Moen P, Lam J, Ammons SK, Kelly EL.
Time Work by Overworked Professionals: Strategies in Response to the Stress of Higher Status. Work Occup. 2013;40 (2) :79-114.
Abstract
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.
Moen P, Kelly EL, Lam J.
Healthy work revisited: do changes in time strain predict well-being?. J Occup Health Psychol. 2013;18 (2) :157-72.
AbstractBuilding on Karasek and Theorell (R. Karasek & T. Theorell, 1990, Healthy work: Stress, productivity, and the reconstruction of working life, New York, NY: Basic Books), we theorized and tested the relationship between time strain (work-time demands and control) and seven self-reported health outcomes. We drew on survey data from 550 employees fielded before and 6 months after the implementation of an organizational intervention, the results only work environment (ROWE) in a white-collar organization. Cross-sectional (wave 1) models showed psychological time demands and time control measures were related to health outcomes in expected directions. The ROWE intervention did not predict changes in psychological time demands by wave 2, but did predict increased time control (a sense of time adequacy and schedule control). Statistical models revealed increases in psychological time demands and time adequacy predicted changes in positive (energy, mastery, psychological well-being, self-assessed health) and negative (emotional exhaustion, somatic symptoms, psychological distress) outcomes in expected directions, net of job and home demands and covariates. This study demonstrates the value of including time strain in investigations of the health effects of job conditions. Results encourage longitudinal models of change in psychological time demands as well as time control, along with the development and testing of interventions aimed at reducing time strain in different populations of workers.