A holistic perspective on work–family issues

Work–family issues is selected as a central topic by Rudolph etal. (Reference Rudolph, Allan, Clark, Hertel, Hirschi, Kunze, Shockley, Shoss, Sonnentag and Zacher2021) for good reasons, but it remains discussed too much in isolation from other topics. Although the authors point to a connection to the topic of telework, we argue that work–family issues require an even broader scope that considers additional interlinked phenomena that should be studied in concert. Such a multiphenomenon approach should, for example, consider the whole work–life interface including the core family as well as broader social networks and dynamics (e.g., cultural and religious aspects) and their interaction with the work sphere. Furthermore, as COVID-19-related confinement blurs spatial, temporal, and behavioral boundaries and consequently reduces recovery opportunities, work–life interface studies may benefit from integrating insights from the recovery literature to incorporate relevant variables (e.g., recovery activities, recovery experiences, sleep, and well-being indicators). For instance, it could be investigated how daily recovery activities influence the next day’s boundary management strategies via affective and energetic resources. Regarding boundary management, a specific extension from integration versus segmentation preferences (i.e., keeping work and private life separate or combining them, respectively) to more fine-grained behavioral strategies by which boundaries are managed may be necessary to fully understand work–family issues during confinement. Additionally, personality characteristics could be taken into account as predictors of successful adjustment to the new circumstances and as protective factors for preserving mental health in times of high uncertainty, such as during pandemics. Moreover, resources in the family sphere should be considered more extensively, such as family/household resilience, cohesion, and relationship quality. Finally, the extent to which working parents fall back to gendered parent roles during confinement may influence work–family issues. In sum, to gain a holistic understanding of the work–life interface during confinement, research will benefit from building stronger connections to various other phenomena.

In addition to a multiphenomenon approach, work–life interface research now also calls for a multistakeholder perspective. As Rudolph etal. (Reference Rudolph, Allan, Clark, Hertel, Hirschi, Kunze, Shockley, Shoss, Sonnentag and Zacher2021) emphasize the need to understand and combat the effects of COVID-19 on society as a whole, not only workers and their employing organizations should be considered. Employees should be seen as embedded in a social network of different actors including not only their core family but also more distal actors like friends or neighbors. Key stakeholders that should also be acknowledged more extensively in the work–life interface (particularly during confinement and teleworking) are children. Children may be affected by home confinement itself or through potentially harmful aspects of their parents’ work (e.g., infection risks as well as job strain; Eurofound, 2020; Wang etal., Reference Wang, Zhang, Zhao, Zhang and Jiang2020). In line with the multiphenomenon approach proposed, children may drive demands (e.g., well-being related worries) as well as resources (e.g., positive interpersonal interactions) in the private sphere that are inherently relevant to important employee outcomes (i.e., well-being, health, and performance). Thus, spillover (i.e., issues in the private sphere affecting work or viceversa; as also labeled by Rudolph etal.) but also crossover (i.e., issues of one household member spreading to other household members) effects to and from children as potential stakeholders are essential to consider. Other key stakeholders whose relevance is particularly highlighted by the current pandemic can be friends, neighbors, close colleagues, extended family, and other stakeholders in individuals’ network beyond other household members. By not incorporating these additional actors of employees’ social networks, work–family issues cannot be fully understood, particularly during confinement.

More holistic research naturally requires a multimethod approach. The unprecedented nature of the pandemic specifically calls for qualitative studies that are particularly valuable when studying novel phenomena. For example, qualitative studies may provide valuable insights into the psychological processes associated with confinement and forced telework, and they may reveal which types of work–life conflicts employees struggle with the most and why. Qualitative studies may also provide first insights into different kinds of coping strategies individuals have developed to deal with the consequences of confinement, forced telework, or home schooling. Such qualitative studies may then be supplemented with quantitative research into the incidence of such coping strategies and their consequences for well-being or work productivity. Furthermore, quantitative studies should go beyond individual or employee–partner dynamics and should consider interactions between all household members (e.g., parent–child, child–child) or the social network as a whole; for example, the actor–partner interdependence model (Kenny etal., Reference Kenny, Kashy, Cook, Kashy and Cook2006) or extensive social network models that capture the full system’s dynamics (Wasserman & Faust, Reference Wasserman and Faust1994) could be used. Such models facilitate understanding how external changes (e.g., fluctuating infection and mortality rates; changing access to labor, education, and care) affect employees’ social network ties and, consequently, their mental well-being. Additionally, such changes and their strongly interconnected and dynamic consequences across life domains (i.e., health-related, psychological, social, educational, and economic) require ongoing monitoring as situations unfold. For instance, besides assessing how confinement affects employees’ work-related experiences and behavior at a specific moment, these effects should be tracked over time. This allows analyzing individual-level change patterns, revealing who adapts quickly to the new situation and who has difficulties and experiences long-term impairments. The measurement burst design (i.e., repeated bursts of experiences sampling studies over a longer period; Nesselroade, Reference Nesselroade, Downs, Liben and Palermo1991) constitutes a particularly strong design in which, for example, employees’ daily sleep or movement patterns and physiological stress indicators (e.g., heart rate) could be tracked during different degrees of confinement to predict long-term changes in their productivity and health. Finally, social media data (e.g., from Twitter or Facebook) or geolocation data may be harvested to supplement self-report data in identifying changes in employees’ affective experiences and behavioral patterns over time due to the threats of the pandemic itself or confinement measures.

Multidisciplinarity is critical

We have argued that to understand how COVID-19 affects employees, organizations, and society as a whole, research stands to benefit from a holistic approach that considers the interplay among multiple phenomena, multiple stakeholders, and multiple methods. Achieving this is hardly possible if we stay in the comfort zone of our own (sub-)discipline of I-O psychology. Instead, we need to reach out to and collaborate with researchers from other disciplines, both within and outside of the field of psychology. Such multidisciplinary approaches are indispensable when studying a highly dynamic and pervasive phenomenon like the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences for humanity.

As for our example on the work–life interface, links with clinical and developmental psychology are evident. However, apart from the methods used in other disciplines (e.g., qualitative research, social network modeling, big data, and machine learning), we may receive crucial insights from pedagogy (i.e., to understand effects on children), sociology (i.e., to understand gendered parent roles), and labor economics (i.e., to consider long-term effects on employees mental health and labor market functioning). The propositions discussed in this commentary for the work–life interface also generalize to the other areas highlighted by Rudolph etal. (Reference Rudolph, Allan, Clark, Hertel, Hirschi, Kunze, Shockley, Shoss, Sonnentag and Zacher2021). For example, topics related to occupational health and safety in times of pandemics may be tackled more effectively by involving virologists, architects, and engineers. Issues relating to leadership and team dynamics may need additional perspectives from communication science and sociology. Human resource policies and career research may benefit from the expertise of lawyers, labor economists, and political scientists. Only through multidisciplinary research will we be able to understand the complex dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic and design intervention and prevention programs that work. Only through multidisciplinary research will we be able to tackle the societal challenges of our time.