Melissa Brown

Across the continuum of satisfaction with work-family balance: Work hours, flexibility-fit, and work-family culture.

This study investigated the association between hours worked per week and satisfaction with work-family balance, using data from a 2007-2008 survey of employees nested within organizations. We tested hypotheses informed by the resource drain and resources-and-demands perspectives using quantile regression. We found that the negative association between hours worked per week and satisfaction with work-family balance was significantly stronger at the 25th percentile, as compared to at the 75th percentile, of satisfaction with work-family balance. Further, there was some evidence that perceived flexibility-fit (i.e., the fit between worker needs and flexible work options available) and supportive work-family culture attenuated the relationship between hours worked and satisfaction with work-family balance. The results suggest that analyses focusing on the average relationship between long work hours (such as those using ordinary least squares regression) and satisfaction with work-family balance may underestimate the importance of long work hours for workers with lower satisfaction levels.

Access to and Utilization of Flexible Work Options

Many workers do not utilize the flexible work options to which they have access nor do they necessarily have access to all options officially provided by their organizations. This study sheds light on these gaps using probit models with sample selection to predict access to and utilization of fourteen flexible options. The findings highlight the roles of supervisor support, occupation, and work‐life culture. The influence of each of these factors on access and utilization differs.

Working in Retirement A Brief Report

Despite the relatively large number of working retirees, very little research has focused specifically on their job experiences. This brief report aims to address this gap in the literature by examining what facets of workplace environment affect job satisfaction and engagement for people who are working in retirement. Data from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce, a sample representative of United States workers, are used to compare workers aged 50 and above who consider themselves retired (N = 203) to those in the same age group who do not consider themselves retired (N = 936). Results suggest that although the economic security offered by the job is less important to job satisfaction and engagement among those who are working in retirement than it is for other older workers, their relationship with their supervisor may be more important. Implications of these findings are considered along with potential directions for future research.

Job Characteristics, Core Self-Evaluations, and Job Satisfaction: What's Age Got to Do with It?.

There is a well-established relationship between age and job satisfaction. To date, there is little research about how many well-known predictors of job satisfaction, specifically job characteristics and core self-evaluations, may vary with age. Using a multi-worksite sample of 1,873 employed adults aged 17 to 81, this study evaluated the extent to which several job characteristics and core self-evaluations varied in their relationships with job satisfaction for workers of different ages. Findings suggest that the positive relationships between job satisfaction and skill variety, autonomy, and friendship weaken as employee age increases, while the positive relationships between job satisfaction and dealing with others, task identity, task significance, feedback, and core self-evaluations did not vary with age. The findings extend previous research by examining how the factors important for job satisfaction vary for employees of different ages.

Measuring Engagement in Later Life Activities: Rasch-Based Scenario Scales for Work, Caregiving, Informal Helping, and Volunteering

The development of Rasch-based “comparative engagement scenarios” based on Guttman’s facet theory and sentence mapping procedures is described. The scenario scales measuring engagement in work, caregiving, informal helping, and volunteering illuminate the lived experiences of role involvement among older adults and offer multiple advantages over typical Likert-based scales.

Workplace Characteristics and Work-to-Family Conflict: Does Caregiving Frequency Matter?

Many workers can expect to provide care to an elder relative at some point during their tenure in the workforce. This study extends previous research by exploring whether caregiving frequency (providing care on a regular, weekly basis vs. intermittently) moderates the relationship between certain workplace characteristics and work-to-family conflict. Utilizing a sample of 465 respondents from the National Study of the Changing Workforce (Families and Work Institute, 2008), results indicate that access to workplace flexibility has a stronger effect on reducing work-to-family conflict among intermittent caregivers than among those who provide care regularly.

The Prism of Age: Managing Age Diversity in the Twenty-First-Century Workplace

Increases in older adults’ labour force participation rates have resulted in a workforce that is ‘more grey’ than it was at the turn of the millennium (see Chapter 2 for workforce ageing statistics). Between 1997 and 2007, the labour force participation rates of adults who were aged 55–64 years increased from 49.6 per cent to 57.1 per cent in Canada, from 41.1 per cent to 51.3 per cent in Germany, and from 54.1 per cent to 61.8 per cent in the United States (OECD 2009a). This extended labour force attachment among older adults reflects a set of new economic realities, emergent priorities of today’s 50+ age group and altered expectations for the productive roles that different societies around the world are setting for older adults, including continued participation in paid employment. (Morrow-Howell et al. 2009)

A mediational model of workplace flexibility, work–family conflict, and perceived stress among caregivers of older adults

As an increasing number of employees become caregivers, the role of workplace resources in supporting caregivers has attracted the attention of researchers, employers, and policy-makers. Workplace flexibility is one type of resource that has attracted particular interest, with research exploring whether flexibility (that is, giving employees some control over when and/or where work gets done) is related to important outcomes for both employees and employers. This investigation develops and tests a mediational model explicating the process through which workplace flexibility – operationalized in three distinct ways – impacts caregiver stress among US employees. Using a sample of 211 caregivers from the National Study of the Changing Workforce (2008), results show that work-to-family conflict mediates the relationship between perceived workplace flexibility and caregiver stress as well as the relationship between access to flexible work options and caregivers stress. However, the mediational model is not supported when flexibility is operationalized as respondents’ formal use of flexible work options. Implications for employers and future research are discussed.

Returning to the workforce after retiring: a job demands, job control, social support perspective on job satisfaction

Despite growing interest in the aging of the workforce, few investigations have explored a key aspect of diversity among older workers: whether or not they consider themselves retired. Using a sample of workers ages 50 and older from the National Study of the Changing Workforce (2008), we apply career development theory and the job demand–control(–support) framework to investigate potential differences between working retirees (i.e. employed older adults 50+ who consider themselves retired) and working non-retirees (i.e. employed older adults 50+ who do not consider themselves retired) in terms of their job characteristics (i.e. demands, control, support) and how these job characteristics are related to job satisfaction. We find that working retirees report lower job demands and higher social support, and that there is limited evidence for the buffering hypothesis. Implications for researchers and employers are discussed.

Motivators for and barriers against workplace flexibility: comparing nonprofit, for-profit, and public sector organizations

Despite growing interest in workplace flexibility, relatively little is known about how the dynamics of flexible options might differ in for-profit, nonprofit, and public sector organizations. This short report evaluates the relative importance of various barriers against and motivators for flexible options in the public, nonprofit private, and for-profit private sectors using two similar surveys of private sector (2006 National Study of Business Strategy and Workforce Development Survey) and public sector (2008 States as Employers-of-Choice Survey) organizations in the USA. While there are some differences in what motivates organizations in each sector to adopt flexible work options, the differences in barriers to flexibility are more noticeable. For instance, the three groups of organizations differ significantly in the importance of implementation costs, employee pressures to adopt these policies and programs, and the extent to which more pressing issues prevent a focus on workplace flexibility. The results of this short report, while preliminary, suggest that understanding both what motivates organizations to adopt flexible work options and what prevents them from doing so should help advocates of workplace flexibility to design policies and programs better suited to each sector.