Personal and Work-Life Balance 2021 - Main Results

This publication “Personal and Work-Life Balance – Main results“ is the first of a series of three publications presenting the results of the Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey. The Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey collects information on how we balance the different aspects of our lives, including work and our personal life.

The data in this publication was collected as part of the Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey which was carried out for the first time in the third quarter (July to September) of 2021. The results of the survey will be published as a series of three publications which will be published during the month of April on three consecutive weeks. The first of these publications, published today, presents the main results of the survey but is a subset of the broader data collected. The next publication will concentrate on “Job and Life Satisfaction and Barriers to Work” which will be published on 19^th April. This publication will cover employees’ job satisfaction and how this impacts on their work-life balance and well-being. Following this, the publication on “Remote Working” will be published on 26^th April and will cover the take-up by employees of remote working arrangements during the pandemic, and their remote working since the pandemic. Again, this last publication is a subset of the main data collection for the Personal and Work-Life Balance Survey.

This publication today covers the flexibility employees have in work, availability of paid and unpaid leave in employment, and barriers to taking leave or availing of flexible work arrangements. The publication also looks at employees’ awareness of their entitlements at work.

• Over one in five (22.4%) employees did not take any annual leave in the 12 months prior to interview. Of the four in five (77.6%) who took annual leave, full-time workers in larger organisations (100 people or more) were more likely to do so – 92.4% compared with 88.4% of part-time staff in similar sized organisations. See Table 2.1.
• The length of service with your current employer also impacts on workers’ likelihood to take annual leave. For workers with long service of 19 years or more, nearly nine in ten (88.7%) full-time employees took annual leave in the previous 12 months, compared with just eight in ten (80%) of their part-time equivalents. See Table 2.1.
• Part-time workers with less service are more likely to take unpaid sick leave – over one in ten (11.8%) with 5 to 10 years’ service took unpaid sick leave, compared to one in twenty (5.0%) of their full-time equivalents. See Table 2.1.
• Of the 7% of employees who had been refused permission to take leave in the previous two years, by far the most common type of leave refused was annual leave. See Tables 2.5 and 2.6.
• One in six (16.7%) employees availed of flexible hours in the 12 months prior to interview. Of workers with children who had worked flexible hours, over one third (34.8%) availed of flexible hours for almost all of the previous four weeks (17 days or more), compared with just 14.1% of workers with no children. See Tables 3.1 and 3.4.
• Part-time workers in firms with 100 people or more were almost twice as likely to encounter barriers to taking unpaid leave - over four in ten (40.4%), compared to just over one in five (21.9%) of their full-time equivalents. See Table 4.1.
• Of workers who had experienced barriers to taking paid leave, the most common reason was lack of staff to cover work (63.8%). This was particularly so in small firms (less than 20 people) where nearly seven in ten (68.8%) of those experiencing barriers to taking leave gave this reason. See Table 4.3.
• For workers with children who cited barriers to taking paid leave, one in eight (12.7%) had to keep their leave for school holidays while one in fourteen (7.3%) needed to keep it in case their children got sick. See Table 4.3.
• The majority (over 90%) of workers were aware of their entitlements to breaks at work. There was less awareness of the entitlement to have 11 consecutive hours of rest in each period of 24 hours (76.2% awareness) and breastfeeding/lactation breaks (67.6% awareness). See Table 5.1.

For further information see tables on PxStat