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Employability

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In todays society, finding a balance between work and home life is vital for employees. As new work structures inspired by globalization (e.g., 24/7 economy) and technological advancements (e.g., smartphones), as well as new family structures (e.g., dual-career households) increasingly blur the boundaries between work and home life (Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014; Marks, 2006; Wharton, 2006), employees search for work-home balance has become a growing challenge. A challenge that is worth pursuing as prior research has demonstrated the critical role of work-home balance in determining employees well-being (e.g., less stress and depression; Odle-Dusseau, Britt, Bobko, 2012) and corporate success (e.g., higher organizational commitment; Carlson, Grzywacz & Zivnuska, 2009). Searching for work-home balance is thus a challenging but important endeavour. This notion has inspired an exponential growth in work-home research over the past 20 years (Thompson, Poelmans, Allen & Andreassi, 2007). Surprisingly however, a close inspection of the scientific literature learns us that little is known about what work-home balance is, which factors predict it, and what results from it, as most research tapped into the differentiating constructs of work-home conflict and work-home enrichment. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation was to create a better understanding of work-home balance through three research studies. First, as a lot of confusion and discordance exists in the work-home literature on how to define and measure balance, we aimed to shed some clarity on the concept of work-home balance by providing a thorough and well-grounded conceptualization and operationalization of work-home balance. Using previous definitions as a basis to start from, we developed a broad definition of work-home balance as individuals overall evaluative judgement of how successful they are in and how satisfied they are with their multiple roles at work and home. As such, we differentiated work-home balance, from the constructs of work-home conflict and enrichment. Furthermore, based on this definition, we also built a 10-item measure to assess work-home balance in survey research. To do so, we performed a scale development study using a three-step approach existing of an item generation and judgement study amongst experts and laymen, a pilot study amongst American employees and a validation study amongst both American and Belgian employees. These three independent studies confirmed not only the presence of a two-dimensional structure in the measure (including a cognitive and affective dimension), but also provided empirical evidence for the reliability, construct validity and measurement equivalence of the scale across different samples and settings. Second, we also aimed to generate a better insight into how employees experiences of work-home balance are formed through a number of contextual and individual predictors. To do so, longitudinal data were collected amongst a sample of 405 employees from two Belgian organizations. These employees filled out an online survey twice, four months apart. Using autoregressive structural equation modelling, we first tested how work conditions (i.e., work demands and work support) influence work-home balance, through a change in employees energy levels (assessed via exhaustion and vigor). Results showed that only emotional work demands have a direct negative effect on work-home balance, while workload and cognitive work demands do not directly affect work-home balance. All three work demands, however, indirectly hinder work-home balance by raising the exhaustion employees experience. In terms of work support, only organizational and colleague support directly increase work-home balance, while supervisor support has no direct effect. Indirect effects were however found for both organizational and supervisor support through an increase in vigor. In a second step, we also investigated how the interplay between personal coping strategies and work conditions influence work-home balance. A combination of hierarchical regression analyses testing for moderation effects and autoregressive structural equation models testing for mediating, indirect and direct effects showed that both emotion-focused and problem-focused coping strategies independently add to work-home balance, over and above the influence of work conditions. More specifically, taking a humorous outlook on work and life, engaging in positive thinking and taking action increase employees work-home balance. In addition to these independent effects, we also found that supervisor support plays a significant role in promoting the personal coping strategies of positive thinking and taking action, further advancing employees work-home balance. Finally, we aimed to examine what the consequences are of experiencing low or high work-home balance, and how this influences the way in which employees give shape to their career in the 21st century. To this end, we investigated the impact of work-home balance on six contemporary and frequently used career decisions, and how this impact might be weakened or strengthened by employees career self-efficacy and organizational work-home support. To do so, a survey was conducted on the crowdsourcing website Mturk, generating a diverse sample of 323 American employees. Results from hierarchical regression analyses showed that when employees experience a low work-home balance, they are more inclined to make career decisions that reduce their current job demands, i.e., the decision to move downwards, to reduce working hours or to take a career break. When employees experience, on the other hand, a high work-home balance, they are more inclined to make career decisions that enhance their current job resources via development and growth, i.e., the decision to move upwards. Decisions to move lateral or to become self-employed were not directly influenced by employees work-home balance. A further investigation of the moderating effects showed the buffering effect of organizational work-home support, weakening the negative relation between work-home balance and the decisions to move downwards, reduce working hours and take a career break. In addition, we also found that employees who experience a low work-home balance but have a highly supportive work environment are less inclined to become self-employed than employees who experience a low work-home balance and do not feel supported in their work environment. Contrary to organizational work-home support, career self-efficacy did not moderate the relations between work-home balance and any of the caree

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Self-management --- Training

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