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

4.0 Reducing Work-Life Conflict: What Can Employees Do?

The vast majority of the research on how individuals cope with stressful events or circumstances has been done by psychologists who have devoted a great deal of effort to understanding this issue. The size of the extant body of research in this area makes a complete review of the topic outside the scope of this report. Instead, this chapter will provide an overview of key research findings and frameworks relevant to this research initiative.

In their seminal article on coping, Pearlin and Schooler (1978) outlined three broad coping responses, which have served as the basis for much of the subsequent theory and research on individual coping. The most direct method of dealing with stress is to identify the source of the stress and to take action to eliminate or mitigate its effects. However, it is often difficult to identify the precise source of stress and/or the actions that can be taken to deal with it. Furthermore, some stressors are beyond the individual's control and are therefore impervious to coping interventions. A second means of dealing with stress is to alter one's perceptions of the stressor so as to paint it in a more positive light or minimize its impacts by focusing on the positive aspects of the situation. A final type of coping involves efforts to deal with stress once it occurs rather than altering its preconditions or one's perceptions. In other words, this type of reactive coping functions to help the individual manage stress, rather than to avoid or mitigate it. Such behaviours include denial, avoidance, blind faith, and harmful activities such as alcohol and drug use.

Subsequent theory and research has refined Pearlin and Schooler's typology. Specifically, researchers have attempted to elucidate the various dimensions of the coping responses available to individuals. Folkman and Lazarus (1980) provided what is arguably the most widely accepted typology of coping strategies. They considered the various functions that coping behaviour might serve and defined two functionally based forms of coping. Problem based coping is proactive and involves an attempt by the individual to influence the stressors in the external environment as a means of obviating and/or mitigating stress. Emotion focused coping, on the other hand, is a reactive form of coping that involves the regulation of stressful emotions once they have occurred. This typology of coping behaviours has been adopted by a number of subsequent researchers (e.g. Daniels & Harris, 2005; Havlovic & Keenan, 1995; Latack & Havlovic, 1992; Rotondo, Carlson & Kincaid, 2003). Other researchers have suggested a third type of coping, appraisal focused coping, which involves an attempt to change one's perceptions of a stressful situation to paint them in a more positive light (Daniels & Harris, 2005; Latack & Havlovic, 1992).

Latack and Havlovic (1992) argued that coping could be further categorized on the basis of the method of coping employed to deal with stressors and feelings of stress. They suggested two methods of coping that could be used to manage both stressors (i.e. problem focused coping) and stressful emotions (i.e. emotion focused coping). The first method of coping, cognitive coping, involves the use of mental strategies to reframe the situation in a more favourable light. For instance, an attempt to convince oneself that one's situation is "is not that bad" or that "everybody faces difficulties at some time" might be viewed as cognitive coping. Behavioural coping, on the other hand, involves direct action to address a stressor or stressful emotion. Examples of behavioural coping might include negotiating a new work schedule to accommodate work and family demands or participating in an exercise class in order to relieve stress.

In recent years, a large number of researchers have attempted to identify the range of coping strategies available to individuals and the circumstances in which they work best. Skinner and colleagues (2003) reviewed approximately 100 measures of coping, selected broadly from literature concerning general and domain specific (e.g. coping with rape, cancer, depression) coping strategies for children, adolescents and adults. Their review identified over 400 ways of coping, which they categorized into 100 groups of similarly worded items. They found items related to five ways of coping appeared on 20 or more of the 100 scales. These five were problem solving; support seeking; avoidance; direct action; and distraction. They found the following 13 items to be present in 10 to 19 of the 100 scales: aggression; self blame; escape; social withdrawal; religion; positive cognitive restructuring; emotional expression; information seeking; acceptance; wishful thinking; emotional social support; worry. Their review also identified 13 higher order categories or "families" of coping strategies:

1. Problem solving (instrumental action, direct action, decision making, planning)
2. Support seeking (comfort seeking, help seeking, spiritual support)
3. Escape (avoidance, disengagement, denial)
4. Distraction (acceptance)
5. Cognitive restructuring (positive thinking, self encouragement)
6. Rumination (intrusive thoughts, negative thinking, self blame, worry)
7. Helplessness (inaction, passivity, giving up)
8. Social withdrawal (self isolation)
9. Emotional regulation (emotional expression, self calming)
10. Information seeking (observation, monitoring)
11. Negotiation (offer exchange, compromise, prioritizing)
12. Opposition (aggression, blame others)
13. Delegation (maladaptive help seeking, self pity)

While this literature provides a useful overview of the behavioural and cognitive strategies people use to cope with stressful situations, it is very broad and applies generally to a wide range of stressors, such as chronic illness, separation of family members and crime victimization. Relatively few authors have specifically examined the coping strategies that individuals employ in dealing with ongoing stressors, such as work-family conflict. Hall (1972) specifically examined the ways in which individuals cope with role conflict in their lives. His research suggested three broad types of coping with role conflict: (1) structural role redefinition, which entails a deliberate action on the individual's part to restructure his or her role set by communicating with others (e.g. spouse, employer, children) regarding their expectations and demands; (2) personal role redefinition, which involves changing one's personal perceptions of role demands rather than attempting to change the demands of others; and (3) reactive role behaviour, which involves an acceptance of the role conflict as unchangeable and an attempt to alleviate conflict by working harder or being more organized.

Hall (1972) identified 16 specific coping behaviours falling into these three types of coping strategies:

Type I Coping: structural role redefinition

• Eliminating or adding role activities, but not entire roles - negotiating fewer role activities with role senders.
• Role support from outside the role set - formal agreement with a non role sender to help the person meet role expectations (usually within the work role).
• Role support from inside the role set - formal agreement with a member of the person's role set (usually within the family) to help the person meet role expectations.
• Problem solving with role senders - assistance of role senders in deciding how to redefine one's roles. Includes collaborative redefinition of roles or moral support from role sender(s).
• Role integration - redesigning roles so that they can be overlapped and performed simultaneously in a mutually reinforcing manner.
• Changing the societal definition of one's roles - role definition at the level of societal expectations.

Type II Coping: cognitive/personal role redefinition

• Establishing priorities - involves the rank ordering of role activities to focus on the most important ones, without eliminating any roles or role activities.
• Partitioning and separating roles - mental compartmentalization of roles so that only one is performed at a time without making formal role restructuring arrangements (i.e. minimizing role overlap).
• Overlooking role demands - mental process of ignoring or avoiding certain role activities, without formally restructuring the role with role senders.
• Changing attitudes toward roles - changing one's outlook toward the role in order to rationalize and reduce dissonance.
• Elimination of roles - the sacrifice of personal interests in order to meet the expectations of role senders.³⁶
• Rotating attention among roles - selective attention and inattention to roles without a formal redefinition (i.e. handling each role as it comes up).
• Developing self and own interests - mentally attaching greater weight to one's own self sent expectations rather than those of role senders.

Type III Coping: reactive role behaviour

• Planning, scheduling and organizing better - attempt to juggle demands more efficiently rather than changing formal or mental role structures.
• No conscious strategy (i.e. passive orientation) - assume that time will take care of things.
• Working harder - increasing time and energy output to meet all role expectations.

Research on the effects of individual coping strategies on perceptions of work-family conflict is relatively scarce (Rotondo et al., 2003). They hypothesized that direct action, help seeking and positive thinking coping styles would be associated with both lower perceived work interference with family (what the authors referred to as WIF) conflict (when applied to work stressors) and family interference with work (what the authors labeled FIW) conflict (when applied to family stressors). They hypothesized that avoidance coping would not be an effective means of coping with time demands and may lead the individual to perceive greater levels of conflict because he or she may feel that nothing ever seems to change. They, therefore, hypothesized that avoidance coping would lead to higher levels of perceived WIF conflict when used with work stressors and higher levels of FIW when applied to family stressors. They found that avoidance coping was positively associated with WIF, but no other form of coping was associated with this type of conflict. They also found that avoidance coping was positively associated with FIW, and direct action and help seeking were both negatively associated with FIW. The authors concluded that avoidance as a coping technique leads to greater conflict and that problem focused coping (i.e. direct action and help seeking) is effective in coping only with family-to-work interference . This suggests that if there are effective means of coping with the interference of work into one's family life, they are beyond the realm of individual coping strategies that are typically studied. It is therefore important to consider the broader set of coping responses that are evident within the family unit as a whole. Such a discussion can be found in Chapter Five.

This chapter is divided into five broad sections. Data on how individual employees cope with the stresses associated with work-life conflict are presented first. This is followed in section 2 by a discussion of how effective each of these coping techniques is at alleviating work-life conflict. The third section focuses on the link between work-life conflict and the decision to have children. Data on the use of this form of coping is presented first, followed by an examination of its effectiveness at reducing the various forms of work-life conflict. Section 4 explores the extent to which off-shifting child care demands and responsibilities with a partner helps employees balance work and family. Again, data on the use of this strategy are given first, followed by an evaluation of how effective this strategy is at reducing work-life conflict. The chapter concludes with a brief summary of the key things employees can do to cope with work-life conflict.