Research

Demanding lives of clergy reveal tactics to achieve work-life balance

University Park, Pa. -- Through interviews with individuals who face particularly extreme challenges in balancing work and home demands -- Episcopal priests -- a researcher at Penn State's Smeal College of Business and his co-authors have identified 11 tactics to help employees achieve work-life balance by negotiating the boundaries between their office life and their home life.

In a paper forthcoming in the August issue of the Academy of Management Journal, Smeal's Glen Kreiner, assistant professor of management, and co-authors Elaine Hollensbe of the University of Cincinnati and Mathew Sheep of Illinois State University interviewed 60 Episcopal priests about the work-home challenges they face and the actions they take to overcome them.

Episcopal priests often live next to their churches and have parishioners who expect them to be constantly available. At the same time, most of them are married and live what many may consider "traditional" family lives. Toeing the line between these perpetual work demands and their own personal and family needs forces these priests to perform a delicate balancing act.

"Episcopal priests face work and home pressures more extreme than most of us," said Kreiner. "As one priest told us, they go before God two separate times vowing to put two separate things first in their lives -- one is their church, and the other is their spouse. If they can manage to strike a balance between these two solemn vows, then the rest of us can learn from their experiences how to find balance in our own lives."

According to the research, individuals differ in the level of integration they prefer between their work lives and personal lives. Some people, called "segmenters," like to keep work at work and home at home. Others, "integrators," tend to bring work home or bring parts of their personal lives to work. Kreiner and his colleagues find that most of us are somewhere in between, and that we set up specific boundaries to keep some parts of our lives separate.

The 11 tactics described below can help individuals maintain the level of integration they prefer. They are divided into four categories -- behavioral, temporal, physical, and communicative -- and include approaches involving people, technology, decision making, communicating, physical space and time management.

Behavioral Tactics

1. Using other people: Enlist the help of family members, colleagues, and others to help control boundaries. For example, priests in the study mentioned having their spouses answer their cell phones on their days off to screen calls.

2. Leveraging technology: Use cell phones, e-mail accounts and handheld devices to your advantage in negotiating boundaries. For instance, keeping work e-mail separate from personal e-mail can help keep boundaries intact.

3. Invoking triage: Prioritize seemingly urgent work and home demands like medical triage. Make quick but efficient diagnoses of which crisis or problem is the most important and/or the most likely to be fixed, then act accordingly.

4. Allowing differential permeability: Some boundaries between work and home life need to be permeable, and it's helpful to identify when and where boundaries may be crossed. For the priests in the study, "pastoral emergencies" such as a death or serious accident, "were often cast as acceptable exceptions to otherwise strong segmentation norms, making them a kind of trump card within typical boundary management tactics."

Temporal Tactics

5. Controlling work time: Manipulate time to meet your specific needs. For example, if you must work during time typically reserved for your family, bank that family time and use it later.

6. Finding respite: Remove yourself from work and/or home demands for a significant period of time. Often, this means taking an entire day off (or longer) and leaving the geographic area where you live and/or work.

Physical Tactics

7. Adapting physical boundaries: Erect or dismantle physical borders between work and home as needed -- this technique is particularly useful for individuals with home offices. One priest explained to the researchers how she had a six-foot stockade fence built between the church and the rectory to physically separate her work and her home.

8. Manipulating physical space: Create or reduce the physical space between your work and your home. For example, some people like to reside close to work for easy access to the office, whereas others prefer to live far from the office because they need that physical space between the two domains.

9. Managing physical artifacts: Use tangible items to separate or blend aspects of your work and home life. For example, the researchers wrote: "Some people put all events on one calendar and others had separate calendars for home and work. Some individuals used one key ring for all doors and functions; others used separate key rings for work and home."

Communicative Tactics

10. Setting expectations: Communicate your expectations up front before a boundary violation can occur. If you do not want to be contacted while on vacation, be sure your colleagues know. Conversely, if you prefer being in constant contact with work, communicate that as well, before you go on vacation.

11. Confronting violators: When people violate your boundaries, let them know. In the above example, if a colleague calls you on your vacation, let him/her know that it's not OK.

Kreiner recommends that individuals determine their own preferences for segmentation or integration and customize these tactics to meet their needs.

"The reality is that it will rarely be easy for us to negotiate between the demands of home and work," he said, "but these tactics have been tested and used successfully by individuals with extremely demanding occupations. By understanding our own preferences for segmentation and integration and using these tactics to navigate our boundaries, it may be possible to achieve that ever-elusive work-life balance."

"Do I Build a Bridge or Secure the Border? Negotiating the Work-Home Interface via Boundary Work Tactics" will be published in the August 2009 issue of the Academy of Management Journal.

Last Updated July 28, 2017

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