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Work-life flexibility policies (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time, right-to-disconnect, and leaves) are increasingly important to employers as productivity and well-being strategies. However, policies have not lived up to their potential. In this chapter, the authors argue for increased research attention to implementation and work-life intersectionality considerations influencing effectiveness. Drawing on a typology that conceptualizes flexibility policies as offering employees control across five dimensions of the work role boundary (temporal, spatial, size, permeability, and continuity), the authors develop a model identifying the multilevel moderators and mechanisms of boundary control shaping relationships between using flexibility and work and home performance. Next, the authors review this model with an intersectional lens. The authors direct scholars’ attention to growing workforce diversity and increased variation in flexibility policy experiences, particularly for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality, which is defined as having multiple intersecting identities (e.g., gender, caregiving, and race), that are stigmatized, and link to having less access to and/or benefits from societal resources to support managing the work-life interface in a social context. Such an intersectional focus would address the important need to shift work-life and flexibility research from variable to person-centered approaches. The authors identify six research considerations on work-life intersectionality in order to illuminate how traditionally assumed work-life relationships need to be revisited to address growing variation in: access, needs, and preferences for work-life flexibility; work and nonwork experiences; and benefits from using flexibility policies. The authors hope that this chapter will spur a conversation on how the work-life interface and flexibility policy processes and outcomes may increasingly differ for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality compared to those with lower work-life intersectionality in the context of organizational and social systems that may perpetuate growing work-life and job inequality.

Work-life balance (WLB) policies have become a popular topic in both academic literature and organizations. However, previous studies in this area have provided mixed results, and the impact of WLB policies on various indicators of organizational financial performance remains unclear. There has been no comprehensive review that synthesizes the current state of knowledge and indicates future research directions. This review addresses this gap and provides a systematic review of published papers investigating the relationship between WLB policies and organizational financial performance.

The review follows the PRISMA-ScR guidelines for scoping reviews. An analysis of 421 relevant records in Web of Science and Scopus databases identified 22 original empirical studies that focused on the relationship between WLB policies and financial performance at the level of the organization.

Most reviewed studies indicated a weak positive relationship between WLB policies and financial performance. There was the strongest support for the effectiveness of flexible working hours and job sharing, while there was mixed support for the policy of working from home. There were a higher proportion of positive results in studies conducted in Western countries compared to Asian countries, which indicates a potential moderating effect of culture. This review also describes the primary limitations of previous studies, namely, low test power and insufficient evidence about causality.

This review summarizes the growing body of quantitative research on the relationship between WLB policies and organizational financial performance. It presents a model that includes moderators and mediators of this relationship and indicates potentially fruitful areas for future research.

This paper examines an employee's recovery process in the remote-working context. It explores which elements of remote work are energy-consuming for employees and what action they can take to instigate the essential recovery strategy of psychological detachment.

The study adopts a qualitative research approach based on 89 semi-structured interviews with employees working from home with six large corporations from multiple industries. The data were interpreted using thematic analysis.

The study identifies a main theme – the energy-consuming elements of remote work – and three sub-themes: extended working hours, intensive working and reduced social support. Each theme incorporates elements controlled by individuals (internal) and those beyond their control (external). Second, the authors identified strategies that helped individuals to detach from work, and devised four sub-themes, the authors labeled cognitive controlling, physical disconnection from work, time-bound routines and non-work activities.

This is the first study to focus on recovery as a process in the context of remote working, and it contributes to the knowledge of psychological detachment and strategies for recovery and to the literature on contemporary remote working.

The paper aims to understand how the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) influenced public employees' perception of smart working and how this approach was used during the pandemic. The authors asked about smart working's positive and negative aspects and how these changed during the pandemic.

The authors explored the strengths and weaknesses of smart working before and after COVID-19. The authors interviewed 27 Italian public employees who had experienced smart working before the pandemic. The questions and discussion aimed to broadly explore the strengths and weaknesses of smart working and smart working's impact on working performance, work relationships and work–life balance (WLB).

Smart working had a widespread and positive impact on organizational flexibility. Smart working improved the response and resilience of Italian public organizations to the pandemic. However, some critical factors emerged, such as the right to disconnect and the impact on WLB.

The authors suggest that the pandemic exposed the need for public administrations to consolidate work flexibility practices, such as smart working, by paying more attention to the impact of these practices on the whole organization and human resources management (HRM) policies and practices.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature on the public sector by discussing the positive and negative aspects of smart working. The study also provides managerial and policy implications of the use of smart working in public administrations.

This conceptual article outlines the known effects of employee monitoring on employees who are working remotely. Potential implications, as well as practitioner suggestions, are outlined to identify how practitioners can create more supportive employee experiences as well as apply these to workplace health management scenarios.

This overview is based on a selective and practically oriented review of articles that hitherto considered the health implications of remote workers being monitored electronically over the last two years. This overview is subsequently complemented by a discussion of more recent findings that outline the potential implications of monitoring for remote employees, employees' work experience and workplace health management.

Several practitioner-oriented suggestions are outlined that can pave the way to a more supportive employee experience for remote workers, who are monitored electronically by their employers. These include the various health and social interventions, greater managerial awareness about factors that influence well-being and more collaboration with health professionals to design interventions and new workplace policies. Organizations would also benefit from using audits and data analytics from monitoring tools to inform their interventions, while a rethink about work design, as well as organizational reviews of performance and working conditions further represent useful options to identify and set up the right conditions that foster both performance as well as employee well-being.

The article outlines practitioner-oriented suggestions that can directly and indirectly support employee well-being by recognizing the various factors that affect performance and experience.

This paper presents the findings of assessing the strategies required for improved work-life balance (WLB) of construction workers in Eswatini. This was done to improve the work-life relationship of construction workers and, in turn, improve the service delivery of the construction industry in the country.

The study adopted a quantitative research approach using a questionnaire administered to construction professionals in the country. The data gathered were analysed using frequency, percentage, Mann–Whitney U test, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The findings revealed that the level of implementation of WLB initiatives in the Eswatini construction industry is still low. Following the attaining of several model fitness, the study found that the key strategies needed for effective WLB can be classified into four significant components, namely: (1) leave, (2) health and wellness, (3) work flexibility, and; (4) days off/shared work.

The findings offer valuable benefits to construction participants as the adoption of the identified critical strategies can lead to the fulfilment of WLB of the construction workforce and by extension, the construction industry can benefit from better job performance.

This study is the first to assess the strategies needed for improved WLB of construction workers in Eswatini. Furthermore, the study offers a theoretical platform for future discourse on WLB in Eswatini, a country that has not gained significant attention in past WLB literature.

Digitalization and flexibility of workplaces as aspects of new ways of working are associated both positively and negatively with employees’ well-being. However, the mechanisms behind this relationship are not clear yet. We present work intensity as a link between new ways of working and psychological well-being. Furthermore, we address two job resources to alter this association: autonomy and boundary control.

Overall, 1,099 employees of a public administration organization participated in the survey and answered a web-based questionnaire. The organization was in the transition to new ways of working including the introduction of a digital filing system and remote work.

The results of regression analyses provided evidence that flexibility and dissolution of boundaries were positively related to work intensity, which in turn was associated with emotional exhaustion and work engagement. Thus, new ways of working were negatively associated with psychological well-being, mediated by work intensity. Further analyses revealed that the job resources of autonomy and boundary control moderated the relationship between flexibility respectively dissolution of boundaries with work intensity. Thus, these job resources acted as buffering factors and mitigated the association of new ways of working with work intensity.

The results indicated that work intensity could be perceived as a conceptual bridge between new ways of working and psychological well-being providing a promising target variable for the deployment of job resources to preserve employees’ well-being.

Popular media suggests that technological advancement will continue to have a dramatic effect on work, but it is difficult to distinguish between the hype surrounding this and the actual potential impacts. This study examines what the evidence is in relation to the impact of emerging technologies on work and the role of the human resource (HR) function in helping employees and organisations to navigate these changes. Evidence suggests that the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, are being employed by organisations to automate simple and repetitive tasks as well as to make complex decisions quickly and more accurately via predictive algorithms. In addition, emerging technologies are increasingly being used to support the implementation of more flexible working practices such as virtual work and gig work. However, this will present a number of challenges for HR professionals, who will need to help employees to update their skills to compete in the future world of work, and to find ways to address the possible negative effects of increased connectivity and precarious working arrangements on employee wellbeing.

In response to the increasing interest in entrepreneurs' well-being in both the entrepreneurship and management research fields, this study builds and tests a research model on the role of entrepreneurial passion for inventing in work engagement in the context of modern knowledge work. The research argument is built on the job demands–resources model, the most commonly used frame for measuring employee well-being in work and organization psychology. The research setting in this study compares digital entrepreneurs and freelancers with traditional knowledge workers and part-time platform workers in terms of passion and engagement.

Using a quantitative research design, the authors collected data from 349 highly specialized knowledge workers through anonymous questionnaires. The research hypotheses were tested with linear and logit models.

The results show that entrepreneurial passion is positively related to increased job demands and work engagement and that job demands can have a positive effect on work engagement in highly complex knowledge work.

The study contributes to the entrepreneurship literature by expanding the analysis of entrepreneurial passion outside the entrepreneurship context and into work engagement theory by adding passion for inventing as an important motivational factor in modern knowledge work. Extant literature on the consequences of work digitalization is still scarce, and this study provides insights into successful working on digital platforms.

The purpose of this paper is to enrich the HRM literature on freelancers’ work–life balance. To do so, we investigate the difference in freelance and employed journalists’ work–life balance and the moderating role of work-scheduling autonomy, job-income security and collegial informational support, drawing on a theory novel to the HRM literature, that is, the Stress of Higher Status Theory.

Data were collected with a survey questionnaire that was administered to a sample of 1,166 journalists, including 118 freelancers, in Norway in 2021. We analysed this data using a stepwise regression analysis.

We report three main findings: First, we find evidence indicating that freelance journalists have less work–life balance than employed journalists. Second, our results provide support for the Stress of Higher Status Theory and testify to the relevance this theory has for high-skill workers. Third, only collegial support significantly (positively) moderates freelancers’ work–life balance.

This study adds to the existing literature on freelancing and work–life balance, demonstrating that individuals’ work arrangements have the potential to shape their work facets and work–life balance. The theoretical and practical implications of this are discussed.