DZone
Agile Zone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
  • Refcardz
  • Trend Reports
  • Webinars
  • Zones
  • |
    • Agile
    • AI
    • Big Data
    • Cloud
    • Database
    • DevOps
    • Integration
    • IoT
    • Java
    • Microservices
    • Open Source
    • Performance
    • Security
    • Web Dev
DZone > Agile Zone > Research Reveals the Importance of Work-Life Integration

Research Reveals the Importance of Work-Life Integration

Should we actively separate our work and home life? Or should we mix it up in both places? What's the best approach?

Adi Gaskell user avatar by
Adi Gaskell
·
Jun. 09, 16 · Agile Zone · Opinion
Like (2)
Save
Tweet
2.13K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

Technology has increasingly blurred the boundaries between our work and social lives, which has rendered work-life balance a constant topic for conversation.

A paper I wrote about last year suggested that thinking about work may be key to ‘switching off’ at the end of your work day.  The rationale was that when we have unfinished business from our work day, we tend to then continue thinking about it after work too.

This more fuzzy boundary between work and home is repeated in a second study that’s soon to be published in Human Relations.

Work-Life Boundaries

The paper challenges the belief that engaged employees need to clearly disconnect work life and home life.  Instead, it argues that integration of the two is key to our general effectiveness in both domains.

“In the long run, it may be better to allow employees’ minds to wander and take occasional phone calls from home rather than set up policies that establish strict and inflexible boundaries, which could discourage the development of functional ways to juggle both”, they say.

The rationale is that by successfully juggling both spheres, we develop methods that allow us manage the transition effectively, and with less stress and strain than those with less effective methods.

For instance, if an employee is adept at utilizing things like flexi-time, their work performances are less disrupted because personal issues don’t spill over into work time.  The authors also believe employees can utilize things like goal setting to ensure that we’re not distracted from the task at hand.

“Overall, our findings suggest that integration, rather than segmentation, may be a better long-term boundary management strategy for minimizing resource depletion and maintaining higher levels of job performance during inevitable work-family role transitions,” they conclude.

Integration

Published at DZone with permission of Adi Gaskell, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • Java: Why Core-to-Core Latency Matters
  • How to Determine if Microservices Architecture Is Right for Your Business
  • Debugging Deadlocks and Race Conditions
  • Ultra-Fast Microservices: When Microstream Meets Payara

Comments

Agile Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • MVB Program
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends:

DZone.com is powered by 

AnswerHub logo