the office, that’s
great, but for the field it completely misses us. People in the office, they’re on the internet all the
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time, they’re on broadband and they can download stuff really quickly, and they don’t really
understand that actually for the field people it’s a lot more difficult.” (Female, Sales
representative, Pharm 1).
Sales employees at Pharm1 could use their computer at home, but the additional step it
would have required meant that they were in fact not taking the time to browse corporate
intranets, as illustrated in the following quotation:
“We’re all so busy, the only time we can get onto the intranet is when we’re at home,
which isn’t that often and people forget it is there.” (Female, Sales representative, Pharm 1).
At Pharm2, however, sales employees in the field had access to and used broadband
internet connections and they often mentioned this as a key tool for their daily activities as well
as a way to stay connected with their families. Thus, the digital divide separating employees
working frequently on a computer with a broadband connection to the internet (e.g. HR, IT and
finance employees) from employees not working on computers (e.g. a large proportion of
employees in R&D labs and manufacturing) or lacking broadband connections (e.g. sales
employees at Pharm1) is an important explanation for the low awareness of WLP on the part of
employees holding “less digital” jobs, and therefore an explanation for inequalities of access
amongst the “digital” and the “less digital” jobholders.
The divide in worksite size. In both Pharm1 and Pharm2, work-life facilities and services were
primarily available at headquarters, revealing a divide between employees working there or at
larger worksites and those located at smaller worksites. The headquarters at Pharm1 offered on-
site and near-site childcare, gym, clinic/nurse, concierge, hairdresser and cashpoint facilities; the
headquarters at Pharm2 offered a sports club, cafeteria and health and beauty centre. Moreover,
Stratification of access to work-life policies
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services such as assistance with childcare and elderly care, laundry and grocery shopping were
organised in such a way that they were available only in limited geographical areas, typically
around the headquarters, where EAP providers were located.
As a result, facilities and services were much less available to employees working at
smaller worksites and to sales employees in the field who may visit headquarters only once a
month when attending meetings. A large section of the R&D, sales and manufacturing
populations were penalised due to the way these benefits were structurally set up. For instance, a
production supervisor at a manufacturing site explained that WLP were not a priority on these
smaller sites:
“We actually have a safety manager but we don’t have the nurse; we don’t have an
employee health station or office. That was one of our headcount reductions.” (Male, Production
supervisor, Manufacturing, Pharm 1).
This triggered feelings of unfairness in the availability of these benefits that were assessed
by field employees as “extra benefits for those at the headquarters”.
“I only used the health and beauty programme once. I was so tired after a meeting that I
went for a massage session. It was fantastic but you can only do it if you’re there. I wish that
agreements with health centres around the country were made so we, the field force, could also
benefit.” (Male, Sales Force Team Leader, Pharm 2)
Feelings of unfairness were particularly strong regarding services provided in case of
need, such as childcare or elderly care. In these cases, the majority of sales employees in the field
in Pharm1 and Pharm2 did not believe it would be available to them if they needed it.
Stratification of access to work-life policies
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“You can only have their services if you’re there – do you think if I need some additional
help with my sick kid they will drive half of the country to help me?” (Female, Sales Force,
Pharm 2)
Job types. A third divide emerged: employees in certain job types had restricted access to some
of the WLP. First, a number of jobs required on-site presence, thus preventing access to
telework. These jobs were found in our sample in all four business units: for instance, employees
working with animals in R&D laboratories were required to work on site so as to be able to care
for the animals. Another example in our sample was an industrial design engineer who worked
with costly printing equipment that was only available on his worksite. Other jobs in which
telework was also not accessible involved facilities maintenance where immediate attendance to
support requests were expected, and the coordination of manufacturing shifts for which meetings
had to be held. This last case is well explained by a manufacturing employee:
“In filling and packing they have one meeting at 8.30 and you’ve got to be there, so you
cannot be flexible there ... Because it’s a 24-hour site, if they have issues at night, they have a
morning meeting to discuss issues at night time.” (Male, New Product Introduction,
Manufacturing, Pharm 1).
Access to telework was the most obvious restriction but not the only one. In jobs such as
manufacturing, the way in which production was set up made it difficult for floor employees to
be available for training when it was scheduled (e.g. those working the night shift). In many jobs
actually, such as in customer service jobs, making time for work-life training took extra effort to
organise work across shifts so that call center employees could attend the training without hurting
service quality. In fact, interviewees gave a myriad of examples and each job seemed to have
Stratification of access to work-life policies
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particularities that prevented access to one or several WLP. For instance, some but not all sales
positions in the U.S. at Pharm 1 were organised across vast territories because these territories
were less populated than others. The mere size of the territory prevented job-sharing
arrangements, as explained by this HR facilitator:
“If you talked about a state that is as sparsely populated as Wyoming, you have one sales
rep that has a territory where it takes them several hours to drive from doctor to doctor. So if you
have got three people in that territory, what are the odds that one of those three would be willing
to job-share with you?” (Male, HR facilitator, Pharm 1).
Intersections of digital access, location and job type stratifications. The three stratification
mechanisms revealed by our analysis – the digital, worksite size and job type divides – existed
either separately or in combinations of two (as in the case of the sales account manager facing the
digital divide and having a vast territory to cover), or even in combinations of three (as in the
case of a building maintenance officer of a small manufacturing site, whose job is less digital, is
based on a small worksite, and requires the employee’s presence there). These three stratification
mechanisms always contributed to preventing employees from receiving or collecting
information, thus lowering their awareness of the WLP provided by their employer and
restricting their likelihood of accessing these. This lowered awareness and access, in turn, had
consequences for the efficiency of HR practices and for organizational justice, which we will
now analyse.
Outcomes of organisational stratification. When we presented our findings to HR officers at
Pharm1 and Pharm2, they expressed concerns. Employees, too, mentioned negative outcomes of
the unequal access to WLP. While HR primarily focused on the efficiency of HR practices,
employees were mostly concerned with organisational justice.
Stratification of access to work-life policies
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Organisational stratification and the efficiency of HR practices. Our findings showed that R&D
and sales jobs were the categories of jobs in which employees had lower awareness of and access
to WLP. Our HR informants explained to us that there was no deliberate intent on their part to
reduce access for employees in R&D and sales, quite the opposite in fact, since R&D and sales
employees are crucial populations to attract, engage and retain in the pharmaceutical industry.
They explained that the pharmaceutical industry is a high-risk industry, characterised by intense
competition for drug discovery, market share and talent. As is also confirmed in the literature,
two capabilities are critical: technical knowledge and market knowledge (Bruni & Verona, 2009).
Highly effective sales representatives are an invaluable asset, since general practitioners have
very limited time to hear them out (Becker & Lillemark, 2006).
Our HR informants were therefore very concerned by our findings. They had prior
understanding that the intranet was not the best communication channel for all populations and
they had already taken steps to organise on-site fairs and to send materials to employees’ homes.
What our findings pointed to was that these actions clearly had not fully succeeded in filling the
awareness and access gap. Thus, it was clear that the organisational stratification at play in these
multinationals impaired the companies’ strategic intent to reach out to all groups of employees.
Organisational stratification and organisational justice. In our samples, resentment and
subsequent backlash seemed apparent for employees in the field or working on smaller worksites.
Feelings of unfairness particularly emerged when employees compared themselves with their
peers at headquarters. In addition to our observations, the uneven distribution of both awareness
and access suggests that HR partly fails to meet the support needs of some groups of employees,
such as low-level workers in manufacturing sites.
DISCUSSION
Stratification of access to work-life policies
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This research took an organisational stratification approach to examine the mechanisms
shaping employee awareness of and access to organisational work-life policies (WLP). Based on
98 employee interviews in two pharmaceutical multinationals in the US, the UK and Portugal, we
found relatively low levels of awareness and access. There were clear inequalities amongst
categories of jobs, with some jobholders (such as headquarters employees in support functions)
demonstrating greater awareness of WLP and greater access to them than others (such as sales
managers in the field, laboratory technicians and manufacturing employees on the floor).
The sheer abundance of WLP, the changing nature of WLP and the confusion with
government-mandated policies in the UK undermined employees’ awareness of and access to
WLP. In addition, three stratification mechanisms stemming from three structural factors were
identified: the intra-organisational digital divide that impaired awareness of WLP, and the
worksite size and the job type divides that conditioned access to certain policies. These divides
clearly explained whether employees in given business units, worksites or jobs were likely to be
aware of and to access WLP. The “more digital” jobholders (those who used a computer as part
of their daily job and had a broadband internet connection) were more aware of WLP than the
“less digital” jobholders (who typically worked in manufacturing settings, R&D labs or on the
road, visiting doctors). Employees whose jobs were located at headquarters or larger worksites
knew more about WLP and accessed them more, as did employees in jobs that were compatible
with flexible hours and/or telework. The three stratification mechanisms were often found in
combination, in particular with manufacturing, sales and R&D jobholders who therefore had
narrower access to WLP than support functions employees located at headquarters.
Theoretical and social implications. Our study extends the organisational stratification theory
carved out by Lambert and Haley-Locke (2004) and Lambert and Waxman (2005). It suggests
that the organisational stratification theory is a robust framework to explain the distribution of
Stratification of access to work-life policies
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access to WLP, beyond the opportunities for WLB that were the original focus of this stream of
research. Ryan and Kossek (2008) mentioned that infrequent access to the company’s website
and emails reduced knowledge of the policies. However, this study is to the best of our
knowledge the first to identify the intra-organisational digital divide as a major stratification
mechanism impairing employees’ awareness of WLP, and the first to analyse these three intra-
organisational divides stemming from categories of jobs in a systematic way. This finding is
particularly noteworthy, in a context where intra-organisational divides have been much less
researched than individual and inter-organisational divides (Dewan & Riggins, 2005). The digital
divide may contribute to explaining why the business case for WLP is still uncertain despite
abundant research (Kelly et al., 2008). This study focused on WLP, yet organisational
stratification mechanisms may impair the fairness and the efficiency of other organisational
rewards that require that employees spend some time collecting information or registering via the
intranet, or travel to certain sites; an example of such a practice would be training. Organisational
stratification mechanisms might thus moderate the relationship between the provision of HR
practices and employee and organisational outcomes.
A second contribution of our study regards work-life literature and lies in integrating and
extending work on inequalities of access to WLP amongst employees. While different streams of
prior research identified three sets of factors that may promote or hinder access to WLP - socio-
demographic factors, employment related factors and cultural factors, and while some research
had identified the relationship between job type and access to WLP, our study helps to
conceptualize job type, worksite size and digital divide as a fourth set of factors, i.e. job related
factors, Thus, it provides an integrated framework on sources of inequalities of access to WLP, as
illustrated in Figure 1.
== Insert Figure 1 about here ==
Stratification of access to work-life policies
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While the focus of our research was job related factors, it is likely that the four sets of factors
may interact and combine with one another, such that several layers of potential sources of
inequalities may accumulate. This has important theoretical implications that need to be
considered and tested in future work-life research. In particular, while low-level workers are
under-privileged compared to managers and professionals (Golden, 2001; Lambert & Waxman,
2005; Swanberg et al., 2005), there are likely disparities amongst low-level workers, for instance
between those whose job is located at headquarters and those who work on smaller worksites.
Likewise, there are likely disparities amongst women, between those who hold jobs where part-
time work is feasible and those who do not, and amongst parents, between those who access on-
site day-care centres and those who do not.
Therefore, our study points to a potential intersection of inequalities produced by the
combination of several stratification mechanisms at the social and the organisational levels. Our
study thus suggests that an intersectional approach might help us to understand the distribution of
organisational rewards, much as the intersectional approach delivers new insight in the field of
diversity (Ozbilgin et al., 2011).
Managerial implications. Prior studies pointed out that WLP often fail to meet the needs of
some categories of employees such as low-level workers in manufacturing sites (Di Renzo et al.,
2011). In order to generate an organisational climate that effectively supports employees' work-
life needs, attention must be given to the structures that influence their implementation. As
illustrated the implementation of WLP can divide employees and form perceptions of preferential
treatment that can arouse negative images about them.
To mitigate the risks of creating backlashes and impairing the effectiveness of WLP,
practitioners need to address the gaps induced by working frequently on a computer with
broadband access to the internet and working at a large worksite. Measuring employees’
Stratification of access to work-life policies
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awareness of and access to WLP with a focus on the digital divide, on worksite size, and on type
of job would enable HR practitioners to be more attuned to their diverse workforce and to better
promote existing policies. While HR may not be able to provide digital access to all employees or
to offer all WLP in all worksites for all jobs, identifying the gaps is a first step towards clarifying
with their employees how they cope for these. Actions may include sending extra information via
mail and organizing special events for specific populations that do not work often on computers.
Since some jobs are intrinsically not conducive to specific types of WLP such as telework for
instance, it is important that organisations consider ways to increase access to WLP across the
occupational spectrum. This may in particular imply offering other forms of support on smaller
worksites or for jobs that cannot be flexible in terms of time and space.
Second, HR practitioners may need to fine-tune communication according to business
units and according to the different types of stakeholders they are addressing. It has been argued
that organisations' internal communication often treats employees as "a uni-dimensional single
public” (Welch & Jackson, 2007: 183) instead of differentiating the messages and channels.
Quality of communication has already been identified as a serious issue for WLP (Ryan &
Kossek, 2008). As Hargie and Tourish (2004) state there is often a communication mismatch
between senior managers and employees concerning workplace policies: employees complain
that they have not been informed of main corporate topics, while managers claim that they have
devoted a great deal of time in educating employees about them. With the growing and extensive
use of electronic communications, employees are faced with loads of messages. Such an
information load can act against the effective functioning of organisations (Conrad & Haynes,
2000). It may be that due to communication overload, employees working in high-speed work
environments such as the multinationals in our sample learn to “tune out” information as it comes
in, so that they can get their jobs done. Therefore, it is very important to raise managers'
Stratification of access to work-life policies
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awareness of the policies and of the benefits of knowing them well: knowledgeable managers feel
more confident sharing information about WLP with their employees either along with other
regular work information, or when employees reach out to them for support. In turn, employees
feel more confident using the policies because they are aware of them, know whether they can
access them, and know that their manager supports use.
Lastly, HR officers should strive to simplify the range of WLP provided. Because the
sheer abundance of programmes may be detrimental, it should be clear which policies are
available to whom and at what time. Giving managers and employees a voice in determining
which policies are more valued could help customise WLP and thus achieve a better fit between
these policies and employees’ needs.
Limitations and future research. This study was based on self-reports; while qualitative self-
reports meet our objectives of capturing awareness, perceptions that one has access to the policies
and reasons that one identified for not having access, future research could benefit from
designing objective ways of assessing who does not have access to policies. In addition, this
study focused on two multinationals, which limits generalizability. However, the fact that
findings were consistent across the two studies despite the authors having conducted them
separately tends to signal reasonable generalizability for large organisations characterised by
differences in intranet access, worksite size and job types. Future research would benefit from
replicating our results via a large cross-industry survey. Lastly, future research combining
different sources of inequities such as job categories, socio-demographic factors and
organisational support would shed light on the intersection of these factors.
Overall, the results of this study suggest that pragmatic rather than HR-driven organisational
stratification mechanisms shape employees’ awareness of and access to WLP. Further
Stratification of access to work-life policies
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investigations of these stratifications mechanisms are critical to addressing inequalities of access
and to bridging implementation gaps.
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Table 1. Sample description
Pharm1 Pharm2
N 73 25
Average age and range 41 26 to 59 34 26 to 55
Average tenure and range 12 1 to 36 9 3 to 13
Female 53.4% 40%
Care-givers 52% 28%
Supervisors 57.5% 16%
Country
UK 56%
US 44%
Portugal 100%
Worksite size
Headquarters 37%
Small and medium worksites 49%
Field-based 13% 100%
Business units
R&D 23%
Manufacturing 25%
Sales 14% 100%
Support functions 38%
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Figure 1: Sources of unequal awareness and access to work-life policies: A theoretical integration
Socio-demographics factors
• Age
• Gender
• Race
• Social class
Employment-related factors
• Job level
• Employment status
• Tenure in the organization
Job related factors
• Digital divide
• Worksite size
• Job type
Culture related factors
• Family-supportive
organizational culture
• Supervisor support
• Workgroup support
Sources of unequal awareness and access to work-life policies:
A theoretical integration
Awareness of and
access to
work-life polciies