Improving Employees’ Work-Life Balance in the Construction Industry: Project Alliance Case Study

Lingard, Helen; Brown, Kerry; Bradley, Lisa M.; Bailey, Caroline; Townsend, Keith

doi:10.1061/(asce)0733-9364(2007)133:10(807)

Cited by 135 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Compressed work weeks Lingard, Brown, Bradley, Bailey, and Townsend (2007) evaluated the trial of a compressed work week for a group of Australian construction workers. The workers trialled a change to working five days of 11.5 hours each, instead of six shorter working days.…”

Section: Time Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizational interventions for balancing work and home demands: An overview

2010

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The effective management of work and non-work demands can have a significant effect on workers' health and performance. The last decade especially has seen an explosion of work-life balance research, resulting in substantial theoretical and practical advances. However, the published literature on organizational interventions to improve work-life balance is extremely sparse. In this paper, we provide some prominent examples of empirical research concerning work-life balance organizational interventions and note that these fall into three main groups: initiatives addressing working time and/or working hours, collaborative action research focused on improving workplace equity and performance levels, and initiatives to embed worklife balance within organizational cultures. We also comment on some common difficulties faced by researchers in evaluating interventions. The specific examples presented here illustrate challenges to research on the effectiveness of work-life balance interventions. We encourage researchers to reconsider the use of merely descriptive rather than more rigorous research designs and to investigate the long-term effectiveness of organizational strategies to enhance work-life balance.

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Section: Time Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizational interventions for balancing work and home demands: An overview

2010

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“…Although family responsibilities are often regarded by employees as one of the top demands leading to work stress (Bakker, Ten Brummelhuis, Prins & Van der Heijden, 2011), work can also energise people and contribute to experiences of psychological meaningfulness, competence and availability to work, and personal engagement. Previous research showed that work-home and home-work interaction affect the engagement of employees (Bakker et al, 2011;Lingard, Brown, Bradley, Bailey & Townsend, 2007;Mostert, Cronjé & Pienaar, 2006;Mostert, Peeters & Rost, 2011). Two psychological conditions, namely psychological meaningfulness and psychological availability, seem relevant for transferring the effects of work-home/home-work interaction to employee engagement (Kahn, 1990;Kahn & Heapy, 2014;May et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Employee engagement: The effects of work-home/home-work interaction and psychological conditions

Rothmann¹,

Baumann

2014

SAJEMS

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The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between work-home/home-work interaction, psychological conditions and employee engagement. A cross-sectional survey was used. The participants were 292 employees of a uranium mine in Namibia residing in towns distant from their workplace. The following measuring instruments were used: Survey Work-Home Interaction -Nijmegen, Psychological Conditions Scale and Work Engagement Scale. Positive work-home interaction and negative home-work interaction had direct positive and negative effects on psychological meaningfulness and psychological availability respectively. Psychological meaningfulness, psychological availability, positive work-home interaction and positive home-work interaction had direct effects on employee engagement. An analysis of the indirect effects showed that positive work-home interaction affected employee engagement via experiences of psychological meaningfulness and psychological availability. Negative home-work interaction affected employee engagement negatively via low psychological meaningfulness and low psychological availability. Implementing policies to promote meaningfulness and availability at work, to build positive workhome interaction and to protect employees against negative home-work interference, will contribute to personal engagement at work.

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“…Overtime can exhaust workers leading to unexcused recuperative absences (Lingard et al, 2007). Alternatively, Saturday overtime can potentially induce workers to absent themselves during straight-time weekdays substituting premium Saturday pay for straight-time weekday pay, all the while keeping their total weekly hours limited (Hanna et al, 2005b).…”

Section: Payroll Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More significantly, we find that there is a precursor relationship between absenteeism and other coincident and subsequent behaviours that lead to discharge for reasons other than absenteeism. Third, both long-standing and recent scholarly prescriptions for managing absenteeism often focus on workplace culture and group norms (Hinze et al, 1985;Lingard et al, 2007;Ahn et al, 2013aAhn et al, , 2013bAhn et al, , 2014), yet high labour turnover induces construction managers to treat absenteeism as an individual phenomenon most commonly handled through dismissal. Finally, the dominant method for studying construction absenteeism has been the workplace survey highlighting working conditions and workplace culture (Business Roundtable, 1982;Hinze et al, 1985;Hanna et al, 2005a;Lingard et al, 2007, Sichani et al, 2011Ahn et al, 2013bAhn et al, , 2014), yet labour market conditions, notably wage and unemployment rates, appear to be the fundamental drivers of construction absenteeism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remuneration and absenteeism on a large construction site

Kim

Philips

2014

Construction Management and Economics

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While scholarly consensus is that construction absenteeism is a serious and widespread problem, aggregate US and Canadian data show construction absenteeism rates substantially below cross-industry averages. While construction absenteeism research focuses on workplace culture and norms, contractors continue to manage absenteeism primarily as an individual problem. While remuneration and labour market conditions are generally acknowledged to influence construction absenteeism, little research has focused on these factors. High labour turnover in construction resolves the first two conundrums. Adapting to higher labour turnover by limiting investment in firm-specific human capital, contractors are quicker to fire absent workers reducing construction's measured absentee rates. Higher labour turnover also constrains contractors' ability to shape workplace culture while facilitating the individual treatment of absentee workers. The construction absentee literature's methodological focus on workplace surveys explains the absence of research on labour market conditioning of construction absenteeism. This case study using payroll data from a large, unionized US industrial construction site shows not only that absenteeism leads to discharge, but also, that absenteeism is a precursor of both quits and discharges for reasons other than absenteeism. Furthermore, a 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate reduced the probability that a worker would be fired for absenteeism by 48%; a $100 increase in weekly overtime pay reduced a worker's probability of being fired for absenteeism by 27% and a $100 increase in per diem or travel pay reduced a worker's probability of being fired for absenteeism by 75%.

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Improving Employees’ Work-Life Balance in the Construction Industry: Project Alliance Case Study

Cited by 135 publications

References 32 publications

Organizational interventions for balancing work and home demands: An overview

Organizational interventions for balancing work and home demands: An overview

Employee engagement: The effects of work-home/home-work interaction and psychological conditions

Remuneration and absenteeism on a large construction site

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