Autonomy at work is generally regarded as a good thing with people typically responding well when they’re given control over how, when, and where they work. Research from Cornell reminds us, however, that variable work schedules can be detrimental to performance.

The study found that when managers rely on variable work schedules, higher employee turnover is common as it can result in a fall in employees’ health, work-life balance, and even job security. What’s more, this was found to be especially so during the Covid pandemic when health and financial distress were especially pronounced.

“Tension between employers’ need for flexibility and employees’ need for predictability raises the question of whether or how the use of variable scheduling affects business outcomes,” the author explains.

Flexible working

While most explorations of autonomy have focused on workers being in control, the research instead focused on those times when employers demand flexibility in order to respond to changing market conditions. The focus of the study was a fast-food restaurant chain in the US.

“Research in the last decade has built a convincing theoretical and empirical record that workers in units with variable work schedules suffer from unstable earnings, negative mental and physical health outcomes, and work-life conflicts,” the author continues.

These factors tend to result to a high turnover of staff, with this especially so during the pandemic as employees were also facing high levels of stress and the work-life conflicts, financial insecurity, and generally lower wellbeing from variable schedules added to this stress.

High costs

The paper shows that this higher turnover of staff comes with extremely high costs even at the best of times, but during the pandemic it was extremely damaging due to the rapidly changing market and regulatory environment.

While traditional management theory suggests that flexible staffing can be a valuable hedge against uncertainty in both demand and volume, the paper reminds us that this can place a considerable toll on the workforce and result in a much higher loss of talent due to the high turnover. As a result, it might lead to short-term solutions to market volatility but produce bigger problems down the road.

“The findings suggest that managers need to rethink the implication of the environmental disruption (COVID-19 in this study) with respect to the use of certain HR practices,” the author concludes. “In particular, the loss of human capital resulting from the use of flexible staffing practices may be a roadblock for firms seeking to bounce back from adversity.”