Work-Life Balance Working Group Newsletter Balance Working Group Newsletter, Volume 7, Summer 2015 1 WARM WELCOME to the seventh edition of the Work-Life Balance Working Group newsletter

Work-Life BalanceWorking GroupNewsletterVolume 7, Summer 2015

Applying the science of psychology to work

Division ofOccupational Psychology

Deirdre Anderson [email protected]

Alexandra Beauregard [email protected]

Rob Briner [email protected]

Uracha Chatrakul [email protected]

Jurate Cingiene [email protected]

Hannah Courtney Bennett [email protected]

Caroline Gatrell [email protected]

Roxane Gervais [email protected]

Christine Grant [email protected]

Fiona Jones [email protected]

Gail Kinman [email protected]

Suzan Lewis [email protected]

Allison Lindsay [email protected]

Barbara Lond [email protected]

Clare Lyonette [email protected]

Gillian Marks [email protected]

Anna Meller [email protected]

Almuth McDowall [email protected]

Julianne Miles [email protected]

Nicky Payne [email protected]

Susie Phillips Baker [email protected]

Cristina Quiñones García [email protected]

Laura Radcliffe [email protected]

Julie Waumsley [email protected]

Stephen Wood [email protected]

Siobhan Wray [email protected]

DOP WLB Working Group Members

Work-Life Balance Working Group Newsletter, Volume 7, Summer 2015 1

WARM WELCOME to the seventhedition of the Work-Life BalanceWorking Group newsletter. This

edition includes research articles on topics ofconsiderable importance to the work-lifefield including the implications of caringresponsibilities for work-life balance and well-being, boundary setting and job crafting andreviews of international conferences. Wehave contributions from researchers workingin Germany, the Netherlands and Israel aswell as the UK. Once again, thanks are due toRoxane for putting together such an inter-esting and stimulating newsletter. Thanks arealso due to the contributors, without whomthis newsletter would not exist.

This volume comprises an article on theDigital Brain Switch Project, which usesnovel methodology to explore work-lifeboundaries in a digital age. Smartphoneshave clear potential to help us integrate ourwork and personal life, but it has becomeincreasingly harder to turn them off. The‘always on’ culture has been very much inthe news recently. A recent survey estimatedthat the average British worker spends 36days a year answering work emails1. Researchconducted in the US reported some startlingfigures: 50 per cent of respondents checktheir email in bed (starting at around 7.00 a.m.)2. More than half (57 per cent)regularly check their work email on familyoutings, 38 per cent at the dinner table andnearly seven out of 10 are unable to sleep

without checking email. Although it canenable flexible working, individuals andorganisations are realising that technologycan be harmful to work-life balance and well-being more generally. We need morecreative, flexible and sustainable strategies to‘reboot’ human beings, and equip them withthe coping skills to do so proactively. Someorganisations are attempting to manageemployees’ usage by introducing emailcontrol systems to encourage face-to-facesocial engagement. Such systems may involveshutting the server down outside normalworking hours to stop emails being sent andreceived. Organisations, such as LiverpoolCounty Council, have stopped employeesfrom sending emails to colleagues within thesame building altogether, with tangiblebenefits for interpersonal relationships andteam-building.

Our working group has strong potentialto help individuals and organisationsmanage information and communicationstechnology (ICT) use more effectively.Earlier this year, members received fundingfrom the BPS to organise a series of seminarsto gain insight into how we are managingdigital usage across the working lifespan, andto what extent we are able to manage bound-aries between work and activities in other lifedomains. Also reviewed is the impact of ICTuse on psychological and physical well-being,as well as work-related outcomes. Particularconsideration is given to exploring the

Message from the Co-Chairs

Almuth McDowall & Gail Kinman

Almuth McDowall Gail Kinman

A

1 See http://www.cityam.com/213658/email-overload-you-spend-36-days-year-writing-emails2 See http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/02/80-of-americans-work-after-hours-equaling-an-extra-day-of-work-per-week.

2 Work-Life Balance Working Group Newsletter, Volume 7, Summer 2015

Almuth McDowall & Gail Kinman

strategies individuals use at different life andcareer stages to ‘manage’ their ICT use, theirpreference for work-life integration or sepa-ration, and the role played by perceptions ofcontrol over domain management and otherindividual differences.

The first two seminars (held at the OpenUniversity in March and Birkbeck in May)were very well attended and enthusiasticallyreceived. The London seminar was consider-ably over-booked, which shows the high levelof interest in the topic. A full summary willbe provided in this newsletter in due course.The final seminar will be in September – thiswill be by invitation only and will pulltogether the themes and messages emergingfrom the previous seminars to identifyoutputs and priorities for research and inter-ventions to help people engage more posi-tively with technology at different life stagesin different working contexts.

For the past few years, the working grouphas organised a seminar in National Work-Life Week in order to showcase the workdone by members. Last year, we explored thepros and cons of flexible working initiativesto a capacity audience. This year we intendto focus on fathers’ experiences of work-lifebalance – a topic that is sadly neglected. Theseminar will take place on 24 September(a.m.) and all are welcome. We have alreadybooked several expert speakers – more infor-mation and registration instructions will beprovided shortly.

Please get in touch with Roxane if youwould like to make a contribution to thenewsletter. We also encourage you to let usknow about any forthcoming presentations,publications and press coverage in relationto work-life issues. If you attend any trainingevents or conferences, it would be good ifyou could let us have an overview of yourexperiences. We would be particularly inter-ested in your ideas for themes for futureeditions of the newsletter.

Dr Almuth McDowallEmail: [email protected]

Professor Gail KinmanEmail: [email protected]


THIS LATEST VERSION of the news-letter includes articles, an interview witha prominent psychologist, and confer-

ence reviews. It is diverse, but provides awealth of information on work-life balanceand I hope that you find it interesting as wellas useful. There are articles on the impact ofelder care on family members, as outlined byHeiko Schulz and Hannes Zacher andHarriet Jefferson. The interview with Evan-gelia Demerouti highlights anotherapproach to the ‘work’ and ‘life’ interfacethat of work-self balance. It is an interestingway to consider balancing these two inter-twined components, but as Evangelia states,while focusing on the self could beconstrued as selfish, unless individuals areselfish at times, neither work nor familywould benefit. Once you read the article,please think of how you can be ‘selfish’ attimes and get some ‘me’ time. Your friendsand family will thank you, I am sure. In ourinternational section, Ifat Matzner-Herutidiscusses work-family conflict among Israeliworking parents, while Gillian Symon andcolleagues present new research on thosedigital technologies that are impacting onour lives to a greater extent. As well, thereare reviews of conferences and seminars andconference announcements.

The next edition of the newsletter willfocus on exploring the concept of WLB atthe organisational level. A future edition willexamine the ‘Always on’ culture that isprevailing in Western societies and isincreasing within Eastern societies, as well asdeveloping countries. If you wish tocontribute on these topics, or any other,please get in touch at the email addresslisted. You can follow the group also on itstwitter feed: @DOPworklife

Dr Roxane L. GervaisEmail: [email protected]

Message from the Newsletter Editor

Roxane L. Gervais

Roxane L. Gervais


Featured article

Employees’ eldercareresponsibilities,

workplace support, andoccupational well-being

Heiko Schulz & Hannes Zacher

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES in manycountries result in a growing numberof employees who provide care for

their older relatives. The ageing of the work-force makes eldercare a significant work-family issue for many employees andorganisations. While research has extensivelyinvestigated the benefits of childcaresupport, the psychosocial resources ofemployees caring for their older relativeshave received less attention (Calvano, 2013).

Zacher and Winter (2011) used astressor-strain-outcome framework to investi-gate relationships of eldercare demands withstrain and work engagement, and thebuffering role of perceived organisationaleldercare support (POES) in a sample ofemployees with eldercare responsibilities.POES was defined as the extent to whichemployees believe that their organisation isconcerned about and supports them withregard to their eldercare responsibilities.Zacher and Winter (2011) showed thatPOES was negatively associated with strain,weakened the positive relationship betweeneldercare demands and strain, and bufferedthe negative relationship between strain andwork engagement. However, Zacher andWinter (2011) did not examine other poten-tially important forms of perceived supportfor eldercare, such as perceived supervisorand co-worker support. Thus the relativeimportance of POES could not be estab-

lished. In a new study, we extended this lineof research by applying the conservation ofresources (COR) theory to the eldercarecontext (Zacher & Schulz, 2015). CORtheory argues that employees want to gainand maintain valued resources and experi-ence strain when valued resources are threat-ened or lost (Hobfoll, 1989). Based on CORtheory, we propose that high eldercaredemands deplete the psychological andphysiological resources of employees which,in turn, leads to the experience of strain.Caring for an elderly relative with multipledisabilities is a more time- and effort-consuming activity than caring for a relativewho can still take care of many activities ofdaily living him- or herself. In addition, higheldercare demands are more likely to be inconflict with responsibilities in other liferoles, such as childcare and employment,than low levels of eldercare demands.

We expected, therefore, that three formsof perceived support for eldercare are nega-tively related to strain and weaken the positiverelationship between eldercare demands andstrain: perceived supervisor and co-workersupport for eldercare as well as POES. Weexpected that POES has relatively strongermain and moderating effects than perceivedsupervisor and co-worker support, becauseemployees should consider POES a morevaluable resource for two reasons. First,employees should view POES as a more effec-

Hannes ZacherHeiko Schulz

tive resource in the context of eldercare thansupervisor and co-worker support (Ng &Sorensen, 2008). POES operates on the basisof a global framework or policy that is createdand enforced by upper-level managementand the human resources (HR) department.Employees are likely to believe that the organ-isation has a broader and more effective set ofstructural means available to supportemployees than individual supervisors and co-workers. For instance, the organisation and itsrepresentatives, such as HR managers, usuallymake final decisions about flexible work andleave arrangements. Second, POES should beperceived as a more stable and consistentresource than perceived supervisor and co-worker support (Ng & Sorensen, 2008). Thesupportive organisational context, includingeldercare-relevant practices and procedures,is less likely to fluctuate over time and, there-fore, is more predictable compared to othersources of support. For instance, supervisorsand co-workers may vary in their supportacross days and weeks, and sometimes theymay even represent an additional demand onemployees’ resources (e.g. because they are ina bad mood or need assistance themselves).

This study was carried out in Germany,where the immediate family has traditionallybeen the main provider of eldercare. Surveydata came from 100 employees (60 female)with eldercare responsibilities working for alarge legal health insurance company. Forthe HR management of the organisation, thepurpose of the study was to examine the inci-dence of caregiving responsibilities amongemployees. The number of hours spent foreldercare per week ranged from two to 35hours, with a mean of 11.65 hours(SD=7.82). The age of care recipients rangedfrom 67 to 105 years, with a mean of 80.68years (SD=6.90). Thirteen participants indi-cated that they lived together with the carerecipient in the same household, whereasthe remaining 87 care recipients livedoutside the participants’ households.

Our findings are generally consistentwith propositions of COR theory (Hobfoll,1989) and with arguments by Ng and

Sorensen (2008) on the differential valueand benefits of perceived support resources.Specifically, we found that, on their own,POES as well as perceived supervisor and co-worker support, were negatively related tostrain. When the three forms of perceivedsupport were examined simultaneously, onlyPOES negatively predicted strain. POES alsoweakened the positive relationship betweeneldercare demands and strain. In contrast,perceived supervisor and co-worker supportdid not have moderating effects.

In conclusion, our results suggest thatsupervisors and organisations need to beaware that employees with high eldercaredemands may experience more strain, butthat high POES can weaken the negativeimpact of such demands. Thus, it is impor-tant that organisational practitioners findways to increase caregivers’ POES. Onepossibility to do so may be to increase theavailability of eldercare-related services.Anecdotal evidence from Germany suggeststhat some organisations are beginning tointroduce initiatives (e.g. long-term unpaidleave, reduced or more flexible work hours,and telecommuting) in order to help theiremployees’ balance work and eldercare.Supervisors may play a particularly impor-tant role in the implementation andmanagement of these eldercare-relatedinitiatives. Organisations could offer aware-ness training for supervisors on how to bestsupport employees with eldercare demands.

Future research could take individualdifferences of caregivers into account, suchas eldercare-related self-efficacy, as addi-tional psychological resources. For example,Schulz, Voegele and Meyer (2009) showedthat outcome expectancies moderated therelationship between perceived stress andchanges in health over time. In addition,further research is needed on the roleplayed by gender and culture in relation-ships among eldercare demands, strain andsupport. Interestingly, gender was unrelatedto eldercare demands in the current study,despite the fact that women still generallycarry the main burden of eldercare responsi-


Employees’ eldercare responsibilities, workplace support, and occupational well-being


bilities. Moreover, future cross-culturalresearch on eldercare could provide impor-tant insights regarding higher-order societalfactors that may benefit employed caregivers(Calvano, 2013).

Another important direction for futureresearch is to investigate which actual organ-isational services and practices, in combina-tion with individual differences inaccessibility, perception and evaluation ofthese services, increase POES. Studies couldinvestigate POES as a mediator betweenorganisational services and practices on theone hand and relevant employee and organ-isational outcomes on the other. Eldercare-related services and practices includeflexible work schedules, leave policies,telecommuting, and employee assistanceprogrammes.

The AuthorsHeiko SchulzTechniker Krankenkasse.Email: [email protected]

Hannes ZacherUniversity of Groningen.

ReferencesCalvano, L. (2013). Tug of war: Caring for our elders

while remaining productive at work. Academy ofManagement Perspectives, 27(3), 204–218.

Hobfoll, S.E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A newattempt at conceptualising stress. AmericanPsychologist, 44(3), 513–524.

Schulz, H., Vögele, C. & Meyer, B. (2009). Optimism,self-efficacy, and perceived stress as predictors ofself-reported health symptoms in college students.Zeitschrift für Gesundheitspsychologie, 17(4), 185–194.doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1026/0943-8149.17.4.185

Ng, T.W.H. & Sorensen, K.L. (2008). Towards afurther understanding of the relationshipsbetween perceptions of support and workattitudes: A meta-analysis. Group & OrganizationManagement, 33(3), 243–268.

Zacher, H. & Winter, G. (2011). Eldercare demands,strain, and work engagement: The moderatingrole of perceived organisational support. Journalof Vocational Behavior, 79(3), 667–680.

Zacher, H. & Schulz, H. (2015). Employees’ eldercaredemands, strain, and perceived support. Journal ofManagerial Psychology, 30(2), 183–198.

Heiko Schulz & Hannes Zacher


IN 2005 my mother died quite suddenlyand unexpectedly. This left my father byhimself. He had always relied on my

mother to organise him – that was the foun-dation of their relationship for over 50 years– but he had started to have memory prob-lems some time before her death and hadbeen increasingly dependent on my motherto manage him on day-to-day matters. Theeffect of her sudden death was devastatingfor him as he had been totally devoted toher. Her death precipitated his underlyingdementia and within weeks, he had gonefrom being independent to requiringconsiderable support from the family.

At the time of my mother’s death, I wasworking in the Health Service as a commu-nity practitioner and was experienced insupporting people at home. As the memberof the family with knowledge of the NHS andcommunity services as well as living relativelyclose to my parents, the main responsibilityof caring for my father and helping himaccess help and support to which he wasentitled, fell on my shoulders.

Naively I thought that accessing help formy father would be fairly easy and straight-forward as this was ‘my trade’, so to speak. I thought that as a professional used tocaring for people in their homes, it would bea case of using my professional knowledge ina personal situation to provide care for myfather. However, the reality was verydifferent. Not only did my professionalknowledge and position not help me achievethe necessary support I knew he was entitledto, but the position I found myself in, both as

a professional and personal caregiver, essen-tially working in similar domains both atwork and now ‘at home’, proved personallycostly and challenging to me. In addition I was not prepared for the response I gotfrom other professionals (and sometimescolleagues), when I was perceived as being inthe role of caregiver and daughter. It was asif my professional and medical knowledgewhich I utilised daily in my work/professional caregiver domain, counted fornothing in my home/personal caregiverdomain.

My father died in 2006. It was not a ‘gooddeath’ and he and the family were let downby the Health Service. For me, I felt I was letdown by my profession and an organisationand ethos that I had believed in, for over 20 years.

In 2007, I took a break from the HealthService and returned to Psychology. I under-took a MSc in Occupational Psychology atSurrey University. This gave me the opportu-nity to examine occupational and organisa-tional behaviour in a more forensic andobjective manner, in particular to explorethe issues raised by the complexities of beingboth a professional and personal caregiveracross the work/life domains.

Background Carers UK (2009) state that there are sixmillion carers in the UK, some 10 per cent ofthe population and this is set to rise to 10 million by the mid-2020s (Buckner &Yeandle, 2011; Jones, 2003; UK Census2011). Carers contribute greatly to the

Featured article

Who cares if I care? Narratives of multiple caring

responsibilitiesHarriet Jefferson

economy through their unpaid contributionto care costs, (estimated at £119 billion/year– Buckner & Yeandle, 2011) and in a time ofausterity, and with the NHS and social careunder increasing financial pressure, thisreliance on hidden and unpaid care is set tocontinue (Barker Commission, 2014; HMGovernment, 2010).

While the profile of caregivers has histor-ically been primarily middle-aged women(the sandwich generation), this too ischanging, as the number of men who arenow looking after dependants is alsoincreasing (Carers Trust, 2014; Mulligan &Morley, 2013; UK Census 2011).

The profile and impact of caregiving inthe UK is an under researched area and thisincludes an absence of research on profes-sional nurse caregivers who are also personalcaregivers and the impact this has on theirwork-life balance, which was the focus of mystudy. My interest was to consider this roleand function in terms of a framework ofwork-life balance, in particular the issue ofwork and personal life merging andencroaching on each other as well asexploring how individuals placed in thisposition, manage to deal with these tensions.

MethodThe study adopted a holistic-content narra-tive analysis approach within a critical realistframework (Crossley, 2000; Willig, 2008). Itinvolved interviewing three participants whoworked as community nurses in the NHS andwho found themselves in the position ofcaring for a relative at home. Each partici-pant gave their individual stories and fromthese accounts common emergent themeswere identified and explored includingexamination within the wider social andcultural context of caregiving.

FindingsFrom the analysis, two main themes emergedwith a number of sub-themes underpinningthem. These were:

Work and Family Issues1. Conflict, withdrawal and disengagement.2. Parallel lives (families exist in temporal

space but with little interaction).3. Importance of community and lack of a

safety net.4. Threats to and affirmation of identity.

The Psychological Contract1. Relations, expectations and the psycho-

logical contract.2. Rejection by family and work (a system of

double bind).3. Sense-making and coping.

All of these themes merit further research,however, the most salient theme to emergewas that of Relations, expectations and thepsychological contract.

The Psychological ContractInvestigating the Psychological Contract(Conway & Briner, 2005; Rousseau, 1989;Rousseau & Tijoriwala, 1998) has generallyfocused on the organisational/work contextof a contract between employer andemployee. Rousseau & Tijoriwala (1998,p.679) describe the Psychological Contractas ‘an individual’s belief in mutual obliga-tions between that person and another partysuch as an employer… This belief is predi-cated on the perception that a promise hasbeen made… and a consideration offered inexchange for it… binding the parties tosome reciprocal obligations’. The contract isa mental model or schema of the relation-ship with the employer and is essentiallyconcerned with a promise but one based onindividual perception and expectations.However, such contracts are subjective. Notall expectations are contractual but they areused to predict individual and organisationaltrust, commitment and satisfaction (Conway& Briner, 2005; Rousseau 1989). In times of


Harriet Jefferson


Who cares if I care? Narratives of multiple caring responsibilities

change and uncertainty individuals use thesecontracts to help them with sense-makingbut in doing so, often result in idiosyncraticinterpretations, particularly when it comes tocontract evaluation, including fulfilment,breach and violation.

In my study the Psychological Contractwas indeed evaluated in relation to its fulfil-ment, breach and violation and was found tolargely fail the individuals concerned,leading to despondency, disappointmentand anger. This effect impacted on the indi-viduals’ physical and mental health and allexhibited symptoms of stress and distress.

However, what also emerged from thisstudy was that there were at least fourpsychological contracts operating within thenarratives of these individuals and it went farbeyond the employer/employee context. Inaddition to this, there were tensions betweenthese contracts causing personal distresswhen trying to balance and/or resolve thesetensions. This was exacerbated by a contextof work-life balance that was blurred forthese individuals.

The four psychological contracts thatemerged from this study were:

The participant/family contractThis was characterised by a change in rela-tionship status for the participant (profes-sional caregiver) and family when faced by afamily member becoming sick and termi-nally ill. The participant’s assumption was toswing into action as the ‘nurse in the family’and this was an ‘unspoken assumption thatthat’s what I’d do…’. Initially it was also anassumption made by the family about their‘professional’ member. However, this was anexpectation without contractual basis andproblems emerged when, for all participants,there came an inevitable point where the‘contract’ tipped over a line of acceptability– when professional knowledge meant thatthe participant was seeking to instigate deci-sions by the family about future care whichwere rejected by the family. Rejection by thefamily of the professional expertise of thefamily member meant this person became

isolated within the family. Added to this, theywere isolated from their professionalcolleagues as they were identified as a ‘rela-tive’ rather than a colleague in this situation.This caused resentment from all involvedand personal regret and wariness abouttaking on a similar future function withinthe family.

The participant/parent contractWith the shift within the family once illnessbecame critical, roles (and accompanyingexpectations) changed, particularly aroundthe relationship between the professionalparticipant and their sick parent. Whatemerged was an unspoken agreement forthe (professional) child to care for theparent which now became a promise andexpectation from both parties but without aclear understanding of what that might be inpractice. For at least one participant this alsoincluded parents-in-law.

This contractual relationship was thedominant one of the four and in some waysthe most contentious and difficult. For boththe professional (participant/child) and theparent, there was a degree of disappoint-ment as expectations were not fulfilled andwere not discussed.

The participant/work contractAs health professionals, all the participantsexpected that their employer (the NHS)would be sympathetic to their personal situa-tion. In all cases they felt let down by theiremployers with regard to an unsympatheticand inconsistent response to: quality of caregiven to the sick relative; access to compas-sionate leave; flexibility with short noticeannual leave; feeling obligated to return towork too early and in particular to dealingwith clients emotional needs too early; lackof management and organisational support.

‘I find it ironic actually that the Major Incident Plans… include counselling fordeath and bereavement of staff… and youthink it would be quite nice to have somethingsimilarly robust [in place for death of a familymember due to natural causes] rather than

just be referred to Core Care [NHS counsellingservice].’‘It would have been… far easier… to go offsick [in the first place] …than try and balanceeverything.’

The nurse practitioner/professional contractIn the case of all the study participants therewas an issue about the power and place ofthe practitioner/professional contract inrelation to their work and life domains. Theyexperienced the care given to their relativeby the organisation they worked for (theNHS) but were forced to review the carereceived through a ‘relative’s/public lens’ asthey were placed by the organisation in therole of ‘relative’. This exposed some uncom-fortable truths and dilemmas for them withregard to their own profession’s practice; itsunderlying values, beliefs, and culturallydetermined behaviours.

‘…the whole thing [being]… a very difficultand disappointing time because it could havebeen managed so much better… But I thinkwhen that’s your job, your profession, it is verydifficult to… sort of watch that and not reallyknow how to manage [the situation], how tohandle your own feelings, how to challenge,when you’re not there as another member ofstaff, you’re just there as a relative…’

The contract between practitioner andher/his professional body (both legal andpsychological) is more complicated than abilateral agreement. Its success is contingenton the contract (both legal and psycho-

logical) with the employee (who is also aprofessional practitioner) and the organisa-tion. In this sense, there is something morelike a tri-lateral contract operating hereinvolving employer, employee and profes-sional body. However, it is not clear that theobjectives of these contracts are fullyaligned, although that is the assumptionmade by the individual who is tied to thesecontracts, as a ‘professional employee of theNHS’. When tested, the ‘professionalcontract’ took precedence over the‘employer/employee contract’, however, itraised questions about how much power andinfluence the professional dimension reallyhad over the organisation’s objectives. It wasan area of much consternation and wherecontract breach and violation was mostevident.

This study is small and limited but hasraised questions about our understanding ofwhat really constitutes ‘work’ and ‘family’ forindividuals where these domains merge. Thecomplexity of the psychological caregivercontract also warrants further investigation.What has emerged from this study is that thecaregiver contract within the family is a deeprooted obligation and individuals will go toextraordinary lengths to meet their obliga-tion to the person in need of care but atconsiderable personal cost.

The AuthorHarriet JeffersonEmail: [email protected]


Harriet Jefferson

Buckner, L. & Yeandle, S. (2011). Valuing carers.London Carers UK and University of Leeds.

Carers UK (2009). Carers facts and figures. From CarersWeek 8–14 June 2009; carersuk.org

Carers Trust and Men’s Health Forum (2014).Husband, partner, dad, son carer? A survey of theexperiences and needs of male carers. London: CarersTrust.

Conway, N. & Briner, R.B. (2005). Understandingpsychological contracts at work: A critical evaluation oftheory and research. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Crossley, M. (2000). Introducing narrative psychology:Self, trauma and the construction of meaning.Buckingham: Oxford University Press.

HM Government (2010). Recognised, valued andsupported: Next steps for the Carers Strategy. London:DH.

Jones, A. (2003). About time to change: The WorkFoundation in association with Employers for Work-LifeBalance. London: The Work Foundation.

King’s Fund (2014). A new settlement for Health andSocial Care – Final Report. The outcome of theCommission on the Future of Health and SocialCare in England 2013 chaired by Kate Barker(The Barker Commission). London: King’s Fund.

Mulligan, C. & Morley, H. (2013). Older men who care:Understanding their support and support needs.Lancaster: Lancaster University Centre for AgeingResearch.

Rousseau, D.M. (1989). Psychological and impliedcontracts in organisations. Employee Responsibilitiesand Rights Journal, 2, 121–139.

Rousseau, D.M. & Tijoriwala, S.A. (1998). Assessingpsychological contracts: Issue, alternatives andmeasures. Journal of Organizational Behaviour, 19,679–695.

UK Census (2011). Office of National Statistics.Licenced under the Open Government Licence v1.0.

Willig, C. (2008). Introducing qualitative research inpsychology. Maidenhead: Oxford University Press.


Who cares if I care? Narratives of multiple caring responsibilities

References

Gail:What first got you interested in occupationalhealth psychology?Evangelia: It was very personal to me. I noticed that a family member became sickafter a period of job insecurity and conflict atwork. It made me realise that people’s expe-riences of work can have a serious impact ontheir well-being and other areas of their life. Gail: The job demands resources (JD-R) model thatyou developed with Arnold Bakker, WilmarSchaufeli and Friedhelm Nachreiner has becomeone of the most popular models of job stress. Morerecently you have starting researching job crafting,could you tell us a bit more about this?Evangelia: ‘Job crafting’ refers to thechanges that employees make to their jobs tobetter accommodate their personal interestsand strengths. The concept of crafting firstcame to my attention when I was working on a project on organisational change. I realised that crafting is an important part ofadjusting to change – in other words, peoplehave to make the job their own for changeinitiatives to succeed. Crafting works inseveral ways: firstly, employees can adjust thenumber of tasks they perform, or seek morechallenges or new responsibilities when theyfeel ready to do so. Secondly, people canexpand their resources, for instance, byincreasing the amount of interpersonalcontact they have to provide more socialsupport, or increase the amount of feedbackthey receive. Thirdly, employees can maketheir job less strenuous by eliminating tasksthey find demanding or finding ways to workmore efficiently. Finally, crafting can involvecognitive reframing, where employeeschange the way in which job tasks are

perceived. For example,by focusing on the mean-ingfulness of the job theydo and their enjoymentof the tasks they under-take. There is evidencethat job crafting can havemany advantages interms of enhancedengagement, resilience,well-being and job satisfaction as well asfinancial benefits for organisations. Gail: Do all jobs have the potential for crafting?What about jobs that are low in control?Evangelia: Employees with greater autonomyat work are likely to have more opportunitiesto craft, but there is scope even in lowcontrol jobs. People who train others to dotasks that they are themselves familiar withcan encourage crafting at an individual level.It is crucial, however, to facilitate a culture ofcrafting at the level of the organisation –essentially crafting could be seen as thequantification and operationalisation of alearning organisation. Action research tech-niques can be useful, as employees are in thebest position to make suggestions for howtheir jobs (and those of others) could becrafted to enhance performance, satisfactionand well-being. Also, employees will bebetter able to determine how the hindrancedemands they experience at work can beminimised and opportunities for challengeincreased.Gail: Is job crafting always beneficial? Oneemployee’s crafting may impinge on anotherperson’s job; for example it may increase acolleague’s workload or reduce their control.


The WLBWG AsksInterview with Professor Evangelia Demerouti,

Eindhoven University of Technology, NetherlandsGail Kinman

Gail Kinman talks to Evangelia Demerouti about new ideas on job crafting and work-life balance.

Evangelia Demerouti

Evangelia: When one person reduces theirdemands those of another employee are likelyto increase, as what they don’t do, others haveto. In our interventions we make it clear thatthere have to be rules; job crafting does notmean that people can pick the tasks they likeand pass those they don’t want to do on totheir colleagues. Little research has beendone yet, but some studies in the US areexploring the notion of job crafting as acollective endeavour. I have some anecdotalevidence that crafting can lead to sustainablechange at the team as well as the individuallevel. Together with my colleagues, I intro-duced a crafting intervention with severaldifferent occupational groups, includingpolice, medical specialists, nurses andacademic employees. Feedback indicates thatthe intervention has led to improvements inoutcomes not only for individual employees,but also in the quality of interpersonal rela-tionships in general. These gains have beensustained over the longer-term. Gail: Is job crafting beneficial for work-lifebalance? Evangelia: Very much so, but little researchhas focused directly on this issue yet.Crafting is likely to be helpful for work-lifebalance in several ways. Employees canadjust their work tasks and patterns toensure they have sufficient time and energyto spend quality time with their family andfriends and maximise opportunities forrecovery. They can also craft their work-lifebalance by engaging in activities andbehaviours in both the work and homedomains that reduce conflict and maximisefacilitation. A better ‘fit’ between the job andthe employee will also increase life satisfac-tion and happiness in general, which hasclear benefits for personal life. Gail: What are your priorities for researching jobcrafting in the future?Evangelia: I want to understand the type ofjob crafting that is beneficial for employeesin different working contexts. Althoughthere can be advantages for organisations

and staff, crafting doesn’t seem to work in allsituations for every worker. It would beexciting to learn more about these processesand develop theory to help us design moreeffective interventions at individual andorganisational levels. Gail: We touched on work-life balance earlier inthe interview. You are very well known for yourresearch in this area. The approach you took inyour recent edited book with Joe Grzywacz3 wasrefreshing in that the authors were asked to proposeinnovative solutions to one or more unresolvedproblems in the field of work-family research. Couldyou tell us a bit more about this?Evangelia: We did not want to publish yetanother edited book that presents reviews ofthe literature that offer vague conclusions.We approached key people in the work-family field and asked them to ‘think outsidethe box’ to develop new ideas and theoriesto tackle unresolved problems and open upnew avenues for researchers. Gail: Many innovative and inspiring ideasemerged from the book. I am particularly interestedin the concept of ‘work-self balance’ that youdiscussed in one of the chapters you wrote. Evangelia: Traditionally, research has exam-ined the implications of the roles thatemployees are required to fulfil in the workand the home domains for well-being – thiscan lead to negative outcomes such asconflict, or positive ones such as enrichmentor facilitation. The fact that people haveinterests that are independent of the workand family domains has generally beenneglected by researchers. Even if peoplebelieve that they have an acceptable balancebetween their work and family life, they oftenforget their own needs. In order to be healthyand satisfied, we must ensure we haveenough time and energy for personal inter-ests, hobbies and friendships where we don’thave to compromise our own needs for thecommon good. Our recent research hasfound a four-factor structure that compriseswork-family conflict, work-family facilitation,work-self conflict and work-self facilitation.


The WLBWG Asks

3 Grzywacz, J. & Demerouti, E. (2013). New frontiers in work and family research. Psychology Press.

Work-self conflict is a strong predictor ofpsychological distress and happiness overtime. Finding time for the self is not only aproblem for women, who traditionallyshoulder the burden of domestic duties aswell as work demands. My research withpolice officers (who were predominantlymale) showed that work-self conflict was theirbiggest source of stress. Interestingly, conflictbetween work and self is not just charac-terised by a lack of time and energy to engagein personal interests, it also manifests itself aslimited opportunities for employees to be‘themselves’, for example, without having tocompromise their personal values. This was abig issue for the police in particular. Gail: How do people make sure they get adequatetime to meet their own needs?Evangelia: It isn’t just about time or evenopportunity – organisations should notintrude on their employees’ personal lives. Ifpeople regularly go home after work feelingso depleted that they have no energy to dedi-cate to their personal needs, their well-beingwill inevitably suffer. The needs of the selfare often considered far less important thansatisfying those of work and family – it couldalmost be considered taboo to even bring upthe subject as people typically feel selfish.‘Me-time’ is often what is left (if anything)when the demands of work and family lifehave been met. We need to encourageconversations between colleagues and super-visors to raise awareness that having the timeand energy to take care of oneself is a humanright; it is crucial that people don’t feel guiltyabout spending time on the activities thatreplenish them. We also need to examinework-self facilitation and conflict at thefamily level within a spillover-crossoverframework. We have found evidence forthese effects among dual-career couples,where one partner’s job resources influencetheir family resources via work-self facilita-tion which, in turn, enhances the energylevels of their partner. Gail: Your spillover-crossover model has greatpotential for increasing understanding of thework-home interface.

Evangelia: The model integrates two existingframeworks to examine the ‘transmission’ ofstressors and strains at the intra-individuallevel across the work and family domains(spillover) and at the inter-individual, dyadiclevel between partners (crossover). Workcharacteristics engender behaviours thatpeople use in their personal lives that resultin experiences of conflict or facilitation and,in turn, these influence other people. Forinstance, if an employee has an argumentwith a colleague, they may feel angry oranxious when they return home. This islikely to impact on how they interact withfamily members with implications for theirwell-being, for example the employee maybecome argumentative or withdraw frominterpersonal contact entirely. This modelhas strong potential for investigating positiveas well as negative spillover-crossover effectsbetween work and family and vice-versa. Thefamily is a small system (usually made up oftwo, three or four people), so behaviours willtypically have a stronger impact in the homethan at work, where one’s behaviour may noteven be noticed as there are so many morepeople to dilute it. Gail: What are your priorities for testing thespillover-crossover model in the future?Evangelia: We need to adopt a systemsapproach rather than see people as existingin microcosms. It is crucial to expand knowl-edge of the behaviours that ‘transmit’ posi-tive and negative effects from one employeeto others who share their work and homeenvironment. Very little is known about posi-tive behaviours in particular. We also need toknow more about the job characteristics orsituations that trigger behaviours that havepositive and negative outcomes, and theindividual differences that moderate theseeffects. For example, communicationbetween partners about issues of concernregarding work, mutual empathy andsupport-seeking may be beneficial ordamaging depending on the context. Whileit may be reassuring, there is evidence thatre-living traumatic events can be harmfuland increase rather than alleviate negative


Gail Kinman

affect. These are issues that should beexplored in the context of the work-homeinterface. We also need to be more specificin our predictions and try to explain a greatdeal more of the variance in outcomes.Explaining nine per cent of the variance in,say, psychological distress is not sufficient topersuade organisations to invest in our inter-ventions. We need to successfully predicthard outcomes such as turnover and prof-itability. If you are able to do that, peoplelisten to you. This is a big challenge, but wehave to face it to make our field stronger. Gail: Finally, you are very eclectic in your ideasand influences. Are there any new areas that youfind particularly attractive for future research?Evangelia: I would like to focus more on situ-ational specificity. I want to gain insight intothe strategies that people actually use to behealthy, to perform well, to make or notmake decisions, to function well at home,and to try to make time for the self. Thesestrategies are likely to be very individualisticand accessing this information will be chal-lenging. Nonetheless, like our work in thefield of demands and resources, we maydiscover some general rules or broad cate-gories (such as approach and avoidance)that could be used as a framework underwhich to organise more specific strategies.

The AuthorDr Gail KinmanProfessor of Occupational HealthPsychology,Director of the Research Centre for Applied Psychology,Department of Psychology,University of Bedfordshire.


The WLBWG Asks


IN THE LAST DECADES, the Israeli work-force has undergone major changeswhich affected workers’ ability to balance

work and life. These changes are similar tothe ones that have occurred in other devel-oped countries in the last decades, such asan increase in work demands, includingextended working hours. In fact, accordingto the OECD Better Life Index, Israeliemployees work more hours than their coun-terparts in other industrialised countries:People in Israel work 1910 hours a year,more than the OECD average of 1765 hours.Furthermore, almost 19 per cent of theIsraelis work very long hours, a much higherpercentage than the OECD average of nineper cent, with 28 per cent of men workingvery long hours compared with nine per centfor women. While the demand to sustainlong hours is especially prevalent in profes-sional and managerial positions, more andmore workplaces have come to adopt thatnorm, which hinders workers’ ability to fulfiltheir familial and other responsibilities.

While the majority of the Jewish familiesare dual-earner ones where both of theparents work outside the home, mothers aresocially expected to put caregiving beforepaid work. Indeed, researches have demon-strated that the gendered division of employ-ment and household work is still persistentin Israel, and overall, fathers spend less timetaking care of children than mothers andeven less time doing housework. Whilefathers today do more childcare and house-work than their own fathers used to do,mothers still do dis-proportionately more.

Clearly, the division oflabour at home affectsthe division of workoutside the home, andthe data demonstratethat by far more womenthan men work part-time(meaning between onehour and 34 hours perweek). When asked,women’s most common explanation forworking part-time is childcare and house-hold chores.

It’s important to note that historically,the role of Israeli women as both workersand caregivers was developed with thecreation of the new state. Women wereexpected to give birth and care for childrenbut also to participate in the labour market.However, their financial contribution wassupposed to provide only the secondincome. Thus, Israeli families comprised of afather as a sole breadwinner and a mother asa sole homemaker has always been an excep-tion, and there was a low legitimacy formothers whose ‘only’ job was to raise theirchildren. Consequently, employment lawswere enacted to provide working motherswith entitlements in order for them tocombine work and family. For example, theEmployment of Women statute was enactedas early as 1954 and established certain rightsto be given to working mothers, such as paidmaternity leave of 12 weeks (later extendedto 14 weeks). The provision’s requirement tobeing employed in order to be eligible forpaid maternity leave demonstrates Israel’s

Work-Life Balance:A global perspective

An examination of the work-family conflict amongIsraeli working parents

Ifat Matzner-Heruti

Ifat Matzner-Heruti

encouragement of women to work outsidetheir homes. Aside from paid maternityleave, Israeli working mothers are entitled tocertain arrangements aiming at allowingthem to combine their work and familyduties. For example, they might be entitledto a shortened working day; they have theright to use the services of an on-siteemployer-provided day care centre (in casethere is one); and they have the right to takeup to eight days of paid leave per year to takecare of a sick child.

Whereas mothers are expected tocombine caregiving with paid employment,fathers are expected to function as the mainproviders, and, at most, ‘help’ their wiveswith childrearing and household chores. Inother words in Israel, as elsewhere, fathers’role is constructed around economic respon-sibility. Israeli society reinforces the normthat men should identify work as a source ofpower and perform primarily as bread-winners. In order to do so they have toadhere to strict and mostly inflexible workingnorms constructed around the ‘ideal worker’model. According to this model, good anddevoted workers are considered to be thosewho dedicate most of their time and energyto their workplace, without taking time offfor family responsibilities. Given that Israeliemployees are ‘overworked’ and work morehours than most of their counterparts inother industrialised countries, many fathersfind combining work and family extremelydifficult.

Israeli laws and workplace norms fortifythe male breadwinner norm and positfathers as ‘second string caregivers’,secondary to mothers. For example, whileIsraeli fathers are formally eligible to a paidleave following the birth or adoption of ababy, their eligibility is contingent upontheir spouses’, that is a father needs to fulfila double set of criteria: not only does hehave to show that he has established his rightto paternity leave, but also that his spousehas established her right to maternity leave.Moreover, the Act has not extended theduration of leave in order to provide fathers

with their own period of leave. Rather, theAct virtually ‘enables’ a mother to shortenher maternity leave of 14 weeks and returnto work early, in order for the father toreplace her and take the rest of the leave.Lastly, the enactment of the paternity leaveprovision was not accompanied by acampaign raising fathers’ awareness – letalone encouraging them – regarding thenew possibility of leave. As a result of theabovementioned factors, the number offathers who have taken paternity leave hasnever risen above several hundred since itsenactment in 1998.

What is more, an empirical research onthe Israeli fathers who took paternity leaveshows that some of these fathers encoun-tered hostile attitudes at work when theytook leave. The hostile environment wasmanifested in disrespectful and demeaningcomments these fathers received from bothemployers and colleagues. In order to ‘main-tain the gendered order,’ workplaces inIsrael often penalise those working fatherswho ‘dare’ to be more engaged and active asparents. Another study on Israeli fathersdemonstrates that working fathers haveinternalised their employers’ demands todedicate many hours to work and come toaccept it, knowing that if they do not, theymight lose their jobs.

Israeli scholars from various disciplinestypically examine the work-family dilemmaby focusing primarily on the difficultiesworking mothers face when trying to balancethe two spheres. The prevailing view hasbeen that women, especially mothers, sufferwhen combining family responsibilities andmarket work. While women’s difficultyjuggling between work and caregivingresponsibilities is worthy of such attentionand should be resolved, this is only one sideof the issue: fathers also face significantwork-family dilemmas. Indeed, data haveshown that more and more fathers todayexpress dissatisfaction with the socialdemand to perform primarily as workerssince this well-entrenched demand comes atthe expense of their family and social lives.


An examination of the work-family conflict among Israeli working parents

Israeli fathers, especially in dual-earner fami-lies, are experiencing more work-familyconflicts than their counterparts did thirtyyears ago, and even more than present-daymothers. Furthermore, there is still a gapbetween fathers’ expressed desire to bemore involved in parental and householdduties, and their actual involvement. Thus,emphasising the incompatibility of work-place norms with regard to fathers’ needsand desires has the potential of under-mining and re-evaluating these norms.

To sum up, in order to ameliorateworking families’ difficulties in mitigatingtheir multiple responsibilities there is a needto adopt a broad strategic and multi-discipli-nary approach. The changes to be achievedare profound and should include changingthe prevalent definitions of the ‘idealworker’ and the ‘ideal parent’. Creating sucha change would be a challenging task giventhe fact that Israel is a very diverse societyand provides a home to many minoritieswith different cultures, religions, socialclasses, histories, etc. Thus, perspectives,beliefs and norms vary across different attrib-utes, such as race and nationality, and in theinter-section of those attributes with gender.

Given the diversified society, crafting newpolicies should involve collaboration withprofessionals in the leading organisations ofa certain field. Yet, they all should have ashared goal which is modifying workplacenorms and advancing greater work-lifebalance in order to fit in with the rapidchanges occurring in gender norms,parental roles, and family structures.

The AuthorDr Ifat Matzner-HerutiFounder of the Israeli Center for Work and Family.Email: [email protected]

ReferencesGershoni, D. (2004). New fatherhood in Israel – a gender

perspective on masculinity and fatherhood in theinstitutional and marital context. UnpublishedMaster’s thesis, Department of Sociology andAnthropology, Bar-Ilan University.

Hacker, D. (2005). Motherhood, fatherhood and law:Child custody and visitation in Israel. Social andLegal Studies, 14(3), 409–431.

Hacker, D. & Frenkel, M. (2005). Active parenthoodand employment equal opportunities: The needto change the characteristics of the labor force.Labor, Society and Law, 11, 275–303.

Mironi, M. (2006). Work, family and the law in Israel.Journal of Comparative Law & Policy, 27(4),487–513.

OECD Better Life index.http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/israel/

Perez-Vaisvidovsky, N. (2013). Fathers at a crossroads:The combined effect of organisational andcultural factors on the making of gender-relatedpolicy. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender,State & Society, 20(3), 407–429.

Rager, A. (2002). Fatherhood: Perception and practiceamong fathers who took paternity leave in Israel.Unpublished Master’s thesis, Department ofSociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University.

Renan-Barzilay, A. (2012). Working parents: Multi-dimensionalism and working-class socialfeminism – a new theoretical framework forreconciling work and family in Israel. Tel AvivUniversity Law Review, 35, 307–352.

Rimalt, N. (2004). Legal feminism in Israel – from andto where? Reflections on being different, dignityand equality. Tel Aviv University Law Review, 27(3),857–884.


Ifat Matzner-Heruti

WITHIN THE GENERAL AREA of Work-Life Balance (WLB)research, transitions across work-life

boundaries has been a focus of attention formany years, particularly since Ashforth andKreiner’s formative work at the turn of thecentury (Ashforth, Kreiner & Fugate, 2000).Matthews et al. (2014) have termed this ‘inter-domain transitions’: ‘the frequency withwhich individuals cognitively or behaviourallyshift their resources (time, attention, etc.) toanother domain through specific actions(such as responding to work emails duringpersonal time or making personal phone callsat work’; p. 74). Our research has been specif-ically interested in unpacking what implica-tions new digital technologies may have forthese inter-domain transitions, particularlygiven that our lives are thoroughly interlinkedwith technology, and not just the technologiesof work. We Skype with families and distantwork colleagues; we have Facebook friendswho may stem from childhood or our currentoccupation; we go on-line to shop and tocheck meeting details. It is possible that in thiskind of ubiquitous technology environment,psychological detachment behind well-marked boundaries (Matthews et al., 2014)and post-work recovery time (Flaxman et al.,2012) may be more difficult to achieve, andwork-life transitions may become increasinglyfrequent and rapid, more like switches thanmanaged processes.

In relation to theimplications of tech-nology for WLB, currentliterature has been domi-nated by consideration ofsmartphones. Up untilnow, the conclusion ofmuch of this literature isto note that by creatingmore permeable bound-aries, technologies both enable more flex-ible working thus supporting WLB, and allowmore intrusion of work activities into homelife, thus undermining WLB. Consequentlymuch of the focus of this literature is to iden-tify contingency factors which mightpromote one or the other, leadingresearchers to categorise employees intovariations of a basic taxonomy of those whocompartmentalise, those who integrate orthose who struggle with either (e.g. Duxburyet al., 2014; MacCormick et al., 2012;Matusik & Mickel, 2011).

Our research sought to understand inter-domain transitions at a detailed and ongoinglevel. Consequently, it contrasts with theabove research in considering all sorts oftechnologies and in examining WLB andboundary-crossing as an everyday practicerather than necessarily the routine outcomeof personal preferences.


New and Emerging ResearchRe-thinking work-life boundaries in the digital age:

The Digital Brain Switch (Dbs) ProjectGillian Symon, Petros Chamakiotis,

Helen Roby & Rebecca Whiting

Gillian Symon

Digital Brain Switch Project: http://www.scc.lancs.ac.uk/research/projects/DBS/4

4 We welcome expressions of interest in our research from practitioners and academics. Please email GillianSymon: [email protected]

The Digital Brain Switch (DBS) ProjectOur research is sponsored by the EPSRC(Grant No. EP/K025201/1) and has the aimof investigating the implications of digitaltechnologies for our experience of micro-transitions (‘switches’) across boundaries. Inour research, 45 participants were drawnfrom three UK-based groups:l social entrepreneurs;l office workers; l university students (undergraduate or

postgraduate aged 18 to 25).In sampling from these different groups, wewere intending to provide potentiallydistinct experiences of boundary transitions,allowing us to highlight the variations inexperience already observed by, forexample, MacDowall et al. (2015). In fact,one initial finding to note is that the bound-aries between these sample groups may be more permeable than immediatelyapparent. Some apparently office-based jobsencapsulated aspects of homeworking orjobshare; some students and self-employedentrepreneurs (the latter of all ages)engaged with part-time employment as theysought to establish their (new) careers; andacross all three groups individuals’ engagedin different kinds of voluntary or communitywork. Already then we start to question occu-pational and life-stage boundaries, as well asbeginning to re-consider what is meant by‘work’ and ‘life’ when some forms of unpaidemployment (e.g. volunteering) are poten-tially like employment.

As suggested above, we were particularlyinterested in micro-transitions and theeveryday nature of boundary negotiation.While diaries have been used in exploringWLB (e.g. Radcliffe & Cassell, 2014) theytend to be restricted to specific time frames(e.g. Sanz Vergel et al., 2011). In this case, weemployed hand-held video devices, encour-aging participants to film their moments oftransition, and leaving them to decide whatconstituted a ‘switch’ for them. Conse-quently the capturing of specific transitionswas triggered by actual events in theireveryday context. We then followed up the

video diaries with in-depth interviews duringwhich we both reviewed selected videoexcerpts with the participants but alsoembedded these snippets in more narrativeaccounts of our participants’ lives.

The identification of important boundaries We are still in the early stages of data analysisacross this very rich dataset. At this juncture,we are not exploring group differences orproviding detailed analysis of specific aspectsof the participants’ experience. However,there are several new perspectives on bound-aries we already see emerging whichencourage us to suggest some developmentsof current approaches to understandingWLB. These are summarised in Table 1.

Implications of this researchAs above, we are still in the early stages ofresearch and there is much work to be doneinvestigating the detail of the switches acrossthese various technology-associated bound-aries. However, there are three other impli-cations of this work we want to reflect on atthis point.

MethodologyThe identification of these kinds of tech-nology-associated boundaries – and poten-tially different domains – and theirenactment in everyday life encouragesdifferent kinds of research design than areperhaps generally pursued. Currently thetwo areas of work and life may be reflecteduncritically in the design of the study, as inSanz Vergel et al.’s (2011) instructions toparticipants to ‘answer the daily measures atthe right moments: in the morning (beforegoing to work), in the afternoon (afterwork), and in the evening (before bedtime)’(p.780). If we want to develop more complexand nuanced accounts of boundaries andtransitions, how can we design studies thatdo not reproduce assumed boundaries?

Individual reflexivityParticipants generally reported finding thevideo diaries very helpful in encouraging


Gillian Symon, Petros Chamakiotis, Helen Roby & Rebecca Whiting


Re-thinking work-life boundaries in the digital age: The Digital Brain Switch (Dbs) Project

Table 1: Boundary work in a digital world.

BoundaryOnline/Offline

Public/private

Activity

Temporal

Boundary workOn top of, and sometimes moresignificant than, discussing work and lifeas separate domains, an importantboundary for our participants was beingonline or offline. They may go online todo a variety of activities which require adigital connection and, at this time, notactively distinguish between work/life.‘Being online’ is therefore a potentiallynew domain of existence giving rise tonew individual strategies and challenges,and the significant boundary to manageis how much time is spent online.

The public and the private may not mapdirectly onto work/life and participantsmay rather be negotiating how much ofthemselves they reveal online to all theircontacts. Many participants had severalseparate social media accounts toreproduce distinctions but this leads to aproliferation of accounts and socialnetworks to monitor, maintain andmanage, and often in subtly differentways.

On a detailed level, participants maythink in terms of boundaries betweenactivities rather than work-life. Forexample, some may be engaged in similarkinds of activities both in their personaland work lives that then provide a work-life bridge. Employment may becharacterised by a number of differentactivities that also need to be switchedbetween – email in particular mayencourage jumping between activitiesand we may be under-estimating thedifficulties of this in grouping verydisparate activities together as ‘work’.

Many participants planned their days atthe beginning of the day (with the helpof digital devices) but then had to ‘timetriage’ (Carrigan & Duberley, 2013) asothers’ planned days collided with theirs

Illustrative extract‘I wrote those ideas for the blogs, then I just thought, oh I’ll just email Judy [a client], let her know, and then checkedmy emails and deleted everything. Andthere was an offer on MountainWarehouse and I bought myself somenew walking boots because my walkingboots are rubbish and it’s my birthday onSaturday, so they’re being delivered. Andthen I… sorted out [an event] forSaturday night followed by a meal for agroup of us. So that’s all my online stuffdone now hopefully for the day. I’llprobably just check-in, I don’t know,Facebook, Twitter, something like thatlater on.’ (Jane, video)‘One of the [members of the socialenterprise] left and started a reallyacrimonious campaign against the otherpeople who were left, online, blogging allthe time, making lots of accusations… itmade me quite sensitive to the fact that I can post something that seemsperfectly, you know, normal but thenpotentially it could be construed bysomeone who wants to paint what I’mdoing in a bad light … I don’t like thethought of putting out a lot of personalinformation about my family.. just in caseit is used by someone against me at somepoint in the future.’ (David, interview)‘…So this evening I wanted some time togo through my staff appraisals for thestaff I line manage at work. And it alsooccurred to me that I had on my Guidingand Brownie to do list to provide areference for one of our young leaders tobe offered up for selection for aninternational expedition. So because I thought, well actually, my frame ofmind is thinking about writing referencesfor people or reviewing people’sperformance, I thought, well I might aswell do this at the same time. BecauseI’d be probably using similar types oflanguage and I might find it easier andquicker to transition between the two.’(Leanne, video)‘Had dinner with the family… I’ve justchecked my email because, just as I wasleaving, I had a message to say thatsomeone…was expecting me to deliversome results next Wednesday and I thought they were due Friday…



Table 1: Boundary work in a digital world (continued).

Boundary

Physical

Mental andemotional

Boundary workand unforeseen events emerged.Participants also reported being ‘suckedin’ to working longer than they meant toonce they logged on or checked phonesas embedded links on-line encouragedfurther exploration. Times of theday/week may be marked out by theprioritisation of particular activities (e.g.prioritising personal activities atweekends but still engaging in workactivities) or the simultaneous executionof personal and work activities (e.g.tweeting to a work account whilewatching TV in the evening) rather than astrict association of temporal zones withparticular activities. Far from WLB thenbeing an achievement or even a goal toachieve, WLB in a digital world is anexperience whose boundaries are dailybeing constantly renegotiated.Mobile technologies changed where ourparticipants could carry out work, notjust in the sense of being able to workoutside an office but of work alsocolonising various parts of the house. Itwas not uncommon for our participantsto recount in their video diaries that theyhad just been using digital technologiesin the bathroom, tackling junk email intheir inboxes through association withthe idea of general cleansing. Some ofour participants had particular places inthe house where they kept their digitaltechnologies as a strategy for accessmanagement.

Some participants experienced leakage ofemotion across activities or found itdifficult to get into a new activitymentally as quickly as they could do thistechnologically. Emotions and cognitionmay lag behind in this transition as theimmediacy of technology means weunder-estimate the change required.

Illustrative extractWell, it’s going to be in the back of mymind over the weekend whether I canshift things around in my diary to meetthe Wednesday deadline instead.’(Alistair, video)

‘Because by the time I’ll come down andwatch TV, it will be about 10 o’clock. I would [then] view Twitter and Facebook,for my work, as leisure time, I suppose. It doesn’t seem like work to me…. say I’dwatched a film and it’s 20 past and thenthe adverts come on that’s when I wouldcheck it… something like Twitter… you’vegot to be on it frequently… so that whenpeople log into Twitter they can see anupdate…’ (Rachel, interview)

‘Actually when I was, when I wasshowering I took my mobile phone withme and I did check some emails whilst I was in the bathroom and I got rid ofabout 20 junk emails so I have a sense of how many new ones have come in.’(Michael, video)

‘…There is this place I put everything. [I]come in from work and just unload allthe tech, all my phones go there and theiPad just go there. So when I come homefrom work that is sort of a bit of a ritual… And then it is there for me to checklater on in the evening. So it feels like I’m in control but I’m probably not as incontrol as I think I am.’ (Kath, interview)‘…My partner said, ‘well you know, you’vegone from being… you know, 20 minutesago you were in a really good mood andnow you’re really annoyed, you look, youknow, you look really fed up’. So it’s… italso comes back to this idea that it’squite, you know, when I’ve got out of mywork zone that, sort of, mind…headspace, I can get in… it’s so easy likea bit of electronic communication canput you back into it like that… ‘(David, interview)


Re-thinking work-life boundaries in the digital age: The Digital Brain Switch (Dbs) Project

them to reflect on their own activities.Recording and watching videos of them-selves (and then later reviewing these videosin the interviews) allowed them to observetheir own activities thus:l realising semi-conscious behaviours that

might be inefficient, ineffective or simplyundesirable;

l appreciating some useful establishedroutines and valued activities; and

l changing their behaviours especiallyaround technology (e.g. switching offalerts).

Such reflection tends to support claims thatWLB is an individualised experience that isdifficult to generalise (MacDowall et al.,2015) and we certainly support the contex-tualised nature of boundaries and transi-tions. Encouraging individuals to ‘observethemselves’ in this way may then be apowerful tool. However, we follow this withsome sense of limits.

Discourses of choice, blame and responsibilityAlthough individual circumstances aredifferent and may require different kinds ofsolutions, we need also to be wary of puttingall the emphasis on individuals (Vair, 2013).The studies outlined earlier, which have cate-gorised reactions to technology use as beingexplained by individual differences, run therisk of pathologising individuals and makingthem complicit in their own disciplining.Our participants as a whole explained theircircumstances as a result of individual choiceand blamed themselves for a ‘failure’ to findWLB. While we do not want to deny indi-vidual agency in running our own lives, theresponsibility of individual choice hereseems crushing. The tendency of our partic-ipants to explain use of technologies byreference to the ‘kind of person I am’ under-plays recognition of others’ responsibilitiesand their social context. As psychologists, wemay need to widen our focus from the indi-vidual psyche to look in more detail at theunderlying societal discourses that may workagainst achieving WLB. So as much as self-help books may advise individuals to take

time out, etc., they compete with socialnorms and discourses about what it means tobe a ‘competent worker’, ‘caring socialentrepreneur’, ‘connected student’ thattend to reinforce continual connection andpermeable boundaries. While Duxbury et al.(2014) emphasise self-control as associatedwith more effective boundary management,at the same time they acknowledge thatsignificant pressure from employers for avail-ability made this difficult to enact withoutcareer effects. Organisations may tend to seetheir appropriate role as: (a) providing flex-ible working; and (b) training courses inhow people may better manage WLB, butthis does not touch other perhaps moreimplicit messages from the organisationabout what constitutes a ‘good employee’(Todd & Binns, 2013).

ConclusionWhile still in the initial stages of our analysisof this comprehensive dataset, we are alreadyexcited by the kinds of results coming out,including encouraging new perspectives onwork-life boundaries (and potentiallydomains) in the digital age. We already see anumber of implications of this for individualexperience and organisational practice, inparticular more overt reflection and adviceon how employees and the self-employedmanage their ongoing digital lives in a worldwhere the boundaries between work and lifemay hold less relevance. Indeed we wouldargue that current advice may be oriented toa form of work-life balance that fails toacknowledge the everyday digital world towhich individuals have already accommo-dated, including technology-enabled rapidswitching and the practices of managing on-line presence. However, we should also bewary about over-emphasising personalchoice, addiction and personality differ-ences as explanations. Self-help Guides,training events and, etc., tend to encourageacceptance of personal liability for WLB(and this may well have been internalised bymany people) whereas we should also belooking in more detail at the societal, organ-

isational and technological mediation ofWLB and asking how can we maintainsustainable working practices in a digitalworld.

The AuthorsGillian SymonRoyal Holloway University of London.Email: [email protected]

Petros ChamakiotisRoyal Holloway University of London &University of Sussex.

Helen RobyOpen University.

Rebecca WhitingOpen University & Birkbeck University ofLondon.

Digital Brain Switch Project:http://www.scc.lancs.ac.uk/research/projects/DBS/

ReferencesAshforth, B., Kreiner, G. & Fugate, M. (2000). All in a

day’s work: Boundaries and micro role transitions.Academy of Management Review, 25, 472–491

Carrigan, M. & Duberley, J. (2013). Time triage:Exploring the temporal strategies that supportentrepreneurship and motherhood. Time andSociety, 22, 92–118.

Duxbury, L., Higgins, C., Smart, R. & Stevenson, M.(2014). Mobile technology and boundarypermeability. British Journal of Management, 25,570–588.

Flaxman, P., Ménard, J., Bond, F. & Kinman, G.(2012). Academics’ experiences of a respite fromwork: Effects of self-critical perfectionism andperseverative cognition on post-respite well-being.Journal of Applied Psychology, 97, 854–865.

MacCormick, J., Dery, K. & Kolb, D. (2012). Engagedor just connected? Smartphones and employeeengagement. Organizational Dynamics, 41,194–201.

MacDowall, A., Kinman, G. & Grant, C. (2015). A workshop on developing work-life balancecompetence: The importance of context. OP Matters, 25, 30–33.

Matthews, R., Winkel, D. & Wayne, J. (2014). A longitudinal examination of role overload andwork-family conflict: The mediating role ofinterdomain transitions. Journal of OrganizationalBehavior, 35, 72–91.

Matusik, S. & Mikel, A. (2011). Embracing orembattled by converged mobile devices? Users’experiences with a contemporary connectivitytechnology. Human Relations, 64, 1001–1030. doi:10.1177/0018726711405552

Radcliffe, L. & Cassell, C. (2014). Resolving couples’work-family conflicts: The complexity of decisionmaking and the introduction of a new framework.Human Relations, 67, 713–819.

Sanz-Vergel, A., Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. & Moreno-Jimenez, B. (2011). Daily detachment from workand home: The moderating effect of role salience.Human Relations, 64, 775–799.

Todd, P. & Binns, J. (2013). Work-life balance: Is it nowa problem for management? Gender, Work andOrganization, 20, 219–231.

Vair, H. (2013). The discourse of balance: ‘Balance’as metaphor and ideology. Canadian Review ofSociology, 50, 154–177.




The WLB WG members continue topromote work-life balance. On 9 February2015, Alexandra Beauregard, hosted a visitfrom Tetsuya Kittaka, the Government ofJapan’s Deputy Director of the CabinetBureau of Personnel Affairs, to discussgender equality initiative in Japanese civilservice and share relevant research resultsfrom my work with UK public service organ-isations. Mr. Kittaka was particularly inter-ested in gaining research findings that wouldhelp them implement flexible working prac-tices and try to change an established long-

hours working culture, which is one of thekey barriers to women progressing up theranks within his organisation. Alexandra wasinterviewed on BBC Radio Five Live for asegment on over-employed workers (aired 26 November 2014); she was interviewed onlive TV for BBC World News for a segmenton shift work (aired 4 November 2014); andwas interviewed as well on live radio forShare Radio’s flagship Saturday programme,‘Track Record’ with respect of her work-lifebalance research (aired 7 March 2015).

Sharing Knowledge and Networking

Work-Life Balance Working Group’s Fact Sheets

The WLB Working Group’s Fact Sheets weredeveloped for use in individual or organisa-tional practice/teaching activities. They arenot static documents, and if you think theyneed to be amended – get in touch and getinvolved. They are intended to be live docu-ments, and will be updated as the evidencebase grows. If you have any ideas for addi-

tional fact sheets that could be targeted toother groups (e.g. journalists, HR profes-sionals) please let us know and discuss.Obtain these at:ht tp://dop.bps.org.uk/dop/psycho-logists/working-groups/work-life-balance-working-group/factsheets/factsheets_home.cfm

Promoting Work-Life Balance


A woman’s work is never done?European Social Survey (ESS)Findings from the European Social Survey (ESS) highlight that the double burden of work fallsstill on full-time working women as they are the ones who are responsible still, on average, foraround two-thirds of the total time heterosexual couples spend on housework. This findingrelates also to feelings of work-life conflict for men.Read the report on: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/_images/ESS%203%20JULY%202013%20FINDINGS%20BOOKLET_FINAL%20v2_tcm8-27183.pdf

Global generations. A global study on work-life challenges across generations.Detailed findings.EYGM LimitedA recent global survey of 9700 full-time workers aged 18 to 67 from the US, UK, India, Japan,China, Germany, Mexico and Brazil, found that one-third of those who responded stated thatthe management of their work-life had become more difficult. Those who were younger andwho were parents were more likely to report the greatest difficulties.Read the report on:http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY-global-generations-a-global-study-on-work-life-challenges-across-generations/$FILE/EY-global-generations-a-global-study-on-work-life-challenges-across-generations.pdf

Research Report: The Impact of Technology on Work/Life BalanceFirst Psychology ScotlandThis report assesses the impact of mobile technologies and portable WiFi on work-life balanceand also well-being. The findings found that taking control of the technology tends to mediateits effects, either positive or negative.Read the report on:http://www.firstpsychology.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Research-report-FULL-technology.pdf

Interesting snippets


Seminar, Conference and WorkshopReviews

ESRC Seminar on ‘Caring and Work-Life Balance inRecession and Austerity’ at the School of Law,

University of Reading, 9 January 2015Grace James & Nicole Busby

IN this fourth seminarof the ESRC fundedseminar series5, ‘Work-

Life Balance in the Reces-sion and Beyond’, parti-cipants considered howausterity and recessionhave impacted on caringand work-life balance.

The seminar opened withthree inter-related papers that questionedand analysed caring and work-life balanceissues in a time of austerity. In the firstkeynote address of the morning, ‘Caring In aTime of Austerity: Unpaid Care, Paid Employmentand Gender’, Professor Nicole Busby (Strath-clyde University) provided an overview of theUK’s Coalition Government’s austerityagenda, describing how it has provided justi-fication for labour market deregulationalongside reductions in the welfare budgetand cuts to public services. In the secondkeynote Dr Lydia Hayes (Cardiff University)spoke of ‘The Care Act, a statute of austerity?The implications of fragmented control over caringlabour’ and Lydia’s presentation presentedan overview of aspects of The Care Act whichhave the potential to detrimentally impacton terms and conditions of work in home-care. Dr Shereen Hussein (King’s CollegeLondon) provided the third keynoteaddress, ‘Job satisfaction, stress and work-lifebalance in social care at a time of austerity’.Drawing upon a longitudinal care study

funded by the Depart-ment of Health, Shereenoutlined how severalstudies have indicatedthat the majority of careworkers report altruisticmotivations in theirlabour choice and how, with continuousdemand, the sector isbecoming a magnet of employment to somewho may find joining other labour sectorsmore challenging.

In the afternoon, participants wereinvited to attend a world café break-outsession and discuss practical implicationsand possible solutions for care and work-lifebalance – focussed around four inter-relatedthemes: (a) Carers and Employment, whereparticipants were asked to identify key work-place-based initiatives/ideas that would helpcarers to balance care commitments withpaid work; (b) Social Care, where participantswere asked to make suggestions for improve-ments to social care which would better facil-itate work/life balance for both carers andthose requiring care; (c) Individual CareNeeds, where key suggestions for improve-ments in identifying and meeting the careneeds of individuals to enable independentliving (i.e. employment opportunities, etc.)were made; and (d) Care Work, where keysuggestions for how to improve the quality,experience and terms and conditions related

Grace James Nicole Busby

5 For further information see the seminar series website – http://www.esrc-work-life-seminars.org/


to care work were considered. The key initia-tives/points raised in these fascinatingdiscussions are outlined in the full reportavailable at the project website (see below).

Following the world café, our inviteddiscussants were asked to reflect on the day’stopics and, drawing upon their own experi-ences, views and knowledge, offer particularinsights and suggest how we might improvethe situation: Jill Miller (a Research Adviserat the Chartered Institute of Personnel andDevelopment (CIPD)), Sue Cohen (whofrom 1990–2013 was CEO of the SingleParent Action Network, and is currently aManagement Committee member of theWomen’s Budget Group), Susan Himmel-weit (Professor Emeritus in Economics at theOpen University) and Gloria Mills (member

of UNISON’s Senior Management Group, apast President of the Trades Union Congress(TUC), Vice-President of the EuropeanTrade Union Confederation (ETUC)Women’s Committee; and Katherine Wilson,Strategic Manager of Employers for Carers atCarers UK) all provided thoughtful insightsand initiated a discussion amongst partici-pants.

The AuthorsGrace JamesSchool of Law, University of Reading. Email: [email protected]

Nicole BusbySchool of Law ,University of Strathclyde.Email: [email protected]

Grace James & Nicole Busby

Work/non-work interface research: Are we there yet?An overview of EAWOP 2015

Jurate Cingiene

OSLO – a city of thousands of sculp-tures depicting relationships betweenmen and women, adults and children,

their struggles and joy throughout life,hosted the 17th congress of the EuropeanAssociation of Work and OrganizationalPsychology, an important event for those inthe organisational psychology field. In total,1517 abstracts were accepted, out of which47 addressed the work-family interface (thenumbers taken from the conference onlinesearching tool) but many more papersdirectly or indirectly touched on this topic.

The aim of this review is to take youthrough some key trends and new insightsinto the work-life interface as well as discusshow work-life interface research focus haschanged since the last congress in 2013. Thisoverview is based on some presentations I attended personally as well as the abstractsfrom the 2013 and 2015 congresses.

Key trends and newinsightsOne of the key areas onwhich to focus and prob-ably the most domi-nating of the areascovered in the congresswas recovery from workand its impact on well-being and work-life inter-face. So what does the research suggests canhelp us recover?l Sleeping plays in huge role in the

recovery process say. (Pereira et al.) l Taking breaks that encourage detach-

ment such as lunch park walks and relax-ation exercises. (Bloom et al.)

l Quality me-time. (McDowall et al.) l Spousal recovery support. (Rodríguez-

Muñoz et al.)

Jurate Cingiene


Work/non-work interface research: Are we there yet? An overview of EAWOP 2015

What about factors that impede our recoveryfrom work?l Negative work reflection and remunera-

tion hinders our recovery. Positive workreflection during leisure time, on theother hand, can increase affective well-being. (Laurenz Meier et al.)

l Late-night smartphone use for funimpedes our recovery. (Lanaj et al.)

Most of the studies, however, were correla-tional and very few interventional studieswere presented. Lehr et al. did a randomisedcontrolled trial to test the effectiveness of aninternet-based recovery training whichaimed to improve sleep in stressedemployees. The findings are promising;however, it is just one study. A systematicreview that summarises recovery interven-tions is needed.

Another interesting topic in the congresswas boundary management. Fonner foundthat protecting home from work is moreimportant for one’s well-being as oppose toprotecting work from home. Kinnunen et al.longitudinal study suggested that boundarycrossing from work to non-work predictedpoor detachment as well as problem-solvingpondering.

A new area that came up in the congresswas work-life crafting. Petrou and Bakkerintroduced a new measure called leisurecrafting. They emphasised the role of bothwork and leisure domains in how one feelssatisfied with the life. Sundstrom et al. talkedabout work-life crafting – shaping work andnon-work lives and the boundaries betweenthe domains. It is debatable how close thisconcept is to boundary work Nippert-Eng(1996). More insight is needed explainingwhy work-life crafting is useful and how it isdifferent from boundary work, moreover, isit something new or just a new label forsomething we have already beenresearching.

A rarely touched area of research waspresented by Steiner et al. – how people thatexperience work-family interferences areperceived. Individuals who experiencedfamily-to-work conflicts were perceived lessagentic, less dominant and were lessrespected compared to those experiencingwork-to-family conflicts. Another studyshowed that people who tend to experiencefamily-to-work conflicts were perceived asless competent and were evaluated lessfavourably for promotion.


Jurate Cingiene

A big focus this year was on technologyand its role on work-family balance. Derks etal. reiterated the message that smartphoneuse was positively related to WHI. A singlesystematic review was presented on self-initi-ated information and communication tech-nology (ICT; Schlachter et al.). The findingssuggest that several intermediate processesneed to be taken into account such as controlover work and rationalisation of ICT use.

Research focus change from 2013 I went through the EAWOP 2013 and 2015abstracts and did a very subjective summaryas shown in Table 1 and Table 2 (thenumbers are approximate). In terms ofwork/non-work research topic choice, flex-ible working arrangements has lost itsinterest in 2015 congress as compared to2013 (Table 1). It could be due to differentcongress theme – this year it was ‘Respectfuland effective leadership – managing peopleand organisations in turbulent times’ and in2013 ‘Imagine the future world: How do wewant to work tomorrow?’ If this is true, we

would expect ‘Technology’ amongst thepopular topic in 2013 but that was not thecase. So why did flexible working lose thepopularity in 2015? Could it be that therewas too much research on flexible workingin 2013 and researchers decided to exploresomething else? Or did we decide that wehad enough evidence behind flexibleworking arrangement? Do we know whatworks and what doesn’t? According tosystematic reviews on flexible working, this isnot the case since the findings are mixed(Joyce et al., 2010).

In terms of some methodological choicesin 2013 and 2015 (Table 2), some variationscan be seen, such as increase in dairy andinterventional studies as well as a tinyincrease in systematic reviews from 0 to 1.The progress is quite small but on a positiveside it is a progress and not regress. Very fewstudies focused on change in work/non-work conflict. We do not know muchabout daily experiences of work/non-workconflict and how the experiences vary byday/month/year.

Table 1: Work/non-work research topic choices in EAWOP 2013 and 2015.

Topics 2013 2015

Flexible working arrangements A lot (10 or more) Some (around 5)

Recovery Some A lot

Managing Boundaries Some Some

Technology Some A lot

Work/home interruptions A little A little

Table 2: Work/non-work research methodological choices in EAWOP 2013 and 2015.

Methodology 2013 2015

Levels research A lot A lot

Dairy research Some A lot

Change research None A little

Interventional studies A little (1) Some

Systematic review None A little (1)

Diverse samples A little A little


Work/non-work interface research: Are we there yet? An overview of EAWOP 2015

ConclusionsAlthough the EAWOP 2015 shed some newlight on work/non-work interface, thechange in topics and methodology since2013 suggests that we need to be moresystematic with our research and make surewe are asking the right research questionsand using the right methods to answer them.More systematic reviews are needed to helpinform future research focus. I would like toencourage a discussion on how we can be more systematic with work/non-workresearch.

The AuthorJurate CingienePhD Student, University of Bath.Email: [email protected]@work_and_family

ReferencesAbstract Proceedings of the 16th EAWOP Congress

2013. Accessed via:http://repositorium.uni-muenster.de/document/miami/1a594ad3-0fea-4189-8e65-bc72f18ef0ea/abstractvolume-EAWOP-2013.pdf

Abstract Proceedings of the 17th EAWOP Congress2015. Accessed via: http://eaw.pg2.at/

Joyce, K., Pabayo, R., Critchley, J.A. & Bambra, C.(2010). Flexible working conditions and theireffects on employee health and well-being. In The Cochrane Collaboration (Ed.), CochraneDatabase of Systematic Reviews. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Retrieved from:http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/14651858.CD008009.pub2

Nippert-Eng, C.E. (1996). Home and work: Negotiatingboundaries through everyday life. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.


A workshop on developing work-life balancecompetence: The importance of context

Almuth McDowall, Gail Kinman & Christine Grant

Written on behalf of the DOP Work-Life Balance Working Group. Based on a workshop at the 2015 Division of Occupational Psychology

conference, Thursday 8 January.

Introduction

THERE IS NO DOUBT that modernworking life is getting more flexible, butalso more complex and demanding

which has implications for how we manageour work-life balance (WLB). In this briefarticle, we summarise some of the key ideasunderpinning our workshop delivered at theDOP conference in 2015 on behalf of theWLB Working Group. When we set theworking group up in 2009, we agreed todisband when we no longer have to highlightthe need for WLB, and the topic isembedded not only into OP training andpractice, but also into organisational activi-ties from grass roots to strategic levels.Evidently, we have some way to go to meetthese important goals, so our workcontinues!

The wide-ranging benefits of evidence-based WLB policies and practices foremployee and family well-being, organisa-tional effectiveness and society in generalhave been highlighted (Grant, 2014;Kinman & McDowall, 2014); the WLBWorking Group has developed relevant factsheets which can be downloaded from theBritish Psychological Society’s website. Alsoemphasised is the need to acknowledge thespecific features of jobs that may threaten orfacilitate WLB rather than assume that ‘onesize fits all’ where interventions areconcerned. But are UK employers gettingWLB right? Recent evidence and statistics,such as the findings from a survey by GRid(2012), suggests ‘perhaps not’ as poor WLBwas cited as a key occupational health

concern by employers over and above work-related stress. Research conducted by othermembers of our WLB Working Group indi-cates that corporate WLB initiatives were puton the ‘back burner’ when organisationsfaced the UK and global recession(Anderson & Lewis, 2013). Under currenteconomic conditions, providing employeeswith initiatives to help them balance theirwork demands with responsibilities in otherdomains, beyond satisfying basic legalrequirements, may be seen by organisationsas a luxury that they cannot afford. Nonethe-less, there is evidence that long workinghours in the UK continue unabated; thefindings of a recent survey into working prac-tices indicate that UK managers work up toan extra day a week in unpaid overtime(ILM, 2014). Although they have the poten-tial to increase flexibility, smartphones andtablets can also increase work-life conflict byallowing employees to work anywhere andanytime, which can create unrealistic expec-tations of the availability of employees andtheir working capabilities.

So what can be done to enhance WLB forthe benefit for all? Organisation-wide initia-tives often fail (Ollier-Malaterre, 2010), asthey do not take into account the needs andpreferences of employees and those whomanage them. These needs are likely todiffer, not only between employees, but alsoover the individual life span. To be effective,therefore, any interventions must encompassactive recognition of individual differencesand an adaptable and flexible approach to

address them (e.g. Kalliath & Brough, 2008;Kossek & Lautsch, 2008). There are also gapsin our theoretical understanding. Thenotion of work-family conflict remains theoverarching (and perhaps over-researched)paradigm, meaning that less focus is placedon the aspects of work that can enhance andfacilitate personal life. Moreover, there aretwo few intervention studies which can guidepractice and those that have been conductedtend to focus on flexible working. Whilst anumber of high quality controlled studieshave recently been conducted in the US(e.g. Kelly et al., 2014), the occupational andlegal context across the Atlantic is ratherdifferent to the UK.

In our workshop, we acknowledged thatmanaging work-life conflict is important, butthat to do so we need to take a proactive,rather than reactive perspective, and alsorecognise the key role of the respectivecontext. In particular, there is evidence thatthe factors that engender work-life conflictare, to some extent, related to the character-istics of particular jobs and working environ-ments. For example, the emotional demandsinherent in the helping professions are likelyto spill over into the personal domain mani-festing themselves as emotional exhaustion,social withdrawal and compassion fatigue(Kinman & McDowall, 2014). Moreover, thelong and often unpredictable working hoursinvolved in police work can reduce the timeavailable to engage in family life and leisureand recover fully from work demands(McDowall & Lindsay, 2014). Finally, the lackof physical and psychological boundariesbetween ‘work’ and ‘home’ experienced bye-workers may mean that the work role ismore salient which has strong potential toimpair work-life balance (Grant, Wallace &Spurgeon, 2013). It is also crucial toconsider the work-related factors that canfacilitate and enrich personal life.

The concept of WLB competenceThe need to employers to comply with theirduty of care to protect the well-being of theirstaff is crucial. Nonetheless, there is a

growing recognition that enablingemployees to self-manage their WLB will notonly have benefits for well-being andperformance, but can also act as a ‘trigger’for culture change; in other words, to moveWLB from the ‘margins to the mainstream’in organisations (Kossek, Lewis et al., 2010).One way of accomplishing this is to raiseawareness amongst employees of thebehaviours that can help them manage thework-home interface effectively (i.e. thatfacilitate and enrich their non-working life)and those that threaten their WLB (i.e. thatconstrain their opportunities for recoveryand impair their well-being and func-tioning). In this workshop we put forwardthe notion of ‘WLB competence’ as a frame-work for working with individuals and organ-isations. Whilst we are aware that someorganisations are now actively abandoningthe concept of WLB for various reasons (e.g.the frameworks may be considered too staticand do not suit fast-moving environments)we argued that making the ‘stuff that peoplecan do’ explicit, and talking about usefulstrategies to balance work and personal life isvery useful. There is good evidence from ahealth and stress context that competencyframeworks provide a solid basis for inter-ventions and awareness raising within organ-isations (e.g. Donaldson-Feilder et al., 2009).Indeed, our own research and practicalexperience shows that the same goes forWLB. In the workshop, we compared andcontrasted factors that facilitate or threatenwork-life balance in different contexts,namely social workers, the UK police andalso e-workers more generally. Somebehaviours are context specific, for instancein some professional contexts it is notpossible to take work home, or indeed to talkabout work with people outside the organi-sations due to confidentiality concerns.Other behaviours, however, are more gener-ally applicable, such as taking a proactiveapproach to WLB, and adopting a solution-focused stance. It is also vital to acknowledgeindividual needs and preferences regardlessof occupational context; for example, some


A workshop on developing work-life balance competence: The importance of context

individuals prefer their work and home livesto be fully integrated while others favourseparation. We summarised the pros andcons of working with competencies in thiscontext as outlined in Table 1.

Delegates who were from a wide range ofbackgrounds participated in activities wherethey considered the aspects of work-lifebalance that could be considered genericand context dependent. To conclude, weemphasised that the behaviours identified asbeing useful for work-life balance should notbe seen as a ‘do it all’ wish list, but used tohelp people pinpoint particular prioritiesand help them work towards meeting them.Used in this way, talking about behaviours isa useful starting point to feed into individualaction planning, get teams to identify jointlynegotiated priorities and/or help linemanagers become more recognisant ofwhere and how support is needed.

It was clear from the packed room at theworkshop that there is much interest in thetopic. We conclude with a plea to the DOPconference committee to allocate us a largerroom and longer slot in 2016 to continue todebate this key issue. We look forward toseeing you then!

The AuthorsAlmuth McDowallBirkbeck University of London.

Gail KinmanUniversity of Bedfordshire.

Christine GrantCoventry University.


Almuth McDowall, Gail Kinman & Christine Grant

Table 1: Working with WLB competencies.

Advantages of working with What to watch out for (minus)WLB competencies (plus)

l Individual and tailored approach l Ensuring that onus is not put solely l Feed into simple and low cost interventions: on individuals

checklists; e-learning packages; l Need a fully supportive environment awareness raising l What works for one individual may not

l Can share best practice between individuals for anotherl Promote individual agency l Reality checks – what is feasible?


A workshop on developing work-life balance competence: The importance of context

Anderson, D. & Lewis, S. (2013). Work-life balancepolicies, practices and discourse and public sector cuts.Paper presented at the Division of OccupationalPsychology Annual Conference 2013: Connectingand contributing to make a difference, 9–11 January. Chester, UK.

Donaldson-Feilder, E., Lewis, R. & Yarker, J. (2009).Research insight: Preventing stress, promoting positivemanager behavior (No. 4845). London: CharteredInstitute of Personnel and Development.

Fritz, C. & Sonnentag, S. (2005). Recovery, health, andjob performance: Effects of weekend experiences.Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 10(3),187–199.

Grant, C. (2014). An introduction to work-life balance.Corporate Wellbeing: An Academic Insight Report.Available at HRZone:http://www.hrzone.com/corporate-wellbeing/

Grant, C., Wallace. L.M. & Spurgeon, P.C. (2013). An exploration of the psychological factorsaffecting remote e-worker’s job effectiveness, well-being and work-life balance. Employee Relations, 5,35.

Group Risk Development [GRiD] (2012). 2011Employer research. Summary of findings. Availablefrom: www.groupriskorg.uk

Kelly, E.L., Moen, P., Oakes, J.M, Fan, J., Okechukwu,C., Davis, K.D., Hammer, L.B., Kossek, E.E.,Berkowitz King, R. , Hanson, G.C., Mierzwa, F. &Caspe, L.M. (2014). Changing work and work-family conflict. Evidence from the Work, Family,and Health Network. American Sociological Review,1–32. doi: 10.1177/0003122414531435

Kinman, G. & McDowall, A. (2014). Understanding thecomplexities of work-life balance and the measures wecan take. Corporate Wellbeing: An Academic InsightReport. Available at HRZone.

Kinman, G., McDowall, A. & Uys, M. (forthcoming,2014). The work-home interface: Buildingeffective boundaries. In L. Grant & G. Kinman(Eds,). Developing resilience for social work practice.London: Palgrave McMillan.

Kalliath, T. & Brough, P. (2008). Work-life balance: A review of the meaning of the balance construct.Journal of Management and Organisation, 14(3),323–327.

McDowall, A. & Lindsay, A. (2014). Work-lifemanagement in the police: The development ofa self-management framework. Journal of Businessand Psychology. 29(3), 397–411.doi:10.1007/s10869-013-9321-x

Ollier-Malaterre, A. (2010). Contributions of work-lifeand resilience initiatives to the individual/organisation relationship. Human Relations, 63(1),41–62. doi:10.1177/0018726709342458

Select references and bibliography

This article was published previously in OP Matters, 25, March 2015, pp.30–33.


The European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology (EAOHP) conferenceOHP in Times of Change: Society and the workplace11–13 April 2016, Royal Olympic Hotel, Athens, Greece.The call for papers is open and the deadline for submissions is 18 September 2015.More information is available at: http://www.eaohp.org/conference.html

Work and Family Researchers NetworkThe WFRN ConferenceChanging Work and Family Relationships in a Global Economy23–25 June 2016, Capitol Hilton, Washington DC.More information is available at: https://workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/content/conference

Conference Announcements

To contribute to the Book Reviews section, please contact Gail Kinman ([email protected])with suggestions for books to review and she will ask the publishers for a copy. To be suitable forreview, books should generally have been published no more than 12 months ago. We are alsolooking for reviewers, so please get in touch with Gail with a list of your interests and she will tryto match up books with suitable reviewers. Finally, if you have written a book yourself, orcontributed a chapter to an edited book, please contact Gail and arrange for a review copy to besent out.

Book Reviews


Postgraduate CornerEmployers’ Forum for Work-Life Balance

Esther Canónico

AST SEPTEMBER I was invited to attendthe Employers’ Forum for Work-LifeBalance, which was organised by

COFACE in collaboration with its Finnishmember Väestöliitto, The Family Federationof Finland.

As a European scholar, I found this eventunique in the sense that it put together prac-titioners and policy makers with academicsand experts in the field. Although sometheory in the field was presented, theemphasis was on the highly practical. Thefocus of the event was European, which wasboth refreshing and necessary. Refreshingbecause it is a welcome change to look intothe situation and real practical cases inEurope instead of the US (where themajority of the extant empirical research inwork life balance takes place). Necessarybecause a European approach is required inorder to understand the regulatory, socialand economic nuances that define theopportunities and challenges faced by theworkforce in European countries.

The conference programme includedtopics with a clear pragmatic focus, such asthe business case for work-life balance andeffective interventions for improving work-life balance at workplaces. Speakers camefrom different areas of interest such asprivate sector organisations, academia, trade

union organisations,private companies andemployers’ associations.Sirpa Huuskonen (HRDirector, ISS ServicesFinland), Alison (Busi-ness Author), ClaudiaMenne, (ConfederalSecretary of EuropeanTrade Union Confedera-tion), Barbara Hobson (Professor, Stock-holm University) and János Vértes(Vice-President of the European Associationof Craft, Small and Medium-sized Enter-prises) were some of the speakers.

The organisers made sure the attendeesfelt very welcome and the group of attendeeswere eager to exchange ideas and socialise,which was definitively an added bonus. I leftthe Forum with new ideas and more impor-tantly, a new set of valuable contacts.

More information on the event can befound at:http://www.coface-eu.org/en/Events/Employers-Forum-Work-Life-Balance/.

The AuthorEsther CanónicoPhD Candidate,LSE Department of Management.Email: [email protected]

Esther Canónico

L


Call for PapersInternational Journal of Stress ManagementSpecial Issue on health and well-being in

academic employeesGail Kinman

OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS or so theuniversity sector in many countrieshas experienced intense and wide-

ranging change. Evidence is accumulatingthat the features of work that traditionallyprotected academics against work-relatedstress, such as tenure, autonomy and colle-giality, are disappearing rapidly with negativeimplications for well-being. Some insight hasbeen gained into the job characteristics andworking conditions that predict strain inacademic employees and the factors thatmight moderate and mediate this relation-ship, but more knowledge is required. Inparticular, very few studies have utilisedmodels of work-related stress, employedlongitudinal designs or evaluated interven-tions in academic contexts. Insight gainedfrom such research has greater potential toinform multi-level, context specific interven-tions to enhance the wellbeing of academicemployees.

The special issue will present interna-tional research from different theoreticaland methodological perspectives in order toadvance knowledge and practice in the fieldof stress and well-being in academicemployees. The Guest Editors of this specialissue are Gail Kinman, Tony Winefield, SilviaPignata and Sheena Johnson. The estimatedpublication date is August 2017.

We invite researchers to submit manu-scripts on the following topics:l Stressors and strains experienced by

academic employees;l Work-life balance and boundary manage-

ment;l Individual differences;l Demographic issues, for example,

gender, age;l Interventions;l Cross-cultural research.Preference will be given to submissions thatutilise key models and/or longitudinaldesigns. Empirical papers are preferred, butstrong review papers that make a distinctcontribution to knowledge will be consid-ered.

Please send a one-page abstract of yourproposed contribution to Gail Kinman [email protected] by 8 November2015.

After initial review of the proposals, theselected authors will be contacted by 30 November 2015 in order to arrange theirfinal contributions. Initial drafts of fullsubmissions are due by 27 May 2016.

Please be sure to specify in the coverletter that your submission is intended forthe special issue on academic employees. Allsubmissions for the special issue will gothrough the normal peer-review process,

Abstract submissions deadline: 8 November 2015.Full submissions due: 27 May 2016.


with no guarantee of acceptance. Final draftsshould be 6000 words or fewer, includingtables, figures, and references. Please reviewthe Instructions to Authors before submit-ting manuscripts. Manuscripts must besubmitted electronically through the IJSMManuscript Submission Portal.

Please contact Gail Kinman([email protected]) or SheenaJohnson ([email protected]) foradditional information on this special issue.

Calling out fornew voicesWhen someone is making waves in psychology in years to come, we want to be able to say theypublished their first piece in The Psychologist. Our ’new voices’ section will give space to new talentand original perspectives.

We are looking for sole-authored pieces by those who have not had a full article published inThe Psychologist before. The only other criteria will be that the articles should engage and informour large and diverse audience, be written exclusively for The Psychologist, and be no more than1800 words. The emphasis is on unearthing new writing talent, within and about psychology.

The successful authors will reach an audience of 48,000 psychologists in print, and many moreonline.

So get writing! Discuss ideas or submit your work to [email protected]. And if you are oneof our more senior readers, perhaps you know of someone who would be ideal for ‘new voices’: do let us know.


www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog

Research. Digested.

The British Psychological Society’s free Research DigestBlog, email, Twitter and Facebook

‘Easy to access and free, and a mine of useful information for my work: what more could I want? I only wish I’d found this years ago!’Dr Jennifer Wild, Consultant Clinical Psychologist & Senior Lecturer, Institute of Psychiatry

‘The selection of papers suits my eclectic mind perfectly, and the quality and clarity of thesynopses is uniformly excellent.’Professor Guy Claxton, University of Bristol

Information for ContributorsAuthor GuidelinesThe Newsletter Editor is keen to encourage concise and focussed articles for the Newsletter. All submissions should be in Microsoft Word format, and could be submitted under the followingbroad categories:

Theory, Method and Research: Peer-reviewed articles and Brief reportsArticles dealing with theoretical, methodological and/or empirical matters are particularlywelcomed, as are literature reviews.

Longer articles dealing with substantive issues should be between 2000 and 4000 words in length.

Brief articles or comments (up to 2000 words) are also encouraged.

GraphicsThe preferred file format for figures and graphics is EPS, TIFF, or PDF.

EventsThe WLB Working Group’s Newsletter provides a platform for publicising and reviewing events.Submissions of this kind should be no longer than 2000 words, and if possible should besubstantially shorter than this.

Book ReviewsThese should not exceed 2000 words.

In all cases, the Newsletter Editor reserves the right to reduce the word limits where appropriate,and to edit manuscripts if necessary.

Manuscript preparationManuscripts should be prepared according to the British Psychological Society’s Style Guide(see http://www.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/images/bps_style_guide.pdf).

Authors are requested to pay particular attention to these guidelines when preparing references lists.

All submissions should be in English.

Manuscripts should be double-spaced throughout, and should incorporate page numbers.

The title page should include the full title of the manuscript, author name(s), institutionalaffiliations and contact details.

We are happy to do some minor copy editing, but we would be grateful if you could ensure thatsubmissions have been proof read and are print ready

Manuscript submissionAll contributions should be submitted by email to the Newsletter Editor:Roxane L. Gervais ([email protected])

St Andrews House, 48 Princess Road East, Leicester LE1 7DR, UKTel 0116 254 9568 Fax 0116 227 1314 E-mail [email protected] www.bps.org.uk

© The British Psychological Society 2015Incorporated by Royal Charter Registered Charity No 229642

Contents

Messages from the Co-Chairs......................... 1Almuth McDowall & Gail Kinman

Message from the Newsletter Editor............. 3Roxane L. Gervais

Featured articlesEmployees’ eldercare responsibilities,workplace support, and occupational well-being ........................................................ 4Heiko Schulz & Hannes Zache

Who cares if I care?Narratives of multiple caring responsibilities................................................. 7Harriet Jefferson

The WLBWG AsksInterview with Professor Evangelia Demerouti, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands............................... 12Gail Kinman talks to Evangelia Demerouti about new ideas on job crafting and work-life balanceGail Kinman

Work-Life Balance: A Global PerspectiveAn examination of the work-family conflict among Israeli working parents .... 16Ifat Matzner-Heruti

New and Emerging ResearchRe-thinking work-life boundaries in the digital age: The Digital Brain Switch (Dbs) Project .................................................... 19Gillian Symon, Petros Chamakiotis, Helen Roby & Rebecca Whiting

Sharing Knowledge and Networking............. 25

Promoting Work-Life Balance......................... 25

Interesting snippets ........................................... 26

Seminar, Conference and Workshop ReviewsESRC Seminar on ‘Caring and Work-Life Balance in Recession and Austerity’ at the School of Law, University of Reading, 9 January 2015.............................. 27Grace James & Nicole Busby

Work/non-work interface research: Are we there yet? An overview of EAWOP 2015 ................................................... 28Jurate Cingiene

A workshop on developing work-life balance competence: The importance of context ......................................................... 32Almuth McDowall, Gail Kinman & Christine Grant

Conference Announcements ............................ 36

Book reviews........................................................ 36

Postgraduate CornerEmployers’ Forum for Work-Life Balance.......................................... 37Esther Canónico

Call for PapersInternational Journal of Stress Management Special Issue on Health and Well-being in Academic Employees.................................38Gail Kinman

Documents

Work-Life Balance Working Group Newsletter Balance Working Group Newsletter, Volume 7, Summer 2015 1 WARM WELCOME to the seventh edition of the Work-Life Balance Working Group newsletter