Work-Life Synergy/Facilitation

A promising direction for research—and indeed for transforming WL problems—is to consider how “accumulating” multiple roles (e.g., employment and personal) can be beneficial, with the potential for positive spillover of emotions, attitudes, and behaviors.

This has been framed as WL “synergy” (Beutell, 2010), as well as WL facilitation (Wayne, Musisca, & Fleeson, 2004) and WL enrichment (McNall, Nicklin, & Masuda, 2010). Wayne et al. (2004) propose that sources of WL synergy/ facilitation might include instances when (a) involvement in one role leads to privileges, security from role failure, and/or personality enrichment, which then lead to improved functioning in the other domain; (b) the activities in one role energize employees for the other role; and (c) the social support individuals receive or the skills and attitudes they acquire in one role are useful in the other (also see Barnett & Hyde, 2001). They assert that like WLC, WL synergy/facilitation is a bidirectional construct comprising W → L synergy, where one’s involvement in work provides skills, behaviors, or positive mood that positively influences the family/personal life, and L → W synergy, where when one’s involvement in family/personal life results in positive mood, support, or a sense of accomplishment that helps him or her cope better, work harder, or feel more confident or reenergized for one’s role at work (Wayne et al., 2004, p. 111). Their findings suggest that WLC is negatively related to WL outcomes, whereas WL synergy is positively related to the same outcomes.

WL scholars argue that the amount of importance one places on a role affects the potential for synergy or conflict; in this capacity, the recent call to interrogate the meaning of work (Cheney, Zorn, Planalp, & Lair, 2008) seems promising. For example, is WL synergy more likely when individuals feel they have meaningful work? However, current scholarship in this area is primarily agenda setting; more studies linking this with lived experiences are needed (for exceptions, see Lucas & Buzzanell, 2004; Wieland, 2011). Overall, awareness of WL synergy changes the theoretical discussion by suggesting a need to facilitate WL synergy, as well as to minimize WLC to obtain positive outcomes.

This awareness transforms the ways individuals think about WL problems by allowing a frame of the positive aspects of combining employment and personal roles. Yet even in offering this construct, as communication scholars we see a need to continue moving beyond antecedents and consequences of WLC (or WL synergy). Rather than asking what makes WLC likely and what are the outcomes, we assert a need to assume that WLC exists and then try to understand the nuanced ways it is negotiated through communication. In moving toward such a communicative approach, we now focus on the multiple contextual “backdrops” within which individuals experience WLC.

Macrosocietal Contexts for Work-Life Conflict

Office Gossip I: Did you hear? I guess Colleen asked about working from home once her maternity leave is over in two weeks... and if she can’t do that, she wants to work part-time. Apparently she is loving motherhood and just can’t fathom leaving Riley in childcare all day... but it’s not CompanyX’s problem she decided to have a kid! I’m not surprised though. Once she has a second she’ll probably quit altogether and in the meantime she gets the benefit of working from home................................................................

If I was a woman I’d take that deal any day.

At the macrosocietal level, we discuss two categories of systems that shape WL norms and practices as a backdrop for thinking about organizational, relational, and individual responses to WLC: (1) economic and political and (2) historical and cultural. After discussing how U.S. WL scholars have studied such systems, we also consider scholarship that focuses on WLC in other national contexts.

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Source: Oetzel John, Ting-Toomey Stella. The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication: Integrating Theory, Research and Practice. SAGE Publications,2013. — 912 p.. 2013

Work-Life Synergy/Facilitation

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