Working from home: do formal or informal telework arrangements provide better work–family outcomes?

Telework arrangements include a suite of options that workplaces provide to meet the growing demand for greater work flexibility and as a strategy to promote work-family balance. However, there has been minimal research comparing formal versus informal telework arrangements, and how they might support employees to manage the competing demands of work and family life. In this paper, we examine how formal and informal telework arrangements impact on public sector employees' job satisfaction, time spent on childcare, and satisfaction with the distribution of childcare tasks. We use survey data from public service employees who had access to telework entitlements in Queensland, Australia (n=856). Our analyses showed that formal and informal telework arrangements provide different outcomes to employed women and men with children, particularly in the areas of job satisfaction and satisfaction with the distribution of childcare tasks. These distinctions suggest that it is important for workplaces to consider how the type of telework arrangement offered can affect how successfully and equitably work-family outcomes are achieved.