Work-nonwork Balance Research Articles

How Effective Are Work-Life Balance Policies? The Importance of Inclusion

In this manuscript we review research on the effectiveness of work-life balance (WLB) policies in improving employee and organizational outcomes. We find that while WLB policies are often implemented with good intentions, their effects are generally small or inconsistent. We identify eight barriers to policy inclusivity that we theorize are linked to reduced effectiveness—a narrow definition of family, focusing on work-family rather than work-nonwork balance, low policy awareness, the practical constraints of access, overlooking vulnerable workers, the nature of the job, supervisor attitudes and behaviors, and unsupportive organizational cultures—and make recommendations for addressing these barriers. We also highlight the importance of considering individual differences and cultural contexts when implementing WLB policies. We conclude by proposing future research directions, such as examining coworker support and the impact of national culture on policy effectiveness.

“A good night’s sleep!” How do remote workers juggle work and family during lockdown? Some answers from a French mixed-methods study

This study, based primarily on job demands–resources model in the context of recovery, uses a mixed methods approach to examine the role that some work and family demands and boundary management tactics play in explaining work-nonwork balance and some related constructs, while also accounting for gender inequalities. The research involved 553 remote workers during the first lockdown in France caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The results confirmed that a high number of work-related emails or phone calls outside of working hours and the constant presence of children at home were risk factors; conversely, good supervisor support was positively related to recovery experiences and negatively related to work-family conflict and insomnia. Women reported higher levels of insomnia symptoms and had more difficulty disengaging from work and restoring their energy than men. The use of effective tactics– planning, having your own space to work, coordinating with your partner - was made more difficult by workload, use of technology, demands at home, the size of the home and, for women, likely gender inequalities.

Managing boundaries for well-being: a study of work-nonwork balance crafting during the COVID-19 pandemic

AbstractIn the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the boundaries between the work and nonwork domain have rapidly blurred, presenting employees with new challenges and potentially heightening interference of the work with the nonwork domain (work-home interference, WHI) and vice versa (home-work interference, HWI). To counteract these interferences, employees can apply work-nonwork balance crafting (WNBC), referring to proactive efforts for balancing both life domains by targeting the permeability of the boundary between them. Employees may focus their crafting on the boundary toward the work domain (WNBC-work) or the non-work domain (WNBC-nonwork), e.g., shielding each domain from negative spillover from the other. This study aims to investigate the longitudinal associations of WNBC with health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that individuals who exhibited more such crafting behaviors at the onset of the pandemic would experience higher mental well-being and work engagement at later points in the COVID-19 pandemic, mediated by lower WHI and HWI. We surveyed N = 2,171 German-speaking employees from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland at three time points during 2020. Structural equation model results indicate that only WNBC-work is longitudinally negatively associated with reduced HWI and positively associated with mental well-being and work engagement. Further, in our sample, only HWI is longitudinally associated with lower mental well-being. No indirect effect reaches significance. Our results underline the importance of WNBC in the work domain in the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Future research should explore the nature of the direct links between WNBC and mental well-being and work engagement and consider alternative mediating processes, such as gain spirals. Lastly, our study underscores that supporting employees in crafting boundaries for well-being can be crucial, particularly during times of crisis.

Working from home during COVID-19: boundary management tactics and energy resources management strategies reported by public service employees in a qualitative study

BackgroundIncreased working from home has imposed new challenges on public service employees, while also granting opportunities for job crafting. Grounding on the Job Demands-Resources model and Hobfoll’s Conservation of Resources theory this exploratory research aims to investigate the work-nonwork balance of employees one and a half years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the research focus lies on employees’ job crafting strategies to optimize their working from home experience concerning boundary management and energy resource management.MethodsTwelve semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with public service employees from different sectors in Germany. The experiences were content analyzed using the software MaxQDA and inductive and deductive categories were derived.ResultsBoundary management comprised different strategies such as communicative (e.g., negotiating work time), physical (e.g., going to the garden), temporal (e.g., logging off in between the work day) and behavioral (e.g., prioritizing tasks) strategies. The job crafting strategies regarding energy management included preventing exhaustion (e.g. taking breaks), healthy cooking and energy management in case of sickness (e.g. deciding on sick leave).ConclusionsThis qualitative case study enriches research on job crafting by offering insights on boundary tactics and energy resources management strategies for remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results point out different starting points for employees and decision makers, how a work-nonwork balance, energy management and thus employees’ wellbeing may be increased when working from home in the future.Trial registrationThe study design and methodology were approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Cologne and the study was prospectively registered (Ref No. 21-1417_1).

A new perspective on balancing life domains: work–nonwork balance crafting

BackgroundSelf-initiated and proactive changes in working conditions through crafting are essential for shaping work and improving work-related well-being. Recently, the research stream of job crafting has been extended to other life domains. The present paper aims to study a novel crafting concept—work–nonwork balance crafting—investigating the role of its antecedents and identifying relevant outcomes. Work–nonwork balance crafting is defined as individuals’ unofficial techniques and activities to shape their work–nonwork balance, here considering their life domain boundary preferences.MethodsIn the study, 1,060 employees in three European countries (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) were surveyed in a longitudinal three-wave study with three-month intervals. We explored the influences of job/home demands and resources as antecedents of work–nonwork balance crafting. Important constructs for employee health and well-being (i.e., work engagement, work-related burnout, mental well-being and detachment from work) were investigated as outcomes.ResultsThe findings suggest that resources and demands in the context of work or home are key antecedents of work–nonwork balance crafting. Work–nonwork balance crafting was also predictive for important employee health and well-being outcomes over three months, mainly in a positive and health-promoting way.ConclusionThis study provides insights into the antecedents of proactive efforts to balance the complex interplay of life domains. By studying work–nonwork balance crafting, we provide a new perspective on crafting beyond job crafting, which may help maintain or improve employees’ mental health and well-being.

Improving Work-Nonwork Balance with Data-Driven Implementation Intention and Mental Contrasting

Work-nonwork balance is an important aspect of workplace well-being with associations to improved physical and mental health, job performance, and quality of life. However, realizing work-nonwork balance goals is challenging due to competing demands and limited resources within organizational and interpersonal contexts. These challenges are compounded by technologies that blur the boundaries of work and nonwork in the always-on work cultures. At an individual level, such challenges can be subsided through the effective application of self-regulation techniques, such as implementation intentions and mental contrasting (IIMC). Further supporting these techniques through reflection on personal data, we implement the idea of data-driven IIMC into a self-tracking and behavior planning system and evaluate it in a three-week between-participant study with 43 information workers who used our system for improving work-nonwork balance. We find evidence that reflection on personal data improves awareness of behavior plan compliance and rescheduling, which are important in realizing work-nonwork balance goals. We also observe the value of micro-reflection, reflection on limited data of the very recent past, for IIMC. Our findings highlight opportunities for automation in data collection and sense-making and for further exploring the role of data-driven IIMC as boundary negotiating artifacts in support of work-nonwork balance goals.

Multidimensional work-nonwork balance: are balanced employees productive at work and satisfied with life?

Given ever increasing work and nonwork demands, achieving work-nonwork (WNW) balance is an important priority for many employees. Scholars have only recently settled on a definition of WNW balance as multidimensional and, as such, our understanding of its antecedents and outcomes is limited. Drawing on Conservation of Resources theory, we explore how organizations can support employees to achieve WNW balance and whether ‘balanced’ employees are more productive at work and satisfied with life. In detail, we hypothesize that the positive effect of supervisor WNW support (FSS) on employees’ life satisfaction and job performance is mediated by multidimensional WNW balance. We find, across two studies with two waves each, that only the dimension of WNW balance effectiveness and not the dimension of WNW balance satisfaction mediated the relationships between FSS, life satisfaction (Study 1 and 2) and self-rated job performance (Study 1). The relationship between FSS and supervisor-rated job performance (Study 2) was not mediated by either WNW balance dimension. As such, organizations can facilitate WNW balance through FSS, while ‘balanced’ employees seem indeed happier with their life and consider themselves to be better performing at work. We discuss the unexpected finding regarding the superior role of WNW balance effectiveness over WNW balance satisfaction for our outcomes in relation to the conceptualization of WNW balance as multidimensional and delineate important theoretical and practical implications.

Linking leader-member exchange and work–nonwork balance: the mediating role of thriving at work and the moderating role of gender

Purpose The authors tested (1) the mediating role of thriving in the association between leader-member exchange (LMX) and work–nonwork balance (WNWB) and (2) the moderating effect of gender in the relationship between LMX and thriving.Design/methodology/approachCross-sectional data were collected from six separate participant groups across an eight-month period (n = 522). Data analysis included confirmatory factor analysis to assess the construct validity of the proposed three-factor model. Hierarchical regression and the PROCESS macro were used to test three hypotheses.FindingsThe authors found thriving mediated an indirect effect of LMX on WNWB. In addition, we found that the relationship between LMX and thriving was moderated by gender, such that the relationship was found for females. Overall, the authors identified a moderated-mediation effect indicating an indirect effect of LMX on WNWB via thriving for females.Research limitations/implicationsCross-sectional design suggests their results are theory driven. The authors suggest future studies replicate the study employing experimental designs.Practical implications The authors suggest organisations develop programs to enhance leadership and thriving capabilities as tools to manage WNWB.Originality/value The authors add to the thriving literature by revealing gender differences in the effectiveness of relational resources (i.e. LMX) in fostering employee thriving. Furthermore, the authors extend the efficacy of thriving beyond the workplace to include WNWB. The authors demonstrate the skills and knowledge acquired at work can be used to lessen the impact of WNWB.

Crafting work-nonwork balance involving life domain boundaries: Development and validation of a novel scale across five countries.

Ongoing developments, such as digitalization, increased the interference of the work and nonwork life domains, urging many to continuously manage engagement in respective domains. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent home-office regulations further boosted the need for employees to find a good work-nonwork balance, thereby optimizing their health and well-being. Consequently, proactive individual-level crafting strategies for balancing work with other relevant life domains were becoming increasingly important. However, these strategies received insufficient attention in previous research despite their potential relevance for satisfying psychological needs, such as psychological detachment. We addressed this research gap by introducing a new scale measuring crafting for a work-nonwork balance and examining its relevance in job-and life satisfaction, work engagement, subjective vitality, family role and job performance, boundary management and self-rated work-nonwork balance. The Work-Nonwork Balance Crafting Scale was validated in five countries (Austria, Finland, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland), encompassing data from a heterogeneous sample of more than 4,200 employees. In study 1, exploratory factor analysis revealed a two-factorial scale structure. Confirmatory factor analysis, test for measurement invariance, and convergent validity were provided in study 2. Replication of confirmatory factor analysis, incremental and criterion validity of the Work-Nonwork Balance Crafting Scale for job and life satisfaction were assessed in study 3. Study 4 displayed criterion validity, test–retest reliability, testing measurement invariance, and applicability of the scale across work cultures. Finally, study 5 delivered evidence for the Work-Nonwork Balance Crafting Scale in predicting work-nonwork balance. The novel Work-Nonwork Balance Crafting Scale captured crafting for the challenging balance between work and nonwork and performed well across several different working cultures in increasingly digitalized societies. Both researchers and practitioners may use this tool to assess crafting efforts to balance both life domains and to study relationships with outcomes relevant to employee health and well-being.

Australia needs to implement a national health strategy for doctors.

Australia needs to implement a national health strategy for doctors.

Making the Invisible Visible - Exploration of Supervisor Family Supportive Behaviours in Remote Work

The aim of the study is to investigate how the leader can support employees’ work-nonwork balance through family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) in a remote work context. Remote work increases physical distance between people, transferring the interpersonal communication and interaction into virtual context, which decreases supervisors’ visible behavior to employees. We still know little about the mechanisms that influence the way employees perceive FSSB, especially in situations where employees and leaders are physically apart. In order to build a thorough understanding of these mechanisms, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 89 remote workers from six large corporates from variety of industries. Our thematic analysis reveals that FSSB is strengthened (or weakened) through supervisor accessibility, communicated trust, verbal investment, psychological security and supervisor-employee attunement. The findings contribute to work-family literature by unravelling new mechanisms that through supervisor’s support influence individual’s balance construct, and on FSSB research by examining how supervisors enact family-supportive behaviors within the context of remote work. As a practical implication we suggest formal structures for work-nonwork support to be put in place in order to even facilitate more the informal support which is needed to create a discussion around work-family matters.

Crafting telework: a process model of need satisfaction to foster telework outcomes

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to offer a model explicating telework as a dynamic process, theorizing that teleworkers continuously adjust – their identities, boundaries and relationships – to meet their own needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness in their work and nonwork roles.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses the lens of job crafting to posit changes teleworkers make to enhance work-nonwork balance and job performance, including time-related individual differences to account for contingencies in dynamic adjustments. Finally, this study discusses how feedback from work and nonwork role partners and one’s self-evaluation results in an iterative process of learning to telework over time.FindingsThis model describes how teleworkers craft work and nonwork roles to satisfy needs, enhancing key outcomes and eliciting role partner feedback to further recraft telework.Research limitations/implicationsThe propositions can be translated to hypotheses. As such the dynamic model for crafting telework can be used as a basis for empirical studies aimed at understanding how telework adjustment process unfolds.Practical implicationsIntervention studies could focus on teleworkers’ job crafting behavior. Organizations may also offer training to prepare employees to telework and to create conditions under which teleworkers’ job crafting behavior more easily translates into need satisfaction and positive outcomes.Social implicationsMany employees would prefer to work from home, at least partly, when the COVID-19 crisis is over. This model offers a way to facilitate a smooth transition into this work mode while ensuring work nonwork balance and performance.Originality/valueMost telework research takes a static approach to focus on the work–family interface. This study proffers a dynamic approach suggesting need satisfaction as the mechanism enabling one to combine work and domestic roles and delineating how feedback enables continuous adjustment in professional and personal roles.

A qualitative investigation of the work-nonwork experiences of dual-career professional couples without children

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the idiosyncratic relationships between work and nonwork among dual-career professional couples (DCPCs) intentionally without children, considering individual members' role salience, nonwork responsibilities and care or career orientation.Design/methodology/approachInterview data from 21 Canadian and American couples (42 individuals) was used to explore the research question: How do DCPCs without children perceive their work-nonwork balance?FindingsDCPCs without children are a heterogenous demographic. Some couples are career oriented, some care oriented, some exhibit both orientations, shaping their experience of work-nonwork balance. Unlike popular stereotypes, they do have nonwork responsibilities and interests outside of their thriving careers. Similar to their counterparts with children, they face conflicts managing work and nonwork domains.Originality/valueBased on theories of role salience, work-nonwork conflict, enrichment and balance, the authors suggest that analyses of work-nonwork balance should include nonwork activities other than child caring. The authors further propose that the experience of the work-nonwork interface varies according to whether couples are careerist, conventional, non-conventional or egalitarian. The study also demonstrates that work-nonwork experiences are relational in nature and should be explored beyond a strictly individual perspective.

Work and nonwork engagements between life domains: Effects on subjective health and life satisfaction of employees across 53 nations varying in economic competitiveness

Using the framework of role balance theory, the authors take a cross-national view of an employee’s engagement in the work and nonwork domains of life. Employing the World Values Survey (WVS) with a sample of 21,270 married employees from 53 nations, we find cross-national variations in the relationship of employees’ degree of work and nonwork domain engagements with their subjective health and satisfaction with life. To explore the impact of the national focus on motivation for economic productivity and innovation, we used a country’s global competitiveness index (GCI), predicting that a nation’s GCI would moderate the relationship of an employee’s work and nonwork domain engagements with both subjective health and life satisfaction. Overall, the results suggest that work–nonwork balance leads to better subjective health and higher life satisfaction only for married employees living in nations high in GCI; for married employees living in countries low in GCI, higher subjective health and life satisfaction resulted for those more highly engaged in nonwork life domains. Theoretical and methodological contributions are discussed, along with implications for future research on national culture concerning work and its impact on employed persons.

Work-nonwork balance: Development and validation of a global and multidimensional measure

Based on Casper et al.'s (2018) definitions of global balance and involvement, affective, and effectiveness dimensions of work-nonwork balance, we developed and validated a measure, with a total of 20 items – 5 items for global balance and 5 items for each dimension. Using 3 studies, we established the content adequacy, factor structure, reliability, and gender and parental status invariance of the measure. Moreover, we show that our measure converges with prior measures of balance (Carlson et al., 2009; Valcour, 2007) and is distinct from role-specific measures of involvement, satisfaction, and performance, as well as life satisfaction. Finally, we demonstrate that global balance and its dimensions uniquely predict employee engagement, citizenship behaviors, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, emotional exhaustion, and/or health, above and beyond existing measures of balance. Thus, our research provides a comprehensive, validated, multidimensional measure of work-nonwork balance and offers unique explanation of valued attitudes and behaviors. Future theoretical, research and practical implications are discussed.

Work–Nonwork Balance: Impact on Subjective Health and Life Satisfaction of People Across 47 Nations

Using theories of role-balance and conservation of resources (COR), we take a cross-cultural view of an employee’s engagement in the work-nonwork domains of living. Employing the World Value Survey (WVS) with a sample of 21,270 married employees from 53 nations, we find cross- cultural variations in the relationship between employees’ degree of work-nonwork domain engagement and their subjective health and life satisfaction. To explore the impact of the national focus on motivation for economic productivity and innovation, we used a country’s global competitiveness index (GCI), predicting that a nation’s GCI would moderate the relationship between the degree of work-nonwork domain engagement and both subjective health and life satisfaction. Overall, the results support our predictions that high work-nonwork domain engagement (or congruence between work and nonwork roles) would enhance individuals’ subjective health and life satisfaction more strongly in high GCI nations than in low GCI nations. Theoretical and methodological contributions are discussed, along with implications for future research on national culture concerning work and its impact on employed persons.

The balance that sustains benedictines: family entrepreneurship across generations

ABSTRACT The heart of family business and family entrepreneurship is the family. Challenging our current understanding of what constitutes a family is important to advance the emerging field of family entrepreneurship. In this conceptual paper, we expand previous research focus with a transactional approach to family and explore family entrepreneurship across generations using the context of Benedictine organizations. The monastic family, defined from the transactional point of view, represents approximately 1,500 years of family history and entrepreneurial activities. Considering an extraordinary example of Benedictines and integrating literature from organizational behaviour, psychology, family science, family business and family entrepreneurship, we investigate the transactional family influence on development and maintenance of resilience capacity (i.e. resiliency) at organizational, family and individual levels. In particular, we develop a theoretical model conceptualizing how values and behavioural guidelines communicated through a code of ethics influences resiliency of (1) family firms through development of a long-term orientation, (2) families through maintenance of a balanced family type, and (3) individuals through enhancement of an individual work-nonwork balance. Finally, we discuss theoretical and practical implications.

The influence of societal and organizational culture on the use of work-life balance programs: A comparative analysis of the United States and the Republic of Korea

This research examines data from in-depth interviews with professional women in the U.S. and Korea to explore the underuse of work-life balance programs (WLBPs) in these two countries. Using thematic analysis, the study examines these women’s perceptions of the influence of societal and organizational culture on their WLBP use. It also examines their beliefs that work-nonwork balance is achievable [labelled work-nonwork self-efficacy (WNSE)] as well as their perceptions of how societal and organizational culture influence their WNSE. Overall, women in Korea spoke more strongly about the influence of societal culture on their WLBP use and WNSE, while women in the U.S. spoke more strongly about the influence of organizational culture. In particular, collectivism, power distance and gendered norms were strongly and consistently noted by interviewees from the Korean sample as factors influencing their WLBP use and WNSE. Alternatively, power distance, uncertainty avoidance and gendered norms were mentioned consistently by interviewees from the U.S. sample, but these women placed greater emphasis on organizational cultures elements as influencing their WNSE and WLBP use. Using a general organizational culture framework (rather than focusing specifically on family-friendly/family-supportive culture), the study found several specific elements of organizational culture that were perceived as influencing women's WLBP use and WNSE in both countries. While much literature focuses on the potential positive impact of WLBP use on women’s work-nonwork balance, we found that many women did not believe that work-nonwork balance would be achievable through WLBP use and so did not use these programs. Study findings suggest additional research that examines societal and organizational culture simultaneously is needed.

Supervisor work-nonwork support, work-nonwork balance and outcomes: Mediation models

Across two studies, we examine single and parallel mediation models between supervisor work-nonwork support, employee life satisfaction and job performance through employee work-family balance (WNW...

The jingle-jangle of work-nonwork balance: A comprehensive and meta-analytic review of its meaning and measurement.

We review research on work-nonwork balance to examine the presence of the jingle fallacy-attributing different meanings to a single construct label-and the jangle fallacy-using different labels for a single construct. In 290 papers, we found 233 conceptual definitions that clustered into 5 distinct, interpretable types, suggesting evidence of the jingle fallacy. We calculated Euclidean distances to quantify the extent of the jingle fallacy and found high divergence in definitions across time and publication outlet. One exception was more agreement recently in better journals to conceptualize balance as unidimensional, psychological, and distinct from conflict and enrichment. Yet, over time many authors have committed the jangle fallacy by labeling measures of conflict and/or enrichment as balance, and disagreement persists even in better journals about the meanings attributed to balance (e.g., effectiveness, satisfaction). To examine the empirical implications of the jingle and jangle fallacies, we conducted meta-analyses of distinct operational definitions of balance with job, life, and family satisfaction. Effect sizes for conflict and enrichment measures were typically smaller than effects for balance measures, providing evidence of a unique balance construct that is not interchangeable with conflict and enrichment. To begin to remedy concerns raised by our review, we propose a definition of work-nonwork balance drawing from theory, empirical evidence from our review, and normative information about how balance should be defined. We conclude with a theory-based agenda for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record