Report Four: Who Is at Risk? Predictors of Work-Life Conflict

PDF Version 558 KB
ISBN 0-662-41606-6

By
Dr. Linda Duxbury,
Professor, School of Business,
Carleton University

Dr. Chris Higgins,
Professor, Richard Ivey School of Business,
University of Western Ontario

Executive Summary

The previous reports in this series have demonstrated that work¹-life balance is important to individual employees, the organizations that they work for, the families that support and rely on them, and the society in which they live. They have also established that the proportion of the Canadian workforce reporting high levels of work-life conflict increased substantively between 1991 and 2001.

The increase in the proportion of the Canadian workforce at risk of high work-life conflict can be attributed to widely documented demographic and structural changes in the work and family domains. The fact that most Canadians now live in dual-income and single-parent families rather than the traditional male breadwinner family means that most working Canadians have dual responsibilities -- to their employer and their family. Our data indicate, in fact, that most employees today (both men and women) have substantive responsibilities at home (i.e. responsibility for child care, elder care or both) that they have to satisfy while simultaneously fulfilling duties associated with paid employment. Demographic factors that have also been linked to more work-life conflict include increased female participation in the labour force, increased divorce rates, increased life expectancy, more dual-income and single-parent families, more families with simultaneous child care and elder care demands, and a redistribution of traditional gender role responsibilities. On the work front, globalization, sophisticated office technology, the need to deal with constant change, the movement toward a contingent workforce, and a growth in atypical forms of work have also been linked to increases in work-life conflict.

Who is more likely to report high levels of work-life conflict? The answer is, quite simply, unknown at this time. The key objective of this report is to rectify this situation by identifying factors that are associated with the incidence of four forms of work-life conflict: role overload, work to family interference, family to work interference and caregiver strain.

This report uses data collected for part of the 2001 National Study on Balancing Work, Family and Lifestyle to answer the following questions:

1. What are the most important predictors of role overload, work to family interference, family to work interference and caregiver strain?
2. Can we identify a set of factors that places employees at risk of all forms of work-life conflict? Can we identify a set of risk factors that is unique to each of the four forms of work-life conflict?
3. What impact does gender have on the prediction of work-life conflict?

The following steps were followed to address these questions. A literature review was conducted first to allow us to identify a number of possible predictors of work-life conflict. These predictors were then categorized into three main groups describing an employee's socio-demographic circumstances, their work and non-work demands, and the organizational culture in which the employee worked. MANCOVA and regression techniques were then used to determine how effective the various predictors were at forecasting the four different forms of work-life conflict examined in this study.

What demographic conditions and life circumstances place an employee at risk with respect to the various forms of work-life conflict? It is difficult to answer this question at this time as much of the empirical research linking key demographic variables, such as education, income and family type, with the incidence of work-life conflict is dated, limited in nature, and has yielded inconsistent or non-significant findings. This report provides a more comprehensive look at this issue by exploring the link between lifecycle stage, family type, age of children, socio-economic status, the employee's community (i.e. rural/urban, size of community, region of Canada), and characteristics of work (i.e. sector of employment, work arrangement, employment status, years with organization, union membership) and work-life conflict.

This report also seeks to increase our understanding of the relationship between the various demands that employees face (at work and outside of work) and the different forms of work-life conflict. Work demands have generally been defined as referring to a set of prescribed tasks that a person performs while occupying a position in an organization. Work hours is one of the most widely studied structural aspects of employment in the work-life literature. It is generally agreed that the number of hours worked contributes to the experience of job demands (pressures arising from excessive workloads and workplace time pressures), a major workplace stressor. Why do employees devote long hours to work if such activities increase work-life conflict? There are several possible explanations for this phenomenon, including the following:

• In the modern workplace, there are fewer people and more work to accomplish, so higher workloads are inevitable.
• Knowledge work is more absorbing and satisfying than other forms of work.
• Managers positively influence long hours by overtly valuing and rewarding those who come in early, stay late and extend their day by taking work home with them.

There is much less of a consensus on what should be included within the umbrella of non-work demands. Non-work may refer to activities and responsibilities associated with the family domain, as well as activities and obligations that go beyond one's own family situation. Social roles typically included within this category include leisure (interpreted to mean "spare time") obligations and responsibilities associated with family membership (i.e. household activities, caregiving) as well as social obligations (i.e. volunteer activities, community activities).

The final goal of this study is to explicate the link between workplace culture and work-life conflict. Workplace culture refers to a deep level of shared beliefs and assumptions, many of which operate below the conscious level of those who are members of the culture. A supportive work culture has been defined as "the shared assumptions, beliefs and values regarding the extent to which organizations value and support the integration of work and family lives for women and men." There is often a gap within organizations between formal work-life policies and informal practices which make balance more difficult. Research in this area has identified several sets of norms that may make work-life balance more difficult. The first, what we refer to in this report as a culture of "work or family," are cultural expectations that an employee who wants to advance will put work ahead of family The second, what we call "the culture of hours," refers to organization expectations and pressures that steer workers who value job security and/or promotion to put in long hours or take work home. In such organizations, employees who reject the culture of "long hours" are less likely to be valued or promoted.

Relevance of This Research

The findings presented in this report offer policymakers, academics and practitioners a better understanding of what contributes to work-life conflict in Canada. Separation of work-life conflict into its four parts allows us to identify unique and overlapping risk factors associated with the various forms of work-life conflict. Such an examination will improve our understanding of the sources of work-life conflict which will, in turn, enable policymakers and organizations to target their interventions, policies and programs at the appropriate factors. By taking a multidimensional approach to our conceptualizations of both work demands and work-life conflict, this research helps us to identify exactly which work demands contribute to what sorts of problems for which groups. Such specificity, which is currently not available to either policymakers or organizations (most research has focused on hours of work per week and either a global measure of work-life conflict or role interference), should help interested parties to identify specific interventions to ease the different forms of work-life conflict. Finally, the examination of the impact of organizational culture on the incidence of the various forms of work-life conflict should increase our understanding of why employees working for organizations which are "best practice" with respect to their policy platform still report high levels of stress and conflict between work and family.

Demographic Profile of Respondents

The sample consists of 31,571 Canadian employees who work for medium to large (i.e. 500 or more employees) organizations in three sectors of the economy: public (federal, provincial and municipal governments), private, and not-for-profit (defined in this study to include organizations in the health care and educational sectors). In total, 100 companies participated in the study: 40 from the private sector, 22 from the public sector and 38 from the not-for-profit sector. The sample is distributed as follows:

• 46% of the respondents work in the public sector; 33% work in the not-for-profit sector; 20% are employed by a private sector company.
• 55% of the respondents are women.
• 46% of the respondents work in managerial and professional positions while 54% work in "other" positions (e.g. clerical, administrative, retail, production, technical).
• 56% of the respondents have dependent care responsibilities (i.e. spend an hour or more a week in child care, elder care or both).

The 2001 survey sample is well distributed with respect to age, region, community size, job type, education, personal income, family income, and family's financial well-being. The mean age of the respondents is 42.8 years. About half of the respondents are highly educated male and female knowledge workers (i.e. managers and professionals). One in three is a clerical or administrative employee; one in five holds a technical or production position. Most respondents (75%) are married or living with a partner and 69% are part of a dual-income family. Eleven percent are single parents. Twelve percent live in rural areas. One quarter of the respondents indicate that money is tight in their family; 29% of respondents earn less than $40,000 per year. One in three of the respondents has a high school education or less.

The majority of respondents have responsibilities outside of work. Seventy percent are parents (average number of children for parents in the sample is 2.1); 60% have elder care responsibilities (average number of elderly dependents is 2.3); 13% have responsibility for the care of a disabled relative; and 13% have both child care and elder care demands (i.e. are part of the "sandwich generation"). The fact that the demographic characteristics of the sample correspond closely to national data provided by Statistics Canada suggests that the findings from this study can be generalized beyond this research.

Sample Profile: Levels of Work-Life Conflict

Role overload is having too much to do in a given amount of time. This form of work-life conflict occurs when the total demands on time and energy associated with the prescribed activities of multiple roles are too great to perform the roles adequately or comfortably. Most employees in our sample (58%) are currently experiencing high levels of role overload. Another 30% report moderate levels of role overload. Only 12% of the respondents in this sample report low levels of overload. Our research suggests that the proportion of the workforce experiencing high levels of role overload has increased substantially over time (i.e. an 11% increase in 2001 compared to 1991).

Work to family interference occurs when work demands and responsibilities make it more difficult for an employee to fulfill family role responsibilities. One in four of the Canadians in this sample reports that his or her work responsibilities interfere with the ability to fulfill responsibilities at home. Almost 40% of the respondents report moderate levels of interference. The proportion of the Canadian workforce with high levels of work to family interference has not changed over the past decade.

Family to work interference occurs when family demands and responsibilities make it more difficult for an employee to fulfill work role responsibilities. Only 10% of the Canadians in this sample report high levels of family to work interference. Another third report moderate levels of family to work interference. Our data suggest that the percentage of working Canadians who give priority to family rather than work has doubled over the past decade.

Approximately one in four of the individuals in this sample experiences what can be considered to be high levels of caregiver strain: physical, financial or mental stress that comes from looking after an elderly dependent. While most respondents to this survey (74%) rarely experience this form of work-life conflict, 26% report high levels of caregiver strain.

Research Question One: Important Predictors of Role Overload

The following conclusions about the occurrence of role overload can be drawn from this study.

1. Work culture and work demands are the key determinants of role overload for male and female employees in Canada.
2. Objective facts about an employee's family, community or work situation do not help us predict the amount of role overload the person will experience.
3. Work culture is the most powerful predictor of role overload. For both men and women, the single most important aspect of work culture with respect to the prediction of role overload was the extent to which the employee believed the organization promoted a culture that was supportive of work-life balance. The results indicate that supportive work cultures serve a protective function within the organization, as the more supportive the environment, the lower the levels of role overload reported. Two other types of work cultures prove to be predictive of increased levels of role overload: a culture of hours and a culture of work or family. With respect to the culture of hours, employees who perceive that it is not acceptable for them to say no to more work and that an inability to work long hours would limit their career advancement are more likely to report higher levels of role overload regardless of their gender. Working for an organization that promotes a culture of work or family (i.e. employees perceive that family responsibilities limit career advancement) is also linked to higher role overload -- perhaps because employees in such circumstances try to "do it all."
4. Work demands are strongly associated with role overload. The data indicate that the most important determinants of role overload are the amount of time spent in unpaid overtime a month and the total number of hours spent in work per week.
5. Role overload is more about demands generated from the work domain than from the non-work domain. Non-work demands, such as time in child care, elder care and home chores, are not substantive predictors of role overload.
6. With relatively few exceptions, the key predictors of role overload hold across gender.

Research Question One: Important Predictors of Work to Family Interference

The following conclusions with respect to the prediction of work to family interference can be drawn from the data:

1. Organizational culture is the most important predictor of work to family interference for both men and women. The power of the work culture to predict work-life conflict can be appreciated when one considers that our measures of work culture explain 35% of the variation in work to family interference for the men in the sample and 33% of the variation for the women.
2. Men and women who work for an organization that promotes a culture that supports balance were more likely to report lower levels of this form of work-life conflict, whereas employees who work for organizations without supportive policies in place report higher work to family interference. This would suggest that organizations that wish to reduce this form of work-life conflict for their employees need to promote a culture that supports work-life balance and introduce supportive policies within the organization.
3. Employees who work in organizations that have a culture of hours (i.e. a workplace in which employees perceive that it is not acceptable to say no to more work, that their career advancement will be limited if they do not work long hours) report higher work to family interference.
4. Employees who work in an organization that promotes a culture of work or family (i.e. one in which employees feel they have to choose between their family and career advancement and that family responsibilities and taking family leave restrict career advancement) report higher levels of work to family interference.
5. Demands at work were the second strongest predictor of work to family interference for both men and women. This form of work-life conflict is not, however, linked to the amount of time spent in work per week but rather a function of work demands that either physically remove the employee from the family domain (i.e. job-related travel) or take time that is typically reserved for the family (unpaid overtime, supplemental work at home [SWAH]).
   
   • Employees who spend more time in job-related travel (i.e. spend more week nights and weekend nights away from home) report higher levels of work to family interference.
   • Employees who devote more time to work (particularly supplemental work hours at home and unpaid overtime) are more likely to report high levels of work to family interference.
6. Work to family interference is more strongly associated with the unwritten rules, norms and expectations placed on an employee at work (i.e. workplace culture) than with employees' work and family circumstances (i.e. family type, lifecycle stage) or the actual amount of time they spend in work or family roles. Employees with higher work expectations and whose jobs require that they extend their work hours into times typically reserved for family are more likely to report high work to family interference.
7. If we have information on where people live, their family situation, where they work (i.e. their sector of employment) and their socio-demographic circumstances, we will have some understanding of the amount of work to family interference they will experience. This would indicate that an employee's life circumstances (i.e. the person's work and life situation) have more of an influence on the juggling aspect of work-life conflict than they do on the demand side of this phenomenon. Higher levels of work to family interference are reported by employees in the not-for-profit sector, those with higher incomes (likely because of the association between income and job type), those who supervise others or work shifts, and those who work in Western Canada.
8. Work to family interference has the same underlying root causes for both men and women (i.e. the same work-related behaviours and organizational cultural norms are problematic for both genders).

Research Question One: Important Predictors of Family to Work Interference

Data supporting the following conclusions with respect to the prediction of family to work interference are outlined in this report:

1. Organizational culture is the most important predictor of family to work interference for both men and women.
2. Employees who work in an organization that promotes a culture of hours (i.e. employees perceive that their career advancement will be limited if they do not work long hours) report higher family to work interference.
3. Employees who work in an organization that promotes a culture of work or family (i.e. one in which employees feel that family responsibilities and taking family leave limits advancement) report higher family to work interference.
4. Family to work interference occurs when the types of behaviour the work culture rewards with respect to career advancement (i.e. long hours, putting work first) are at odds with the types of behaviours one would associate with being a suitable parent/elder caregiver (i.e. spending time in family activities, taking family leave, putting family first).
5. Employees with higher levels of family to work interference spend more time per week providing child care and/or elder care. They are also more likely to have primary responsibility for child care in their family.
6. Employees with higher levels of family to work interference spend fewer hours per week in leisure activities. This suggests that these employees may be trying to cope with this form of interference by devoting time they would normally spend on themselves to their work and/or family roles.
7. This form of work-life conflict is linked to what an employee has to do at home (i.e. non-work demands) and how easy it is for them to fulfill these responsibilities given the expectations imposed at the level of the organization (i.e. organizational culture). It is not associated with the demands an employee faces at work (i.e. work circumstances, sector of employment), nor is it associated with where one lives.
8. Time in home chores, education and volunteer work are not significant predictors of family to work interference for either gender.

Research Question One: Important Predictors of Caregiver Strain

The following conclusions can be drawn with respect to the circumstances associated with caregiver strain:

1. Caregiver strain can be predicted with some degree of confidence if you know an employee's lifecycle stage and non-work demands. None of the other factors considered in this analysis is predictive of this form of work-life conflict.
2. For both men and women, caregiver strain is positively associated with the time demands associated with looking after an elderly dependent (most important predictor) and having this form of responsibility (second most important predictor).
3. Employees with both child care and elder care responsibilities (i.e. those in the sandwich group) and those with just elder care responsibilities report higher levels of caregiver strain than employees in other roles. The greater the responsibility one has for elder care (i.e. employee is an only child, the parent lives in the home, siblings do not assume concomitant share, lack of community support), the higher the level of this form of conflict.
4. This type of work-life conflict can be substantively predicted by knowing an employee's lifecycle stage. Employees who are older and in a lifecycle stage that involves elder care are more likely to report high levels of caregiver strain, regardless of where they live, where they work, their income, job type, etc. This finding is not a surprise given that caregiver strain is defined as a strain due to care of an elderly dependent. It also, however, indicates that caregiver strain issues are endemic within the Canadian population (i.e. no one province stands out as having addressed this issue).
5. Caregiver strain has a very different etiology than the other forms of work-life conflict examined in this study (i.e. it has a very different set of predictors). It is, for example, the only form of work-life conflict examined in this study that was not substantively associated with organizational culture.

Research Question Two: Common Predictors of Work-Life Conflict

Examination of the data leads to other key conclusions with respect to the prediction of the various forms of work-life conflict:

1. None of the predictors examined in this study substantively related to all four forms of work-life conflict for both men and women.
2. Organizational culture is a substantive predictor of role overload, work to family interference and family to work interference. Employees who work in an organization with a culture of hours and a culture of work or family report higher role overload, work to family interference and family to work interference while employees who work for an organization with a culture supportive of work-life balance report lower levels of these three forms of work-life conflict.
3. Role overload and work to family interference are strongly predicted by circumstances at work.

Organizational culture and work demands are the two most important predictors of role overload and work to family interference. With respect to work demands, both role overload and work to family interference are positively associated with hours per month in unpaid overtime, hours spent in work per week, hours per week in SWAH and time away from home in job-related travel. Organizational cultures that focus on hours (i.e. advancement limited if you do not work long hours or if you say no to more work), emphasize work or family (i.e. family responsibilities and family leave are perceived to limit advancement) and are non-supportive of balance are also linked to higher levels of role overload and work to family interference.

4. Family to work interference and caregiver strain are more likely to be determined by family circumstances.

The most important predictors of caregiver strain and family to work interference are associated with the family domain (i.e. non-work demands, family type, adult role responsibilities). While family to work interference appears to be primarily a function of demands associated with child care, caregiver strain seems to be driven by elder care issues. Both of these forms of work-life conflict are positively associated with hours per week providing elder care, hours per week delivering child care and responsibility for elder care. Caregiver strain is strongly associated with the provision of elder care.

5. Work to family interference is the only dimension of work-life conflict that can be predicted by sector of employment, income, job type, work arrangement, and place of residence in Canada.

The following predictors of work to family interference are unique to this form of work-life conflict:

• sector of employment (employees in the not-for-profit sector report higher interference than those in the public and private sector);
• income (income is positively associated with work to family interference, probably because of the strong positive association between income and job type);
• employees who supervise the work of others report higher work to family interference,
• employees who work shifts report higher work to family interference; and
• employees who live in Western Canada report higher work to family interference, while employees who live in Quebec report lower interference.

Research Question Three: Gender Differences in the Prediction of Work-Life Conflict

The following conclusions with respect to gender differences in the prediction of work-life conflict can be drawn from this study:

1. Organizational culture is a key predictor of role overload, work to family interference and family to work interference for both men and women.

There is no set of factors that places both male and female employees at risk of all four forms of work-life conflict. If we limit ourselves to an examination of the predictors of role overload, work to family interference and family to work interference, however, we are able to identify one factor that places both male and female employees at risk of increased work-life conflict -- the culture of the organization in which the employee works. The following types of cultures are problematic (i.e. positively associated with role overload, work to family interference and family to work interference) for both men and women:

• a culture of hours where employees believe that if they do not work long hours they will not advance in their organization, and
• a culture of work or family where employees perceive that family responsibilities and taking family leave limit advancement.

On the other hand, both men and women who work for an organization whose culture is supportive of work-life balance report lower levels of these forms of work-life conflict (i.e. supportive culture is negatively associated with role overload, work to family interference and family to work interference).

2. Role overload has a different etiology for men than women. Job-related travel is associated with increased role overload for women but not men. Management positions are associated with higher levels of role overload for men but not women.

Job-related travel appears to be more problematic for women than men. This conclusion is supported by the following factors that are important predictors of role overload for women but not men: hours commuting to work per week, week nights away from home per month on business, and weekend nights away from home on business. For the men in the sample, role overload is a function of being a manager and engaging in work extension activities (i.e. taking work home to complete in the evening, engaging in SWAH).

3. Supportive organizational policies are associated with lower levels of role overload and work to family interference for women but not men.

Working for an organization that has supportive policies in place is predictive of reduced role overload for women but not men. It may be that women, more than men, need work-life policies to be in place before they can take positive action with respect to balance (i.e. such policies give their actions legitimacy and give them the "courage" to push back). This interpretation of the data is consistent with the fact that women (but not men) who feel that they cannot say no to overtime work are more likely to report high work to family interference.

4. Family type and adult roles are predictive of role overload and work to family interference for women but not men.

For the men in the sample, family type has no strong association with either role overload or work to family interference. That is, men in traditional families and single men with dependent care responsibilities report the same levels of both of these forms of work-life conflict as dual-income fathers and men in dual-income families with elderly dependents. For the women in the study, on the other hand, family type is strongly associated with role overload and work to family interference. Women in non-traditional families (i.e. those with a stay-at-home husband) report lower levels of role overload and family to work interference but higher levels of work to family interference than other women. In other words, the women in this family type manifest work-life conflict patterns that are more typically reported by men.

5. Responsibility for child care is the most important predictor of family to work interference for men. For women, on the other hand, family to work interference is more strongly associated with the amount of time spent providing child and elder care.

While non-work demands predict family to work interference and caregiver strain for both men and women, the order of importance of the predictors suggests that there is a gender difference about the link between non-work demands and work-life conflict. For women, it is the amount of time that they have to spend looking after children and elderly dependents that is more problematic. Responsibility for these roles is of secondary importance with respect to the prediction of family to work interference. For men, on the other hand, having primary responsibility for child care appears to cause more of a problem than the amount of time spent in the role. This finding is consistent with the fact that the women in this sample spend more time providing child and elder care than men -- time that can be expected to increase the extent to which family to work interference affects this group of employees.

6. Women with multiple caregiving demands (i.e. both child care and elder care) report lower levels of family to work interference than women with only child or elder care.

This finding suggests that multiple caregiver roles offer some form of protective function to women with respect to this form of work-life conflict.

7. Age of children in the home is predictive of family to work interference and caregiver strain for women but not men.

The data indicate that, for the women in the sample, two forms of work-life conflict (family to work interference and caregiver strain) are substantively associated with the age of their children. Caregiver strain is positively associated with children's age, while family to work interference is negatively associated with children's age. These relationships were not significant for men. The following picture emerges from these data. As women age, the amount of care required by their children declines (as does family to work interference) as they too get older. At the same time, the amount of care required by the parents and in-laws of these women increases (as does caregiver strain) as they age. Women with adolescent children and parents who are younger and still independent report lower levels of both forms of work-life conflict. This result can be explained by the fact that, for women, biological limitations provide an upper limit on the age at which a woman can have children. These work-life findings indicate that employers and policymakers need to consider both child care and elder care roles when looking at conflict for women between work and life.

8. Work demands are associated with caregiver strain for women but not men, suggesting that they change their behaviour at work to cope with elder care responsibilities at home.

Work demands have a stronger association with caregiver strain for women than men. Examination of the data indicates that caregiver strain is positively associated with time per week performing SWAH and negatively associated with hours per week in work. It would appear from these data that women with this form of work-life conflict try to fit their work demands around their caregiving obligations by leaving the office early (fewer hours in work per week) and taking work home to complete (higher SWAH).

Recommendations

The data reviewed in this study leave little doubt that there is no "one size fits all solution" to the issue of work-life conflict and that different policies, practices and strategies will be needed to reduce each of the four components of work-life conflict. That being said, the data indicate that there are a number of strategies and approaches that the various stakeholders in this issue can use to reduce work-life conflict. Three sets of recommendations are offered in this report. The first set of recommendations relates to work demands and organizational culture. These recommendations have the broadest applicability (i.e. work demands and organizational culture are predictive of three out of four forms of work-life conflict, caregiver strain being the exception). This is followed by recommendations that should help employees cope with family to work interference and caregiver stain.

Recommendations That Deal with Work Demands
To reduce role overload, work to family interference and family to work interference, employers need to focus their efforts on making work demands and work expectations realistic. Work demands, rather than demands from outside work, are the key predictors of role overload and work to family interference, the two most common forms of work-life conflict in Canada at this time. While employers often point with pride to the many "programs" available in their organization to help employees meet family obligations, these programs or options do not diminish the fact that most people simply have more work to do than can be accomplished by one person in a standard work week. Therefore, employers and governments need to recognize that the issue of work-life conflict cannot be addressed without dealing with the issue of workloads. Employers can also help employees deal with heavy work demands by introducing initiatives that increase an employee's sense of control. The recommendations listed below are, we feel, critical with respect to addressing the issue of demand and control:

1. Employers need to identify ways of reducing employee workloads. This is especially true for not-for-profit sector employers. Special attention needs to be given to reducing the workloads associated with being in management.
2. Employers need to examine workloads within their organizations. If they find that certain employees are consistently spending long hours at work (50 + hours per week), they need to determine why this is occurring (e.g. ambitious staff, unbalanced and unrealistic work expectations, poor planning, too many priorities, lack of tools and/or training to do the job efficiently, poor management, organizational culture focused on hours not output). Once they have determined the causal factors, they need to determine how workloads can be made more reasonable.
3. Employers need to recognize that unrealistic work demands are not sustainable over time and come at a cost to the organization which is often not recognized or tracked. Accordingly, we recommend that the employer start recording the costs of understaffing and overwork (i.e. greater absenteeism, higher prescription drug costs, greater employee assistance program use, increased turnover and hiring costs), so they can make informed decisions with respect to this issue.
4. Employers need to identify ways to reduce the amount of time employees (especially women) spend in job-related travel (e.g. increase their use of virtual teams and teleconferencing technology). In particular, they need to reduce their expectations that employees will travel on their personal time and spend weekends away from home to reduce the organization's travel costs.
5. Employers need to analyze workloads and hire more people in those areas where the organization is overly reliant on unpaid overtime.
6. Employers need to track the amount of time employees spend working paid and unpaid overtime and capturing the number of hours it actually takes to get various jobs done. They should also collect data which reflect the total costs of delivering high quality work in various areas on time (i.e. paid and unpaid overtime, subsequent turnover, employee assistance program use, absenteeism). Such data should be longitudinal in nature as many of the consequences of poor people management do not appear until 6 to 12 months after the event. This type of data should improve planning and priority setting, as well as allow senior executives to make better strategic, long-term decisions.
7. Employers have to develop an etiquette around the use of office technologies such as e-mail, laptops and cell phones. They need, for example, to set limits on the use of technology to support after-hours work and make expectations regarding response times realistic.
8. Employers need to provide employees with more flexibility around when and where they work. The criteria under which these flexible arrangements can be used should be mutually agreed upon and transparent. There should also be mutual accountability around their use (i.e. employees need to meet job demands, but organizations should be flexible with respect to how work is arranged). The process for changing hours of work or the location of work should, wherever possible, be flexible. The increased use of flexible work arrangements would have the added benefit of reducing the amount of time spent commuting to and from work -- an important predictor of role overload for women.
9. It is very difficult (if not impossible) to implement flexible work arrangements in organizations where the focus is on hours rather than output and presence rather than performance. This means that organizations that want to increase work-life balance need to introduce new performance measures that focus on objectives, results and output (i.e. move away from a focus on hours to a focus on output). To do this, they need to reward output, not hours, and reward what is done, not where it is done. They also need to publicly reward people who have successfully combined work and non-work domains and not promote those who work long hours and expect others to do the same.
10. Employers need to give employees the right to refuse overtime work. Saying no to overtime work should not be a career-limiting move. Some organizations may want to give management limited discretion to override the employee's right to refuse overtime (i.e. because of an emergency situation, due to operational requirements) but this should be the exception not the rule.
11. Employers should implement time off arrangements in lieu of overtime pay.
12. Employers should provide a limited number of days of paid leave per year for child care, elder care or personal problems.
13. Employers should provide appropriate support for their employees who work rotating shifts. What is an appropriate support should be determined by consulting with employees who work rotating shifts. Policies that have been found to be effective in this regard include limits to split shifts, advanced notice of shift changes, and permitting shift trades (i.e. allowing employees to change shift times with one another).
14. Employers should implement "cafeteria" benefits packages which allow employees to select those benefits which are most appropriate to their personal situation on a yearly basis.
15. Employees need to say no to overtime hours if work expectations are unreasonable.
16. Employees need to try to limit the amount of work taken home to be completed in the evenings. Employees who do bring work home should make every effort to separate time in work from family time (i.e. do work after the children go to bed, have a home office).
17. Employees need to try to limit the amount of time spent in job-related travel.

Recommendations That Deal with Organizational Culture

To reduce role overload, work to family interference and family to work interference, employers need to deal with their organization's culture. Work-life policies are a necessary first step, but they are not sufficient in that they will not be implemented or used in a culture that is non-supportive of work-life issues. The findings from this study identified three different organizational cultures which are associated with increased work-life conflict: a culture of hours, a culture of work or family and a non-supportive culture (environment is non-supportive of balance). The importance of addressing the issue of organizational culture cannot be over-emphasized. Culture was the single strongest predictor of role overload, work to family interference and family to work interference for both men and women. A policy approach on its own will not fix what is wrong in many organizations. To address the issue of work-life conflict, employers need to create supportive work cultures. This means changing reward structures and accountability and measurement systems.

While the preceding recommendations will all act to make the work environment more supportive, we recommend that the following specific steps be taken by organizations that wish to focus their efforts on cultural change:

18. Work with employees to identify the types of support they would like (i.e. diagnose the situation) and which types could be accommodated within the organization. Not all supportive policies are feasible and practical in every context.
19. Develop and implement appropriate supportive policies. The development phase should include an analysis of the potential problems associated with the implementation of each policy and suggestions on how these problems could be addressed.
20. Communicate to employees the various policies that are available. Indicate how these policies can be accessed and any restrictions to their use. Repeat these communications on a regular basis (e.g. every couple of months). Publish these data on the company's Intranet.
21. Encourage employees to use the policies by having senior management model appropriate behaviours, conducting information sessions on the policies and how they can be used (e.g. through lunch and learns), communicating how these policies are being used successfully in this organization and others (e.g. communicate best practices), etc. Employees must be made to feel that their career will not be jeopardized if they take advantage of supportive policies.
22. Measure the use of the different supportive policies and reward those sections of the organization that demonstrate best practices in these areas. Investigate those areas where use is low.
23. Change accountability frameworks and reward structures. Stop rewarding long hours and unpaid overtime work and instead focus on rewarding accurate work plans and sound human resource management.
24. Employees need to take advantage of the supportive policies and flexible work arrangements available within their organization.
25. Employees and managers alike need to model the type of behaviour that is associated with organizational support of work-life balance, as actions speak louder than words in this arena (i.e. do not call meetings late in the day or early in the morning, do not expect employees to travel on personal time or save money for the organization by travelling for business on the weekend).
26. Culture change is considered to be transformational in nature. Organizations need to offer training to senior managers on the critical success factors necessary for transformational change, provide training to managers on how to manage a change of this nature, and ensure that several people on the organization's senior leadership team have the necessary competencies to lead and manage this type of change.

Recommendations That Deal with Family to Work Interference and Caregiver Strain

Unique predictors of family to work interference and caregiver strain include non-work demands and responsibilities associated with child care and elder care. To reduce these forms of work-life conflict will require a partnership among governments, employees, unions and employers. We would recommend the following actions to reduce these forms of work-life conflict:

27. Governments need to take the lead with respect to the issue of child care. In particular, they need to determine how to best help employed Canadians deal with child care issues (i.e. develop appropriate policies for parents of children of various ages, identify and implement relevant supports).
28. Governments need to take the lead with respect to the issue of elder care. In particular, they need to determine how to best help employed Canadians deal with elder care issues (i.e. develop appropriate policies, identify and implement relevant supports).
29. Employers should offer child and elder care referral services.
30. Employers should extend their employee assistance program to cover the families of their employees (e.g. offer an employee family assistance program instead).
31. Employees need to educate themselves on how they can best deal with the issues of elder care. Things such as financial planning courses and nurturing an awareness of what types of community resources are available for those with elder care issues are likely to help employees increase the amount of control they have over these issues.
32. Employees with caregiving responsibilities should self-identify so that their employer can try to respond. This is particularly true with respect to issues surrounding elder care where the employer does not know that the employee is facing challenges outside work. It is difficult for an employer to assist if he or she does not know there is a problem.

Finally, the findings outlined in this study are somewhat disturbing in what they say about Canadian values. Why is caring for our seniors and our children causing so much strain? Why are Canadian men and women foregoing having families or reducing the number of children that they have? Has there been a change in values in Canada? Do Canadian organizations with cultures of work or family and hours reflect what is important to Canadians? Do such cultures give us a competitive advantage globally or are we hurting our chances of future success by focusing on short-term gains? Are we asking too much of families? Are we asking too much of employees? The data outlined in this study suggest that Canadians need to take a step back and reassess these issues. Canadian employees and employers "survived" the 1990s. Our ability to thrive in this millennium may well depend on how we move forward on the issues outlined in this report.

__________________
¹Throughout this report, the term "work" refers to paid employment.