‘Bringing the Badge home’: exploring the relationship between role overload, work-family conflict, and stress in police officers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing from work-life theory and the police literature, this research explores police officers’ work-life challenges by: (1) examining the relationship between role demands (at work, at home) and work-life conflict, (2) investigating the relationship between work-life conflict and stress, (3) determining the extent to which a family-friendly organisational culture moderates the relationship between work-family demands and work-life conflict, and (4) exploring the impact of gender on these relationships. Samples of 616 male and 264 female Canadian police officers are used to test eight hypotheses. Partial Least Squares (PLS) Multi-Group Analysis (MGA) was used to test these hypotheses. Consistent with broader work-life research, the analysis reveals that role demands positively relate to work-life conflict for both male and female officers. Results also highlight two unexpected findings: the positive relationship between role demands (at work, at home) and work-life conflict is stronger for male officers with high perceptions of family-friendly organisational culture than male officers with low perceptions of family-friendly organisational culture. This study highlights the complexity of work-life challenges for men and women in a male-dominated organisation (i.e. police). In doing so, this study emphasises organisational context to explain findings that challenge conventional work-life research, which has been predominantly conducted in non-police organisations.