Overview

The Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) survey measures how work intersects with other life activities, as seen by a randomly selected representative group of 2,690 working Australians. Alongside its usual assessment of work-life interference in Australia, the 2014 AWALI survey offers new insights on four particular themes: 

• How employee requests for flexibility have changed since immediately prior to and four years subsequent to the Fair Work Act 2009 created new rights to request flexibility for some workers;
• Who works on Saturdays, Sundays and weekends, and how unsocial working times (weekends, evenings/nights) affect work-life outcomes;
• The work-life outcomes of carers of elders or a person with a chronic illness or disability;
• Patterns of flourishing (positive mental health) in the Australian workforce, and associations with social and employment factors.

AWALI 2014 also included questions on workers who currently receive penalty rates for working non-standard hours and wellbeing/thriving, and a longitudinal sample of participants re-contacted from 2012. These findings will be reported in other publications from the Centre for Work + Life