When would creative R&D employees like to work?

Purpose: This paper aims to identify which types of creative R&D employees prefer which daily and weekly working schedules.

Design/methodology/approach: This paper builds on an original repeated survey of creative R&D employees from Estonia and presents multinomial logit regression estimates based on a sample of 153 individuals from 11 entities.

Findings: The probability of women preferring their weekly work to be concentrated in three to four days is 20 percentage points higher than in men, and the case is similar for less-educated creative R&D employees. The more educated prefer the standard five-day working week. Men have a stronger preference for their week of work to be dispersed over six to seven days. Sleep patterns appear to relate to working time preferences as morning-type individuals have a stronger preference for a working day with fixed start and end times. Those who sleep 7 h or more per day prefer the standard five-day working week more, while employees who sleep less than 7 h favour a working week of six to seven days. Employees who desire more creativity intensity at work have a stronger preference for irregular daily working hours, as do those with poorer general health.

Originality/value: The results indicate that individual characteristics have a significant impact on the preferences for working time arrangements. Similar working time regulations for all employees appear outdated, therefore, and may make work inefficient and harm individual well-being, at least for creative R&D employees.