High-performance’ Management Practices, Working Hours and Work–Life Balance

‘High-performance’ ManagementPractices, Working Hours and Work–Life BalanceMichael White, Stephen Hill, Patrick McGovern,Colin Mills and Deborah Smeaton

Abstract

The effects of selected high-performance practices and working hours onwork–life balance are analysed with data from national surveys of Britishemployees in 1992 and 2000. Alongside long hours, which are a constant sourceof negative job-to-home spillover, certain ‘high-performance’ practices havebecome more strongly related to negative spillover during this period. Surpris-ingly, dual-earner couples are not especially liable to spillover — if anything,less so than single-earner couples. Additionally, the presence of young childrenhas become less important over time. Overall, the results suggest a conflictbetween high-performance practices and work-life balance policies.

1. Introduction

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss andwork twelve hours a day.

Robert Frost (1875–1963), US poet (attrib.)

Robert Frost’s acerbic observation on the costs of success at work has a par-ticular resonance in an age when the concept of work–life balance is neverfar from the public discourse. National newspapers, for instance, frequentlycarry stories about the damage that workers do to their families by work-ing long hours (e.g. Guardian, 21 November 2000: 21; Financial Times, 13September 2001: 16; Sunday Times, 20 January 2002: 8). The conventionalwisdom in these accounts is that much of the problem is due to Britain’s ‘longhours culture’, for it is widely known that full-time workers in Britain workthe longest hours in the European Union. British men work an average of

British Journal of Industrial Relations41:2 June 2003 0007–1080 pp. 175–195

Michael White and Deborah Smeaton are at the Policy Studies Institute; Stephen Hill is at RoyalHolloway, University of London; Patrick McGovern is at the London School of Economics andPolitical Science; and Colin Mills is at Nuffield College, Oxford.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

3.5 hours per week more than those in the second highest country (Greece),while British women work 0.8 hour per week longer than the second highest(Sweden) (Social Trends 2001).

Politicians have been quick to propose solutions, and so the concept ofwork–life balance has emerged as a potentially important focus of workplaceregulation. In a 1998 Green Paper (DTI 1998), the Department for Trade andIndustry linked the regulation of working time to family policy and theNational Childcare Strategy, and this was followed in 2000 by the NewLabour government’s Work–Life Balance Campaign, which seeks to persuadeemployers of the business benefits of practices that enhance the work–lifebalance. The notion of work–life balance encompasses the family-friendlyperspective of the earlier Green Paper, but is wider, seeking to help allemployed people, irrespective of marital or parental status, to achieve a betterfit between their professional and private lives. Possible solutions includesome combination of ‘family-friendly’ employer policies, such as flexibleworking hours, homeworking and state assisted nursery places. The underly-ing assumption is that work–life balance can be achieved without threaten-ing the economic success of either party, possibly even promoting it for both.However, this assumption is not self-evident. There may, for example, beother practices that employers regard as important for their own successwhich may exacerbate the work–life balance problem irrespective of the posi-tive contribution of family-friendly policies.

It is with this possibility in mind that we examine the effects of certainhuman resource management or work organization practices associated withvarious models of ‘high-performance’ or ‘high-commitment’ management(e.g. Huselid 1995; MacDuffie 1995; Wood and de Menezes 1998; Appelbaumet al. 2000). Given the lack of consensus about this terminology, in this paperwe adopt the convention of referring to these as high-performance practices.We are aware that there is considerable debate about their ‘performance’effects, but it is reasonable to assume that many employers adopt them in order to improve performance. Furthermore, there is evidence (e.g.Appelbaum et al. 2000: 229–30; Appelbaum and Berg 2001: 279; see also discussion in next section) to indicate that these ‘best practice’ models ofhuman resource management/work organization commonly serve to obtaingreater discretionary effort from employees. It is therefore plausible to expectthat these will make demands of individuals that will have repercussions thatfall beyond the workplace. We test this proposition by examining the impactof working hours and selected high-performance practices on negative job-to-home spillover (Bond et al. 1998; Maume and Houston 2001). In doing so,we draw together three previously separate literatures, predominantly fromthe United States — those on the time squeeze, the work–family spillover,and high-performance work systems — with the explicit aim of opening upa new area of research. To our knowledge, the possible spillover effects of these so-called high-performance practices have not been investigated previously.

176 British Journal of Industrial Relations

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2003.

2. Long hours, time-pressed families and high-performance management

Much of the intellectual energy behind the debate on work–life balancecomes from the United States, notably through Juliet Schor’s (1991) influen-tial study The Overworked American (see also Hochschild 1997). Using evi-dence from a range of secondary sources, Schor challenges the widespreadassumption that average hours of work are continuing to fall in advancedindustrial economies, much as they have done over the past century. Instead,she claims that US employees are working an additional 163 hours on average— that is, about an extra month’s work per annum (see also Leete and Schor1994). Since the increase in hours is three times greater among women thanamong men, she claims that dual-earner couples are more likely to experi-ence a ‘time squeeze’ (Schor 1991: 17). Indeed, several other US studies reportsubstantial increases in the combined hours of such couples (Bluestone andRose 1997: 66; Clarkberg and Moen 2001: 1117), though still others disputeSchor’s claim of a general increase in hours, for example by arguing that therehas been a growing tendency for hours to be over-estimated by employees(Coleman and Pencavel 1993; Robinson and Bostrom 1994). In contrast withthe United States, average working hours do not appear to have increasedduring the 1990s for British workers. Rather, the dispersion of hours hasincreased, with more people working either very long or very short hours(Green 2001: 58–61).

For our purposes, Schor’s estimates are less relevant than her attempt toexplain them by examining both employer policies and employee motives. Onthe employers’ side, Schor points to their desire to extract increasing returnsfrom labour, which many now see as a fixed cost; to the growing proportionof white-collar employees, where there is no tradition of premium overtimepayments; and to an increase in the bargaining power of employers relativeto that of labour, through either a reduction in job security, a declining unionpresence or both. Employees for their part choose demanding jobs to fulfilmaterial ambitions in a consumer society that has developed powerful formsof advertising and credit purchase systems. According to Schor, manyworkers are obliged to accept high work demands simply to service their personal debt. The last point resonates with the British experience, where consumer debt and house prices (hence mortgage commitments) have reached unprecedented levels: outstanding loans secured on dwellings rose by37 per cent between 1995 and 2000, a period in which the Retail Price Indexrose by 11 per cent (Consumer Trends 2001, Tables S8 and S9; Guardian, 30November 2001: 27).

Schor’s discussion does not review employer practices that exert pressureto work longer hours, but it is natural to inquire what these might be. Specifi-cally, it seems plausible that high-commitment or high-performance man-agement practices will have a negative impact on the private lives of workers,to the extent that they are designed to evince greater discretionary effort inpursuit of the organization’s goals. Yet much, though not all, of the related

‘High-performance’ Management Practices 177


literature, regardless of whether it is termed high-commitment management(e.g. Walton 1987; Wood 1996), high-performance work organization(HPWO) (e.g. MacDuffie 1995; Becker and Huselid 1998; Wood 1999a) orhigh-performance work systems (e.g. Appelbaum et al. 2000; Appelbaum andBerg 2001), claims that it is good for both employers and employees. Employ-ers, it is argued, gain through improved quality, productivity and financialreturns (Huselid 1995; Ichniowski et al. 1997; Appelbaum et al. 2000), whileemployees benefit from higher wages and job satisfaction (Huselid 1995;Appelbaum et al. 2000).

How is this achieved? Proponents of high-performance work systems claimthat they are characterized by a common desire to raise employee skills, moti-vation and empowerment (Appelbaum and Berg 2001: 275–6), although thesemay be realized in various ways. The practices, which typically involve a com-bination of work organization and human resource management (HRM)policies, are designed to provide greater participation in decision making, theopportunity to learn new skills and the financial incentive to offer greater dis-cretionary effort in the service of the employer’s goals. Generally, the prac-tices include some form of teamworking, quality circles, training and careerdevelopment, appraisals and performance-related pay.

It is not necessary, for the purposes of this paper, for us to reach a con-clusion about the strength of the evidence concerning the contribution ofsuch practices to organizational performance. More importantly (from thepresent viewpoint), the evidence on its benefits for employees is mixed at best.With regard to the bundles of practices associated with HPWO, an analysisof the British workplace employee relations (WERS, 1998) survey by Ramsayet al. (2000) finds that they are associated with job strain and lower pay satisfaction, while Godard’s survey of Canadian employees reports that highlevels of adoption are linked with low job satisfaction and self-esteem, pos-sibly because the work is considered to be more stressful (Godard 2001: 797).In relation to individual practices, there is both qualitative and quantitativeevidence to challenge claims that employees gain from their introduction.Case studies by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic report thatautonomous working groups, which require high levels of individual partici-pation, are associated with feelings of constant pressure and stress (Parkerand Slaughter 1988; Barker 1993; Graham 1995; Danford 1998). Using datafrom a nationally representative survey of employees, Gallie and colleaguesfound that a composite variable reflecting appraisals, target setting and meritpay was associated with greater work pressure for non-manual employees,while a second composite variable partly based on performance related paywas associated with higher work pressure for both manual and non-manualemployees (Gallie et al. 1998: 77–80).

However, Osterman (1995) reports that organizations in the United Statesthat adopt high-performance practices also adopt flexible working time andcareer-break practices, thereby giving employees more scope to adapt workdemands to family or non-work aims. Thus, the employers most active in pur-suing high-performance may also strive for practices that offset or balance



their adverse effects outside work. By contrast, Wood (1999b) reports, on thebasis of an analysis of Osterman’s data, that the extent to which an integratedfamily-friendly management approach is practised is unrelated to ‘high-commitment management’ in the United States, a result that he has found tobe similar in the UK (Wood, personal communication, 2002). A recentnational survey of British employers finds that family-friendly policies arelittle more than an aspiration for the majority (Hogarth et al. 2001, passim).

In summary, the idea that both employers and employees can only benefitfrom high-performance practices has already been challenged by a wide rangeof evidence. Our aim is to extend this line of investigation with a particularfocus on the relatively unexplored area of work–life balance.

3. High-performance management, working hours and work spillover:some hypotheses

In developing our hypotheses, we have replaced the policy-related concept ofwork–life balance by one of negative job-to-home spillover (Bond et al. 1998;Maume and Houston 2001). This was necessary for two reasons. First, wewished to give a more focused, if narrower, indicator of work–life balancewhich captured the effects on the employees’ domestic life. Second, given ourfocus on high-performance practices, we wished to capture the spillovereffects of work demands as a whole rather than simply assess the effects interms of the division of hours between work and non-work activity. Thesurvey measures that we have constructed to represent negative job-to-homespillover (described in detail in Section 4) emphasize the consequences of thejob for family relations.

We use the term ‘work demands’ to indicate those aspects of employmentthat have the potential to create negative job-to-home spillover. Workdemands include hours worked, work intensity (the pace of work, and pro-portion of working hours spent in work activity), and work pressures of anyother kind (e.g. peaks in work load). Additional work hours subtract fromhome time, while high work intensity or work pressure may result in fatigue,anxiety or other adverse psycho-physiological consequences that can affectthe quality of home and family life.

The discussion in the preceding section indicates that two sets of hypoth-eses need to be considered with regard to negative job-to-home spillover. Thefirst relates to employer practices, while the second relates to an employee’spersonal and family circumstances, as discussed earlier in relation to the workof Schor and others.

Hypotheses concerning Employer Practices

There are two general hypotheses that relate to employer practices: (i) prac-tices that increase work demands increase negative work-to-home spillover;



(ii) practices that increase employee choice or flexibility over work demandsreduce negative job-to-home spillover.

We divide practices that increase work demands into two main types.

1. The setting of working hours by employers tends to raise work demandsabove the optimal choice level for employees (Clarkberg and Moen2001: 1125–6). Thus, actual hours worked will be positively related tonegative job-to-home spillover.

2. We hypothesize that three types of ‘high-performance’ practices willgenerate more work demands and hence more negative spillover fromwork to home: performance appraisal practices; work organizationpractices that emphasize group or team collaborations, hence poten-tially increasing ‘concertive control’ (Barker 1993: 408); and incentiveor performance-related pay practices. Note that, rather than consider-ing high-performance practices in a general way, we focus on types ofpractice in which the literature reviewed above points to serious impli-cations for work demands. We expect negative spillover to be reducedwhere there are practices that increase employee choice and flexibilityover work demands. Such practices might include those that allowchoice over starting and finishing times, flexible hours systems and indi-viduals’ control over their own hours of work. (For parents with youngchildren, career-break schemes, term-time working contracts andvarious forms of childcare assistance would also be relevant. These arenot considered within the scope of the present paper.)

Hypotheses concerning Individual Circumstances

A range of personal circumstances may generate or increase negativespillover. More specifically, financial pressures, or lack of resources, may leadto longer hours and have negative consequences for domestic life. Also, avariety of family circumstances may add to financial pressures; for example,young children impose higher childcare costs, while single-earner familiestend to have lower incomes than dual-earner families. On the other hand,single-earner families (and also single people) will tend to have additionaltime available for household and family activities. In general, the literaturereviewed above suggests that on balance dual-earner families are more proneto a spillover problem, and this is the hypothesis we adopt.

4. Data sources and measures

The data used in this paper were taken from two representative surveys ofthe employed and self-employed in Great Britain, with samples restricted tothose aged between 20 and 60 inclusive. Working in Britain 2000 (WIB2000)was conducted between June 2000 and January 2001 and produced a sampleof 2466 employed people with a response rate of 65 per cent. Employment



in Britain (EIB1992) was conducted in 1992 and generated a sample of 3855employed people with a response rate of 72 per cent. The employee sub-samples were 2132 in WIB2000 and 3458 in EIB1992. Both WIB and EIBwere multi-stage household surveys using postal address files as the samplingframe and a Kish grid method to select individuals randomly within eachsampled household. Primary sampling units were postal sectors, with 167selected (by a stratified random sampling method) for WIB and 150 for EIB.In both WIB2000 and EIB1992, interviews were face-to-face, of approxi-mately one hour in duration, with an additional self-completion question-naire. In EIB there were two different versions of the self-completionquestionnaire, each of which was administered to a random one-half of thetotal sample. The dependent variable in the present analysis was obtained ina half-sample, so that the available sample size was reduced. After samplelosses arising from other missing data, the samples available for analysis were1474 employees for 1992 and 1915 employees for the year 2000.

To make the two surveys more representative, each was weighted in thesame way by data from the population estimates of the Labour Force Surveysof 1992 and 2000, respectively. The weighting variables were sex, age, socio-economic group and part-time or full-time employment status. All analysesreported here incorporated these weights, which were combined with theweights required to correct for Kish sampling.

The Dependent Variable: Negative Job-to-Home Spillover

The concept of negative job-to-home spillover is measured in a mannersimilar to that of Maume and Houston (2001: 177), in that it seeks to capturethe effects of work on time for partner/family as well as time for familyresponsibilities. In addition, our version asks directly about the effects of theemployees’ jobs on their partners or families. This three-item index variableis worded as follows:

How often would you say the following statements are true of yourself ?

1. After work I have too little time to carry out my family responsibilitiesas I would like.

2. My job prevents me from giving the time I would like to mypartner/family.

3. My partner/family gets a bit fed up with the pressure of my job.

The response scale was ‘Almost always, Often, Sometimes, Rarely, Never’.Item 2 from the 1992 survey was reversed in 2000 to read ‘My job allows meto give the time I would like to my partner/family.’ This does not affect themeaning of the scale. The three items are highly inter-correlated and have areliability (Cronbach alpha) of 0.85 in 1992 and 0.75 in 2000. They also forma distinct and significant factor in a principal components factor analysisinvolving other variables relating to work demands. The scoring and scaling of the items to produce the dependent variable are discussed inSection 5.



The items are assumed to be applicable to single people as well as to thosewith spouses or partners. We checked this assumption by item non-responseanalysis, which showed (by age group) 2–4 per cent non-response in 1992 forthose with no spouses or partners and no children, and 1–2 per cent non-response in 2000. It is also worth noting that, even when people live apartfrom their families, they generally maintain family contacts. In the 1992survey 48 per cent of those without spouses, partners and children said thatthey saw relatives at least once a week, and 72 per cent at least once a month.Only 2 per cent of this group stated that they never saw relatives.

Explanatory Variables Representing the Hypothesized Influences

(a) Working hoursThis was defined as the weekly hours worked during the most recent payperiod, inclusive of paid overtime but exclusive of unpaid meal breaks andunpaid overtime.

(b) Employers’ ‘high-performance’ practicesOur selection of items focuses on those types of practice that are linked inthe research literature with high work demands, as reviewed earlier.

Appraisal systems are often represented, in human resource management,as relating to personal development and motivation. Although our own inter-pretation is more in terms of control, the items reflect the HRM background.As well as establishing whether the individual takes part in an appraisalsystem, the surveys asked whether appraisals helped to plan training; whetherappraisals affected promotion; whether appraisals affected pay; and whetherappraisals influenced how hard the individual works.

Group-working practices are here represented by four items: whether or notthe individual works in a group; whether co-workers influence how hard theindividual works; whether the person takes part in a work improvementgroup or quality circle; and whether pay depends in part on the performanceof the work group.

Evidently, the last item above can also be construed as an element ofperformance-related pay (PRP). Other items representing this element were:whether part of the pay depended on the individual’s own performance;whether part of the pay depended upon the performance of the workplaceor organization; whether the organization had a profit-sharing or sharescheme; whether pay incentives influenced how hard the individual worked;and whether pay increases were given to those people who worked hard andperformed well (‘merit pay’).

We used factor analysis and item analysis to assess whether it would bemore efficient to retain the separate items or construct composite variables.In the case of the appraisal variables, construction of a composite variablewas supported; since each item had a uniqueness of less than 0.5, they col-lectively constituted a distinct and significant factor, and had a Cronbachalpha greater than 0.7 in each survey. Accordingly, we constructed a



summative scale (labelled ‘appraisal intensity’) from the five appraisal items,scoring each item as binary (hence the scale takes values 0–5). However, onthe same criteria, construction of scales for the other two sets of items wasnot supported. These have therefore been retained as separate items in theanalyses, each being represented as a dummy variable.

Factor analysis was also used to examine the validity of separating theseitems from other HPWO type practices. It might be, for example, that theseitems considered separately increase negative job-to-home spillover, yet thewider HPWO systems (of which they form part) do not have these conse-quences or may even have benign consequences. The preliminary question,however, is whether such wider systems exist at a detectable level in the data.In an exploratory factor analysis, we were unable to find any general factor;the majority of the 26 HRM or work organization items available in bothsurveys had uniqueness greater than 0.8. Indeed, there were only three inter-pretable factors, one loading on the appraisal scale (see above), anotherloading — somewhat less strongly — on a subset of pay items, and the thirdloading on two items concerning management–employee communications.Thus, there was nothing to suggest that our selection of variables had artifi-cially detached items from their natural groupings or had ignored an under-lying structure.

(c) Employer practices: flexibility and choice in working timeIn our analysis the practices expected to reduce job-to-home spillover are:availability of personal choice from a range of pre-specified starting and finishing times; participation in a flexible hours system; and personal discre-tion (on a day-to-day basis) over one’s own starting and finishing times. Thesurveys treat these as mutually exclusive situations, and each is representedby a dummy variable. The implicit base category is having to work standardhours that are set by the employer.

(d) Individual circumstances: financial pressure and home timeThe respondent was coded as working under financial pressure if giving, asthe single most important reason for working, ‘need money for basic essen-tials such as food, rent, mortgage’. Other variables relating to financial pres-sures were: having an employed partner; having a non-employed partner;having a youngest child aged under 3, 3–4, 5–11, or 12–15. (These age bandsreflect public educational arrangements in Britain, where in most areasnursery classes begin at age 3, primary school at age 4 or 5 and secondaryschool at age 11 or 12.) Dual-earner couples should (other things being equal)experience less financial pressure, while single-earner couples should experi-ence more financial pressure. Children of dependent age increase financialpressure, and the lower the age of the youngest child, the greater will be thepotential childcare costs.

The employment status of the spouse or partner, as well as having a finan-cial interpretation, has implications for home time, as discussed earlier in connection with the US literature. Dual-earner couples are expected to face



a time squeeze on home time resulting from their high combined workinghours.

Control Variables for the Analysis

Variables were included in the analysis to control for aspects of the work-place and of individual circumstances that could affect negative job-to-homespillover.

A potentially important workplace variable is the exercise of arbitrary ordiscretionary power by the supervisor, which has been interpreted as part ofthe ‘simple’ or ‘drive’ system of labour control (Edwards 1979). The item usedhere asked whether the supervisor ‘treats some people better than others’,and a positive response is indicative of the abuse of discretionary power.

In Schor’s (1991) discussion, job insecurity is assumed to be one of thedrivers of longer working hours. Indicators of security in our analysis werethe employee’s job tenure in months, and its square (to capture nonlinearity);and a single item reporting whether (as perceived by the employee) the sizeof the organization’s workforce had increased, decreased or remained stableover the previous three years.

The other workplace variable included in the analysis was whether tradeunions were recognized. Individual control variables were: age and its square;social class — a seven-category version of the Erickson–Goldthorpe classschema (Erickson and Goldthorpe 1993); hours worked in a second job (0 if no second job); whether individuals had a non-financial commitment toemployment; and whether individuals used IT in their jobs. All analyses wereproduced separately for men and women.

5. Analysis procedure

The analysis was devised with the aim of testing the hypotheses concerningworkplace practices, individual circumstances and negative job-to-homespillover. For this purpose regression modelling, with its capability of esti-mating the independent effects of each explanatory variable, provides anappropriate framework. The main technical issue is how to scale the depen-dent variable. Three variant forms of scaling were used to assess the sensi-tivity of results to this choice. (i) The three items were summed to producean assumed interval scale, which had a range of 13 points, and this scale wasused in OLS (linear) regression models. (ii) The 13 points of the summativevariable were treated as an ordinal scale (a weaker measurement assumption),and this was used in ordered probit models. (iii) A principal componentsfactor analysis was conducted on the three items (each assumed to be measured on an interval scale), and the derived factor score was used as thedependent variable. This method weights the items in accordance with theircontributions to the assumed underlying common factor, rather than givingthem equal weight, and generates a closer approximation to a continuous



variable than does version (i). The factor-scored dependent variable was usedunder OLS regression models.

The important result from this series of variant analyses was that theresults were qualitatively the same across all three, with no substantial dif-ference in the significance level of any explanatory variable. Thus, the analy-sis was not sensitive to the choice of scaling. Also, the customary diagnosticsshowed the residuals in the OLS models to be approximately normally dis-tributed. In the following, only the results using the variable derived from theprincipal component analysis (iii) are presented. Results of the above variantanalyses, and of other results referred to subsequently but not reported infull because of space limitations, may be obtained from the first-namedauthor.

The results are derived from four regression models, which were estimatedseparately for the sub-samples: women in 1992, women in 2000, men in 1992,and men in 2000. The availability of the two surveys makes it possible toassess whether the relationships of the high-performance management prac-tices to negative spillover were changing over this period. This could occur,for instance, through the wider diffusion of practices or through qualitativechanges in their application.

Standard errors in all the models were computed by a robust estimator (theHuber–White estimator), which takes account of the complex survey designand of heteroscedasticity. (For explanation of robust estimation, see Skinner1989: 23–58.)

6. Results

Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics for the explanatory variables. Theseare of interest in indicating whether the prevalence of hypothesized influenceson negative spillover was changing over the period. Average hours workedwere nearly two hours higher in the sample of 2000 than in 1992, but thisshould be regarded with caution, as it is not supported by analysis of theLabour Force Survey (see also Green 2001). We can however say with confi-dence, based on these surveys and the LFS, that average hours of work didnot fall over the period.

Of the high-performance practices, the appraisal index remained staticacross the surveys, but three of the four group-working practices showed aclear increase, as did three of the five performance-related pay practices. Thisis part of a steady diffusion of HRM practices over the period, which wehave documented elsewhere (White 2001). Among the working time practices,only one — participation in a flexible hours system — rose appreciably,although overall the rigid setting of hours by employers decreased.

Turning to individual circumstances, we find that the proportion of peopleworking primarily from financial necessity has fallen slightly. There was aslightly higher proportion with a dependent child in the 2000 sample, but alsomore people without a spouse or partner. The proportion of dual-earner





TABLE 1Descriptive Statistics for the Dependent and Explanatory Variables

2000 1992

Mean or s.d. Mean or s.d.proportion proportion

Index of job–home 7.72 2.776 7.20 2.952negative spillover

Actual hours/week 37.79 13.692 36.39 12.440

Appraisal index 2.195 1.950 2.176 1.949

Work in group 0.582 0.460

Effort determined 0.338 0.356by co-workers

Take part in work 0.304 0.205improvement group

Group PRP 0.170 0.054

Profit sharing 0.150 0.157

Individual PRP 0.221 0.153

Workplace PRP 0.260 0.215

Effort determined 0.243 0.183by pay incentives

Merit increases 0.373 0.378

Start/finish timesFixed by empl’r* 0.537 0.601Have choice 0.133 0.113Flexible hours 0.222 0.173Own discretion 0.108 0.113

Work from financial 0.597 0.641necessity

Age of youngest childNone* 0.579 0.6150–2 0.109 0.0933–4 0.058 0.0525–11 0.162 0.15912–15 0.093 0.081

Marital statusNo partner* 0.296 0.247One-earner couple 0.125 0.154Two-earner couple 0.580 0.598

The sample size for the analysis in 2000 is 1915 and for the analysis in 1992 is 1474.* Indicates reference category in OLS analysis.+ This is the simple summative scale; the factor score variable is standardized with mean 0 andstandard deviation 1.

couples changed little, but single-earner couples decreased as a proportion ofthe sample while the proportion of single people increased.

We now turn to the results of the four regression models. Estimates areshown in Table 2 for the hypothesized explanatory variables. Also shown arethe estimates relating to fairness of supervision, which (although designateda control variable) turned out to provide information of interpretative value.



TABLE 2Models of Negative Job-to-home Spillover

Women Men

1992 2000 1992 2000

Weekly hours 0.020 0.022 0.023 0.026(4.50)** (6.41)** (6.20)** (8.84)**

Appraisals index 0.080 0.040 0.051 0.034(scored 0–5) (3.45)** (2.07)* (2.36)* (1.80)+

Take part in work -0.071 0.117 0.072 0.012improvement group (0.72) (1.74)+ (0.80) (0.17)

Work in group/team 0.002 -0.001 0.001 -0.005(0.02) (0.03) (0.01) (0.07)

Co-workers influence 0.152 0.072 -0.056 0.143effort (1.99)* (1.07) (0.74) (1.88)+

Have group PRP -0.131 0.247 0.016 -0.037(0.41) (2.11)* (0.10) (0.33)

Pay incentives -0.064 0.008 0.186 0.160influence effort (0.55) (0.10) (2.40)* (2.12)*

Have individual PRP -0.052 0.026 -0.260 -0.089(0.40) (0.30) (2.76)** (1.06)

Have workplace or 0.117 0.016 0.072 -0.030organizational PRP (0.87) (0.19) (0.99) (0.32)

Have profit-sharing -0.241 -0.018 -0.019 0.003or share scheme (2.16)* (0.16) (0.24) (0.03)

Pay increases based -0.013 0.043 -0.057 -0.071on effort/performance (0.16) (0.68) (0.73) (0.96)

Choose work times 0.196 0.001 0.176 -0.065from set list (1.72)+ (0.02) (1.68)+ (0.57)

Have flexible hours -0.079 -0.174 0.004 -0.080system (0.72) (2.12)* (0.05) (0.94)

Decide own starting 0.210 0.155 0.556 -0.215and finishing times (1.55) (1.21) (5.11)** (1.99)*

Work mainly from 0.070 0.143 -0.045 0.101financial necessity (1.02) (2.53)* (0.52) (1.52)

Youngest child aged 0.440 0.308 0.246 0.0560–2 (3.39)** (2.59)** (2.03)* (0.58)

Youngest child aged 0.675 0.402 0.365 0.1673–4 (4.36)** (2.65)** (2.98)** (1.15)

Youngest child aged 0.350 0.311 0.582 0.1365–11 (3.11)** (2.93)** (5.58)** (1.29)

Youngest child aged 0.239 0.163 0.216 0.15212–15 (1.85)+ (1.76)+ (1.76)+ (1.13)

One-earner couple 0.276 0.236 0.508 0.376(2.18)* (2.04)* (4.86)** (3.63)**

Dual-earner couple 0.183 0.070 0.386 0.100(2.13)* (1.00) (4.13)** (1.12)

For reasons of space we do not show the results for the other control vari-ables, but they can be obtained from the first-named author.

Employers’ Practices: Hours Worked

The results show that negative job-to-home spillover increased with addi-tional hours worked, to a similar degree for both women and men, and to asimilar degree in both 1992 and 2000. Indeed, actual hours worked provedto be by far the strongest explanatory variable in this analysis: when omittedin variant analyses, adjusted R2 values fell by nearly one-half. This relation-ship between hours and negative spillover was, of course, net of any cor-relation with the various work control and time control practices included in the model. The strength and stability of the relationship between hoursworked and negative job-to-home spillover testifies to the importance ofworking hours practices within the workplace. Whatever changes haveoccurred in the workplace during the 1990s, they have done nothing to reducethe effects of hours worked on negative spillover.

Employers’ Practices: Appraisals, Group Working and Performance-Related Pay

The results also confirm that Britain’s work–life balance problem is notsimply a matter of working hours. We find clear evidence that high-performance practices are an important, if previously ignored, source ofnegative spillover, even after controlling for working hours.



Table 2 (contd )

Women Men

1992 2000 1992 2000

Supervisor treats -0.166 -0.258 0.014 -0.162people the same (2.25)* (4.14)** (0.18) (2.37)*

Constant -1.71 -1.06 -0.89 -1.78(2.81)** (2.10)** (1.85)+ (3.08)

Observations 718 1001 756 914

Adjusted R-squared 0.24 0.24 0.31 0.21

Dependent variable is the factor score derived from three items relating to negative job-to-homespillover (see text for further explanation). OLS regression models with robust variance estima-tor. Cell entries are the estimated coefficients, with t-statistics (absolute values) in parenthesesbelow.+ Significant at 10%; * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%.PRP = performance-related pay. The following control variables were also included in all analyses: hours worked in second job; age; age-squared; tenure; tenure-squared; 7 social classdummies; trade union representation dummy; 3 dummies for change of size of workplace in past3 years; use of IT in job (dummy); non-financial work commitment (dummy).

In particular, appraisal systems had a clear effect on increasing negativespillover for both men and women, and this extended across both years, albeitwith smaller coefficients, and a fall in significance to the 10 per cent level formen, in 2000. Other theoretically significant results concerned group or teammotivational practices. There was some tendency for group-orientated prac-tices to have an increased relationship with this form of work–family conflictin 2000, which suggests that group-working practices are playing a larger rolein work demands. Gender differences are also evident. For men, being in asituation where co-workers controlled work effort resulted in more negativespillover in 2000. For women, there was a particularly large impact on negative spillover in 2000 if they participated in a group incentive scheme.Women were also adversely affected, in 2000, if they took part in a workimprovement group; although the coefficient was significant only at the 10per cent level, the sign had also changed over the period. On the other hand,women in 1992 had more negative spillover if their co-workers influencedtheir work effort: this effect had become non-significant by 2000.

There were also changes over time in the impact of performance-relatedpayment systems on job-to-home spillover. In 1992, men receiving individu-ally based bonuses had less negative spillover than other men, a finding con-sistent with much of the older research showing that incentive workers wereoften able to gain control over work demands (e.g. Lupton 1963; Roy 1952).By 2000, however, this relationship had become smaller and non-significant.A similar pattern was observed for women in respect of profit-sharing orshare-option schemes, which reduced negative spillover in 1992 but not in2000. Finally, men who reported that pay incentives (of any kind) had animportant influence on their work effort were more likely to experience negative spillover in both years.

Overall, ten of the estimates relating to the selected high-performance prac-tices were significant at least at the 10 per cent level (eight at the 5 per centlevel), and with positive sign — that is, they increased negative spillover, ashypothesized. Two of the estimates were significant with negative sign, con-trary to hypothesis, but both of these occurred in 1992 with a subsequentshift towards the expected sign by 2000. The latter point, alongside other evi-dence, suggests that the hypothesized relationships may on balance have beenstrengthening over time. In 1992 there were four significant and positive co-efficients, while in 2000 there were six.

Employers’ Practices: Hours of Work and Flexible Hours

The effects of individual flexibility and discretion over hours in amelioratingnegative spillover were partly as hypothesized, but not altogether consistent.Consistent with our hypothesis, taking part in a flexible hours system sig-nificantly reduced negative spillover for women in 2000, while making no difference either way to men. Contrary to our hypothesis, however, havingdiscretion to decide one’s own working times was positively signed thoughnon-significant for women in both years, and was both positive and



significant for men in 1992, suggesting that men at that time used their discretion chiefly to impose more work demands on themselves. By 2000,however, this was no longer the case: the relationship for men had moved significantly in the negative direction, with discretion over hours being linkedto a reduction in negative spillover (p < 0.05). This was the largest singlechange over time observed in this set of analyses, and one that suggests animportant shift in the male perspective.

Connected with the issue of individual discretion over work-times is thatof supervisory discretion. The fairness or unfairness of the supervisor is animportant influence on negative spillover over the entire period for women(with an increasing coefficient), and in 2000 for men. When the supervisor isseen as fair, negative spillover is lower; when the supervisor is seen as unfair,the reverse applies. These results suggest that supervisory equity is becomingincreasingly important as an influence on spillover between work and home.

Individual and Family Circumstances

All the variables concerning individual and family circumstances producedsignificant effects on negative spillover, and some of these results were not ashypothesized. Consistent with our hypothesis, working from financial neces-sity was significantly linked to negative spillover for women in 2000, althoughthis did not hold in 1992. For male employees the sign of the coefficient wasmoving in the same direction across surveys, although the change was notstatistically significant.

The general assumption in the time-squeeze literature, which we haveadopted as a hypothesis, is that dual-earner families are most adverselyaffected by work demands. In the present analysis, however, those in dual-earner couples consistently reported less negative spillover than those insingle-earner situations, although this difference was statistically significantonly for men in 2000. In other words, it was the single-earner couples thathad the highest levels of negative spillover.

The analyses provided little support for the idea that negative spillover hasbeen exacerbated by parents’ child-centred values. Indeed, children werebecoming less central to negative spillover over the decade. By 2000, men’sexperience of negative spillover appeared unaffected by the age of theyoungest child — a marked change from 1992. It is true that women’s senseof negative spillover was much affected by having young children, but thisinfluence was also tending to weaken somewhat by 2000. The overall impres-sion is that concern for time with children is playing a decreasing part in theexperience of negative job-to-home spillover.

7. Summary and conclusions

The analyses were designed to test hypotheses about the role of workplacepractices, hours of work and individual circumstances in relation to negative



job-to-home spillover. The results show that actual hours worked are thelargest influence, with little change between 1992 and 2000; but negativespillover is also affected by a range of workplace practices, albeit with con-siderable differences between male and female employees. Appraisal systems,group-based forms of work organization and individual incentives all con-tribute to the imposition of the public sphere on the private. Flexible hourssystems and personal discretion over starting and finishing times tend toreduce the problem, especially in 2000.

Alongside individual discretion over working time, the way supervisors usetheir discretion is also of increasing importance, for good or ill. With regardto individual circumstances, external financial pressures are becomingincreasingly significant although the overall impact of children (or of childdevelopment values) is decreasing. Surprisingly, there is no indication thatdual-earner couples are more affected by work–family spillover than single-earner couples: if anything, the reverse applies. Thus, two of the main explanations in the existing literature for negative spillover on the individualside are not supported, whereas employers’ workplace practices are found toplay a significant and perhaps a growing role.

In devising this analysis of work–life balance, we were guided largely bydebates in the United States concerning increasing working hours and thetime squeeze, which we juxtaposed with the literature on high-performancemanagement practices. The results of our analysis indicate that some of theclaims from the time-squeeze literature are not supported, while our decisionto incorporate a selection of practices associated with various high-performance models has been vindicated. In relation to the latter, our evidence clearly shows that employees do not always benefit from high-performance work practices. As Ramsay and colleagues argued (Ramsay etal. 2000: 521), advocates of high-performance management ‘best practice’models should take care when proclaiming the unitarist assumption thateveryone gains from managerial innovation (e.g. Appelbaum et al. 2000: 228).

Ideas about dual-earner and single-earner families also seem in need ofrevision. Dual-earner families do not experience more work–family spilloverproblems than single-earner families: among men, in 2000 it was clearly the reverse that applied. This counterintuitive finding requires us to re-conceptualize the nature of work–family spillover, since we can no longersimplistically assume that it is an inverse function of the couple’s home time.So, what might explain this surprising result?

One possibility is that the average earner in the single-earner couple workslonger hours to make up for only having one wage; and that it is the earner’shome time, not the couple’s, that matters. However, neither the means nor thedispersions of hours differ appreciably between employees in the single-earner and dual-earner situations, so this possibility must be rejected.Another possibility is that additional resources available to dual-earnercouples enable them to offset the time squeeze by putting domestic activitiesout to the market (in the form of cleaners, childminders, nurseries and out-of-school clubs, etc.). Finally, those in dual-career households may select or



remain in jobs that have less negative spillover precisely because both part-ners wish to have careers. Female partners, in particular, may be less inclinedto take demanding jobs, given that they still do most of the domestic labour(Gershuny 2000: 165–7). Other interpretations are also possible (see e.g.Clarkberg and Moen 2001: 1127–9). Obviously, these are issues requiringfurther research.

Policy responses to the findings will need to take account of the strengthof the forces arrayed, so to speak, against work–family or work–life balance.Of paramount importance is policy to regulate working hours, since theseexert the strongest influence by far on negative work-to-home spillover.However, a further and complex policy issue arises from the various ‘high-performance’ practices that have become more prevalent over the past decade,and are now shown to be an additional and independent source ofwork–family spillover. If these practices continue to diffuse, they will lead tofurther work intensification and the creation of more severe pressures onhome life. Some individuals or couples will of course be able to develop alter-native work–lifestyles and walk away from pressurized employment, but ourfindings do not encourage complacency on this score. Too many employeesare constrained in their choices by financial pressures.

Against this opposition, ‘flexible and family-friendly’ practices to promotethe work–life balance look feeble by comparison. Flexible hours systems and personal discretion over time clearly enable employees to have a morebalanced lifestyle, even if these practices are currently enjoyed by only smallproportions of the labour force (22 and 11 per cent, respectively). Men, inparticular, seem to have become increasingly willing to use such practices toreduce spillover, which suggests that there may be a latent demand for suchpolicies among male employees. Yet the effects of such flexible hours policesare small in comparison with the effects of Britain’s long working hours andof steadily diffusing high-performance practices. It is also more disquietingthan comforting to note that by the year 2000 the ability of supervisors to influence negative spillover, for better or worse, had grown; the more sowhen 43 per cent of employees felt that their supervisor did not treat allemployees fairly. When supervisors are increasingly relied upon to intervene,it is a reasonable inference that systems of workplace regulation are failingto cope.

A more fundamental approach would be for employers to look inside eachof their working practices, and seek an improved design that builds in safe-guards for the work–life balance. Work teams, for example, could themselvesbe charged with addressing work–life balance issues when setting outputtargets for their members. This admittedly untried suggestion contrasts withthe prevalent approach, which is to embrace high-performance practices evenif they have adverse consequences, while seeking separate means of damagelimitation such as flexible hours. Practices such as appraisal systems, team-working and performance-related pay need to be reviewed in such a way asto respect and value the diversity of life circumstances and work–life preferences among employees. This is an inherently difficult project, but the



chances for substantially improving the work–life balance in its absence seemslender.

Final version accepted 3 January 2003.

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was financed under Grant no. L212252037 of theESRC Future of Work programme and by the Work Foundation (previouslythe Industrial Society). The survey ‘Working in Britain 2000’ was conductedby NFO System Three Social Research to the project team’s design, underthe direction of Bruce Hayward. We are grateful to the interviewers and tothose who gave of their time for the interview. We would also like to thankthe referees and the editors of this special edition for their comments.

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High-performance’ Management Practices, Working Hours and Work–Life Balance

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