Download Work-Life Balance

Work-Life Balance:
An Eye on the Future
Richard A. MacKinnon CPsychol CSci AFBPsS, Talent Q
Overview
 First Principles: What is Work? What is Family? What is Balance?
 Development of the Work-Life Balance concept
 Relevance of Work-life Balance
 European Work-life Balance
 Contemporary Risk Factors in the workplace
 Looking to the Future
First Principles
A Cynical View…
The Issue of Language
 Terminology has evolved as the research focus has developed
 This has resulted in some confusing and inaccurate
terminology in professional and public literature.
 Conflating terms such as:
 Work-life balance
 Work-family balance
 Work-family conflict
 Interference, Spillover, etc. etc.
The Issue of Language
 Ozbilgin et al’s (2010) critique of the positivist framework of
previous research point to its limited scope of what “family” and
“work” represent. They highlight these as “blind spots” in worklife research.
 Geurts and Demerouti (2003) point out that there is little
agreement as to what constitutes “work” and “non-work”.
 The contemporary work domain is not as distinct from the nonwork domain, either spatially or temporally. These previously
distinct domains and roles have become increasingly
interrelated.
What is Work?
 Traditional definitions of “work” involve reference to structured,
paid employment (e.g. Warr, 2002).
 However, such references exclude effort-related activity that is
done outside of formal employment.
 An example here would be the selection of domestic chores
that are done in most households on a weekly basis (e.g.
cleaning, gardening).
 What about unpaid, volunteering activities?
 Psychological versus Physical work?
What is Work?
 Geurts and Demerouti (2003) point out that there is little
agreement as to what constitutes “work” and “non-work”.
 The contemporary work domain is not as distinct from the nonwork domain, either spatially or temporally.
 These previously distinct domains and roles have become
increasingly interrelated.
What is “Family”?
 Much of the existing literature uses a narrow and overly
traditional definition of “family”.
 This excludes those individuals for whom home life does not
conform to the traditional concept of nuclear family (i.e. a cohabiting, married man and women with children).
 For example: single-parent families, same-sex relationships
(whether formally state-recognised or not; whether involving
the raising of children or not), childless couples and, of course,
single people without any caring responsibilities whatsoever.
 Places emphasis on home life, to the exclusion of life outside
of work and the home (e.g. recreation, development, social).
What is Balance?
 The term “balance” is also problematic
 “Balance” suggests a 50/50 split between work and home life,
a ratio that may not suit everyone
 Suggests that balance between the two domains is possible,
even desirable.
 Lewis (2003) points to work-life integration: A dynamic and
ongoing process
 Moen and Hernandez (2009): “balance” places the focus on
the individual’s challenges, rather than on societal or
organisational issues which place the individual in an
undesirable position in the first place.
Development of the Concept
From there to here: Women at Work
 Interest in WLB really began in the 1960s
 Growth of service sector
 Social liberalisation
 A focus on the impact of women’s employment on the home
domain
 Balancing the demands of work and home
 Maintaining dual responsibilities
 No change to the traditional division of labour in the home
 Women moving into jobs created by – and for – men.
From there to here: Women at Work
 1970s – growth in provision of childcare facilities
 1980s – growth in the Employee Assistance Programme
 1990s – WLB as a critical factor for job-seekers (of both
genders)
 A parallel development of the legislation that protects women
at work
The Contemporary European Workplace
Three factors combine to increase the risk to employees:
 The demographic make-up of the modern workforce in Europe
 Changes to the nature of work itself
 The impact of information technology
Demographics
 More dual-income couples
 More people caring for elder relatives
 The ‘sandwich’ generation
 An ageing workforce
 A more diverse workforce
Changes to the Nature of Work
 The work domain changing significantly
 Less temporally static
 Less geographically static
 The knowledge economy
 Increased flexibility for some employees
 BUT: don’t forget more traditional roles
The Impact of Information Technology
 Advancements in communications technology
 Phones, Blackberrys, laptops
 More work conducted “on the move” and at home
 Technology as a “double-edged sword”
 We’re not designed to be “always on”
 Much of this technology is not designed for constant
use
The Relevance of Work-life Balance
Relevance of Work-Life Balance
National
Organisational
Individual
• Culture
• Economy
• Culture
• Job Design
•
•
•
•
Gender
Sexual Orientation
Caring Responsibilities
Relationship Status
The Individual Level
 Work is an important determinant of health and wellbeing.
 Research into occupational stress has long highlighted the interface
between work and home as a potential stressor (e.g. Karasek, 1979;
Karasek, 1998; Godin, 2003; Siegrist, 2001).
 Dissatisfaction with, and imbalance between, work and personal demands
have been implicated in the pathology of several negative outcomes at the
individual level.
The Individual Level
 MacEwan and Barling (1994) demonstrated the link between
increased imbalance and increased risk of anxiety and depression
 Joyce et al (2010) illustrated that flexible working alternatives (e.g.
self-scheduling) are associated with improvements in physical health
(e.g. lowered blood pressure, improved sleep quality) and mental
health (e.g. reduced psychological stress).
 Frone (2000) found that both work-to-family and family-to-work conflict
were:
“...positively related to having a mood, anxiety, and substance
dependence disorder. Depending on the type of work-family conflict
and type of disorder, employees who reported experiencing workfamily conflict often were 1.99-29.66 times more likely than were
employees who reported no work-family conflict to experience a
clinically significant mental health problem.”
The Organisational Level
 Organisational Culture dictates what is acceptable
 “How we do things here”
 Line Managers interpret and deploy policy
 Leaders are models for all other managers
 There will always be constraints on flexibility
 Organisational innovation required
 Organisational and employee perspectives not always aligned
The Organisational Level
 “Work-to-family conflict” has been identified as a cause of decreased
job satisfaction (Rice et al, 1992) and subjective career success
(Peluchette, 1993).
 Employees’ organisational commitment has been found to increase
with work-to- family conflict (e.g. Netemeyer et al, 1996).
 Greenhaus et al (1997) found that increased work-to-family conflict
negatively impacted organisational turnover (i.e. it increased).
 Job performance can also be negatively impacted by work-to-family
conflict (e.g. Frone, Yardley and Markel, 1997).
Impact at the National Level
 Very difficult to measure accurately
 £billions lost in productivity due to stress in the UK
 Cause of stress not consistently measured
 Aside from productivity, impact on health services
 Exit of key (female) talent from workforce
So what does “European” WLB look like?
 Eurofound (2010) identified large differences across EU and
accession states in terms of:
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Provision of social welfare
Attitudes to working mothers
Proportion of women in the workforce
Size of the public sector
Gender-based division of labour in the home
Reported average weekly working hours
Perceived job security
Looking to the Future
Methodological Issues
 WLB research has been criticised for some common
methodological shortcomings (e.g. Casper et al, 2007,
Schultheiss, 2006, Ozbilgin et al, 2010).
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Over-reliance on cross-section, quantitative methodology
The use of poor measures
A uni-directional focus
Un-representative participant groups
A focus on negative outcomes
Adopting an Ecological Systems approach
 Grzywacz and Marks (2000) critiqued earlier
conceptualisations of the links between work and home as
being “deterministic”.
 They turned to Ecological Systems theory, advanced by
developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner:
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Micro-system
Meso-system
Exo-system
Macro-system
National
Organisational
Individual
• Culture
• Economy
• Culture
• Job Design
•
•
•
•
Gender
Sexual Orientation
Caring Responsibilities
Relationship Status
Domain-Interaction approaches
 Emphasises interaction between work and non-work domains
and considers the relationships between domains from a bidirectional perspective (work can influence home as well as
vice versa).
 Simultaneously considers how the domains can impact each
other positively as well as negatively.
 Moves away from a simplistic uni-directional (usually work-tohome) focus, which pre-supposes domain conflict.
Domain-Interaction approaches
 The model proposes four potential interactions:
 Negative work-to-home (NWHI)
 Positive work-to-home (PWHI)
 Negative home-to-work (NHWI)
 Positive home-to- work (PHWI).
 It does not pre-suppose either the direction or the nature of the
interaction
Pos.
Work
Neg.
Work
Pos.
Home
Neg.
Home
WorkLife
Balance
A Need to Accommodate Diversity
 More women at work
 More older employees
 Diverse families / relationships / caring responsibilities
 Move beyond the constraints of legislation
 The ‘Singles-Friendly’ Work Culture
Summary
 It’s not really about ‘Balance’
 An Ecological Systems Perspective provides us with a more holistic
view of the work-life balance concept.
 The role of organisational culture is key when considering work-life
balance.
 Employers should exhibit increased sensitivity to the diversity issues
related to WLB