Flexible working-time arrangements are advantageous for both employers and employees a recent European survey has found. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, a Dublin-based EU agency, conducted research into working time and work-life balance, interviewing employees and managers in 21,000 workplaces across Europe. Reported benefits of flexi-time arrangements included a higher degree of job satisfaction (EU average 63 percent), better adaptation of working hours to the workload (EU 55 percent) and lower absenteeism (EU 26 percent)..

While UK private and public organisations were shown to be first-rate in terms of offering flexible working-time arrangements (56 percent) ranking them fourth in Europe behind Latvia, Sweden and Finland, the arrangements themselves were shown to be not as flexible, nor as effective as those in the rest of Europe. In comparison to the rest of Europe, the UK reported consistently lower averages on flexi-time benefits. The EU survey was carried out in the 15 old Member States of the European Union (EU15) and in six of the new Member States: the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia.