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

4.1 How Do Canadian Employees Cope with Stress?³⁷

To make it easier for the reader to follow the discussion, we categorized the individual coping techniques using principal components analysis. This categorization (Table 12) indicates that Canadian employees use four types of personal strategies to cope with work-life conflict: (1) social support, (2) active coping techniques aimed at the reduction or elimination of the sources of conflict, (3) avoidance and (4) reactive coping techniques, which focus on alleviating the symptoms of stress rather than the source of stress itself.

Data on the availability and use of the different individual coping strategies considered in this research are summarized in Tables 13 (Total Sample) and 14 (Gender by Dependent Care and Gender by Job Type) analyses. These data indicate that Canadians use a myriad of strategies to cope with stress.

Table 12: Factor Analysis of Individual Coping Strategies

	Social Support	Active Coping	Avoidance	Reactive Coping	% Use Daily
Sought help from colleagues at work	0.8				16
Talked with colleagues at work	0.79				32
Sought help from family or friends	0.74				23
Talked with family or friends	0.73				45
Prioritize		0.82			69
Schedule, organize, plan time more carefully		0.89			49
Delegate work to others		0.75			27
Just try and forget about it			0.76		19
Find other activity to take my mind off it			0.63		32
Use drugs (i.e. prescription, other)				0.72	11
Just work harder (I try to do it all)				0.61	43
Reduce the quality of the things I do				0.55	10
Have an alcoholic drink				0.53	12

Table 13: Use of Individual Coping Strategies (Total Sample)

Coping Strategies	% of Sample Who Use
	Rarely	Weekly	Daily
Prioritize	9%	21%	69%
Schedule, organize and plan my time more carefully	22%	32%	47%
Talked with family or friends	26%	29%	45%
Just work harder (I try to do it all)	31%	26%	43%
Find some other activity to take my mind off it	36%	32%	32%
Talked with colleagues at work	40%	27%	32%
Delegate work to others	49%	24%	27%
Sought help from family or friends	51%	25%	23%
Just try and forget about it	60%	20%	19%
Sought help from colleagues at work	65%	19%	16%
Have an alcoholic drink	65%	23%	12%
Use prescription, over-the-counter or other drugs	86%	4%	11%
Reduce the quality of the things I do	72%	18%	10%

Table 14: Use of Individual Coping Strategies
a. Gender by Dependent Care

Coping Strategies	% Who Use Frequently
	Males		Females
	No D	D	No D	D
Talked with family or friends	37	37	52	49
Talked with colleagues at work	28	26	36	36
Sought help from family or friends	13	11	20	29
Sought help from colleagues at work	19	19	20	21
Just work harder (I try to do it all)	36	37	45	55
Prioritize	64	66	72	72
Delegate work to others	29	36	22	26
Just try to forget about it	18	18	20	20
Find some other activity to take my mind off it	38	37	35	25
Reduce the quality of the things I do	9	10	9	12
Schedule, organize, plan my time more carefully	45	44	49	49
Have an alcoholic drink	15	17	7	7
Use prescription, over-the-counter or other drugs	8	8	13	13

Table 14: Use of Individual Coping Strategies
b. Gender by Job Type

Coping Strategies	% Who Use Frequently
	Males		Females
	Mgr/Prof	Other	Mgr/Prof	Other
Talked with family or friends	39	35	55	47
Talked with colleagues at work	28	25	38	35
Sought help from family or friends	20	18	28	25
Sought help from colleagues at work	12	22	24	18
Just work harder (I try to do it all)	38	36	48	48
Prioritize	74	58	75	69
Delegate work to others	45	24	32	17
Just try to forget about it	17	20	18	21
Find some other activity to take my mind off it	35	32	33	29
Reduce the quality of the things I do	10	9	11	9
Schedule, organize, plan my time more carefully	49	38	53	46
Have an alcoholic drink	19	15	9	8
Use prescription, over-the-counter or other drugs	8	9	11	15

The majority of Canadians try to cope by prioritizing

Almost 70% of the 31,571 working Canadians who completed our survey attempt to cope with stress by prioritizing their commitments. In other words, the first line of defence against the stresses associated with balancing work and life commitments is to use a cognitive approach to the situation (what Hall refers to as personal role redefinition), which involves the rank ordering of their different role activities to focus on the most important ones, without eliminating any roles or role activities. Unfortunately, the data (Duxbury & Higgins, 2003) indicate that most Canadians cope by giving a higher priority to work than to family -- a strategy that is not sustainable in the long term.

Men and women in managerial and professional positions are most likely to use this coping strategy while men in other positions are least likely to use it.

Many Canadians attempt to cope by scheduling, organizing, planning and trying to do it all

Approximately half of the respondents to this survey attempt to cope with stress by scheduling, organizing and planning their time more carefully (47%), talking with family and friends (45%), and just trying to do it all/working harder (43%). It should be noted that all of these strategies are reactive in nature and involve dealing with the stressor once it has occurred, rather than the elimination of the stressful situation. Women are more likely than men to cope by talking to family members and just working harder. Managers and professionals are more likely to cope by scheduling, planning and organizing.

One in three employees copes by finding other things to focus on and seeking support at work

Two other strategies, find some other activity to take my mind of the stressor (escapism) and talk to colleagues at work (social support), are used by 32% of the respondents. A similar proportion of the sample indicated that they used such strategies weekly and rarely. Women were more likely to cope by talking to colleagues at work. Men, on the other hand, were more likely to cope by engaging in other activities such as sports.

Half the sample indicate that they rarely delegate work to others or seek help from family or friends

Research has shown that people who either use active problem-based coping strategies such as delegating the work to others and/or who have family and friends who they can rely on to provide support are more able to cope with stress. Unfortunately, these strategies are not widely used. Only 27% of the sample (albeit 45% of the male managers and professionals) indicated that they delegate work to others on a daily basis as way to cope with stress. Half the sample, on the other hand, indicated that they rarely delegated work to others as a way of coping (perhaps because they had no one to delegate to in the time-crunched Canadian workplace). Similarly, just over half of the respondents (51%) said that they never coped with stress by seeking help from family and friends (perhaps because all their friends and family are in the same situation they are).

On a positive note, 60% of respondents do not use one of the key emotion-focused avoidance strategies included in this study -- just try to forget about it. Such a strategy is typically less effective as the source of the stress normally remains unchanged and hence problematic. More worrisome is the fact that one in five uses this strategy daily.

Few Canadians cope with stress by seeking help from colleagues at work

Two thirds of the sample indicated that they rarely turned to colleagues at work for help as a way to cope with stress, anxiety and depression. While 32% of the sample said that they talked to colleagues at work as a way to alleviate their stress, only 16% asked colleagues to help them. This is unfortunate as many Canadian employees find the same types of things (i.e. heavy workloads, non-supportive managers, non-supportive work cultures) stressful. It is also unfortunate as this limits the sharing of effective coping strategies between employees. Again, we can only surmise why such sharing does not exist. These findings may reflect the fact that people are just too busy at work to talk to colleagues and ask for help. Second, the "macho" culture within many Canadian organizations, which rewards long hours and saying yes to more work, may mean that employees do not ask for help because they fear that it will affect their image and their chance for advancement.

A substantive number of Canadian employees cope by using alcohol or drugs

Twelve percent of respondents cope with stress by using alcohol. One in four respondents has a drink on a weekly basis as a way to cope with stress, anxiety and depression. Similarly, 11% use prescription, over-the-counter or illegal drugs as a way to cope with stress while 4% more use this coping mechanism weekly. These strategies are both reactive ways of dealing with emotional responses to stress, which are problematic on both social (linked to greater physical illness and costs to the health care system as well as family dysfunction) and economic (related to reduced productivity and increased absenteeism) fronts. It is interesting to note that while both men and women cope by using avoidance, men are more likely to cope by having a drink while women are more likely to cope by using medication or taking drugs.

Canadians do not cope by reducing the quality of the things they do

Only one in ten of the respondents copes by frequently reducing the quality of the things they do. Another one in five uses this strategy approximately weekly. The majority (72%) use this strategy rarely, if at all. This is unfortunate as this form of cognitive reappraisal has the potential to reduce stress and anxiety caused by high workloads and competing priorities.

Women more likely than men to cope by seeking social support

The data indicate that how an employee chooses to cope with stress, anxiety and depression depends very much on the gender of the worker. Women, regardless of job type or dependent care status, were more likely than men to use the following coping strategies:

• seek social support (i.e. talk with family and friends and talk with colleagues at work)
• seek help from family or friends
• work harder
• use prescription, over-the-counter or illegal drugs

Three other interesting differences with respect to these strategies can be observed if one looks more closely at the data. First, it is important to note that females with dependent care responsibilities are significantly more likely than female counterparts without dependent care to cope by seeking help from family or friends and working harder. No such difference was observed for the men in the sample. Second, the gender difference in the use of prescription medicine as a means of coping with stress can be largely explained by the fact that women in other positions in the organization are more likely than any other group to use this coping strategy (15% of the women in this group use prescription drugs on a daily basis as a way of coping with stress).

Men more likely than women to cope by delegating work to others and having a drink

Men were more likely than women to use the following coping strategies:

• delegate work to others
• have an alcoholic drink

Again, a better understanding can be obtained by looking at the within gender differences. This analysis indicated that males with dependent care responsibilities (36%) and men in management positions (45%) are significantly more likely than counterparts without dependent care/in other types of jobs to cope by delegating the work to others. One in five men in managerial and professional positions and 15% of men in other jobs use alcohol to cope with stress. This is approximately double the number of women who use this strategy.

Managers and professionals cope by planning, delegating and being organized

When gender is taken into consideration, the managers and professionals in the sample were more likely than those in other jobs to:

• delegate work to others
• schedule, organize and plan their time

It is likely that employees in this group use these strategies because they can (i.e. more likely to be in positions of authority within the organization) and because they have learned these skills at work and are transferring them to other domains.

Tendency to seek help, try to forget and reduce quality are not associated with demographic status

Finally, the use of three of the strategies examined in this analysis was not associated with gender, job type or dependent care status: seek help from colleagues at work, just try to forget about it, and reduce the quality of things done. In all three cases very few employees use these strategies.

Individual coping techniques are not associated with dependent care status

The use of the various coping strategies considered in this study was not associated with dependent care status. Those with child and/or elder care responsibilities were not more or less likely to seek help from others, rely on their families and friends, reduce the quality of their work, have a drink or take drugs. Nor were they more or less likely to prioritize, schedule and plan, or just work harder. These findings are interesting as they do not support either the positive or negative preconceptions many people hold of working parents or caregivers.