Control over work-life boundaries creates crucial buffer to manage
after-hours work stress

Date:
June 25, 2020
Source:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau
Summary:
Workers with greater boundary control over their work and personal
lives were better at creating a stress buffer to prevent them
from falling into a negative rumination trap, says a new study by
experts who study occupational stress and employee well-being.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
When work intrudes after hours in the form of pings and buzzes from
smartphone alerts, it can cause spikes of stress that lead to a host
of adverse effects for workers, including negative work rumination,
poor affect and insomnia.


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But according to research co-written by a team of researchers at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who study occupational stress
and employee well-being, those who have greater "boundary control" over
their work and personal lives were better at creating a stress buffer
that helped protect them from falling into a negative-rumination trap.

Information communication technologies such as smartphones and tablets
enable employees to work anywhere and anytime, thereby blurring work
and nonwork boundaries. But that convenience comes at the expense of
increased stress and mental health woes for workers unless they have
control over the boundaries between work and nonwork life, said YoungAh
Park, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

"Most people simply can't work without a smartphone, tablet or laptop computer," she said. "These technologies are so ubiquitous and convenient
that it can lead some people to think that employees have to be always
on or always available. Clearly, this kind of after-hours intrusion
into the home or personal life domain is unhealthy, and our research
shows that an always-on mentality has a big downside in the form of
increased job stress." In the study, Park and co-authors surveyed more
than 500 full-time public school teachers in grades K-6 to measure their off-the-clock work intrusion via technologies on a weekly basis for five consecutive weeks.

"We asked about their weekly work intrusion involving technology,
specifically their after-hours work -- whether they were expected to
respond to work-related messages and emails immediately, and whether
they were contacted about work- related issues after hours," she said.



==========================================================================
The researchers found that teachers' adoption of technological boundary
tactics such as keeping work email alerts turned off on smartphones was
related to lower perceptions of the weekly work intrusion.

The study builds on recent scholarship on how coping with off-hours occupational demands is becoming an increasingly important issue for
workers, said Yihao Liu, a professor of labor and employment relations
at Illinois and a co-author of the study.

"Managing your work-life balance through boundary control is not only
helpful for you and your family, it also could be a benefit for your co-workers, because they also have to potentially read and respond to
the back-and-forth messages that people are sending after the workday is
done," he said. "Setting a good boundary between work and regular life is
going to help more people and more stakeholders. Overall, it's critical
that individuals manage their work- life boundaries for their own health
and well-being, but also for their own productivity and their colleagues' productivity." Moreover, the researchers found that teachers' boundary
control softened the work intrusion-negative rumination link and that this boundary control was an important mechanism by which two "border keepers"
-- principals, who effectively functioned as supervisors in the study;
and parents, who could be thought of as clientele -- can affect teachers' weekly stress experiences.

In other words, the weekly strain symptoms involving work intrusion can
be alleviated by a supervisor who supports employees' work-life balance,
Park said. Or conversely, it can be aggravated by clientele who expect employees to be always accessible and available.

"A really important point around the sense of boundary control is that stakeholders can influence employees' control," she said. "Our study
suggests that school principals can play a positive role in that their
support for work- life balance was associated with the teachers' greater
sense of boundary control. When you have supportive leaders who model
behaviors for work-life balance and work effectively with employees to creatively solve work-life conflicts, that translates into less stress
for teachers through boundary control." Although the study only included elementary school teachers in its sample, the findings about drawing
clear boundaries after work ought to apply to most workers, especially
now that more are working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers said.

"Our initial motivation was to study teachers because we tend to
assume that their work and nonwork lives are separate and distinct,"
Park said. "Teachers have set schedules in a physical building, along
with discrete blocks of free time over the weekends. But even with
this working population, we found that after-hours work intrusion via technology can be really stressful for them. So although this finding
is particular to teachers, a class of employees who we tend to assume
have clear work-life boundaries, it's now an issue for everyone who is electronically tethered to their work after regular hours."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Illinois_at_Urbana-Champaign,_News_Bureau.

Original written by Phil Ciciora. Note: Content may be edited for style
and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. YoungAh Park, Yihao Liu, Lucille Headrick. When work is wanted after
hours: Testing weekly stress of information communication technology
demands using boundary theory. Journal of Organizational Behavior,
2020; DOI: 10.1002/job.2461 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200625122734.htm

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