Changing Work and Work-Family Conflict: Evidence from the Work, Family, and Health Network

American Sociological Review
2014, Vol. 79(3) 485 –516
© American Sociological
Association 2014
DOI: 10.1177/0003122414531435
http://asr.sagepub.com
Work-family conflict is increasingly common
among U.S. workers (Jacobs and Gerson
2004; Nomaguchi 2009; Winslow 2005), with
about 70 percent of workers reporting some
interference between work and non-work
(Schieman, Milkie, and Glavin 2009). Work-
family conflict has grown due to increases in
women’s labor force participation (meaning
more households have all adults employed)
and rising expectations for fathers’ involve-
ment in children’s daily care (Nomaguchi
2009). Yet work organizations have not
changed much in response: the institutional-
ized expectation in U.S. workplaces is that
serious, committed, promotable employees
will work full-time (and longer), full-year, on
531435ASRXXX10.1177/0003122414531435AmericanSociologicalReviewKellyetal.2014
Changing Work and Work-
Family Conflict: Evidence
from the Work, Family, and
Health Network
Erin L. Kelly,a Phyllis Moen,a J. Michael Oakes,a
Wen Fan, a Cassandra Okechukwu,b
Kelly D. Davis, c Leslie B. Hammer,d Ellen Ernst Kossek,e
Rosalind Berkowitz King,f Ginger C. Hanson,g
Frank Mierzwa,h and Lynne M. Casperi
Abstract
Schedule control and supervisor support for family and personal life may help employees
manage the work-family interface. Existing data and research designs, however, have made
it difficult to conclusively identify the effects of these work resources. This analysis utilizes
a group-randomized trial in which some units in an information technology workplace were
randomly assigned to participate in an initiative, called STAR, that targeted work practices,
interactions, and expectations by (1) training supervisors on the value of demonstrating
support for employees’ personal lives and (2) prompting employees to reconsider when
and where they work. We find statistically significant, although modest, improvements in
employees’ work-family conflict and family time adequacy, and larger changes in schedule
control and supervisor support for family and personal life. We find no evidence that this
intervention increased work hours or perceived job demands, as might have happened
with increased permeability of work across time and space. Subgroup analyses suggest the
intervention brought greater benefits to employees more vulnerable to work-family conflict.
This study uses a rigorous design to investigate deliberate organizational changes and their
effects on work resources and the work-family interface, advancing our understanding of the
impact of social structures on individual lives.
Keywords
work-family conflict, organizations, experiment, group-randomized trial, schedule control

486 American Sociological Review 79(3)
a schedule determined by the employer, with
no significant breaks in employment (Blair-
Loy 2003, Moen and Roehling 2005, Wil-
liams 2000). Trying to live up to this ideal
creates work-family conflict for employees
who have significant caregiving responsibili-
ties, as well as the growing proportion of
single workers and dual-earning couples who
do not have a partner at home to take care of
all the “little things” that need to be done
(Schieman et al. 2009). The goal of this study
is to assess the effects of an innovative work-
place intervention on work-family conflict
and related work conditions.
Scholars and advocates concerned about
work-family conflict have advocated chang-
ing the social structure of workplaces, that is,
the largely taken-for-granted and mutually
reinforcing practices, interactions, expecta-
tions, policies, and reward systems that reflect
and reinforce the ideal-worker schema (Acker
1990; Albiston 2010; Williams 2000). These
calls recognize the constraining power of
social structures, understood as “mutually
sustaining cultural schemas and sets of
resources” (Sewell 1992:27), but also
acknowledge that agents can, in theory, recon-
figure those structures through changing their
everyday practices, interactions, and the
social meanings attached to them. These theo-
retical precepts inform our understanding of
the sources of work-family conflict, and point
to the possibility for meaningful change
through interventions that address the inter-
related practices, interactions, and meanings
at work in an organization.
This project is also informed by middle-
range theory regarding the work conditions
most relevant to work-family conflict. Guided
by the job demands-resources model (Bakker
and Demerouti 2007), scholars have viewed
flexibility (or schedule control) and support
as key work resources that can reduce work-
family conflict (Schieman et al. 2009; Voy-
danoff 2004). Work resources are the
“physical, psychological, social, or organiza-
tional aspects of the job” that help workers
accomplish their work tasks or reduce the
“physiological or psychological costs” of
work demands (Bakker and Demerouti
2007:312). Schedule control and support are
work resources that ameliorate work-family
conflict because they make it easier to get
work done and offset the stress of feeling
pulled in two directions. 1
Many studies tie schedule control and
supervisor support to work-family conflict
and related outcomes (as we will review), but
the causal claims that can be made are lim-
ited. This study supports stronger causal
claims by conducting a group-randomized
trial in which some work units received an
intervention (i.e., a new workplace initiative
that represents the experimental treatment),
while other units continued with “business as
usual.” We evaluate the effects of this inter-
vention on employees’ schedule control,
supervisors’ support for family and personal
matters as reported by employees, and the
work-family interface. We utilize two waves
of data from employees in the information
technology (IT) division of a U.S. Fortune
aUniversity of Minnesota
b Harvard School of Public Health
cThe Pennsylvania State University
d Portland State University
ePurdue University
fEunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
gKaiser Permanente Center for Health Research
h RTI International
iUniversity of Southern California
Corresponding Author:
Erin L. Kelly, Department of Sociology and Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, 909
Social Sciences, 267 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455
E-mail: [e-mail]

Kelly et al. 487
500 organization; our pseudonym for the
company is TOMO. The intervention is called
STAR, short for “Support. Transform.
Achieve. Results.” STAR aimed to modify
the practices, interactions, and social mean-
ings within this workplace, specifically tar-
geting employees’ control over when and
where they worked and supervisors’ support
for family and personal life, in hopes of
reducing work-family conflict and promoting
employee well-being.
CHANGiNG WORK tO
REDuCE WORK-FAMiLy
CONFLiCt
Previous Research and Its Limitations
Before reviewing empirical studies on the
relationships between schedule control,
supervisor support for family and personal
life, and work-family conflict, we clarify our
understanding of these terms. Because “flex-
ibility” is sometimes used to refer to a man-
agement strategy of easily eliminating
workers or relying on contingent staff, we
prefer the more specific term, “schedule con-
trol,” to refer to employees’ control over the
timing of their work, the number of hours
they work, and the location of their work
(Berg et al. 2004; Kelly et al. 2011; Lyness
et al. 2012; Schieman et al. 2009). Supervisor
support for family and personal life involves
providing emotional support for employees’
work-life challenges, modeling how supervi-
sors themselves handle work-family issues,
looking for creative solutions that meet the
needs of both employees and organizations,
and facilitating employees’ flexible work
practices (Hammer et al. 2009). This form of
support is more closely associated with work-
family conflict than is general supervisor sup-
port when comparing effects in the same
sample (Hammer et al. 2009) or through
meta-analysis (Kossek et al. 2011). We use
the broad terms of work-family interface and
work-family conflict interchangeably to refer
to challenges managing paid work and non-
work and the sense that family time is
squeezed or inadequate. We use the
directional terms (work-to-family conflict
and family-to-work conflict) more specifi-
cally to describe the degree to which role
responsibilities from one domain are per-
ceived as interfering with the other domain
(Greenhaus and Beutell 1985; Netemeyer,
Boles, and McMurrian 1996). Changes in the
work environment may be more salient for
work-to-family conflict, but family-to-work
conflict may decrease as expectations shift
within the workplace (e.g., arriving at work
later due to a school appointment is no longer
experienced as a problem). Note that the mea-
sures of conflict refer to personal life and
family, so they are also salient for individuals
with few family responsibilities.
Many studies have considered the relation-
ship between these work resources and the
work-family interface. Employees who report
more control over their schedules have lower
work-family conflict (Byron 2005; Galinsky,
Bond, and Friedman 1996; Galinsky, Sakai,
and Wigton 2011; Hammer, Allen, and
Grigsby 1997; Kossek, Lautsch, and Eaton
2006; Moen, Kelly, and Huang 2008; Roeters,
Van der Lippe, and Kluwer 2010) and better
work-life balance (Hill et al. 2001; Tausig and
Fenwick 2001). Employees who report more
support from supervisors—particularly with
regard to work-family issues—also report
lower work-family conflict (Allen 2001; Batt
and Valcour 2003; Frone, Yardley, and Mar-
kel 1997; Frye and Breaugh 2004; Hammer
et al. 2009; Kossek et al. 2011; Lapierre and
Allen 2006; Thomas and Ganster 1995;
Thompson, Beauvais, and Lyness 1999) and
believe their organizations to be more helpful
with work-family balance (Berg, Kalleberg,
and Appelbaum 2003).
We identify two concerns regarding this
body of research. First, the vast majority of
these studies are cross-sectional and nonex-
perimental, and so do not fully support causal
claims. These design limitations are serious
because employees have differential access to
schedule control, supervisor support, and
organizational work-family policies, with
clear variation by education and occupational
status (Davis and Kalleberg 2006; Golden
2008; Lyness et al. 2012; Schieman et al.

488 American Sociological Review 79(3)
2009; Swanberg et al. 2011). The apparent
inverse relationship between each resource
and work-family conflict may reflect, at least
in part, the selection of individuals with
higher human and social capital into “good
jobs” with “good employers” (Weeden 2005;
Wharton, Chivers, and Blair-Loy 2008).
Employees who enjoy these work resources
often have higher incomes, higher occupa-
tional status, and perhaps fewer family
demands, because they are more likely to
have spouses who are not employed, fewer
children, financially stable elders, and finan-
cial resources to outsource various “little
things” that need to get done. Some research,
however, finds that employees in these “good
jobs” often work longer hours, face higher job
demands, and invest more psychologically in
their paid work; the “stress of higher status”
helps explain the higher work-to-family con-
flict reported by these employees in some
studies (Schieman et al. 2009; Schieman,
Whitestone, and Van Gundy 2006). Previous
cross-sectional studies examining work-family
conflict generally control for work hours (and
sometimes control for job demands or psy-
chological involvement), but a stronger
design would attempt to manipulate these
work resources while holding work demands
constant, as we do here.
The second concern is that previous stud-
ies do not provide clear guidance on how to
foster these work resources. Research on
common work-life policies finds mixed evi-
dence regarding their effect on schedule con-
trol or supervisor support for family and
personal life (Kelly et al. 2008; Kossek and
Michel 2011). Flextime and telecommuting
policies may be formally available in a given
organization, but employees’ ability to use
these arrangements varies according to their
occupational status and their managers’ pref-
erences or whims (Blair-Loy and Wharton
2002; Eaton 2003). Furthermore, in most
organizations, these flexible work arrange-
ments are treated as individual accommoda-
tions for valued employees (Kelly and Kalev
2006) and often carry career penalties for use
(Glass 2004; Leslie et al. 2012; Wharton et al.
2008). When managers determine access to
flexible work options, employees may not
feel they have much schedule control and
may not experience lower work-family con-
flict (Batt and Valcour 2003; Tausig and Fen-
wick 2001). In light of the mixed evidence on
flextime and telecommuting policies, schol-
ars and practitioners have argued for broader
efforts to move beyond simply putting a new
policy “on the books” (Lewis 1997; Mennino,
Rubin, and Brayfield 2005; Thompson et al.
1999). This study involves a rigorous evalua-
tion of one such effort.
Few workplace interventions have been
made with regard to fostering supervisor sup-
port for family and personal life, and even
fewer have been studied. Management train-
ing is a viable option, but to design appropri-
ate training, scholars first need to identify
which behaviors constitute and convey super-
visor support for family and personal life
(Hammer et al. 2007). Scholars have long
recognized supervisors’ critical role in inter-
preting policies and acting as gatekeepers to
flexible work and family leave policies (Blair-
Loy and Wharton 2002; Hochschild 1997;
Kossek, Barber, and Winters 1999), but only
recently have researchers identified other
dimensions of supervisor support for family
and personal life, such as providing emotional
support, sharing how one handles work-family
challenges, and looking for creative solutions
that meet both employees’ and organizations’
needs (Hammer et al. 2009; Hammer et al.
2007).
Recent Studies of Workplace
Interventions
Building on cross-sectional research, two
recent studies provide the strongest evidence
to date on the possibility of manipulating
schedule control and supervisor support for
family and personal life and the effects of
those changes on the work-family interface.
In a study of the Results Only Work Environ-
ment (ROWE) initiative at the corporate
headquarters of Best Buy Co., Inc., Kelly and
colleagues (2011) found that employees in

Kelly et al. 489
departments participating in ROWE during
the study period saw significantly increased
schedule control and improvements in the
work-family interface, compared to changes
reported by employees in departments that
continued operating in traditional ways.
ROWE employees also had improved health
behaviors (e.g., sleep before work days and
going to the doctor when sick) compared to
employees in traditional departments (Moen
et al. 2011). These findings point to the pos-
sible benefits of broad initiatives targeting
schedule control—as opposed to individually
negotiated flexible work options—but the
study did not involve randomization to “treat-
ment” (instead studying a phased roll-out of
ROWE), and the intervention and control
groups were not fully equivalent at baseline
(Kelly et al. 2011).
Second, Hammer and colleagues (2011)
evaluated an intervention targeting supervi-
sors’ support for family and personal life in
12 grocery store sites. The training described
how supervisors could demonstrate support
for employees’ family and personal lives,
with a self-monitoring activity to help super-
visors practice supportive behaviors. Work-
family conflict was investigated as a
moderator of the intervention effects, rather
than as a primary outcome. Hammer and col-
leagues (2011) found that employees with
high family-to-work conflict at baseline who
worked in stores that received training
reported higher levels of job satisfaction and
physical health and lower turnover intentions
than did similar employees in control stores,
whereas employees who began with low lev-
els of family-to-work conflict reported lower
job satisfaction and physical health and higher
turnover intentions than did similar employ-
ees in control stores. The intervention may
have created a negative backlash among
workers who did not feel company resources
were used to benefit them, and supervisors’
attention to workers with high family-to-work
conflict may have frustrated other employees
(Hammer et al. 2011). This study demon-
strated the value of training supervisors to
express support for family and personal life,
while suggesting that work-family “interven-
tions may be most effective for those most in
need” (Hammer et al. 2011:147).
Contributions
We advance the work-family literature by
investigating an innovative workplace inter-
vention and utilizing a group-randomized
trial (GRT, also called a cluster-randomized
trial or place-based experiment). As we will
describe, we integrated the interventions
reviewed earlier to target both schedule con-
trol and supervisor support for family and
personal life. The intervention aimed to alter
the social environment itself, as experienced
through everyday work practices, interac-
tions, and the social meaning of work pat-
terns. Within the work-family field, almost no
GRTs or other experiments have attempted to
change the social environment. Two impor-
tant exceptions were conducted outside the
United States. First, a recent experiment in a
Chinese call center randomized individuals to
work at home or in the office; researchers
found improved work performance and job
satisfaction and reduced turnover for those
working at home (Bloom et al. 2013). Inter-
estingly, after the experimental period in
which those randomized to work at home
were obligated to do so, employees were able
to choose where they worked and outcomes
improved even more (Bloom et al. 2013),
suggesting the value of increased employee
control. Second, in a group-randomized trial
of self-scheduling among nurses in a Danish
hospital, nurses in the treatment teams
reported greater improvements in work-life
balance, job satisfaction, satisfaction with
hours, and social support than did nurses in
the control condition (Pryce, Albertsen, and
Nielsen 2006).2
This study also has implications well
beyond work-family scholarship and the
study of work organizations and employee
well-being. Sociologists and other social sci-
entists have turned their attention to rand-
omized experiments in conjunction with a
revived commitment to causal inference and

490 American Sociological Review 79(3)
counterfactual thinking (Gangl 2010; Morgan
and Winship 2007; Winship and Morgan
1999). Yet, sociologists have rarely conducted
group-randomized trials—the very experi-
ments that would help identify effects of
social structures or social environments more
conclusively (Cook 2005; Oakes 2004). Some
recent educational research uses GRTs to
examine innovations in schools (e.g., Borman
et al. 2007; Cook, Murphy, and Hunt 2000;
Raudenbush, Martinez, and Spybrook 2007),
and occupational health studies increasingly
involve GRTs (Landsbergis et al. 2011; van
der Klink et al. 2001). Sociologists of work
and organizations have not yet pursued group-
randomized trials to investigate effects of
specific workplace policies or initiatives on
employees and organizations themselves.
In some cases, GRTs involve group rand-
omization simply to achieve “economies of
spatial concentration” (Bloom 2006:120–21).
In these studies, the intervention target is
individual behavior change and randomiza-
tion occurs at the group level primarily for
convenience and ease of intervention deliv-
ery. For example, when workplace-based
smoking cessation interventions randomize at
the workplace level, they do so for ease of
delivering smoking cessation messages to
individuals within a site and to avoid con-
tamination of intervention activities into con-
trol groups (e.g., Okechukwu et al. 2009;
Sorensen et al. 2002). Other GRTs aim to
induce organizational change, such as whole-
school reforms and employer-based initia-
tives that invite change in policies or practices
(Bloom 2006). We employ a GRT design
because randomizing individuals is not appro-
priate for a social intervention, such as STAR,
that targets individual and team practices,
interactions, expectations, and norms.iNtERvENtiON OvERviEW
STAR included (1) supervisory training on
strategies to demonstrate support for employ-
ees’ personal and family lives while also sup-
porting employees’ job performance, and (2)
participatory training sessions to identify new
work practices and processes to increase
employees’ control over work time and focus
on key results, rather than face time. STAR as
implemented in TOMO included eight hours
of participatory sessions for employees (with
managers present) and an additional four
hours for managers. Managers were first ori-
ented to the STAR initiative in a facilitated
training session and then completed a self-
paced, computer-based training lasting about
an hour. The computer-based training
reviewed demographic changes, described
the impact of work-family conflict on busi-
ness outcomes (e.g., turnover and employee
engagement), and claimed that demonstrating
support for subordinates’ personal and family
life could benefit both employees and the
organization. The training reviewed ways
managers could demonstrate “personal sup-
port” and “performance support” and invited
managers to set goals for exhibiting support-
ive behaviors over the coming week. Manag-
ers carried an iPod Touch with an alarm
reminder to log these behaviors. They
received personalized feedback charts
describing which types of supportive behav-
iors they had concentrated on and whether
they had met their goals; the charts also
showed mean scores for other managers in
STAR. This self-monitoring task was intended
to help managers reflect on their own behav-
iors; feedback was delivered individually, and
information was not shared with executives.
A second self-monitoring task was completed
about one month after the first. Managers also
participated in a facilitated training session
specific to supervisors toward the end of the
STAR roll-out; this provided an opportunity
to share what was working well in their teams
and to ask questions of facilitators and peers.
Participatory training sessions attended by
employees and managers prompted discus-
sions of the organization’s expectations of
workers, everyday practices, and company
policies, and encouraged new ways of work-
ing to increase employees’ control over their
work time and demonstrate greater support
for others’ personal obligations. Sessions
were highly scripted and very interactive.

Kelly et al. 491
Structured messages were presented to all,
but participants responded differently to
activities and questions. Facilitators argued
that expectations that everyone work from
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the office do not reflect cur-
rent technologies, employees’ preferences
given their personal obligations, or some
teams’ need to interface with offshore staff.
Facilitators critiqued the assumption that
employees seeking more flexibility were less
committed or productive, instead claiming
that employees would be more engaged in
their work, more responsive to customers’
and co-workers’ needs, and happier if they
had more control over their schedules. Then,
using a variety of role plays and games, par-
ticipants discussed how, when, and where
they would like to work, how they could
coordinate and communicate if hours were
more varied and more employees worked
remotely, and what everyday practices and
interactions would need to change to support
new work patterns. Common changes dis-
cussed were setting up conference call lines
for meetings, clarifying tasks so “face time”
is not used to evaluate productivity or com-
mitment, contacting co-workers by instant
message rather than stopping by their cubi-
cles, and deciding whether a one- or two-hour
break (e.g., a walk or errand during the work
day) needed to be announced to one’s team.
Several work groups reporting to the same
executive participated in each session. This
allowed employees to hear their manager’s
perspective, and vice versa, and exposed them
to other teams’ approaches to these issues.
Although STAR primarily targeted prac-
tices and interactions at the team level, the
intervention aligned these practices with an
existing policy. Company policy required
employees who wanted to work at home rou-
tinely to file a telecommuting agreement that
had to be approved by their manager, director,
and vice president (VP). Employees in STAR
filled out the company’s regular telecommut-
ing agreement, but the whole group was
granted blanket approval by their VP, rather
than the case-by-case approval used before
STAR (and in the usual-practice groups). The
blanket approval was discussed in the first
session and signaled top management’s sup-
port for changes associated with STAR. Later
sessions helped employees and managers
jointly decide how much work at home was
appropriate for different jobs, and how teams
would communicate and coordinate with
more variable schedules and more remote
work.
Compared to most work-family initiatives,
STAR is different in its collective and multi-
level approach. Rather than provide select
employees access to a flexible schedule or
telecommuting based on a manager’s approval
of a request (Blair-Loy and Wharton 2002;
Briscoe and Kellogg 2011), groups of employ-
ees were randomized to STAR. STAR’s
attempt to shift schedule control from manag-
ers to employees facilitated work at home and
variability in work hours (i.e., changed indi-
vidual work practices), but it also changed
interactions at work because employees no
longer asked permission to adjust their sched-
ules or work location. STAR also altered the
social meaning of these work patterns from
being a special “accommodation” that may
signal lesser commitment to being routine
and accepted (Kelly et al. 2010; Kossek et al.
2011). Similarly, the broad effort to encour-
age managers to demonstrate support for
employees’ family and personal lives likely
increased conversations about what was hap-
pening outside of work (i.e., changed interac-
tions), while also encouraging changes in
work practices, such as a manager attending a
meeting for an employee who had an impor-
tant work deadline or family obligation.
These new interactions and practices have
broader social meaning, signaling leader-
ship’s recognition and legitimation of employ-
ees’ lives outside of work.
STAR’s approach is consistent with pio-
neering action research that uses collective
dialogues to reevaluate work processes and
practices in the hopes of advancing both an
organization’s goals and work-life fit (Bailyn
2011; Perlow 1997, 2012; Rapoport et al.
2002). Our experimental design, however,
allows for a more rigorous evaluation of the

492 American Sociological Review 79(3)
initiative than has been possible in those stud-
ies. Moreover, STAR pairs bottom-up changes
identified by employees with structured train-
ing to promote managerial supportiveness.
REsEARCH QuEstiONs
We investigate four broad research questions.
(1) Does STAR increase employees’ schedule
control and their reports of supervisor support
for family and personal life? (2) Does STAR
improve employees’ experience of the work-
family interface? Specifically, does STAR
reduce work-to-family and family-to-work
conflict and increase perceived time adequacy
for family among TOMO employees at a six-
month follow up?
We hypothesize that STAR will increase
schedule control, employees’ perceptions of
their supervisors’ support for family and per-
sonal life, and family time adequacy, and that
STAR will reduce conflict between work and
family in both directions. This expectation is
based on cross-sectional research that finds a
relationship between the intended targets of
STAR—schedule control and family-supportive
supervision—and work-family conflict, as
well as recent studies of similar workplace
interventions. Yet there are several reasons
STAR might have no or very limited effects.
First, STAR critiques past management prac-
tices, such as managers setting schedules,
rewarding “face time” or visibility, and
expecting employees to drop personal con-
cerns while they are at work. Resistance to
these changes might arise from managers and
employees who have built careers under the
old expectations, as has been seen in other
participatory management initiatives (Smith
2001; Vallas 2003). Second, the study of
ROWE in Best Buy found positive effects
(Kelly et al. 2011; Moen et al. 2011), but a
randomized evaluation of a similar initiative
might not find changes in another organiza-
tion. ROWE was “homegrown” within the
company and therefore customized to that
organizational culture and workforce. STAR,
in contrast, was brought into the organization
and delivered by outside consultants. Addi-
tionally, STAR was implemented in TOMO
as a pilot program with the understanding that
top executives were not ready to adopt it
across-the-board. In this study, work units
were randomized to STAR or “usual practice”
conditions. Some employees and mid-level
managers may have believed that executives
above them were not supportive and were
therefore cautious about STAR themselves.
Third, STAR’s manager training component
has not been previously shown to reduce
work-family conflicts; the pilot study in gro-
cery stores evaluated work-family conflict as
a moderator of other work and health out-
comes (Hammer et al. 2011). Finally, during
the course of the study, it was announced that
TOMO would be acquired by another firm
(with the merger finalized after the follow-up
data analyzed here). This reflects the reality
of conducting field experiments, in that all
conditions could not be controlled. The
merger announcement raised questions about
whether the current organizational culture
would be sustained into the future and may
have decreased employees’ investment in
STAR. Employees facing organizational
restructuring often feel that implementing
workplace interventions is unwise (Egan et al.
2007; Olsen et al. 2008).
(3) Does the STAR initiative make condi-
tions worse for employees by increasing their
work hours or job demands? Such unintended
consequences might arise due to increased
permeability of work and non-work across
time and space and the resulting blurring of
work and family roles (Chesley 2005; Glavin
and Schieman 2010; Kelliher and Anderson
2010; Schieman and Glavin 2008). Employ-
ees may gain more control over when and
where they work but simultaneously find
themselves working more or feeling more
pressed at work. Although generally concep-
tualized as a work resource, schedule control
may operate more to intensify work demands
by increasing employees’ exposure to job
pressures (Schieman 2013). This dynamic
may be especially likely in a salaried, profes-
sional workforce like TOMO, where the
employer does not pay overtime (so the
employer has an interest in getting as many
hours of work as possible) and employees’