Workplace woes do impact personal life

TORONTO - Workplace woes do impact personal life because half the people regularly bring them home, according to a new study.

Researchers measured the extent to which work was interfering with personal time using data from a national survey of 1,800 American workers.

Scott Schieman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto (UT), and his co-authors Melissa Milkie (University of Maryland) and doctoral student Paul Glavin (UT) based their findings on the survey.

They asked participants questions like “how often does your job interfere with your home or family life” or “with your social or leisure activities or “about things going on at work when you are not working?”

“Nearly half of the population reported that these situations occur ’sometimes’ or ‘frequently,’ which is particularly concerning given that the negative health impacts of an imbalance between work life and private life are well-documented,” says Schieman.

People holding college or postgraduate degrees tend to report their work interferes with their personal life more than those with a high school degree.

Professionals tend to report their work interferes with their home life more than people in all other occupational categories.

Several job-related demands predict more work seeping into the home life: interpersonal conflict at work, job insecurity, noxious environments, and high-pressure situations.

However, having control over the pace of one’s own work diminishes the negative effects of high-pressure situations, says a Toronto release.

Several job-related resources also predict more work interference with home life: job authority, job skill level, decision-making latitude, and personal earnings.

These findings appeared in the December issue of the American Sociological Review.