Shift work interventions for reduced work‐family conflict
| Date | 09 January 2007 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450710719996 |
| Pages | 162-177 |
| Published date | 09 January 2007 |
| Author | Marie Gee Wilson,Andrea Polzer‐Debruyne,Sophie Chen,Sonia Fernandes |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Shift work interventions for
reduced work-family conflict
Marie Gee Wilson
The University of Auckland Business School, Auckland, New Zealand
Andrea Polzer-Debruyne
Department of Psychology, Massey University – Albany, NSMC, Auckland,
New Zealand, and
Sophie Chen and Sonia Fernandes
The University of Auckland Business School, Auckland, New Zealand
Abstract
Purpose – This research aims to investigate the efficacy of family involvement in shift work training
targeting both physiological and social coping strategies.
Design/methodology/approach – The study utilized repeated surveys of work-family conflict
(WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC) in a naturally occurring field experiment. Three small process
manufacturing sites introduced training for shift workers, with or without family involvement, and
with or without training on managing relational aspects of shift-work.
Findings – The inclusion of social coping strategies combined with family involvement significantly
reduced work-family conflict. Open response categories on the survey suggest that these reductions
were due to the facilitation of a joint problem solving approach by family members. In contrast,
employee focused training on physiological coping alone appears to increase family conflicts.
Research limitations/implications – As a field study, this paper cannot control for the
particularities of family situations. It should also be noted that the participants were all male, and
results may have differed for female shift workers given differing family and work expectations.
Practical implications – For employers and OSH officers, this research suggests that broader
spectrum training may assist shift workers in managing the requirements and impact of unsociable
hours of work. For the shift worker, the research reinforces the importance of family support and
family involvement in moderating shift work’s potentially negative effects.
Originality/value – This is the first study to assess the impact of family involvement in training
and development-based interventions. This paper provides a unique perspective on shift work
interventions by documenting both content and process effects for shift work support.
Keywords Shift work, Family,Training
Paper type Research paper
In discussing work-life balance, the focus is often on the amount of time spent at work,
and flexibility of work time and place to accommodate family and other requirements.
In both research and the popular literature, however, the focus of this balancing act is
on a traditional 9-5 view of employment that spills over – in hours and energy – to a
fairly traditional view of non-work life. The issue of balance may become more
difficult, however, when the “work” in work-life balance is a series of rotating or shifts
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
This research was supported in part by a grant from the Foundation for Research, Science and
Technology, New Zealand.
ER
29,2
162
Received 4 October 2005
Revised 7 March 2006
Accepted 8 March 2006
Employee Relations
Vol. 29 No. 2, 2007
pp. 162-177
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450710719996
that result in dynamic discontinuities between workers and the rest of their life. For the
shift worker, the particular issues of work-life balance, stress and coping, are both
more complex and more compelling.
The term “shift work” is used to refer to a way of organising the daily working
hours in which different persons or teams work in succession to cover more than the
traditional eight hours per day, up to and including the whole 24 hours (Costa, 2003).
Consequently, the term “shift work” does not include the typical 8am-5pm Monday to
Friday working arrangements (Grosswald, 2002; Presser, 2003). There are literally
dozens of ways to structure shifts. In general they can focus on including or excluding
night work; they can include or exclude weekend work or parts thereof; they can vary
concerning flexibility of working times (e.g. rotating, permanent, split shifts) or the
regularity or irregularity of the shift cycle (Costa, 2003).
Increasingly non-standard working hours such as shift work, weekend work and
split shifts are becoming the norm in industrialised, Western societies. According to a
survey on working conditions carried out in the European Union’s 15 member
countries (Boisard et al., 2002), only 24 per cent of the working population are now
engaged in so-called standard day work, that is between 7:30-8:00 am and 5:00 –6:00
pm from Monday to Friday, and 18.8 per cent of the European work force is engaged in
shift work that includes night work. As early as 1991, Presser (1995, cited in
Grosswald, 2002) reported that approximately 45 per cent of Americans are employed
under some kind of shift work conditions.
The reasons for this increased shift work are two-fold and closely linked: there is the
increased need for temporal flexibility of the organisation, as well as the economic
necessities and choices for the individual. Temporal flexibility is seen as one of the
milestones of labour flexibility on which most organisations are currently focused
(Costa, 2003). In this context, shift work is a widely used tool enabling the organisation
to be active around the clock in response to increasingly flexible market demands. This
is progressively more the case not only in necessary social services (like hospitals, the
police force, transport and electricity) or in highly technological industries (like
chemical and steel industry, power plants or mining), but also to support productive
and economic choices (for example bank branches opening late and on weekends, and
extended hours for restaurants, news and entertainment industries).
Closely linked to this organisational focus are the needs of the individual. On a
rather worried note Presser’s (2003) findings suggest that, at least in the SA, a large
proportion of shift workers engage in this type of work because they could not get
other jobs and their choices were limited. European research (Presser, 1987) has
established similar findings, in that the ability to hold multiple jobs is one reason
people engage in shift work. According to Finn (1981) 23 per cent of night shift workers
and 19 per cent of evening shift workers had a second job, in comparison to 11 per cent
of “regular” day workers. Another more positive angle to shift work is suggested by
Coleman’s (1989) findings that some employees appreciate the possibility for shift
work, as it allows them to take time off mid-week and pursue leisure activities without
dealing with the large weekend crowds.
In spite of shift work’ s advantages and increasingly “normality”, temporal
flexibility can still result in difficulties for the individual. These difficulties can often be
health related (Costa, 1996; Finn, 1981; Owen, 1985), but also extend to individuals’
participation in social events. Normal social patterns still tend to operate around the
Shift work
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