Reducing Work-Life Conflict: What Works? What Doesn't?

1.2 Objectives of the Research

Researchers have long been interested in understanding the strategies that individuals and families employ to cope with stressful events and circumstances. Coping can be defined as any response to external stressors that serves to prevent, avoid or minimize emotional distress (Pearlin & Schooler, 1978). Coping behaviour has five functions: (1) to decrease the individual or family's vulnerability to distress by eliminating or managing those factors that contribute to stress; (2) to strengthen and maintain the resources that serve to protect the individual or family from harm or distress (e.g. family cohesiveness, adaptability); (3) to reduce or eliminate stressor events and their corresponding hardships; (4) to actively influence the individual or family's environment by doing something to change the social circumstances; and (5) if stress cannot be avoided, to control the impact of the stress and its destabilizing impacts on the individual or family (McCubbin et al., 1980). By understanding which types of coping strategies are used in different types of situations and the effectiveness of these coping measures in various stress situations, we can generate valuable insights that can help individuals, families and organizations to support the management of stress.

Coping has often been studied as the response to catastrophic life events such as unemployment, disease, death, family separation, bankruptcy, etc. However, researchers have also acknowledged that coping takes place as an ongoing response to "normative" stresses that occur gradually and persistently, such as the conflict produced when work and family interests collide (Burr & Klein, 1994; McCubbin & Patterson, 1983; Pearlin & Schooler, 1978).

Although much has been written about coping strategies and processes, there has been a lack of integration among the researchers studying family coping, individual coping and organizational support for coping (Burr & Klein, 1994). As a result, these three fields have developed in relative isolation, despite the obvious overlap in their content. It is our intent in this report to provide a holistic picture of how strategies applied by the key stakeholders in the work-life equation--the individual, the family and the organization--help employees cope with work-life conflict.

Accordingly, the key objective of this report is to identify coping strategies that are associated with lower levels of the four forms of work-life conflict: role overload, work-to-family interference, family-to-work interference and caregiver strain. Three sets of moderators will be examined:

• organizational interventions (i.e. flexible work arrangements, supportive management, supportive services and policies)
• individual coping strategies (i.e. having fewer children, delaying starting a family, working harder, prioritizing)
• family coping strategies (i.e. work different hours than spouse, planning family time, gendered division of labour)

Specifically, this research seeks to answer the following questions:

1. How do Canadian employees cope with competing work and family demands? Specifically: What resources do Canadian organizations provide to help employees cope with work and family conflict? What personal coping strategies are used by Canadian employees? What strategies are used within families? What strategies are being used frequently? Infrequently?
2. What advice can we offer organizations interested in reducing the levels of role overload, work-to-family interference, family-to-work interference and caregiver strain in their workforce?
3. What advice can we provide to individual employees about how best to cope with role overload, work-to-family interference, family-to-work interference and caregiver strain?
4. What advice can we offer to Canadian families about how best to cope with role overload, work-to-family interference, family-to-work interference and caregiver strain?
5. How do gender, job type and dependent care⁶ status affect:
   • the use of these different coping strategies
   • the type of advice we would offer (i.e. what coping strategies are more effective for women? for men? for employees with dependent care? for employees without dependent care? for managers and professionals? for those in other positions?).⁷