Work-life conflict

 

 

 

Introduction:

All over the years, people used to work to satisfy their personal and social living needs. They are always struggling to improve their living conditions but as much they achieve, as much they demand more (according to Maslow’s need theory). In spite of the technology and industry advancement which provided better communications and easier work, people still need better conditions that can help them satisfy their family-life, own life and social relations. People sometimes try to satisfy their family and social life needs which could result in work performance degradation and increase the absenteeism rate.

This paper discusses the effects of both work and personal life on each other.

 

 

Definition of work-life (work-family)

“Work-family refers to any connection between the work and personal domains of an individual” (McCarthy). It refers to all activities that can affect work (or personal life) as a result of the engagement on activities related to the other side. This includes, but not limited to, childcare, social life, long time working hours, the need to travel and so on. The terms Work-Family and Work-Life refers to the same definition

(Seitel) defined work-life as “what an employer does to create a more flexible, supportive work environment, so employees will be able to focus on the job while they’re on the job.” This definition in inline with what is stated previously because employers tend to reduce the effect of people’s life on work performance.

 

 

Definition of work-family conflict (WFC)

“It is having a job that interferes with your family life. It is when your family interferes with your career and your ability to get ahead at work” (Duxbury). People play several roles in their life such as parents, sons and daughters, managers, subordinates, friends and much more. These different roles set different responsibilities and demands on people. (Duxbury), (Carslon), (Higgins), (Greenhaus), (Chen) & (Carikci) define work-life conflict as a form of inter-role conflict when one of the roles imposes different demands and requirements on people that are not compatible with the other role. Work domain requires time, energy and commitment that may not allow people to satisfy their family and life needs.

(Higgins) & (Greenhaus) classify this role conflict into two types

·         Work-to-family conflict: that occurs when work demands prevents (or hardens) one to satisfy their family needs such as long work hours, travel and so.

·         Family-to-work conflict: occurs when family responsibilities cause degradation of work performance. Children’s care and conflict at home are examples of family situations that may affect work.

 

Conflict Reasons and forms

There are multiple forms of WFC that originate from different sources, time demands and strain are the most important factors (Duxbury), (Carslon), (Greenhaus), (Poelmans) & (Chen)

 

Time demands: Both work and family have time requirements but since one’s time is finite, people tend to share their time between these demands and try to make balance between them. According to (Duxbury), (Carslon), & (Greenhaus),the WFC results from the excessive demand of one domain over the other.

Inflexible work schedule, long working hours, long and frequent travel and excessive overtime are just some examples of work time requirements that reduce the engagement in family life. On the other side, the existence of children, spouse, child and elder care responsibilities may decrease work performance and increase the absenteeism rate.

As a result, the greater the amount spent at one domain the greater the level of perceived WFC.

 

Stress due to Role overloading: people play several roles in their life; they are employees, parents, spouse, friends and much more. (Chen), (Greenhaus), (Duxbury) stress that is originated due to one role can be easily transferred and affect the other role.

Conflict at work, organizational or career change, bad working conditions can lead person to return back home physically and emotionally exhausted and so can not fulfill the family and home demands. On the other side presence of spouse and children, health problems, elder and children care, unsupportive family members all can not help employee to focus at work.

The last changes in economics, organizational downsizing, restructuring and so caused employees to fear from losing their jobs and feel insecure (Duxbury). They start to work long hours and spend less time with their families, which increase WFC. (Higgins)

The globalization has influenced people’s life and organizations’ operations. Currently some people have to travel and work away from their homeland. The extensive travel and absence from home increase the WFC. Besides that, culture differences increases the complexity of dealing with people. Organizations cannot follow the same techniques that are used in one country to handle WFC in another country.

 

 

People differences in work-family conflict

According to (Greenhaus), individual differences can increase or decrease the effects of WFC due to differences in situation perception or due to environment differences. Following are some factors that can make some differences.

-          Type of work. Works that require frequent absenteeism from home and that are risky such as rescue teams, fire station and police. Increase WFC.

-          Work support: Flexibilities, facilities and incentive programs can help the employee in reducing WFC.

-          Family responsibilities: Married people, existence of children or elders can increase the WFC.

-          Partner support and understanding spouse can help a lot in reducing WFC

-          Life span: individual interests are changing through life span young employees have more demands for child care and time spend with family while, healthcare is more important for old employees (Chen) & (McCarthy).

-          Education and experience can generate better understanding to situations and so less stress.(Chen) &(Greenhaus)

-          Gender (Chen), (McCarthy), (Higgins) & (Carslon): women are considered to suffer more from WFC since they retain more home responsibilities and childcare.

-          Personality: It is all about situation perception, individual preferences and their abilities to cope with stress. (Greenhaus) supported the concept of personality differences and its effects on WFC in his paper. People with high Negative affectivity experience higher level of WFC according to (Greenhaus).

-          Culture: (Carikci) different cultures have different demands. For example Eastern and Arab cultures focus on elder care and put more child care responsibilities on women rather than men.

-          Income: employees with high income suffer less from WFC because they can spend more on child care and health insurance.

 

 

Importance, consequences and symptoms of work-life conflict

Work-life conflict has increased due to role overload in the last decades (Higgins) & (Duxbury). For example, almost 60% of working Canadians reported high levels of stress due to role overload according to (Higgins). As any kind of stress, stress caused by WFC can lower employee performance.  According to (Higgins), (McCarthy) & (Greenhaus) people suffering from WFC have 3.5 times more absenteeism rate due to mental or physical fatigue and 2.3 times more turnover rate for people with WFC. The birth rate in Canada has declined in the last decades because parents decided to delay or not having children or limit their family size (Duxbury) & (Higgins). This is because they can not balance between their work and family life requirements.

 (Greenhaus) discussed the relation between WFC and job satisfaction and concluded that they are negatively correlated. When WFC arises, job satisfaction goes down. Low job satisfaction can produce very negative impact on job performance and so the overall cost on organizations.

The accumulation of incompatible demands between work and family makes it to difficult to satisfy both of them which in turn increase the stress on people. (Poelmans) study shows that there is a strong relation between the WFC strain and mental health that can affect the family relations and involvements. The stress from one role can be easily transferred to the other role and make great impact on it specially when the person is not aware of that (McCarthy). Such issue will make one to lose focus on both work and family roles and so escalate the conflict.

 

 

Solutions and recommendations for people

Since the WFC is not only a matter for parents with young children, people and organizations must work on reducing WFC. Here are some suggested recommendations for people to do:

-          Goal setting: Individual should identify what is important in their lives and make their decisions according to it. This includes the quality of life they want, time and space allocation and so. Goal settings is not enough alone, but continues observation on achievements, how they are done and goal adjusting will help individuals (Greenhaus). This helps individuals to define their identities and roles.

-          Positive thinking is very helpful for people to cope with role overload when one thinks positively about his achievements and the situations.

-          Time management can produce good effects and reduce WFC.

-          Balance in time, satisfaction and involvement between work and family helps in the reduction of WFC.

-          Spousal support (McCarthy) can make great difference and change in one’s life. When the spouse is understandable and can help in the family role such as child care, the overall WFC can be minimized.

 

 

 

Solutions and recommendations for organizations

(Higgins) It is not enough for organizations to deal with WFC reduction to make employees happy because WFC has great impact on the work performance as discussed before. Employees can work harder and overtime and try to adapt to work requirements but this does not help in reducing the stress. The solution is in the hand of the employer who has the power but it is not enough to teach employees how to cope better to reduce WFC as in (Higgins). Organizations must provide support for their employees to reduce the effects of WFC as discussed before.

There are several methods where employers can support the employees. The following are some of them: (McCarthy), (Higgins)

-          Flexible working hours and parental leave: when employees have the freedom on selecting the time they can attend to work they can have better chances to spend time with their families and fulfill his work and family demands. Organizations must focus on performance and output measure of work instead of presence and how much hours spent.

-          Incentive programs such as health insurance for the family and dependants

-          Child and elder care programs such as on-site care, payment incentives for it or even creating partnerships with care institutes.

-          Telecommuting can be very helpful in improving WFC since one can organize his own time.

-          Relocations and transfers: organizations can provide some support in providing house, help in getting used to new environment, courses about new culture and even help in providing job for spouse. Transfer can be helpful specially if the employee is not living with his family.

-          Better communication with the employees to know individual life needs

 

SAS institute is known of its work-life programs that help people, which made it one of the best 10 American companies to work for. SAS is known of its focus on people and work environment.

They have several employee programs such as in-site childcare center, health center, private offices for all, subsidized cafeteria, and athletic facilities. The company offers unlimited employee sick days and a 35-hour workweek. Their main goal is creating a work environment where employees’ effectiveness is the most important. They have unique work-family programs that contributed to reduce turnover rate to as low as 4% which increased company’s savings to about $60 million. (Bankert) and SAS web site.

 

 

Studies and results

Due to the importance of the WFC the number of studies related to this topic has increased in the last decades. Most of the studies used questions like:

-          Is the job you are engaged in now is your ideal job?

-          Do you have any WFC?

-          What kind of conflicts between work and family do you have?

-          What do you consider yourself, work-centric or family-centric?

-          Do you like to see any policies to be implemented at your workplace to reduce WFC?

-          Does going to work make you feel too tiered and does not help you in enjoying family life?

-          Is the time you spend with your family sufficient?

-          Do your family responsibilities prevent you from effectively performing your job?

The questions are asked over several years and several times a year (Carslon), (Poelmans), (Chen) & (Lo).

 

 

Results and conclusions of some studies made in some countries:

Canada: according to (Duxbury) & (Higgins)

-          WFC is on the rise, half of Canadians employees experience such conflict.

-          WFC affect individuals, families where women report higher levels and almost half of 1-5 years old children need parental care.

-          WFC affect organization. Employees with WFC miss more than twice as many workdays as those with low conflict. WFC costs around $2.7 billion due to lost time.

-          WFC affects not only parents, 15% of Canadian employees care for both children and old relatives.

-          WFC is associated with health risks and increased smoking and alcohol consumption.

-          Canadians do not have flexible work hours. While 88% of employers stated they offer flexible working hours, only 24% of employees agree.

 

Holland: according to (Jacobs)

-          10% of employees experience WFC.

-          WFC increases fatigue and high level of absenteeism.

-          Long working hours such as frequent overtime and working shifts increases WFC.

-          Advanced knowledge of work schedule, incentives offered by organizations and the ability to take days off reduces the effect of WFC.

 

Hong Kong: according to (Lo)

-          Number of women in work force has increased last decade.

-          The most important demand for women employees is flexible working hours.

-          There is weaker labor legislation in Hong Kong than in western countries. It does not support work-family balance and benefits.

-          Women there hold the house and child care responsibilities and men do not share in that. For that reason, in families women have to scale back their careers for their house life.

 

Turkey: according to (Carikci)

-          WFC is generated from pressure due to the time constraints in work.

-          In Turkey, parents and elder family relatives care are so important for Turkish and specially women which increases WFC on them.

-          Turkish women are considered to suffer more from WFC because the culture considers house and child care of their responsibilities more than men.

-          As a result women experience more WFC.

-          In Turkey, the business is not family friendly and does not provide sufficient social security compared to Europe.

 

Most studies indicated the effect of work on life is the most important for people and it is their highest priority (Duxbury), (Poelmans), (Greenhaus) & (Carikci). For that reason organizations must care about the WFC reduce it to reduce turnover rate.

 

Conclusions

Work-Life conflict is the result of the role overload and inability to satisfy the demands of home and work. While there are several factors that increase WFC, time demand is the most important one. Individuals are affected differently by WFC which is the result of perception and environmental differences. In general, women suffer from WFC more than men.

The WFC has increased in the last decades and affect the employees’ performance and so the overall organizations profit. Organizations must offer programs and incentives to reduce the WFC. There is a great demand for flexible working hours but this alone does not solve the conflict. Governments should have some influences on rules and labor legislation to reduce WFC. Besides that, they must perform researches and studies on this topic.

Finally, WFC is solved only by the cooperation between people and organizations.

References

-          N. McCarthy. “Notes on Work and Personal Life Balance”. December, 26, 2003 from World Wide Web at http://www.mtsu.edu/~pmccarth/work_fam.htm

-          L. Duxbury, C. Higgins & D. Coghill. (2003) “Voices of Canadians: Seeking Work-Life Balance”.

-          D. Rotondo, D. Carlson & J. Kincaid. (2002) “Coping with multiple dimensions of work-family conflict”, The Emerald Research Journal.

-          D. Carslon, K. Kacmar & L. Stepina. (1995) “An examination of two aspects of work-family conflict: time and identity”, Women in management review.

-          C. Higgins & L. Duxbury. (2003) “Work-Life conflict: Myths versus Realities”, FMI Journal.

-          J. Greenhaus. “Work-Family Conflict”

-          S. Poelmans. (2001) “Work-Family Conflict as a mediator of the work stress- Mental health relationship”.

-          I. Chen, Y. Lin, F. Tsai & N. Liu. “The study of Work-Family Conflict and Job Satisfaction”.

-          S. Seitel. Workfamily.com. “Work-life essays”. December, 26, 2003 from world wide web at http://www.workfamily.com/Open/Work-Life-Essays.asp

-          I. Carikci. (2002) “Gender differences in work family conflict among managers in Turkey: non western perspective”.

-          S. Jacobs. (2003). “Ten percent of employees experience work-family conflict”

-          S. Lo (2002). “Perceptions of work-family conflict among married female professionals in Hong Kong”, The Emerald Research Journal.

-          E. Bankert, M. Lee & C. Lange. “SAS institute: the Wharton work/Life roundtable”.

-          W. Jones & T. McKenna. (2002). “women and work-home conflict: a dual paradigm approach”

-          C. Higgins & L. Duxbury. “The 2001 National Work–Life Conflict Study”

-          SAS http://www.sas.com