The study also focuses on three conceptual elements and possible traits of the individuals using communication technologies out of hours; they were affective commitment, ambition, and job involvement. There are suggestions a person’s attachment and career aspirations to the organisation changes their responses towards working beyond the call of duty. Method Non-academic staff employees and a significant other for some employees received a survey packet via the university mail system including a cover letter, the survey and reply envelope.
The packet explained the survey process to all participants, however only the managers and administration staff received a second survey for a significant other. Participants were asked to report the number of times a day they used one of the five communication technologies for work outside of the normal work hours. The significant other was to report on the correlating staff employee’s use, and had to be someone quite close such as a spouse, partner or an adult child etc. All the employees taking part in the survey had been set matching work hours from 8am – 5pm.
This was to ensure no-one was in a different position regarding the expected or not expected use of communication technologies as part of their existing job requirements. The measures within the survey content used different scales to analyse the three hypotheses and the overall work-to-life conflict using statements to engage the employees. Participants were asked if they 1. Strongly disagree through to 5. Strongly agree with statements provided in the surveys, this was for both employees and significant others.
For example one of the statements to assist in validating job involvement was “The most important things that happen to me involve my job”. In addition to analysing the results of the survey through correlation and regression, the authors also carried out a number of post hoc analysis to understand the relationships “after controlling for hours spent working during non work hours and demographic variables” such as sex, marital status and number of dependants (family demands) (Boswell and Olson-Buchanan 2007).
Results
A total of 365 surveys were received back from the (Boswell & Olson-Buchanan, 2007) study with a response rate of 38 percent from the employee surveys and 27 percent from the significant other surveys. The results driven from the respondents of the survey for the hypotheses regarding communication technologies were as follows:- 1. Use after hours relates positively with (a) effective commitment – No (b) job involvement – Yes (c) ambition – Yes 2. Use after hours relates positively with employee work-to-life conflict – Yes 2b.
Use after hours relates positively with employee work-to-life conflict as reported by the employee’s significant other – Yes Employees in managerial and administration roles are also more likely to have a need for after hours use related to their job expectancy, responsibilities and duties. The study showed that those in managerial positions did have a far greater use of communication technologies out of hours, and suggested that this correlated to the ambition and job level of the participant.
However non managers also had a positive use of communication technologies out of hours which resulted in work-to-life conflict, but this was significantly less. There was no link between the of communication technologies use after hours and affective commitment, in fact the implications were that higher use after hours could actually decrease the affective commitment felt by the employee as the work boundary was crossed. Discussion The study was only focused on non academic ‘traditional’ employees whose normal hours are based in the office, rather than at home using communication technologies as their everyday forms of communication.
The surveys for significant others were only sent out to the employees in managerial and administrative positions and not other lower level positions as the university administration team felt uncomfortable to request their involvement. The survey did not have the ability or statistics to look at the overall affect felt and reported by significant others for employees across lower levels. A new direction would be to look at the use of communication technologies and the work-to-life conflict objectively and only control the technology type element of the study.
Further analysis would be to breakdown the technology types in the survey to maximise the statistics collated and pin point if there is a specific technology that is used after hours. Surveys could be sent out to a whole range of employees from different industries, and different managerial /non managerial experience including low level employees, non academic and academic employees. All industries would include employees regardless of their direct contact with the office / head office on a daily basis such as; virtual team members, tele-workers, traditional workers and reps who are generally out on the road.
The objective would be to ascertain the level of communication technologies used after hours regardless of marital status, job type, academic history, employee level or location whilst also looking at the different reactions with the technology available. Another point that could be raised is to look at, if employees felt their job was the most important element of their life and/or wanted to progress their career. Does this mean a. they would have greater use of communication technologies after hours and b. ould they see this as a conflict or a welcome part of the role with no clear boundary defined. There is also further research into the flexibility of choice employees have in communication technologies out of work and the benefits they may see. This could be beneficial to being able to work around a personal situation i. e. needing to be at your daughter’s graduation, whilst knowing you need to monitor a work project. Having the ability to take your office with you creating mobile work practices, for some people this is a benefit and worthy sacrifice of the traditional work boundaries.
Analysis Since the first text message was sent in England in 1992, technology development, advancement and acceleration has set new boundaries in many industries across the world. (Boswell & Olson-Buchanan, 2007) article was to specifically look at the implications of communication technologies usage for work by employees, outside of work and the work-to-life conflict it may cause. The implication of the research was that some employees may feel more career opportunity if they stay connected to work out of hours.
I have two personal views regarding this implication; going above and beyond the call of duty can be inspirational and as an employer it could certainly give me grounds to think that this was a dedicated employee looking to get ahead. On the other hand I would naturally look at the position the employee was in, if they were not in one of responsibility or role of autonomy and their job should not take longer than the working day, I would pose the question can they manage in their current role? Do they need to be working outside of the office hours?
The study held by (Boswell & Olson-Buchanan, 2007) was across one organisation with participants with a variety of positions, responsibilities and experiences. Although all employees received the same surveys with statements relating to their work, one aspect that was not looked at was the employee’s usage of communication technologies for social and/or personal reasons. With further questions we could analyse if the employee agreed and enjoyed using communication technologies, if they would choose to use it regardless of the scenario or cause i. . social purposes and/or work. Further research brought me to a study held by (Matusik & Mickel, 2011) examining user’s reactions to responsiveness-accessibility pressures from mobile devices including BlackBerries and iPhones. This was on internal and external organisational pressures both personal and business. The results were 27 percent of participants were identified as having enthusiastic reactions, 31 percent balanced reactions and 41 percent had trade-off reactions, with 1 percent not classified.
The study revealed the ‘balanced’ participants had the highest percentage to engage in boundary setting behaviours such as turning it off at the weekend, whilst the ‘trade-off’ participants could see professional benefits and personal costs and were the second highest to have boundary setting behaviours. The ‘enthusiastic’ participants did not appear to have many boundaries if any. (Boswell & Olson-Buchanan, 2007) suggest that highly involved and ambitious employees’ greater use of communication technologies after hours may come at a price.
And employees may need to be encouraged to disengage from their work. It is important to recognize, however, that while flexible working policies may ostensibly be about allowing employees some choice, in order to achieve a better work–life balance, in practice this is not always the outcome (Higgins, Duxbury, & Johnson, 2000).
As a manger of people, the question here is what are the implications for communication technologies after hours use? And how do we as managers need to manage this i. . to ensure burnout in our most important employees does not occur such as leaders/managers, yet promote it so that we get the best of our rising stars which are those who want to improve themselves within the organization. My organisation has had data and e-policies for a number of years, however I know they have not been updated for nearly three years and in that time all management staff have been provided with iPhones and laptops enabling a constant connection to the office after hours.
In an dissertation by (Zuppo, 2012) a survey was sent out to 3,000 human resource professionals who were members of SHRM. The focus was on professionals who were most likely to be instrumental in policy-making processes for their organisations regarding Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and work/life policies. From the 3,000 potential respondents, 305 completed surveys were used, and when asked whether or not their organisation had a formal information communication technology policy that limits employees’ usage of information communication technologies uring non-working hours (for work purposes), 21 percent said they did, 77 percent said they did not have a formal policy and 2 percent were unsure. A follow on question was asked if the formal information communication technology policy mentions organisational concern for work/life balance issues; a total of 29 percent stated the policy mentioned the concern, however the other 71 percent said the policy did not apply exclusively to company-provided/reimbursed information communication technologies (Zuppo, 2012).
It is interesting that employees choose to stay connected to work even though this work time conflicts with the time they would like to spend with friends or family (Boswell & Olson-Buchanan, 2007).
I found this statement very open ended with many possible answers. An employee’s choice to stay connected to work will no doubt follow from a. if the employer expects constant communication and micro managing, b. if the employee’s position holds a certain amount of accountability and c. he extremity of an issue that cannot be ignored especially if the buck stops with that employee. My own recent personal experiences whilst I was on annual leave with my Mum who was visiting from the UK for a month can validate that sometimes status overrules choice, and you choose the job you are in. As a general manager, I believe my employer does expect me to have constant communication as I am accountable for the overall decision making and responsibility of the company. Noticeably the managing director and CEO both email me after hours and at weekends on a regular basis.
One reason for the afterhour’s email is that they are based overseas meaning the close of their working day is a few hours behind mine, but I have also noted that as a global organisation time constraints are ignored and people email when they need you rather than to when you are working. A recent article on the website stuff. co. nz quoted results from a Randstad quarterly Workmonitor survey showing that 56 percent of employees handled work related matters in their private time and 59 percent received work related phone calls or emails outside of regular office hours.
Three out of 10 workers said their employer expected them to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week (Van Den Bergh, 2012).
Obviously there is much research that needs to be done to understand the implications of afterhour’s use of communications technologies. The research and results of (Boswell & Olson-Buchanan, 2007) have interesting findings which is thought provoking for organisations and needs further investigating into the impact on work-to-life conflict and the impact on the performance of employees.