Employee Cardiometabolic Risk Following a Cluster-Randomized Workplace Intervention From the Work, Family and Health Network, 2009-2013.

Objectives. To examine whether workplace interventions to increase workplace flexibility and supervisor support and decrease work-family conflict can reduce cardiometabolic risk. Methods. We randomly assigned employees from information technology (n = 555) and long-term care (n = 973) industries in the United States to the Work, Family and Health Network intervention or usual practice (we collected the data 2009-2013). We calculated a validated cardiometabolic risk score (CRS) based on resting blood pressure, HbA1c (glycated hemoglobin), HDL (high-density lipoprotein) and total cholesterol, height and weight (body mass index), and tobacco consumption. We compared changes in baseline CRS to 12-month follow-up. Results. There was no significant main effect on CRS associated with the intervention in either industry. However, significant interaction effects revealed that the intervention improved CRS at the 12-month follow-up among intervention participants in both industries with a higher baseline CRS. Age also moderated intervention effects: older employees had significantly larger reductions in CRS at 12 months than did younger employees. Conclusions. The intervention benefited employee health by reducing CRS equivalent to 5 to 10 years of age-related changes for those with a higher baseline CRS and for older employees. Trial Registration. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02050204. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(12):1322-1331. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307413).

The Psychosocial Implications of Managing Work and Family Caregiving Roles: Gender Differences Among Information Technology Professionals.

An increasing number of adults, both men and women, are simultaneously managing work and family caregiving roles. Guided by the stress process model, we investigate whether 823 employees occupying diverse family caregiving roles (child caregiving only, elder caregiving only, and both child caregiving and elder caregiving, or "sandwiched" caregiving) and their noncaregiving counterparts in the information technology division of a white-collar organization differ on several indicators of psychosocial stress along with gender differences in stress exposure. Compared with noncaregivers, child caregivers reported more perceived stress and partner strain whereas elder caregivers reported greater perceived stress and psychological distress. With the exception of work-to-family conflict, sandwiched caregivers reported poorer overall psychosocial functioning. Additionally, sandwiched women reported more family-to-work conflict and less partner support than their male counterparts. Further research on the implications of combining a white-collar employment role with different family caregiving roles is warranted.

Manager Characteristics and Employee Job Insecurity around a Merger Announcement: The Role of Status and Crossover.

Most existing research theorizes individual factors as predictors of perceived job insecurity. Incorporating contextual and organizational factors at an information technology organization where a merger was announced during data collection, we draw on status expectations and crossover theories to investigate whether managers' characteristics and insecurity shape their employees' job insecurity. We find having an Asian as opposed to a White manager is associated with lower job insecurity, while managers' own insecurity positively predicts employees' insecurity. Also contingent on the organizational climate, managers' own tenure buffers, and managers' perceived job insecurity magnifies insecurity of employees interviewed after a merger announcement, further specifying status expectations theory by considering context.

Changing Work and Work-Family Conflict: Evidence from the Work, Family, and Health Network*

Schedule control and supervisor support for family and personal life are work resources that may help employees manage the work-family interface. However, existing data and designs have made it difficult to conclusively identify the effects of these work resources. This analysis utilizes a group-randomized trial in which some units in an information technology workplace were randomly assigned to participate in an initiative, called STAR, that targeted work practices, interactions, and expectations by (a) training supervisors on the value of demonstrating support for employees' personal lives and (b) prompting employees to reconsider when and where they work. We find statistically significant, though modest, improvements in employees' work-family conflict and family time adequacy and larger changes in schedule control and supervisor support for family and personal life. We find no evidence that this intervention increased work hours or perceived job demands, as might have happened with increased permeability of work across time and space. Subgroup analyses suggest the intervention brings greater benefits to employees more vulnerable to work-family conflict. This study advances our understanding of the impact of social structures on individual lives by investigating deliberate organizational changes and their effects on work resources and the work-family interface with a rigorous design.

Designing Work, Family & Health Organizational Change Initiatives.

For decades, leaders and scholars have been advocating change efforts to improve work-life relationships. Yet most initiatives have lacked rigor and not been developed using scientific principles. This has created an evidence gap for employer support of work and personal life as a win-win for productivity and employees' well-being. This paper examines the approach used by the U.S. Work Family Health Network (WFRN) to develop an innovative workplace intervention to improve employee and family health. The change initiative was designed to reduce organizationally based work-family conflict in two contrasting contexts representative of major segments of today's U.S. workforce: health care employees and informational technology professionals. The WFRN Intervention (called STAR) had three theoretically based change elements. They were: 1) increase job control over work time and schedule; 2) increase supervisor social support for family and job effectiveness; and 3) improve organizational culture and job design processes to foster results orientation. Seven practical lessons for developing work-life interventions emerged from this groundbreaking endeavor.

Limited Engagements? Women's and Men's Work/Volunteer Time in the Encore Life Course Stage.

Americans are living healthier and longer lives, but the shifting age distribution is straining existing and projected social welfare protections for older adults (e.g., Social Security, Medicare). One solution is to delay retirement. Another is an alternative to "total leisure" retirement -- an "encore" stage of paid or unpaid engagement coming after career jobs but before infirmities associated with old age. We draw on gendered life-course themes together with data from the American Time Use Survey (2003-2009) to examine the real time American men and women ages 50-75 apportion to paid work and unpaid volunteer work on an average day, as well as factors predicting their time allocations. We find that while full-time employment declines after the 50s, many Americans allot time to more limited engagements - working part time, being self-employed, volunteering, helping out - through and even beyond their 60s. Caring for a child or infirm adult reduces the odds of paid work but not volunteering. While time working for pay declines with age (though more slowly for men than women), time volunteering does not. Older men and women in poor health, without a college degree, with a disability or SSI income are the least likely to be publicly engaged. This social patterning illustrates that while the ideal of an encore of paid or unpaid voluntary, flexible, and meaningful engagement is an emerging reality for some, it appears less attainable for others. This suggests the importance of organizational and public policy innovations offering all Americans a range of encore opportunities.

Time Work by Overworked Professionals: Strategies in Response to the Stress of Higher Status.

How are professionals responding to the time strains brought on by the stress of their higher status jobs? Qualitative data from professionals reveal (a) general acceptance of the emerging temporal organization of professional work, including rising time demands and blurred boundaries around work/ nonwork times and places, and (b) time work as strategic responses to work intensification, overloads, and boundarylessness. We detected four time-work strategies: prioritizing time, scaling back obligations, blocking out time, and time shifting of obligations. These strategies are often more work-friendly than family-friendly, but "blocking out time" and "time shifting" suggest promising avenues for work-time policy and practice.

Ongoing Remote Work, Returning to Working at Work, or in between during COVID-19: What Promotes Subjective Well-Being?

The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated a massive turn to remote work, followed by subsequent shifts for many into hybrid or fully returning to the office. To understand the patterned dynamics of subjective well-being associated with shifting places of work, we conducted a nationally representative panel survey (October 2020 and April 2021) of U.S. employees who worked remotely at some point since the pandemic (N = 1,817). Cluster analysis identified four patterned constellations of well-being based on burnout, work-life conflict, and job and life satisfaction. A total return to office is generally more stressful, leading to significantly lower probabilities of being in the optimal low stress/high satisfaction constellation by Wave 2, especially for men and women without care obligations. Remote and hybrid arrangements have salutary effects; moving to hybrid is especially positive for minority men and less educated men, although it disadvantages White women's well-being.

The Uneven Later Work Course: Intersectional Gender, Age, Race, and Class Disparities.

OBJECTIVES: Later adult work attachments and exits are in flux, suggesting the need for understanding both the range of contemporary population-level pathways of work and nonwork and variations by overlapping social locations. We document patterned continuity and change in monthly work attachments and analyze the intersecting effects of age, gender, education, and race/ethnicity. METHODS: We capitalize on massive microlevel 16-month panel data from the Current Population Survey from 2008 through 2016 to empirically identify patterned pathways of monthly states: working full-time, long hours, part-time; being self-employed or unemployed; not working because of a disability, due to family care or other reasons, or because one defines oneself as retired. RESULTS: Analyses of 346,488 American women and men aged 50-75 years reveal patterned elasticity in the timing and nature of work attachments in the form of six distinctive pathways. Our intersectional analyses illustrate divergences and disparities: advantages for educated White men, disadvantages for low-educated Black men and women through their early 60s, and intersecting effects of gender, education, and race/ethnicity during the later work course across age groups. We find convergence across social markers by the 70s. DISCUSSION: This research highlights the importance of intersectional analysis, recasting the gendered work course in later adulthood into a framework of even greater complexities within mutually shaping categories of race/ethnicity, class, and age. Older Americans experience patterned, uneven pathways around work and nonwork. We recommend additional scholarship on the dynamics of constrained and disparate choices unfolding across multiple intersecting social locations.

Changing Workplaces to Reduce Work-Family Conflict: Schedule Control in a White-Collar Organization.

Work-family conflicts are common and consequential for employees, their families, and work organizations. Can workplaces be changed to reduce work-family conflict? Previous research has not been able to assess whether workplace policies or initiatives succeed in reducing work-family conflict or increasing work-family fit. Using longitudinal data collected from 608 employees of a white-collar organization before and after a workplace initiative was implemented, we investigate whether the initiative affects work-family conflict and fit, whether schedule control mediates these effects, and whether work demands, including long hours, moderate the initiative's effects on work-family outcomes. Analyses clearly demonstrate that the workplace initiative positively affects the work-family interface, primarily by increasing employees' schedule control. This study points to the importance of schedule control for our understanding of job quality and for management policies and practices.

Does Enhancing Work-Time Control and Flexibility Reduce Turnover? A Naturally Occurring Experiment.

We investigate the turnover effects of an organizational innovation (ROWE-Results Only Work Environment) aimed at moving away from standard time practices to focus on results rather than time spent at work. To model rates of turnover, we draw on survey data from a sample of employees at a corporate headquarters (N = 775) and institutional records of turnover over eight months following the ROWE implementation. We find the odds of turnover are indeed lower for employees participating in the ROWE initiative, which offers employees greater work-time control and flexibility, and that this is the case regardless of employees' gender, age, or family life stage. ROWE also moderates the turnover effects of organizational tenure and negative home-to-work spillover, physical symptoms, and job insecurity, with those in ROWE who report these situations generally less likely to leave the organization. Additionally, ROWE reduces turnover intentions among those remaining with the corporation. This research moves the "opting-out" argument from one of private troubles to an issue of greater employee work-time control and flexibility by showing that an organizational policy initiative can reduce turnover.

GENDERED CHALLENGE, GENDERED RESPONSE: Confronting the Ideal Worker Norm in a White-Collar Organization.

This article integrates research on gendered organizations and the work-family interface to investigate an innovative workplace initiative, the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), implemented in the corporate headquarters of Best Buy, Inc. While flexible work policies common in other organizations "accommodate" individuals, this initiative attempts a broader and deeper critique of the organizational culture. We address two research questions: How does this initiative attempt to change the masculinized ideal worker norm? And what do women's and men's responses reveal about the persistent ways that gender structures work and family life? Data demonstrate the ideal worker norm is pervasive and powerful, even as employees begin critically examining expectations regarding work time that have historically privileged men. Employees' responses to ROWE are also gendered. Women (especially mothers) are more enthusiastic, while men are more cautious. Ambivalence about and resistance to change is expressed in different ways depending on gender and occupational status.

Disparate Disruptions: Intersectional COVID-19 Employment Effects by Age, Gender, Education, and Race/Ethnicity.

These are unprecedented times, as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts public health, social interaction, and employment attachments. Evidence to date has been about broad shifts in unemployment rates as a percent of the labor force. We draw on monthly Current Population Survey data to examine subpopulation changes in employment states across the life course, from January through April 2020. COVID-19 downturns produced disparate life-course impacts. There are increases in unemployment and being out of the workforce at all ages, but especially among young adults, with young women most at risk. Intersectional analyses document conjoint life-course vulnerabilities by gender, educational attainment, and race/ethnicity. For example, Black men aged 20-29 with a college degree experienced a 12.4 percentage point increase in being not in the labor force for other reasons (NILF-other). Individuals with less than a college degree in their 50s and 60s were more likely to become unemployed, regardless of race. And more non-college-educated Asian men in their 60s and 70s reported being retired (6.6 and 8.9 percentage point increases, respectively). Repercussions from the pandemic may well challenge assumptions and possibilities for older adults' working longer.

Postretirement Life Satisfaction and Financial Vulnerability: The Moderating Role of Control.

OBJECTIVES: This article examines changes in life satisfaction around retirement exits for those with varying preretirement incomes, testing whether constraints on personal control and control over finances moderate the relationship between retiring and preretirement income. METHOD: This longitudinal study draws data from the 2004-2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study to examine changes in life satisfaction pre- versus postretirement for three groups (the poor/near poor, financially vulnerable, and financially stable) of full-time workers aged 51-87 years (N = 970), and a subset (N = 334) who fully retire over a 4-year period. RESULTS: Controlling for baseline life satisfaction, health, job/demographic characteristics, and social engagement, ordinary least squares regression results show financially stable retirees report higher levels of postretirement life satisfaction relative to their full-time working counterparts, whereas the poor/near poor and the financially vulnerable report similar life satisfaction to those who continue working full time. Constraints on personal control and control over finances moderate postretirement life satisfaction for the financially vulnerable. DISCUSSION: Results suggest full retirement predicts improved life satisfaction only for those most advantaged financially. Financially vulnerable older workers may adjust more effectively to retirement if they have access to resources that facilitate greater control over their lives.

Understanding the effects of Covid-19 through a life course lens.

The Covid-19 pandemic is shaking fundamental assumptions about the human life course in societies around the world. In this essay, we draw on our collective expertise to illustrate how a life course perspective can make critical contributions to understanding the pandemic's effects on individuals, families, and populations. We explore the pandemic's implications for the organization and experience of life transitions and trajectories within and across central domains: health, personal control and planning, social relationships and family, education, work and careers, and migration and mobility. We consider both the life course implications of being infected by the Covid-19 virus or attached to someone who has; and being affected by the pandemic's social, economic, cultural, and psychological consequences. It is our goal to offer some programmatic observations on which life course research and policies can build as the pandemic's short- and long-term consequences unfold.

For Better or Worse? Couples' Time Together in Encore Adulthood.

Objective: This study examined the amount of time married couples share together in a new "encore adult" life course stage around the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Also investigated was the relationship between shared time and experienced well-being for this age group. Method: Time diary and survey data were used from nationally representative 2003-2014 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data for 26,303 adults aged 50-79 years. Analyses examined amount of total and exclusive shared couple time and experiences of happiness and stress when together using multivariate models. Results: Shared time was positively associated with couples living on their own, conjoint employment/nonemployment, and age. Encore women and men reported feeling happier and less stressed when with their spouses. Men seemed to find time with spouses more enjoyable if both partners or just their wives were working. Discussion: Encore adults are living longer as couples; results suggest couple relationships may occupy most of their days, with potentially positive implications for emotional well-being. Men and women are happier during time with a spouse when the woman works, with men reporting even higher levels of happiness than women. This is important as contemporary couples navigate increasingly complex work/retirement transitions in gendered ways.

Involuntary vs. Voluntary Flexible Work: Insights for Scholars and Stakeholders.

Building on insights from the early stages of our research partnership with a U.S. Fortune 500 organization, we came to differentiate between voluntary and involuntary schedule variability and remote work. This differentiation underscores the complexity behind flexible schedules and remote work, especially among white-collar, salaried professionals. We collected survey data among the partner firm's information technology (IT) workforce to evaluate whether these forms of flexibility had different implications for workers, as part of the larger Work, Family, and Health Network Study. We find that a significant minority of these employees report working variable schedules and working at home involuntarily. Additionally, involuntary variable schedules are associated with greater work-to-family conflict, stress, burnout, turnover intentions, and lower job satisfaction in models that adjust for personal characteristics, type of job, work hours, family demands, and other factors. Voluntary remote work, in contrast, is protective and more common in this professional sample. Employees working at least 20% of their hours at home and reporting moderate or high choice over where they work have lower stress and intentions to leave the firm (as well as higher job satisfaction in some models). These findings point to the importance of both stakeholders and scholars distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary forms of flexibility, even in a relatively advantaged professional and technical workforce.

Edificando sobre la base de conocimientos que resultaron de las fases iniciales de nuestra colaboración con una empresa estadounidense de la Fortune 500, hemos diferenciado entre el trabajo a distancia o variabilidad de horario voluntaria e involuntaria. Esta diferenciación destaca la complejidad tras los horarios flexibles y el trabajo a distancia, particularmente para oficinistas y profesionales asalariados. Como parte del estudio más amplio "Work, Family, and Health Network Study," lanzamos una encuesta a los empleados especializados en las tecnologías de la información (TI) de esta empresa, con fines de evaluar si dichas formas de flexibilidad laboral tienen distintas implicaciones para los funcionarios de esta empresa. Se observa que una minoría importante de los empleados declara haber experimentado variabilidad de horarios y haber trabajado desde casa de forma involuntaria. Adicionalmente, se observa que la variabilidad de horario involuntaria se asocia con mayores incidencias de conflicto entre trabajo y familia, estrés, agotamiento, intenciones de rotación laboral, y otros factores. En cambio, el trabajo a distancia voluntario protege a los empleados y es más frecuente entre esta muestra de profesionales. Aquellos funcionarios que realizan 20% o más de sus horas laborales desde casa y que declaran tener moderadas o amplias opciones de empleador presentan menos estrés y menores intenciones de renunciar (algunos modelos indican que éstos también presentan mayor satisfacción laboral). Estas conclusiones demuestran la importancia para académicos e interesados de distinguir entre la flexibilidad laboral voluntaria e involuntaria, incluso en una fuerza laboral técnica, profesional, y relativamente aventajada.

Job Strain, Time Strain, and Well-Being: A Longitudinal, Person-Centered Approach in Two Industries.

The notion of constellations is central to many occupational health theories; empirical research is nevertheless dominated by variable-centered methodologies. Guided by the job demands-resources framework, we use a person-centered longitudinal approach to identify constellations of job demands and resources (task-based and time-based) over time that predict changes in well-being. We situate our research in two dissimilar, but growing, industries in the United States-information technology (IT) and long-term care. Drawing on data collected over 18 months, we identify five patterned, stable constellations of job demands/resources using group-based multi-trajectory modeling: (1) high strain/low hours, (2) high strain/low hours/shift work, (3) high strain/long hours, (4) active (high demands, high control) and (5) lower strain (lower demands, high control). IT workers are overrepresented in the lower-strain and active constellations, whereas long-term care providers are more often in high-strain constellations. Workers in the lower-strain constellation experience increased job satisfaction and decreased emotional exhaustion, work-family conflict and psychological distress over 18 months. In comparison, workers in high-strain job constellations fare worse on these outcomes, as do those in the active constellation. Industrial contexts matter, however: Compared with long-term care workers, IT workers' well-being is more at risk when working in the "high strain/long hours" constellation. As the labor market continues to experience structural changes, scholars and policy makers need to attend to redesigning the ecological contexts of work conditions to promote workers' well-being while taking into account industrial differences.

Sustaining sleep: Results from the randomized controlled work, family, and health study.

Although calls for intervention designs are numerous within the organizational literature and increasing efforts are being made to conduct rigorous randomized controlled trials, existing studies have rarely evaluated the long-term sustainability of workplace health intervention outcomes, or mechanisms of this process. This is especially the case with regard to objective and subjective sleep outcomes. We hypothesized that a work-family intervention would increase both self-reported and objective actigraphic measures of sleep quantity and sleep quality at 6 and 18 months post-baseline in a sample of information technology workers from a U.S. Fortune 500 company. Significant intervention effects were found on objective actigraphic total sleep time and self-reported sleep insufficiency at the 6- and 18-month follow-up, with no significant decay occurring over time. However, no significant intervention effects were found for objective actigraphic wake after sleep onset or self-reported insomnia symptoms. A significant indirect effect was found for the effect of the intervention on objective actigraphic total sleep time through the proximal intervention target of 6-month control over work schedule and subsequent more distal 12-month family time adequacy. These results highlight the value of long-term occupational health intervention research, while also highlighting the utility of this work-family intervention with respect to some aspects of sleep. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Caring for the elderly at work and home: Can a randomized organizational intervention improve psychological health?

Although job stress models suggest that changing the work social environment to increase job resources improves psychological health, many intervention studies have weak designs and overlook influences of family caregiving demands. We tested the effects of an organizational intervention designed to increase supervisor social support for work and nonwork roles, and job control in a results-oriented work environment on the stress and psychological distress of health care employees who care for the elderly, while simultaneously considering their own family caregiving responsibilities. Using a group-randomized organizational field trial with an intent-to-treat design, 420 caregivers in 15 intervention extended-care nursing facilities were compared with 511 caregivers in 15 control facilities at 4 measurement times: preintervention and 6, 12, and 18 months. There were no main intervention effects showing improvements in stress and psychological distress when comparing intervention with control sites. Moderation analyses indicate that the intervention was more effective in reducing stress and psychological distress for caregivers who were also caring for other family members off the job (those with elders and those "sandwiched" with both child and elder caregiving responsibilities) compared with employees without caregiving demands. These findings extend previous studies by showing that the effect of organizational interventions designed to increase job resources to improve psychological health varies according to differences in nonwork caregiving demands. This research suggests that caregivers, especially those with "double-duty" elder caregiving at home and work and "triple-duty" responsibilities, including child care, may benefit from interventions designed to increase work-nonwork social support and job control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).