Mrs. E.N. Abe & Dr. Z. Fields

School of Management, IT & Governance, College of Law & Management Studies University of KwaZulu-Natal, Varsity Road, Westville Durban

South Africa

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

STRATEGIES, AND WORK AND

FAMILY STRESSORS AT A

MUNICIPALITY IN THE SOUTH

AFRICAN PUBLIC SECTOR

HOW DO I ACHIEVE BALANCE?

Seminal contributions:

De Cieri, Holmes, Abbott, and Pettit (2005), Fleetwood (2007), Kossek, Lautsch, and

Eaton (2006), Fleetwood (2007), Gambles, Lewis, and Rapoport (2006), Kossek,

Pichler, Bodner, and Hammer, 2011, Caillier (2013).

WLBS as those organisational practices which augment employee independence in

organising and consolidating the aspects of their lives that are associated with work

and non-work spheres. This definition gives room for varied practices or benefits to

be classified as WLBS. Some arrangements made by organisations to assist employees

in addressing their work-life stressors could be effective while others may not.

WLBS can be classified into three groups: flexible working programmes (FWPs),

family-friendly programmes, and health and wellness programmes.

Most studies on the efficacy of these strategies have examined them either as

independent factors or a group of work-family initiatives, concentrating on personal

level resultant variables and considering mainly the availability and use of such

strategies.

Work-life balance strategies (WLBS)

Seminal contributions:

Beehr and Newman (1978), Caplan, Cobb, French Jr, Harrison, and

Pinneau Jr (1975), Chen and Silverthorne (2008), Parker, Axtell, and

Turner (2001), Thompson, Beauvais, and Lyness (1999), Chiang, Birtch,

and Kwan (2010), Lambert, Hogan, Paoline, and Clarke (2005), Zheng,

Yang and Maclean (2010).

For the purpose of this paper, stressors are those things, situations or

feelings that challenge individual comfort, satisfaction and performance.

This paper examines the influence that work-life balance strategies could

have on work and family stressors. The work stressors that are examined

in this paper are job stress, role conflict/function vagueness and absence

of autonomy.

Work Stressors

There is no consensus on the definition of the construct among

scholars (Beehr & Newman, 1978). But for the purpose of this

paper, job stress are those situations pertinent to the job and

work environment that place an individual employee in a

position where he/she is ill-disposed to perform his/her

function maximally. These for instance include role overload and

all such work-connected burdens that lead to tiredness and

depression.

The effect that work-life balance strategies have on job stress has

unfortunately not been studied expansively.

Job stress

Thompson and Prottas (2006) suggest that job autonomy is the level of freedom and discretion to arrange the flow of work and make decisions as to the method of performing a job, inherent in that job (Hackman & Oldham, 1976). Such decisions may include time and ways of performing one’s tasks at the workplace. Absence of autonomy therefore refers to the lack of discretion to make important decisions concerning one’s job.

Job autonomy has been measured from availability of flexibility (ability to choose when to start and end work) perspective instead of the real feeling of control (Thomas & Ganster, 1995; Valcour & Batt, 2003).

This paper suggests that the presence of work-life balance strategies that are not aligned to the provision of autonomy to employees could be stressful to the employees.

Absence of autonomy

The roles and responsibilities performed by individuals in complex

workplaces ought to be clearly designed and stated to avoid

ambiguity and conflict.

This paper is based on a municipality which naturally has multiple

sources of authority. Directives come from both the administrative

and political superiors whose interests are often at variance with

one another to management and subordinates.

Many studies show that multiple authority has the capacity to

upset a person’s alignment to the workplace or career by placing a

demand on the individual to choose between the two (Etzioni,

1959; Evan, 1962; Gouldner, 1957; Malczewski, 2014).

Function vagueness/role conflict

Family is a dynamic association of individuals. Individuals in a family could be connected by birth, adoption or marriage.

Families have existed from as far back as history can tell. Major changes in contemporary times may have led to resultant changes in the outlook and challenges of the family unit.

For the purpose of this paper, four types of family units are briefly discussed. They are: nuclear family, single-parent family, extended family and blended family.

Family Stressors:

Family /family units

Nuclear family consists of parents (father and mother) and their children living in the same domestic unit. It occupies a central position in human society (Maguire, 2015; Shapiro, 2013).

Single-parent family is one where a parent lives with dependent children, either alone or in a larger household, without a spouse or partner.

Extended family unit comprises two or more nuclear families of the same generational bracket living together with their respective wives and children in the same household.

Blended family could be defined as a joined family. It comprises of two married (or cohabiting) individuals who came into the relationship with children from earlier relationships.

Family/family units contd

Family stress is a situation arising through real or sensed need-capacity imbalance in the way a family functions (explained above).

Some of the stressors faced by employees include but are not limited to parenting and child care, elder relative care, personal health factors, finance/debt issues as well as relational stress.

The family stressors examined in this paper include parental workload/relationship tension, absence of spousal support, elder care and level of misconduct by the child. The degree of the effect of these could be dependent on the type of family unit.

Family Stressors.

Though active scholarly engagements and debates on

the issue of WLBS have been on-going from various

perspectives, yet not much has been written on how

work-life balance strategies effectively address

work and family stressors confronting

employees.

Problem Statement

To explore the effect that

WLBS have on work and

family stressors.

Research Objective

How do work WLBS affect work

and family stressors?

Research Question

A pragmatic research approach is adopted to examine the

effect that WLBS have on work and family stressors at a

municipality in the South African public service.

Cross-sectional

Exploratory

Mixed method design

Random sampling

Research Method

Self-administered questionnaire (Spector and

Fox, 2003, Casper et al., 2007)

Eleven members of top management were

interviewed

Target population: all heads of units, managers,

supervisors and coordinators at the

municipality.

Research Method

• WLBS: participants were asked to respond on a dual response ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ WLBS

scale in order to establish the strategies in place at the municipality. A factor analysis

was subsequently utilised to group the strategies according to their effectual patterns

into two groups, namely life strategies and work strategies. The pattern that emerged

categorically placed the WLBS into two distinct domains: work and life strategies

with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α) 0.782 and 0.781 respectively, indicating a very

satisfactory reliability coefficient.

• To verify the efficacy of the WLBS at addressing work and family stressors,

respondents were asked to rank on a 5-point scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree

to (5) strongly agree; the effect of the strategies in assisting them cope with various

work and family-related stressors. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α) for this scale was

0.945.

Research Method

• Work stressors: Work Stressor Scale, a three dimensional scale comprising function vagueness

/role conflict scale, job autonomy scale and job control scale was used to measure

work stressors on three distinct dimensions. The Cronbach alpha reported in this

study for these scales are; 0.863, 0.870 and 0.870 respectively and were considered

appropriate in accordance with George and Mallery (2003)

• Family stressors: Family Stressor Scale also a 3-dimensional scale consisting of Child

Misbehaviour Scale, Parental Workload /Relational Tension Scale and Absence of Spousal

Support Scale was used in assessing family stressors. The Cronbach’s alpha reported in

this study for these scales are 0.983, 0.897 and 0.919 respectively

• IBM SPSS 22 and Nvivo 10.

Research Method contd.

•Preliminary analysis description (see

research paper)

•Sample size:

•Respondents approached: 370, final sample

size :307 participants (82,97% response rate);

deemed adequate in line with Wilson (2010).

Findings

Table 1 Descriptive Statistics: WLBS in place at the municipality Description Frequency

Percentage

Yes No Yes No

Stress management 223 84 72.6% 27.4%

Domestic relationship counselling 203 104 66.1% 33.9%

Substance/alcohol abuse counselling 271 36 88.3% 11.7%

HIV/AIDS counselling 278 29 90.6% 9.4%

Financial/debt counselling 235 72 76.5% 23.5%

Work from home on ad hoc basis 31 276 10.1% 89.9%

Job share 76 231 24.8% 75.2%

Compressed work week 54 253 17.6% 82.4%

Telecommuting 91 216 29.6% 70.4%

Career break 67 240 21.8% 78.2%

Table 2: Work-life balance strategies address work stressors

Frequency Per cent Valid Per cent Cumulative Percent

Valid Strongly disagree

67 21.82 21.82 21.82

Disagree

64 20.85 20.85 42.67

Neutral

99 32.25 32.25 74.92

Agree

66 21.50 21.50 96.42

Strongly agree

11 3.58 3.58 100.00

Total

307 100.00 100.00

Table 3: Work-life balance strategies address family stressors

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid Strongly disagree

73 23.78 23.78 23.78

Disagree

63 20.52 20.52 44.30

Neutral

104 33.88 33.88 78.18

Agree

59 19.22 19.22 97.40

Strongly agree

8 2.60 2.60 100.00

Total

307 100.00 100.00

Table 4 WLBS as predictors of stressors Independent variables R R square Adjusted R square F Beta T P-value

.131* .017 .014 5.286 - - .000

Work-life balance strategies

.131 .2.299 .022

Constant .181 .000

• The qualitative data analysed in this study provided vital explanation for the reasons why WLBS

did not meaningfully address the work and family stressors at the municipality in the South

African public service.

• Although the municipality adopted the wellness programmes to assist employees in addressing

their work and family stressors, employees seemed to have largely avoided using the

programme. Furthermore, the quantitative data analysis showed after exploratory factor

analysis, that the wellness programmes comprised more strategies addressing family stressors

and little or nothing of work stressors.

• An association between work-life balance strategies and stressors was found in this study and

the size of the prediction of work-life balance strategies on stressors was significant at p < .05.

The contribution made by work-life balance strategies was negligible at 1.4% in line with prior

studies (Batt & Valcour, 2003; Behson, 2002; Dikkers et al., 2004; Kossek & Friede, 2006; Kossek et al.,

2006; Lapierre & Allen, 2006; Moen & Yu, 1999; Tausig & Fenwick, 2001; Thompson & Prottas, 2006) .

Findings

• The qualitative data analysis explained why this contribution is minimal. The reasons

found in this study that explain the negligible contribution of work-life balance

strategies are; non-adoption of strategies addressing work-stressors by the

municipality, numerous work stressors and many delimiting factors (stigma,

inaccessibility, culture, invisibility, absence of management support) associated to the

adopted wellness programmes at the municipality.

• These explanations supported Kossek et al. (2011)’s position on the provision and

implementation of work-life balance strategies and Felstead, Jewson, Phizacklea, and

Walters (2002) analysis of the theories underlying the adoption of work-life balance

strategies.

Findings contd.

• The results are limited to the municipality in the South African public

service, but comparable studies could be conducted at the provincial and

the national levels of the South African public service for triangulation.

Further research is recommended into the alignment of work-life

balance strategies and stressors for the purpose of tacitly improving

workplace environments and family situations. The concept of

alignment of strategies is new to the field of study and needs to be

studied further. Such research may identify practical characteristics of

work and life strategies that provide further evidence of peculiarity in

addressing effectively work and family challenges and assisting

employees in surmounting work and family stressors.

Limitations and Recommendations for future

research

• The main aim of work-life balance strategies should be to reduce stressors that reduce employee satisfaction with work and family situations. Therefore, it is recommended that management lead in championing the formulation, implementation (building work-life balance strategies portfolio) and promotion of work-life balance strategies at the municipality. This way, the strategies best suited to workplace stressors and employees’ work and family demands will be formulated and implemented. Effectively crafting a work-life balance strategies portfolio demands various skills, including aspects of management (change, project, communication), as well as strategic planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the outcomes. Management need to be seen (not just heard) as being supportive of work-life balance strategies. When management endorsement is seen in the promotion of the policies (by way of campaigns, slogans, publicity and support), use by employees will be encouraged and possibly sustained.

Implications for practice

With respect to this paper, strategic alignment is achieved where the strategies adopted to address stressors are succinctly and tacitly observed to be so doing

CONCLUSION

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT