research insights

Dr Grant's PhD measured the impact of remote working on work-life balance, well-being and job effectiveness. Dr Grant's research in this area along with numerous conference papers is published, see below for more detailed information: 

Grant C. A., Wallace, L. M. and Spurgeon, P.C. (2013) An exploration of the psychological factors affecting remote e-worker's job effectiveness, well-being and work-life balance. Employee Relations Vol 35 5 

 

A brief synopsis of the research is given below:

Work-life balance has been widely researched and many validated scales measuring the interaction between work and non-working lives currently exist.  However, existing work-life balance scales do not take account of e-working and are not linked to applied interventions.  Whilst e-working has been linked to productivity gains, the impact of e-working on employees’ well-being and work-life balance has not been measured. The purpose of this research was to develop a unique ework-life balance scale, with ‘actionable’, applied interventions for individuals, supervisors and organisations, which could improve their e-working capability.  The research employed an existing scale of well-being (SF-36v2) alongside the ework-life survey.  Measures of job effectiveness were included in the new scale.

Aims and Objectives

The main aim of the research was to devise a new work-life balance scale in the context of e-working that were ‘actionable’, that is actions derived from the scales can be interpreted as clear interventions that could help individuals, managers and organisations improve e-working effectiveness. Below are the key objectives

• To design and explore the dimensionality, and confirm the reliability and validity of the new scale by using samples from a diverse base of e-workers, including the development and testing of associated recommendations/interventions.
• To utilise the scale to investigate potential associations between e-working, work-life balance, well-being and job effectiveness.

Eleven organisations took part in the research across three sectors, public, private and voluntary.  Twenty-one exemplar e-workers were interviewed and 250 participants responded to an online ework-life survey, which included the newly devised ework-life scale.  In total five studies were completed, using mixed qualitative and quantitative designs.  The classical method was used to develop the ework-life scale which involved interviews, sorting methods, item reduction, checks for reliability, validity and exploratory factor analysis.  Qualitative findings indicated differences in the types of e-workers, their access to technology, ability to work flexibly and individual e-working competencies. 

Differences were not found between genders and e-working effectiveness. Overall, the research found that remote technology provided the ability to manage work-life balance for many participants. However, there were also adverse impacts on well-being, due to over-working and a lack of time for recuperation.

The research has particular implications for those managing remote e-workers and can help to raise awareness of the issues that are sometimes hidden by a lack of visibility.

 

Research interests:

Dr Christine Grant is interested to work with employers and practitioners to pilot the colleagues in testing the ework-life assessment and to develop other measures into work-life balance, particularly related to remote working and competencies and skills. 

Recently her work has also branched out into developing a resiliency competency which may be of interest to employers and practitioners and Christine would be pleased to work with interested organisations. 

Please contact Christine: Christine.grant@coventry.ac.uk to take part in the pilot or to discuss her research.  Christine likes to work collaboratively and would be happy to help with research projects in this field.