Work and family roles compete for the working couple’s time.
Neither work nor family roles was significantly greater source of conflict for either men or woman.
Role Overload is the most consistent predictor of time based conflict – has numerous social roles and at least one requires excessive time commitment.
Excessive work-time, an inflexible work schedule and work involvement offers less freedom to meet demands of family role.
Characteristics of families likely to experience more work-family conflict – married, young children, number of children, lack of spouse support, stereotypical gender role attitudes.
Time pressures to role of parent linked to depression.
Job insecurity, time pressures at work, poor leadership relations and work-family conflict affected marital satisfaction through job exhaustion and psychosomatic symptoms.
Strain-based conflict
Work role stressors like role conflict and role ambiguity can cause strain symptoms such as tension, anxiety, fatigue, depression, apathy and irritability.
“Strain in one role affects performance in another role”
Work-stressors identified = role overload, role conflict and ambiguity, lack of career progress, repetitive tasks, changing work environment, long hours, boring tasks, lack of work challenge, new job or poor job-person fit.
Research results showed:
Conflict within the family affects working life
Significant correlation between role conflict and emotional exhaustion
Burnout contributors in males were only work related but in females both work and non-work related factors
Male partners of working woman experience lower level of job satisfaction and quality of life
Dual-career females show lowest level of job involvement
Women with flexible work schedules report less strain then those with fixed schedules
Parents in bad mood after work, children reported a more negative attitude to school and lower levels of constructive behaviour
More warmth and acceptance, monitoring and limit-setting used by parents the less adolescents were involved in alcohol abuse and more positive their attitude to school.
Behaviour-based conflict
Certain patterns of role behaviour conflicts with expectations of behaviour in other roles. Conflict could be if manager is unable to adjust his behaviour when switching from role as an employee to that of husband and father.
May/June 2011
3.4Work-family enrichment
Hammer and Hanson define as “process by which experiences in one role improve the quality of life in the other role”
(refer to Chapter 1)
3.5Organisational actions (table 6.4)
In past if organization cannot meet employee’s family requirements they would leave but this is not to the benefit to either party.
Can individual have fulfilling career and satisfying family life – people too career-focused not interested in or a family or involved in the family and people too family-oriented are more focused to the family and will restructure their career around the family.
The challenge is for individuals not to limit involvement with one role but to accommodate the other role and to pursue both roles with determination
Employees who experience employer support are more likely to aspire to senior positions, more committed to organization, more satisfied with their careers, experience less conflict between work and family, are more likely to be parents and are more satisfied.
Organizations assist working couples to find balance by :
Include commitment to work and family life balance in mission statement
