The proposal is for the collection of new comparative and representative survey data on the relationship between operating hours and working time management and their consequences for employment in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. Operating hours and working time management are crucial for economic competitiveness and organisational performance and closely linked to job security and creation and thus social welfare as well, which may affect women and men differently.
However salient these issues are today in the European Union and with steeper competition in a global economy, there is a great lack of information. A standardized enterprise survey would collect data for all sectors of the economy and all firm sizes and be designed to serve as a prototype survey in order to have the option of building the knowledge base to include all EU countries in future research.