INFLUENCE OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS AMONG NURSES IN OSUN STATE
CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the researcher will review existing literature generally on work-life balance and narrow it down specifically to productivity of an organization. Various concepts of work-life balance and employee productivity are discussed, and previous and recent researches on work-life balance and its effect on employee productivity are well outlined and stated.
2.1 DEFINITIONS
2.1.1 Work
According to Ogunbameru (2008) Work refers to any physical and/or mental activities, which transform natural materials into a more useful form, improve human knowledge and understanding of the world, and/or provide or distribute goods to others”. It is “an instrument activity intended to provide goods and services to support life” (Edwards and Rothbard, 2000). These definitions of work limit the concept to activities alone and to address this shortcoming, Ogunbameru (2008) stated that “the definition of work cannot be limited to references to activities alone, but must also consider the social context within which those activities are being carried out”. Work in this case is primarily viewed from one angle.
The reasons why people work are made up of both economic and non-economic goals and perhaps, the most important non-economic value people receive from work is a sense of useful achievement. This stance was further supported by Edwards and Rothbard (2000) in their pustule that although work may provide intrinsic rewards its primary goal is extrinsic. The economic reason for working, on the part of the employee, is to earn money for sustenance. This view contrasted with the notion that the most obvious reason for work is the economic function of producing goods and services (Ogunbameru, 2008), which is the organizational view of work. In the first instance, the assumption is that work provides both intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction which may not be limited to the work environment alone. On the other hand, work also supplies the social needs of man at the work place when people meet, converse and share experiences and the type of work one is involved in connotes a certain level of social status both for the worker and his family (Ogunbameru, 2008). Work, for the purpose of this study will be any paid activity aimed at producing goods or services while non-paying activities, whether in the course of producing goods and services or not, will fall under personal life activities.
Work plays a fundamental role in adulthood, significantly affecting self-concept and well-being. In this case, work could be expected to be a rewarding experience (Keith and Gubellini, 2000).
2.1.2 Life
A definition of “life” in relation to “work” is a very precarious exercise fraught with tautology and at times oversimplification of concepts. This is for the simple reason that in literature, work has been seen as part of life and vice versa. However, in the study of work-life, a distinction needs to be made and the dichotomous relationship between the two concepts explained. “Life” includes all activities outside work covering such concepts as family, leisure and other activities not related to working for pay. This also covers free time spent without being committed to any activities whether for pay or not (Guest, 2001).
2.1.3 Work and Life
A 2002 study by Ezzedeen and Swiercz reveals that employees are often preoccupied with work when not working to such an extent that when they are in the company of family and loved ones, they experience an inability to be meaningfully engaged in non-work activities. The study further explains that "modern work has become knowledge based, fluid, and intellectual; overworked people think about work all of the time”.
This feeling of work consciousness took on a psychological dimension aptly captured by the study as being “cognitively intrusive”. That is, the person is always thinking of work while he is supposed to be off work and concerned with other non-work activities.
2.1.4 Work – Life Balance
Balance between work and personal life was defined by the Irish National Framework Committee for Work/life Balance Policy as “a balance between an individual’s work and their life outside work”. The principle at stake here is that work should be healthy and should leave time and energy to pursue interests outside work (Kodz, Harper and Dench, 2002). Such “interests outside work” include extended personal responsibilities as child or elder care and the need to fulfil certain societal obligations, travel, study or even engaging in leisure activities.
The point here is that the worker has certain control over his working time. Working time means any period during which the individual is working, is at the employer’s disposal and is carrying out activities or duties assigned to him by the employer (CIPD, 2007). Working time is however not limited simply to the hours of 8 – 5 that one is officially expected to work, but includes the time spent commuting between work and home (David, 2009).
The search for a balance between work and personal life is not without its critics. Work-life balance has been seen as a ploy to elevate an issue that is very naturally part of everyday life (Nicholl, 2007) as there was never any consideration of separating the two concepts until recently (Wheeler, 2009). According to some of the critics, the idea of balance between work and life was unheard of in the 17th, 18th, 19th, or for most of the 20th centuries as both concepts were largely integrated, more so as the agrarian nature of existence at the time was an amalgamation of the two. In most parts of Africa and other developing regions of the world, this is still the case. The problem of role differentiation, and, hence the need for balancing work and personal life, was qualified as a problem of a post industrial “affluent society”, characteristic of the developed West.
With the spread of the use of ICT, affluence, in terms of technology adoption and utilization, has become a worldwide phenomenon, although in relative terms. This created a globalized workforce sharing many similar characteristics and culture. Most noticeable of these character changes include the increasing globalization of labour skills (Castells 2000; Quah 1996 and 1999); the feminization of employment where special considerations are made with respect to the employment of women, and new less secure working patterns (Mishel, Bernstein and Schmitt 2009) which, in turn, generated problems for the sustainability of families and communities (Beck 2000; Carnoy 2000; Hochschild 2007; Reich 2001) especially in the developed countries.
This new workforce had to contend with conflicting demands on time, energy and commitment by the work itself, and personal or family life outside work. People have also become increasingly individualized in work and home life as traditional systems of social support through the company, state, family and community have been eroded (Beck 2000; Carnoy, 2000). Thus the individual is saddled with multiple roles in both spheres of his daily existence with little or no external support to cushion the negative effects of role conflicts and overload.
The African experience, where marriage and child birth are considered important milestones in life, is no better than what obtains in other regions of the world. Traditionally, African women’s main role in the family is to cater for the upbringing of the children and to assist the husband in maintaining the economic balance in the house through supportive labour on the farm or in some other petty trades. With enlightenment and education, more women are finding their niches in traditionally male dominated paid jobs, and in some instances, time consuming entrepreneurial businesses, thus expanding the scope of the relative earnings to the family but to the detriment of their traditional roles as the main family support and maintenance agents. In some dual-earning families, the wife may earn as much as the husband. Increasing dual-earning families in Information and knowledge management
Nigeria, for instance, has increased work/life pressure substantially among all the classes of people (Alutu and Ogbe, 2007).
In justifying the dichotomy between work and life and the need for a balance between the two concepts, Burchell (2006) as sited in a report of the Equal Employment Opportunity Trust of New Zealand; opined that “the concept of work/life balance includes the priority that work takes over family, working long hours, and work intensification”. And work intensification in this case was defined as “the increasing effort that employees put into the time that they are working” or the amount of work done in a day. This extended the temporal range of potential working hours and contributed to the development of non standard, flexible and long working hours (Harkness 2004; Presser 2005).
2.2 THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK
Several theories have been put up to explain the relationship between work and life outside work (Krouse and Afifi, 2007; Bakker, Demerouti and Burke, 2009).
2.2.1 The Segmentation Theory
The segmentation theory states that work roles and life roles exist in separate domains and have no influence on one another. It refers to the complete compartmentalization or fragmentation of work and family systems whereby the two domains are lived separately and have no influence on one another. This is however considered to be the weakest theory on the relationship between work and personal life (Guest, 2001).
2.2.2 Spill-Over Theory
The spill-over theory on the other hand recognizes the influence of the two domains on each other. It states that increased satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) at work leads to increased satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) at home. Spill-over experiences can be either positive or negative, but the experiences of work and family are identical—either both are positive or both are negative (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000).
2.2.3 Compensation Theory
The compensation theory defines the compensatory effect between two forms of psychological interference: work-to-family and family-to-work. This theory simply proposes that what may be lacking in one sphere, in terms of demands or satisfactions can be made up in the other (Guest, 2001). In contrast to the spill-over theory, it holds that the relationship between the two is bi-directional; that is, one domain compensate for what is missing in the other. It represents efforts to offset negative experiences in one domain (i.e., work or family) by increased efforts to seek positive experiences in the other domain (i.e., family or work). Efforts are pursued through one of two pathways. One pathway includes increased involvement in one domain (e.g., work) reciprocated by decreased involvement in the other domain (e.g., family). The other pathway includes pursuing the domain offering greater rewards and fulfilment at the expense of the domain that offers little return (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). The assumption here is that the worker who is dissatisfied with family life may be happier putting in more hours and thus enhancing his performance and vice versa.
2.2.4 Resource Drain Theory
The resources drain theory states that a negative correlation between family and work domains exists in such a way that any personal resource expended on one domain reduces the amount of resources available to the other domain. It also refers to the transfer or shift of a limited amount of available resources such as time, energy, attention from one domain to another and thereby reducing the availability of the same resources for utilization in the domain originally owning the resource. When the remaining or unused resources become insufficient, or are depleted, or both, the potential for increased levels of stress, fatigue, and burnout sets in (Frone, 2003).
Specifically, support from elements within the two domains (partner and employer) has a significant impact on one another. The impact of partner support is greater when employees feel that their employers are unsupportive of their lives beyond work. Conversely, for employees with relatively unsupportive partners, the employer’s family-friendliness reduces role conflicts more than partners. Thus, one source of support compensates for the lack of the other (Friedman, 2000).
2.2.5 Border Theory
Clark (2000) in his work/family border theory, defined borders as encompassing psychological categories and tangible boundaries that divide the times, place and people associated with work versus family. This theory distinguishes three types of boundaries between work and non-work, family or personal life domains namely; physical, temporal and psychological boundaries. Extending role theories such as the compensation theory, border theory looks at how roles in life are separated by boundaries or borders. Permeability and flexibility are key related concepts to examine how boundaries between life domains affect integration, transitions, and conflicts between domains. Much like managing a physical geographical boundary, the Border theory implies that certain roles, and their related character attributes, are restricted specifically to one side of the divide between work and life while others can only be allowed to transit after sufficient moderation or modification. It considered many of the factors covered by the other theories and it extends on these by going beyond the personal practice of the subject or the organisational policies having direct influence on the determination of balance between work and life. This, therefore, is the theoretical foundation on which this study is based upon.
2.3 HISTORY OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
The work-leisure dichotomy was invented in the mid 1800s. Paul Krasner remarked that anthropologists use a definition of happiness that is to have as little separation as possible "between your work and your play." The expression "Work–life balance" was first used in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s to describe the balance between an individual's work and personal life. In the United States, this phrase was first used in 1986.
Most recently, there has been a shift in the workplace as a result of advances in technology. As Boswell and Olson-Buchanan stated, "increasingly sophisticated and affordable technologies have made it more feasible for employees to keep contact with work." Employees have many methods, such as emails, computers and cell phones, which enable them to accomplish their work beyond the physical boundaries of their office. Employees may respond to an email or a voice mail after-hours or during the weekend, typically while not officially "on the job." Researchers have found that employees who consider their work roles to be an important component of their identities will be more likely to apply these communication technologies to work while in their non-work domain.
Some theorists suggest that this blurred boundary of work and life is a result of technological control. Technological control "emerges from the physical technology of an organization”. In other words, companies use email and distribute smart phones to enable and encourage their employees to stay connected to the business even when they are not in the real office. This type of control, as Barker argues, replaces the more direct, authoritarian control, or simple control, such as managers and bosses.
2.3.1 CURRENT STATE OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN NIGERIA
On the 2rd of August 2011, Mr Prince William Ankrah, General Secretary of Ghana Mineworkers Union has appealed to the government and other employers to collaborate with the Trades Union Congress in promoting work-life balance.
This could be done through policies and programmes to assist women to manage their responsibilities at work, home and in the community.
He said there should be joint efforts of government, employers and trade unions to work towards the ratification of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 156 that deals with workers with family responsibilities.
Mr Ankrah was addressing the opening of the fourth national women's conference of the Union in Sunyani which is under the theme “Working Women and Work-life Balance.”
He said women were not only concerned about their material well-being as they also aspired to attain a balanced life so that they could have sufficient time to take care of their needs such as career development, family, health and community.
Mr Ankrah said work-life balance was well rooted in advanced countries and was gradually catching up in Ghana and it was high time Ghanaians embraced this concept and worked towards its achievement.
He said adoption of work-life balance concept would bring about a win-win scenario for both employers and employees, stressing that it was an investment that guaranteed handsome dividends.
Ms Felicia Asiedu, national chairperson of the Women's committee of Ghana Mineworkers Union, appealed to mine employers to end job losses and unemployment of women.
“Women should be encouraged and supported to work at all spheres within the mining industry”, she said.
Mrs Theresa Obosu, second national vice-chairperson of the women's committee noted that today's career women were continually challenged by the demands of full-time work and their responsibilities and commitments at home.
She said the majority of women were struggling to achieve work-life balance, noting their lives were a juggling act that included multiple responsibilities at work, heavy meeting schedules, business trips on top of managing the daily routine responsibilities of life and home.
Mrs Obosu said work-life balance could be achieved when women “have enough time for both work and family so that their lives as women would be relatively comfortable”.
She said successfully achieving work-life balance would ultimately create a more satisfied workforce that would contribute to productivity and success at the workplace and fulfilment to married couples. (Obosu, 2002)
2.4 BENEFITS OF PROPER WORK-LIFE BALANCE OF EMPLOYEES IN AN ORGANIZATION
Proper employee work-life balance is a complex lend of corporate culture, human resources practices, and individual perceptions. Virtually every thing the human resource department does affect employee work and life, directly or in directly. But many human resource activities are largely un- noticed by employees, including for example, recruitment, selection, and benefits administration. Other important human resources function affect employees only periodically, as in the case of performance appraisal system and salary sessions. This necessitates some ongoing activities to foster good employer-employee relation.
According to Williams (2005), the following are the benefits of proper work-life balance to an employee and to an organization:
* Improves productivity
Good work-life balance improves productivity. Employee productivity is significantly affected by two factors: ability and attitude. Ability is simply whether or not the employee is able to perform the job. Ability is influenced by such things as training, education, innate aptitude, tools and work environments. Attitude on the hand refers to an individual’s willingness to perform the job. Attitude is influenced by a myriad of factors, such as level of motivation, job satisfaction, and commitment at work. Proper work-life balance practices such as paid leave, moderate working hours, health care and recreational packages help improve both ability and attitude of the employee. Through continuous monitoring of employee skill, attitude, and quality of work environment, the organization is able to initiate timely collective actions. The result is an improvement in employee productivity.
* Implementation of organizational goals
Proper work-life balance for employees in an organization ensures implementation of organizational strategies. Human resource management plays an important role in achieving organizational goals. Goals and strategies however well formulated will not be attained unless they are well executed. This means that employee should be committed to the achievement of these goals. Unless employees understand their roles and are rewarded for exhibiting desired behaviours, it is likely that the organization will be able to generate grass root support for its plans. Good employee relations practices ensure that these goals and strategies are properly communicated to the employees and their commitment.
* Reduction of employment cost
Proper work-life balance of employees reduces costs. Good employee work-life balance practices signify concern and interest in the employees. When this becomes part of the overall organizational culture, significant cost saving reduces absenteeism and turnover can emerge. Good employee relations practices also give the firm a recruiting advantage as most job applications would like to work for an organization that treats them fairly and offers them a challenging job with potential job with career growth.
* Achievement of human resource goals
Good employee relations and proper work-life balance help the personal goals of the human resource function. An important goal of human resource department today is to help employees achieve their personal goals. A keen interest in the employee’s work related and career goals not only bring benefits to the organization, but also help it to meet its social objectives.
2.5 BEST WORK-LIFE BALANCE PRACTICES FOR HIGH EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE
Organizations are always striving to maintain proper work-life balance for their employees as well as maintain positive employee relations.This is especially true during such trying times as the current economic downturn— at such times, employers feel especially strong pressure to retain top talent in order to meet and exceed business demands. However, organizations often face dwindling resources at such critical periods, meaning that they must be creative in terms of maintaining these positive relations.
One cheap and easy way in which proper work-life balance can be achieved and preserved is through smart communication practices. (Terry, 2005)
Communication, especially between employees and management, can have a major impact on work-life of employees. Better work-life programs preferred by employees can be communicated to their managers to execute. When effective communication practices are in places, employees generally feel more connected and committed to the organization. However, when communication breaks down, employee relation problems are more likely to occur. Here are a few tips for improving or establishing organizational communication practices to preserve positive employee relations.
Coffman (2004) outlined various work-life balance practices that are considered as best employee work-life balance practices in most jurisdictions. These practices are:
* Conduct a communications audit. A preventative measure that organizations can take is to conduct a communications audit. A communications audit is a snapshot of an organization’s communication strategies, activities, and programs. (Coffman, 2004). This process can inform an organization as to which communication practices work and which may need to be improved. A variety of methods can be utilized in a communications audit, such as workplace observation, interviews or surveys of employees or leadership, and focus groups. Communication audits are especially important for determining where communication breakdowns may have led employees to be confused or misinformed on organizational rules, policies, and practices. Once areas are identified for improvement, organizations can determine an action plan to repair or implement new communication processes.
* Provide a well-designed outlet for employees to communicate suggestions and concerns to management concerning their family and social issues. To maintain proper work-life balance in an organization, an organization must utilize a variety of systems for employees to communicate their work-life, health, and family issues and concerns to management. When employees feel their voice is being heard in the organization, they are generally more engaged, especially when they see their suggestions implemented. This also benefits employers as employees, being in the trenches of the organization, often bring to light ideas for change and streamlining of organizational processes, which result in cost saving and increased productivity.
Wilson (2010), In a recent Employee Relations Survey, organizations reported using many types of suggestion systems, ranging from face-to-face and group meetings to management blogs and social media. What is best for each organization depends on the culture of that organization but no matter what, there are some best practices that are recommended for establishing an effective and well-received suggestion program. Appoint a cross-functional suggestion review team. Many organizations designate specific suggestion review teams or taskforces from a cross-section of departments. Each employee in this group can provide a unique perspective on each suggestion and its viability, and this team often has the power to recommend and implement suggestions.
Establish guidelines for the employee suggestion program. Good suggestion programs have guidelines as to what topics are open to suggestions.Typically, acceptable suggestions include ideas on cost savings, productivity, process improvement, and morale improvement. Suggestion programs that merely become outlets for complaints and venting do not lead to enhanced positive employee relations. Communicate the process. A suggestion box tucked into a corner does little good for employees or for the organization. For a suggestion program to be successful, the employees have to know how to submit their suggestions and concerns. Employees should understand who evaluates ideas, how decisions are made, and how rewards are allocated (if applicable). Recognize and reward. A very effective way to foster positive employee relations is to provide rewards or recognition for employee suggestions.
The results of a recent ERC survey conducted by Wilson (2010), showed that 30% of organizations rewarded suggestions in some way. A rewards program has the potential to positively affect employee relations so long as the process is made explicit and employees understand why or why not they are being rewarded. Keep in mind that rewards do not need to be costly—praise can be its own reward. For instance, in lieu of cash awards, many organizations provide recognition in meetings or newsletters for great employee ideas and suggestions. Provide feedback. Feedback on employees’ suggestions and ideas should be provided, perhaps privately if suggestions are not anonymous. We’ve seen situations where employees are less likely to provide suggestions if they fear that their idea could be publicly rejected. In some programs employees can actually track the progress of their ideas from submission to implementation. If feedback is not feasible, acknowledging and showing appreciation for suggestions, at the very least, is crucial.
Have leadership interact with employees at all levels of the organization. A personal connection between leaders and employees can go a long way in building and maintaining positive employee relations.When employees have an opportunity to meet, talk with, and be empowered by organizational leaders, they feel more emotionally committed to the organization, engaged, and willing to work harder for the organization (Avolio, Zhu, Koh, & Bhatia, 2004).
A recent survey conducted by Wilson (2010), found that most organizations (86%) provide opportunities for upper management to meet with lower-level employees, and organizations can utilize a few different strategies to do so such as: Walking the floor. In some organizations, leaders and upper management use a “management by walking around” style.These leaders will walk around the office or work area, stopping to greet and interact with employees. These managers are often on a first-name basis with everyone in the organization.
* Social outings:
Social outings and organizational events are great ways for management to meet with the families and friends of their employees, as this will go a long way in involving their families in the affairs of the organization and knowing their challenges. Many managers take part in fun games and events, creating bonding experiences with employees and their families. A somewhat common practice is leaders cooking out for employees or doing something special to serve them. Employee forums and focus groups: Rather than wait for employees to communicate suggestions and concerns, leaders can proactively invite employees and their families across the organization to attend forums and focus groups established solely for work-life balance issues. Employees appreciate and respond positively when they have an opportunity to communicate their ideas directly to leaders, and this can go a long way in building proper work-life balance for employees.
2.6 DETERMINANTS OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE
A study by Kossek, Colquitt and Blum (2001), building on some of Kossek’s earlier work, has examined the influence of both work and family climate on aspects of work-life balance and related outcomes. The core focus is on what they term “care giving” decisions, in other words, decisions about care of children and elderly family members. The key issues are where they should be cared for and by whom. It is hypothesized that work and family climates, and specifically the climates of sharing and sacrifice, will influence the consequences of the decisions for work-life balance and for work and family performance and for well-being. The results confirm that the climate of sharing in the home and at work has a positive impact on performance and well-being. Indeed caring for an elderly relative in the home where there is a climate that does not support sharing has a particularly negative association with performance at home and at work and on well-being. The climate of sacrifice has much less influence than the climate for sharing. This study therefore manages to incorporate climates at work and at home, a range of individual differences including differences in care giving decisions, work-life balance and conflict and a set of organizational, family and individual outcomes
There is something of a puzzle about why family-friendly policies and practices do not appear to improve work-life balance to the extent we might expect. Perry-Smith and Blum (2001) report a US study on “bundles” of family-friendly practices and corporate performance. They find, in line with other research on Human Resources Management, that isolated family-friendly practices will have little impact but that a comprehensive bundle of practices are associated with superior ratings of corporate performance.While their focus is on corporate performance, there may be similar implications for their impact on employees.One interpretation of the presence of a bundle of practices is that they have become embedded in the organizational culture whereas isolated practices operate on the margin. This would reinforce the importance of considering organizational culture/climate as a key unit of analysis as much as the specific practices.
Research has concentrated on the demands of work rather than home. However in this context some of the work of Hochschild (Hochschild, 2007) is revealing in suggesting that the use of progressive human resource practices to generate commitment to work can risk making work almost too attractive. In contrast, the life of the American parent is increasingly programmed to meet a series of time-based obligations to transport children, meet specific needs and set aside “quality” time. With these demands made in the home, work, particularly where the social and physical environment is attractive and levels of autonomy and scope for development are high, can appear particularly appealing.Reference has already been made to some of the research on individual factors. There has been comparative work on orientations to work and the extent to which work is a central life interest. The Meaning of Work Team asked the lottery question in a number of countries – would you still work if you won enough money never to need to work again?A positive answer is taken as an indication that work is a central life interest. Responses suggested that most people would continue to work; the proportion saying they would range from 93 per cent in Japan to 69 per cent in the UK.When this question was repeated in the late 1990s in the UK, 61 per cent said they would continue to do some sort of work. Evidence from those who have won the lottery indicates that over half do in practice continue to work. Another way of getting at work as a central life interest is to ask a more direct question.In the UK, a recent survey of 2000 workers, mainly form the public sector, showed that 14 per cent said they were more committed to work than to life outside work, 25 per cent were more committed to life outside work and the remainder, a little over 60 per cent said they were equally committed to both. A rather higher proportion, almost 20 per cent of those in the private sector, said they were more committed to work.
Evidence of the relation between orientations to work and career and life stage comes from a longitudinal study of graduates in large organizations (Sturges, et al, 2000). This reveals that at the point of entry into their organizational career, the issue of work-life balance is seen as very important and they are eager not to get sucked in to a long hours work pattern. As their careers advance, they work longer hours and become more dissatisfied with their work-life balance. They rationalize this by arguing that it is only temporary and that once the current assignment is completed, they will get back into a better balance.In other words, the belief in their ability to control their working lives remains central to their capacity to cope with and tolerate the long hours.
2.7 EMPLOYEE WORK-LIFE BALANCE CHALLENGES AND CONFLICTS
According to Greenhaus (2002), Work-life balance challenge/conflict is a form of inter-role conflict in which the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respect. Participation in the work (family) role is made more difficult by virtue of participation in the family (work) role. Accordingly, the conflict takes place at the work-life interface. Conflict between work and family is important for organizations and individuals because it is linked to negative consequences. For example, conflict between work and family is associated with increased absenteeism, increased turnover, decreased performance, and poorer physical and mental health. It is a tight connection between families; conceptually conflict between work and family is bi-directional. Most researchers make the distinction between what is termed work-family conflict, and what is termed family–work conflict. Work-to-family conflict occurs when experiences at work interfere with family life, like extensive, irregular, or inflexible work hours, work overload and other forms of job stress, interpersonal conflict at work, extensive travel, career transitions, unsupportive supervisor or organization. For example, an unexpected meeting late in the day may prevent a parent from picking up his or her child from school. Family-to-work conflict occurs when experiences in the family interfere with work life like presence of young children, primary responsibility for children, elder care responsibilities, interpersonal conflict within the family unit, unsupportive family members. For example, a parent may take time off from work in order to take care of a sick child. Although these two forms of conflict–work interference with family (WIF) and family interference with work (FIW) are strongly correlated with each other, more attention has been directed at WIF more than FIW. This may because work demands are easier to quantify; that is, the boundaries and responsibilities of the family role is more elastic than the boundaries and responsibilities of the work role. Also, research has found that work roles are more likely to interfere with family roles than family roles are likely to interfere with work roles. This is largely attributed to the idea of what Arlie Russel Hochschild termed "the ideal worker". Hochschild astutely points out that the image employers have of an “ideal worker” already rests on some unrealistic assumptions about how the family should operate. Many employers expect that employees with families have someone tending to everything at home, leaving the worker unencumbered, despite the fact that a majority of families in Ghana are dual earning, the image of the "ideal worker" persists and causes work-family conflict by demanding too much of working parents.
Work can conflict with one’s home and family life. However, workaholism can lead to adverse effects on one’s relationship with his or her partner. Workaholism is “an individual difference characteristic referring to self-imposed demands, compulsive overworking, an inability to regulate work habits, and overindulgence in work to the exclusion of most other life activities.” Workaholism can affect a person’s private life since it includes exclusion of other activities including spending time with spouses which is significant to any healthy, happy relationship. When there is a strain on a relationship due to a partner’s workaholism, both partners can become stressed and less supportive of one another resulting in negative behavior. Individuals, who work a lot to the point of interference with the rest of his or her life, tend to perceive their family as having less of a strong communication background. These individuals also perceive their families as having family roles that are not as clearly defined as they would like them to be. Workaholism isn’t the only dynamic that can be a factor in work–family conflicts. Family alone demands enough from an individual, but in this new millennium where more than one individual or spouse is working to support a family, the demands of upholding family life and maintaining a career or job are immense. (Robinson, 2007)
Work-family conflict can be diminished by establishing family-friendly policies in the workplace. Certain policies can include tele-work and telecommuting policies where employees have the ability to work from home, and schedule flexibility policies where employees have control over their schedules. Family-work conflict can also be diminished by establishing workplace family-friendly policies. Some of these policies include maternity, paternity, parental, and sick leaves, providing child care options either on-site child care centre at the business, references to close child care centres, or supplemented child care incomes for the families placing their children in a child care centre, and health care insurance. To allow these policies to work you need to make sure that your employed managers and supervisors are supportive and allowing for employees to use the policies.
2.8. WORK-LIFE IMBALANCE AND ITS EFFECTS ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE
There has been a much larger body of research on the effects of work-life imbalance and in particular various manifestations of work spill over and conflict. In his review of the subject area, O’Driscoll (2008) identifies research on work and life satisfaction, on well-being, mental health and physical health and on individual performance in organizations. This reflects a set of traditional outcomes of interest to W/O psychologists. Recent research has increasingly recognized the complexity of the issues and the study by Kossek and colleagues cited earlier is just one illustration of this. More sophisticated research typically starts from a particular model of the family. For example, there is a large body of research on women’s careers that explores the consequences of various types of family commitment.Similarly, there is extensive research on dual career families. Such studies usually take into account the demands and rewards in both the workplace and the home.
A fairly typical example can be found in the work of Mauno and Kinnunen (2001) who report a Finnish study of 215 dual earning couples in which they explored the impact of a range of work stressors on marital satisfaction. One of the stressors was work-family conflict. Using structural equation modelling, they found that most of the stressors spilled over into marital satisfaction via job exhaustion and its impact on psychosomatic health. Work-family conflict and time pressure had a stronger effect than other stressors such as leader relations and job insecurity. However this affected each partner independently and did not spill over into the marital satisfaction of the other partner. In other words the women partner may have experienced work-family conflict; this had an impact on exhaustion and health which in turn had a negative impact on her marital satisfaction but despite this work spill over, the study detected no marital spill over from the satisfaction of one partner to the other.
Another typical example is the research of Vinokur, Pierce and Buck (2007) who examined the impact of work and family stressors and conflicts on the mental health and functioning of women in the US Air force. This goes a step further than the Finnish study by incorporating family as well as work stressors in the analysis. The study builds on and partly replicates an earlier community study by Frone, Russell and Cooper (2003). The findings are complex. Using structural equation modelling again, they find that marital and parental family roles had a different effect. They also found that high involvement in family and or work affected the outcome. Both job and marital distress and family-work conflict had adverse effects on mental health.High involvement in job and family had a beneficial impact on distress but a negative impact on work-family conflict.At this point it is perhaps appropriate to return to the other form of work-life imbalance reflected in unemployment.There is an extensive body of research from Europe, North America and Australia that demonstrates the negative consequences of unemployment on individual well-being and family functioning.There are two mains types of model to explain this which might be termed the deprivation model and the agency model.The deprivation model is particularly associated with the work of Jahoda (2000) and emphasizes the latent functions of work such as providing a time structure, external demands to perform and a role and status in society, all of which are largely lost among those experiencing unemployment. In contrast, an agency model (Fryer, 2001) gives much greater weight to individual interpretation and action rather than treating the experience of unemployment as standard and negative. Agency helps to shape expectations about the future and has been shown in quite carefully controlled experiments to be subject to change through cognitive intervention. Whichever model we choose to adopt, and some sort of integration can be achieved, the evidence suggests that work-life imbalance reflected in too little work is at least as serious if not more as imbalance caused by too much work. But in arriving at this judgement, much depends on the outcomes selected for study. Unemployment may have little impact on the organization but a considerable impact on unemployed workers and their families.
2.8.1 EFFECTS OF WORK-LIFE IMBALANCE ON FAMILIES
According to Fryer (2001), the structural economic changes have influenced specific aspects of the family. However, not all families are affected in the same way. In the U.S., whether or not a family is dual or single-earner is related to their social class and income. The economic changes in the past couple of decades have affected middle-class and lower-class families very differently in many aspects, especially since the 1970s economic recession. These family inequalities significantly affect the intersection of Race (United States Census) and Social class in the United States as well.
Middle-class families have certain class-specific problems that arise when family and work intersects. Many of them have to do with the balance parents must create between their career aspirations and their familial desires. Because the middle class has greater access to more stable occupations and the chances for occupational mobility, many middle class American families must deal with the ultimate decision between balancing their families with their jobs.
* Delayed Fertility
Middle class women oftentimes delay motherhood until after the peak of their fertility at age 29-30, a delay that has become more common in the last two decades. Motherhood is delayed because of the higher educational and career aspirations middle class women oftentimes make the career incentives are too great to pass up. While middle class women on average have children at age 29, lower class women typically have children much earlier in their lives because of the lack of incentives to delay childbirth. According to Edin and Kefalas, lower class women do not make the same delay because they are oftentimes lacking the career and educational incentives that middle class women have.
The delay in fertility becomes a problem among middle class women when they delay childbirth past their fertility peak. Since fertility peaks at a certain age, pushing childbirth past that age significantly decreases the probability that certain women to have children. The media has been an influence on women's fertility choices: popular celebrities who have managed to have children well into their forties and other medical miracles covered in the media oftentimes give women false hope that they themselves will also be successful later in life. For every success story, however, there are many more disappointments.
* Ideology of Motherhood
Although American women have made significant strides in the workplace, they are still culturally and socially required to be mothers first and foremost. The cultural ideas of motherhood in Ghana have given birth to a new ideal: a working mother who not only has a wonderful career but also manages to flawlessly balance her family and domestic duties as well. This ideal is known as the "supermom." The media is a culprit in this depiction: A study examining the portrayal of mothers in magazines showed that the most popular magazines in Ghana still continue to promote the traditional role of motherhood while undermining homemakers by portraying them as superficial and negative. Instead, only the Supermom type is portrayed and rarely critiqued.
As a result of this Supermom ideal, cultural contradictions of motherhood widely exist. Working mothers are often critiqued for being selfish and not spending enough time with their children. They defend their position by saying they work to support their children economically. Homemakers are often critiqued for pursuing meaningful careers. They respond by saying that the childcare and other domestic work they do for their families is much more important. Only the unrealistic depiction of the supermom can balance these two ideological extremes, but that ideal is an unrealistic solution for most women.
* Inequalities in Care Work
Despite the career gains women have made, their husbands have not reached parity in terms of their domestic work and care work. Women in the developed world, including the U.S., still do hours more of housework than their male counterparts, despite their success in the workplace. Working mothers on average do more work and sleep less than their husbands. The perception of who does more housework is also skewed by whether or not the husband or the wife is reporting. Unsurprisingly then, working mothers do not spend a significantly lower amount of time with their children compared to women who do not work—working mothers simply sleep less on average.
As a result, many middle-class families have resorted to alternative methods of child care. A common option is to buy child care, such as day care providers and centres.
Lower class families have been heavily influenced by income as well. Lower-class families have a different set of work-family balancing issues, many of which are much more difficult to solve than those of middle-class families.
* Single-Parenting
Lower-class families are disproportionately made up of single mother households. According to Kathryn Edin, this is because of the lack of incentive to marry other lower class men among lower class women, and the desire to save marriage for more quality prospects. Unlike middle class women, lower class women do not have the same financial and marriage incentives to marry especially in the face of likely divorce. As a result, lower class mothers have less incentive to delay their childbearing to later years. Many of the problems shared by single parents are disproportionately felt by the lower class for these very reasons. The inability to use the income and time of two spouses has a harmful effect upon the work opportunities of lower-income mothers. Another factor is income: single-mothers tend to work lower income wage, which come with few benefits such as maternity leave, health insurance, childcare, and flexible schedules. Low-wage work oftentimes is characterized by weekly schedule changes, little flexibility, and extreme short notice for changes. As a result, lower class mothers have a greater a time crunch and more conflict in balancing their work needs with those of their children. Single mother home environments are much poorer because of nonstandard hours and schedules.
* Care Work
Single-mother and lower-class families have a much more difficult time negotiating childcare or finding sustainable childcare options. The breadwinner-homemaker family and economic model does not apply to single-parent families because the single-parent must be both roles at all times. Because child care services cost a substantial amount, low-income mothers spend a higher percentage of their income on child care than middle class mothers do. Few low-income mothers are happy with their childcare arrangements especially in light of the fact that low-income childcare arrangements suffer from frequent disruptions. In the United States, state assistance for childcare is nowhere near the level of other developed countries and has actually decreased.
2.8.2 EFFECTS ON THE ORGANIZATION
As a predictor of work-related consequence, Work-Family Conflict (WFC) has been associated with negative workplace outcomes such as absenteeism and turnover , intentions to leave work and low job satisfaction. Furthermore, individuals who experienced work-family conflict have been found to incur increased health risks, inadequate performance in family roles (e.g., marital partner and parent), reduced family and life satisfaction, and poor marital adjustment (Irving, 2000).
According to Irving (2000), the most distal of the consequences of work-family conflict, as purported by the proposed model is intention to turnover. Given that it is the final outcome in a chain of other outcomes, the model proposes that the relationship between job stress and intention to turnover is mediated by burnout, organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Each of these three variables has been found to have consistent and robust relationships to intention to turnover.
However before discussing each of these three variables of antecedents of intention to turnover the author will first discuss the relationship between work-family conflict and intention to leave, and the relationship between job stress and intention to turnover.
Studies examining the relationship between work-family conflict and intention to turnover have produced mixed results. While some researchers have found significant relationships between work-family conflict and intentions to turnover, others have found negative relationships or no relationship between the two variables (e.g. Kossek and Ozeki, 2001). In Their study, Netemeyer et al. (1996) suggested that work-family conflict would be positively related to intentions to turnover. In the three samples tested the researchers found significant correlations of .14, .25, and .28 between work-family conflict and intentions to turnover (Netemeyer et al., 1996). Lyness and Thompson (1997) also found that work-family conflict was inversely related to intent to remain in an organization. They reported a high negative correlation of -.43 (Lyness & Thompson, 1997). In another study, Boyar et al. explored the relationship between work-family conflict and intentions to turnover. The results of their study indicated that work-family conflict and intentions to turnover were positively related with a correlation of .25 and (Boyar et al., 2003). Netemeyer et al. in their tri-cultural study proposed that work-family conflict would predict intentions to turnover. The results of their study produced positive correlations of .37, .35, and .45 (Netemeyer et al., 2004). However, although these results seem to suggest that persons who suffer from high levels of work-family conflict are more likely to have the urge to leave an organization, other studies suggest quite the opposite.
Aryee (1992) found that the job-spouse dimension of work-family conflict was positively related to intention to turnover (r = .25) while the job–parent and job-homemaker dimensions of work-family conflict were negatively related to intention to turnover (r = -.25 and r = -.10). While no explanation was provided for these specific results, Aryee suggested that, “even when [a Singaporean woman] is in paid employment, housework and childcare remains [her] main responsibilities” indicating that the culture promotes a segmentary approach to the effects of work on specific aspects of a woman’s life. In a meta-analysis, Kossek and Ozeki (2001) found no significant relationship between work-family conflict and intentions to turnover.
Allen et al. (2000) noted that although the majority of the results seem to suggest a positive relationship between work-family conflict and intentions to turnover, more research needs to be done to examine the nature of this relationship. The proposed model suggests that intention to turnover is a distal (indirect) consequence of work-family conflict because of its strong relationships to other variables that are also the results of mediated relationships.
Job stress serves as a mediator between work-family conflict and several other variables.
It is also directly related to intentions to quit an organization. In a longitudinal study examining an integrative model of burnout, Lee and Ashforth (2005) found that job stress is significantly related to intentions to leave. Their study produced a correlation of .31 (Lee & Ashforth, 1993).