It Was the Best of Times;It Was the Worst of Times

Abstract

The importance of work–life balance has increased dramatically in recent years. Hyperconnected employees are struggling to balance the “spillover” between internal work and external life demands. We questioned whether there was a difference in organizationally supported work–life balance at Fortune Magazine’s “Best Places to Work For” versus Wall St. 24/7’s “Worst Places to Work.” We analyzed 1,100 unsolicited, open-ended employee reviews from a major career web site and conducted a contextual analysis of the differences between the “best” and “worst” places to work. Our findings show clear differences in the time benefits offered and governance structures used to support these benefits. Our findings also reveal that employees today are not seeking “balance.” Instead, they are seeking “work–life flexibility,” a new, complex way of looking at the employee today. Findings are discussed and implications for work–life flexibility are provided.

Keywords

work–family conflict/management work–life conflict/management qualitative research content analysis

Introduction

You are about to sit down to dinner with family. Your phone begins ringing. Your spouse shoots you a look that says “don’t answer that.” However, you want to appear available, helpful, and competent, so you take the call in another room, leaving your place at the table. You are at work, and you receive a text from your daughter’s school—she is sick and needs picked up. Can you be there in 30 min? On the way, there your Facebook messenger tone sounds—probably someone from your intramural basketball team trying to finalize your availability for the weekend.

Sound familiar? This constant overlap of our various obligations is the new normal. Aided by developments in technology, today’s employees can “tune in” to multiple life facets simultaneously. As organizational researchers, we are only beginning to understand the need to extend previous work–life balance research as the complexities of our obligations grow and often collide with each other (e.g., MacCormick, Dery, & Kolb, 2012). The purpose of this study is to analyze what the “best” and “worst” companies do differently in terms of this increased complexity, and to assess the accompanying employee reactions. Furthermore, we seek broader theory that better accounts for the frictions underlying the various life facets of today’s employee. In sum, we contribute to the existing work–life balance literature using the notion of hyperconnectivity to explain that balance suggests a state of being that is no longer attainable. Instead, we introduce the term work–life flexibility as a more accurate assessment of the phenomenon and propose complex systems theory as an alternative framework for the work–life balance literature.

When Time Collides: “Balance” and Hyperconnectivity

More than 60 years ago, it was thought that work and life should be completely separate. In fact, the thought of the two merging was believed to be absurd (Dubin, 1956). Research on the merging of work and life gained momentum in the seventies and eighties as more women took prominent roles in the workplace (Crouter, 1984). Practitioners and researchers alike began seeing the effects of the growing role conflict among employees between their work roles and the various roles outside work (Beutell & Greenhaus, 1982; Burke, Weir, & Duwors, 1980; Kopelman, Greenhaus, & Connolly, 1983; Locksley, 1980; Pleck, Staines, & Lang, 1980). In looking for a solution, many suggested that the conflict between home and work would reach a better balance if work schedules were more flexible (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Research-backed benefits such as job sharing, employee-assistance programs, and child/elderly care began to garner attention (Cascio, 1998; Hobson, Delunas, & Kesic, 2001; Marshall & Barnett, 1994). By 2004, approximately 28% or more than 30 million U.S. employees had the ability to manipulate workday start and end times. The percentage is believed to be far greater when additional flexible time such as personal time, flex time, vacations, and unpaid leave are taken into account (Gangwisch, 2014; U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005). Although flexible schedules and other life assistance benefits are certainly important in helping with balance, balance itself is in the eye of the smartphone holder.

Smartphones, laptops, and other portable communication devices have exacerbated the work–life balance issue. Employees cannot seem to go through a workday without staying connected to the outside world (D’Abate, 2005), but the definition of “outside world” seems to be the cause of concern. The outside world seems to be defined as whatever world of which the employee is not currently a part. Thus, being constantly connected to the outside world while in the workplace can be seen as a big problem, but the reverse is also true. As employees leave work and return to their “outside” lives, they are bringing work with them. This “job creep” (MacCormick et al., 2012) occurs when a person’s job spills over into other portions of life. Modern technology has made “job creep” the norm. In a study conducted by Neverfail in 2012, 83% of professionals reported checking their email after leaving work, and 66% bring work with them on vacation. More than 50% read emails during meals with family and friends (Flipping the Switch, 2012). Constant access to work can result in excessively engaged employees who are more likely to burnout, defined here as experiencing extreme emotional, physical, and cognitive exhaustion, than those who have a recovery period from work tasks (Schaufeli, Leiter, & Maslach, 2009; Trougakos, Beal, Green, & Weiss, 2008).

It seems when life encroached upon work, that work encroached back on life. And yet a third piece of this topic is the oft neglected “other” obligations employees face—to friends, volunteer groups, and so on . . . The constant thread in all of these anecdotes is the simultaneous access the employee has to all facets of life, a concept known in the information technology literature as hyperconnectivity.

Hyperconnectivity refers to the various means of communication and interaction available to individuals today, as well as the impact of these means on personal and organizational behavior (Fredette, Marom, Steiner, & Witters, 2012). Attributes of hyperconnectivity include (a) always on—technological advances in the form of broadband Internet and mobile devices allow individuals to be connected to everything, all the time; (b) readily accessible—the size of technology has shrunk such that individuals now hold maximum computing power in the palm of their hands; (c) information rich—round-the-clock news, “live feeds,” and the like create a culture in which one can never be completely knowledgeable—there is always some new information to be gained by being connected; (d) interactive—individuals can now offer their opinions on everything from the banal to the controversial; (e) not just about people—machine-to-machine communication has created an environment in which devices can be linked; and (f) always recording—individuals now have the opportunity to document their lives, and the lives of anyone they wish, daily (Fredette et al., 2012). Hyperconnectivity is increasingly cultivated by the presence of Millennials in the workplace. The first generation to grow up in a hyperconnected environment, they expect constant connections with their coworkers, colleagues, families, and the like (Fredette et al., 2012).

Organizational Response

The organization’s response to hyperconnectivity will play an important role in individual-level outcomes such as emotional labor (Hochschild, 1979), performance, and job satisfaction (Grandey, 2000; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989), as well as organizational-level outcomes such as recruitment and retention, strategic goal setting, and profit.

Research to date has focused on how organizations can curtail hyperconnected behaviors in the workplace, as they constitute an ethical violation tantamount to theft of time on the part of employees and may have dangerous repercussions (cf. Young, & Case, 2004; Greengard, 2000; Stanko & Beckman, 2015). This was the subject of a study by D’Abate (2005), whose qualitative results suggested 77% of employees make personal calls at work, 67% send and receive personal emails, 30% make personal appointments during work time, 27% pay personal bills, and another 27% are planning weddings, errands, and vacations at work as well as entertaining family that stops in for a visit! The technological advances prevalent in today’s workforce make such activities possible.

Other organizations may allow the connectivity with efforts to help employees manage it. Research in this area includes support for the strategic provision of resources to employees to allow them to fulfill personal obligations (Kirchmeyer, 1995), specific recommendations for increased supervisor support (Blanch & Aluja, 2012), enhanced employee–employer communication (Clark, 2000), and strategic efforts by senior management to model and reward functional forms of work engagement (MacCormick et al., 2012).

In sum, although previous research has well-established issues of “spillover” and current research has begun to examine spillover’s reciprocal effect on time at home, discussions of the work–life merger more generally neglect two issues the current study attempts to address. First, what do employees report as valuable in managing their multiple obligations? Second, to our knowledge, no studies exist that analyze anonymous third-party data in an attempt to understand what employees value in helping to navigate their different obligations, in their own words and without the threat of social desirability bias or predefined scale items. This is important because reporting anxiety is reduced when the report is anonymous increasing the likelihood of an accurate report being made (Ayers & Kaplan, 2005; Kaplan & Schultz, 2007). Also, predefined scale items limit the range of response someone might normally give if they could express themselves regarding what is most important to them.

We sought answers to both of these gaps in the form of a qualitative analysis of anonymous online employee reviews—what are the “best” companies doing differently from the “worst” companies with regard to an employee’s countless obligations? The purpose of this qualitative research is to better understand today’s hyperconnected employee by considering what employees expect from their organizations. This will extend the existing work–life balance literature by providing a better understanding of the employee of today. Specifically, this study provides researchers an alternative theoretical framework for scholarship in the work–life field while exploring the practical challenges and rewards of operating in today’s hyperconnected organizational contexts.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows. First, we describe the content analysis software used, including its relevance to this qualitative research as well as its previous uses in the literature. Next, we outline the text samples selected for analysis. Based on our results, we identify emergent themes and explain how these themes suggest a more appropriate extension of work–life “balance” to work–life “flexibility.” Finally, we discuss implications of our findings for the organization as well as the individual, and conclude with directions for future research.

Method

We chose to undertake a qualitative analysis of work–life complexity in part because of the novelty of the context. If hyperconnectivity is indeed changing the very way we conceptualize notions of “work,” “life,” and “balance,” it is important to capture accounts of these changes in a pure, participant-driven form. This “thick description” (Geertz, 1973; Ponterotto, 2006; Ryle, 1949) allows us to give voice to our participants by analyzing employees’ own accounts of their organizations. Furthermore, the work–life literature has been criticized for an overemphasis on empirical work with only moderately correlated results (Grzywacz & Marks, 2000), suggesting that perhaps a fuller analysis warrants a qualitative method. We selected Leximancer as a qualitative analysis tool to assist in generating themes from the data.

Leximancer is a content analysis software used by several recent publications in notable journals for the use of analyzing written text for meaning and identifying key concepts (S. Chen & Bouvain, 2009; Gapp, Fisher, & Kobayashi, 2008; Kabanoff & Brown, 2008; Wilden, Devinney, & Dowling, 2013). For example, S. Chen and Bouvain (2009) used Leximancer to compare communications between several companies and the world regarding their corporate social responsibility. In a similar setting, we chose Leximancer because of its formulaic technique for analyzing and visualizing complex textual data between employees from various companies. The algorithm analyzes word frequencies, connections, and co-occurrences among words and phrases (Smith & Humphreys, 2006). It then produces a visual depiction of the conceptual and relational text analysis in the form of a concept map. In our case, this concept map will allow us to analyze common text themes used by employee reviewers in our sample (Wilden et al., 2013).

Leximancer has a number of strengths over other content analysis software. First, Leximancer does not require a consistent string of words to appear in the text to identify themes (e.g., “a great perk was . . . “); instead, Leximancer’s algorithm “reads” the text and identifies the relevant concepts, allowing for an automated coding process (Cretchley, Rooney, & Gallois, 2010). Second, Leximancer demonstrates its reliability through its stability. This feature is attributable to Leximancer’s unique algorithm. The consistency of this algorithm allows for replication when the same parameters are in place (Cretchley et al., 2010; Smith & Humphreys, 2006). This means future researchers could easily reproduce our concept map, given the parameters we used to generate it. Such ease of use can help avoid problems of expectation biases possible in manual coding techniques, such as those associated with intercoder reliability (Smith & Humphreys, 2006; Wilden et al., 2013).

The concept map consists of circles representing themes drawn from the analyzed text. The darker the circle, the more important, or more discussed, the theme. The closer the circles are to each other, the more related the themes. Those that are not touching and far apart represent themes discussed separate from each other. Those that are overlapping represent themes that were sometimes discussed together. Inside the theme circles are relevant concepts. The proximity of two concepts shows a semantic link to one another (Campbell, Pitt, Parent, & Berthon, 2011; Smith & Humphreys, 2006). The amount of themes and concepts that appear on a map can be numerous. Leximancer provides a sliding scale allowing users to view only a specified percentage of the results. For our study, we set both the theme and concept scales to 50%. This setting indicated to Leximancer that we only wished to see the top 50% of the themes and concepts. Reducing the amount of themes and concepts allows for a less cluttered view and the ability to focus on the top themes and concepts discussed in the text.

Once the reviews were uploaded, a few parameters were adjusted to account for study relevance. For example, original results produced themes and concepts centered on words that were not employee-provided words or useful to our study. These words were names of companies or parts of the review that were not written by the reviewer (e.g., the words “helpful” and “review” in “Did you find this review helpful?” that were listed after every review). We removed those words to prevent them from distracting from the employee’s actual review. Next, we combined words that were used in similar ways (employed, employment; employee, employees; learn, learning, learned; boss, supervisor, supervisors; etc.). This provided us with a Leximancer dictionary that would be used to develop themes and concepts when searching through the more than 1,100 reviews comprising more than 80,000 words.

As with any archive data, it is possible that manipulation might occur. We do not feel this influences the data for two reasons. First, it was a third party that identified the best and worst companies. The motive for Indeed.com participants to praise or degrade the company is low as no harm or benefit will come to the company or the employee because of their comment. Second, the point of our study was not to analyze gossip, but the existence of a work–life “balance” culture. Thus, we felt the risk of data manipulation was minimal for this study.

“Best” and “Worst” Companies to Work for

Sample Selection

Several decisions had to be made during the data-gathering process. The authors randomly selected five of the “best” and “worst” workplaces appearing on “Fortune’s Best Companies 2014” and “24/7 Wall St.’s 2014 Worst Places to Work,” respectively. However, following initial data gathering, it became apparent that more complex data decisions would have to be made. The five randomly selected “best” places to work only provided 375 reviews, and 81% of those came from three companies widely known for having excellent perks (Google, Edward Jones, and Quicken). Therefore, the decision was made to cast a wider net to avoid an unfair skewing of the results centered on the aforementioned companies. Two additional companies were randomly selected (Salesforce.com and Intuit) and added to the data, bringing the total number of reviews from seven companies to 479. This reduced the overrepresentation of Google, Edward Jones, and Quicken by 19%, which we believe provides a better sample.

Next, the authors assessed the textual data from the five worst places to work and discovered that these reviews totaled 706. None of the companies on the list was known by the researchers as being particularly horrible or great, and the reviews were fairly evenly dispersed among the three companies. The five unused companies on the list were also retail companies; we did not feel that adding additional companies would add to the data. Therefore, we moved forward with seven companies from the best places to work and five companies from the worst places to work.

Sample Characteristics

Our final sample consisted of 100% of the 2014 Indeed.com reviews for seven of the top 10 companies listed in the “Fortune’s Best Companies 2014” (N = 479). Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work for in America” has been used in management studies for many years. Employees from selected companies are asked to fill out a 55-item attitude survey called the Great Place to Work® Trust Index©. This index measures respect, camaraderie, fairness, pride, management, and other attitudes in the workplace. This comprises two thirds of their score. The remaining one third of the score is derived from a second survey measuring the benefits, training, recognition programs, and so on. Surveys are completed yearly. The companies from the list that were randomly selected for this review included Google, SAS, Edward Jones, Quicken Loans, Genentech, Salesforce.com, and Intuit. Table 1 provides a detailed description of these companies.

Table 1.

2014 Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For.

No.	Company	Rank	Founded	Industry	Employees	Sector
1	Google	1	1998	Media	42,162	Public
2	SAS	2	1976	IT-software	13,884	Private
3	Edward Jones	4	1922	Financial services—Investments	39,932	Private
4	Quicken Loans	5	1985	Financial services—Banking	8,386	Private
5	Genentech	6	1976	Biotechnology	12,010	Private
6	Salesforce.com	7	1999	IT	10,298	Public
7	Intuit	8	1983	IT-software	8,925	Public

Textual data were collected from open-ended reviews created by employees on Indeed.com. Collecting online reviews for analysis is a common practice in the hotel-, restaurant-, and tourism-management fields (e.g., Chatterjee, 2001; Duan, Gu, & Whinston, 2008; Ye, Law, & Gu, 2009). We reason that seeking out independent, open-ended, and anonymous reviews should enhance the integrity of the data, as these reviews are neither solicited by the company nor part of the consideration process Fortune uses in selecting its “Best Companies to Work For.” In addition, Indeed.com is currently the Number 1 job site in the world with more than 140 million average monthly users (according to the Indeed.com press room) and has an extensive collection of current reviews for nearly every company on the Fortune 500 list.

Analyzed following the same criteria as above, we next looked at 706 reviews from “24/7 Wall St.’s 2014 Worst Places to Work” list (Frohlich, & McIntyre, 2014). This list was created by reviewing the Glassdoor.com reviews of the Fortune 500 companies with the worst reviews. The “Worst Places to Work” list has received a tremendous amount of attention and is often republished in such widely read publications as Time, Huffington Post, Fox News, and Yahoo! Finance. A description of these companies can be found in Table 2.

Table 2.

2014 Wall St. 24/7’s America’s Worst Companies to Work for.

No.	Company	Rank	Founded	Industry	Employees	Sector
1	Children’s Place	10	1989	Apparel retail	16,500	Public
2	Family Dollar	9	1959	Discount retail	58,000	Public
3	hhgregg	8	1955	Electronics retail	6,100	Public
4	ADT	7	1874	Security and alarm services	17,000	Public
5	Books-A-Million	1	1917	Specialty retail	5,400	Public

Before we proceed, it is important to highlight the differences between the companies. Those in the top places to work are mostly tech companies. Those in the worst places to work are mainly retail. Although this difference may signal possible discrepancies in analysis, we argue that the differences further aids in the generalizability of our analysis. Professional employees are not the only ones in need of work–life improvements. In fact, it may be that retail hourly employees are in more need of work–life improvements than their higher skilled counterparts, as hourly employees are often attempting to balance more than one job along with their other life demands (M. Chen, 2014; Villano, 2011). Furthermore, hourly jobs still expect their employees to be available to cover for sick employees or to stay late if the retail location is busy. Hourly management is expected to stay late and work long hours to “get ahead” in the organization (Zemke, Raines, & Filipczak, 2000). Therefore, we acknowledge the different industries represented in our sample, but argue that this could also be considered a strength of our analysis.

In conducting a contextual analysis, we used Leximancer to identify the dominant themes and concepts in both the best and worst places to work. We then referred back to the data frequently for further understanding of the significance of the Leximancer results. In comparing the two Leximancer mappings and through an extensive analysis of the reviews, two major differences stood out as obvious distinctions between the best and worst companies to work for: time benefits and work–life governance structures. We discuss each of these in turn below.

Results

Time-Benefits

In the Leximancer mappings (Figures 1 and 2), the circles represent the major themes with the dots representing major concepts within the themes. The darker the circle, the more prevalent the theme. The line connecting the concepts represents the concept mapping or the way the message unfolds. To conduct the analysis, we first used the mappings as a guide, then referred back to the actual reviews to verify our findings. For example, in Figure 2, the dots and corresponding terms represent reviews from the worst places to work report management as a major theme. Inside the management theme, we see that when people discussed management, they also tended to discuss their week, then their hours followed by their pay. In other words, employees at the worst places to work tend to link their pay to the hours they worked each week, as assigned to them by management. In another example, Figure 1 with the “best” places to work speaks about management as well, but instead of being linked to hours and pay, it is linked to team and team is linked to work. In these reviews, most people discussing management referred to the management team instead of just their manger and how the team worked together to accomplish a task.

Figure 1.

Leximancer analysis of “Fortune’s Best Companies 2014” 2014 Indeed.com reviews.

Figure 2.

Leximancer analysis of the reviews of the “2014 Worst Companies to Work For . . . ”

Immediately we noticed a major difference between the “best” and “worst” companies in the provision of employee benefits. The best places to work had a theme dedicated to benefits, and it was one of the darkest circles indicating a more prevalent theme. The worst places to work did not mention benefits as a theme or a relevant concept. It is missing from the discussion. This is a significant finding because were the word benefits or anything related to be used frequently, then it would appear as its own separate theme or at least a concept. Instead, we see that it is not even common for employees at the worst companies to consider.

Company-provided benefits have been discussed frequently in management research (Edwards, 2001; Kossek, Pichler, Bodner, & Hammer, 2011). In the late 1980s, with the increase of women in the workplace and dual income families, many companies began to focus on making their organizations more family-friendly (Robbins, & Judge, 2015). Many on-site benefits began to show up in the workplace including gyms, child care, and on-site laundry facilities (Rapoport, Bailyn, Fletcher, & Pruitt, 2002). Studies have found that offering benefits increases overall workplace satisfaction and commitment (Maertz & Boyar, 2011), which has been linked to higher performance, a decrease in intent to quit, and an increase in organizational citizenship behavior (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002). Further to this point, a recent meta-analysis found that it is not necessarily the type of benefits that are offered but rather the number of benefits as employees are not likely to utilize every benefit offered to them (Butts, Casper, & Yang, 2013). Our analysis found benefits to be one of the main themes throughout the reviews from the “Best Places to Work.” The word “benefits” could be applied to many different organization-provided benefits, but further analysis discovered that more than 80% of the findings were referring to their time benefits or, as the reviewers commonly called them, “perks.”

It was very hard work, but there were many perks and activities to enjoy that made corporate America a more tolerable environment.

. . . beautiful campus . . . all the perks . . .

. . . great perks! Great work/life balance.

Food was the most mentioned time benefit. Comments such as “lunch every Monday and breakfast every day” or “They bring in breakfast, lunch and dinner” were extremely common, mentioned in more than 25% of the reviews. There are two possible reasons for the inclusion of this as an important sub-finding within this theme. First, there are savings to the employee associated with organization-provided food. According to Forbes (Touryalai, 2013), the typical American spends an average of $1,000 a year on lunch. Second, simply feeling as if they have “permission” to eat readily accessible food may be important. More than 65% of employees either take a hurried lunch at their desks or do not take lunch at all (Bresiger, 2014). Many employees feel that not taking lunch signals to colleagues that they are serious about their jobs (Bresiger, 2014; Tahmincioglu, 2012). Two thirds of American employees are working more hours than scheduled to keep up with increasing job demands (Aarons-Mele, 2014). In fact, “control your time” has more than 200,000,000 more mentions than “make more money” on Google (Aarons-Mele, 2014). Increased work pressures combined with the hyperconnected employee’s ability to connect to work outside normal operating hours increase the social strains on employees to keep up with non-work relationships and responsibilities. Today, time is one of the most crucial resources a person has (Aarons-Mele, 2014; Bresiger, 2014; Pappas, 2012; Tahmincioglu, 2012; Touryalai, 2013). Free, on-site meals not only allow employees to save a little more of their paychecks but also allows them the freedom to quickly grab something to eat without sacrificing valuable work time to leave to get food or time at home preparing food to bring. Should additional late hours be needed, employees do not need to spend the time leaving campus to buy food. Food is provided for them just a short walk away. “ . . . free food all over the office, snack breaks encouraged . . . ”

Many other time benefits were mentioned. Free Internet usage was mentioned as an excellent way to stay connected to the outside world, pay bills, check personal email, or even plan a family event (D’Abate, 2005). Other benefits help reduce the stress of a busy work commute: “[company provided] bus transportation is great to have in the heavy-traffic Bay Area . . . ” Some benefits promote physical and social wellness where employees are able to stay active and interact with their colleagues at a level that is different from their workplace: “ . . . free food, gyms, basketball courts, ping pong tables, pool tables, etc.” “Very fun workplace with game room and ping pong tables.” One company even had employees who mentioned perks that helped accomplish common household chores. “ . . . laundry mats . . . for free and much more.” All of these time benefits are enjoyed by employees at the best places to work but are non-existent in the worst places to work.

In the worst places to work, benefits were only mentioned in 7% of the employee reviews. Those that did mention benefits largely mentioned the lack of benefits provided by these companies. The only “perk” that was specifically mentioned was related to merchandise such as discounts or the ability to check out books.

Overall, time benefits have been linked to enhanced job satisfaction, commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior while mitigating quitting intentions, stress, and work–family conflicts (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990; Meyer et al., 2002). Employees at the best places to work appreciated the benefits that the company provided to them. Relatedly, the second theme to emerge from our analysis dealt with the need for supportive management in the form of work–life governance to ensure the creation and facilitation of these time benefits.

Governance: Policies and Management

Attention to work–life balance issues has increased in the past 30 years. In the late 1980s, many organizations began restructuring their governance policies to accommodate working parents (Edwards, 2001; Harrington, Van Deusen, & Humberd, 2011; Kossek et al., 2011). These policies include flex time, work-from-home structures, accommodating schedules for school, family events, and an understanding and supportive management. Such policies have been linked to positive attitudes in the workplace (Butts et al., 2013). Positive attitudes in the workplace have in turn been linked to contextual performance behaviors (Staw, Sutton, & Pelled, 1994) and positive organizational change (Avey, Wernsing, & Luthans, 2008).

Employees at “The Best Places to Work” favorably reviewed the work–life policies existing in their workplaces. These included company-scheduling policies that allowed employees to choose their schedules or be flexible with their time. One employee stated his or her appreciation for their policies by noting, “They promote work and life balance without compromising the organization’s goals and objectives.” Another stated, “They really understand life/work balance . . . they allow you to have a life outside of work.” This was a very common theme in the data from the best places to work.

Employees from the worst places to work struggled to find nice things to say regarding their companies’ work–life policies. The only policy mentioned was flex time. In 21 reviews mentioning this benefit, 20 employees from one company noted the presence of flex time. The more frequent mention of time was as a source of contention, with employees commenting, “ . . . work–life balance is a joke most of the time . . . ” Employees had too few hours, had too many hours, or were given a schedule that was either not followed or they were asked to stay and work more hours than they had planned. When employees did not receive enough hours or were given too many hours, or when managers failed to follow the scheduled number of hours, employees responded negatively in their company reviews. Some mentioned the need for consistent hours for income purposes, whereas others mentioned too many hours as impeding on their external lives.

This is not a job when a lead manager can only get 15 hours a week, how are we supposed to survive on that and put food on the table and pay bills.

The worst part of the job is the work hours. 4 hr shifts, changing every week, working a lot of holidays. The first store I worked at was in a mall so the hours were a lot of times late at night, working as late as 1 am sometimes.

This company barely gave you any hours. No health benefits unless FT but no FT available.

Although a seemingly trivial issue, scheduling appears to be an important indicator of perceived social support from management.

Social support from management has been a topic of research in recent studies (Ellström & Ellström, 2014; Kossek et al., 2011). It is increasingly important for employees to feel that they are receiving social, work–life support from their managers (Emhan, 2012). When employees feel support from their managers, they perform better and are more loyal to their organizations (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002; Walumbwa, Cropanzano, & Goldman, 2011). In addition, many employees view actions taken by management to be actions by the organization itself (Levinson, 1965). With these points in mind, it is crucial that managers support existing work–life policies. Those at the best companies felt that most of their managers and policies supported their lifestyles.

Moreover, management at top companies to work for was frequently discussed as supportive and available to teach, coach, and guide as necessary. Many found their management to be “completely down to earth” and “very upbeat and supportive.” In fact, roughly 25% of the reviews mentioned management, most of them noting a very supportive managerial structure.

In stark contrast to the “Best Places to Work,” employees at the “Worst Places to Work” mentioned management in a negative matter more than 60% of the time. Regardless of the issue, management representatives at the worst places to work were perceived as unapproachable and difficult to work with. Comments such as “The two-faced District Manager hired this slob of a manager with zero people skills to ‘run’ the store, but mostly had a bad attitude,” or “24/7 verbal abuse even sexually assaulted a coworker” were not present in the best places to work. Several comments were directly related to scheduling issues: “Manager will abuse her power over the schedule and make changes to it to suit her personal needs without informing the other employees, especially those affected by the changes.” These negative experiences continue to cause conflict outside work. Such work–family conflict can be very difficult to resolve and often requires additional time and energy (Bacharach, Bamberger, & Conley, 1991; Ilies et al., 2007), which takes away time and energy that could be spent in other non-work areas.

Interesting to note was the interaction of poor management with time benefits. Even the best places to work had a few employees dissatisfied with management. When management failed, the reviewers still rated the company positively frequently mentioning the company provided time benefits: “Great work–life balance, perks and benefits . . . Not very strong management . . . A lot of duplication in work . . . ,” “ . . . so-so compensation . . . not the best management . . . management takes a long time to make decisions . . . However, the work–life balance is fantastic . . . ” The interaction between time benefits and poor management is interesting because organizational policies aimed at helping hyperconnected employees successfully manage both their personal and professional lives appear to mitigate managerial flaws. Alternatively, poor management seems to drive the conversation at the worst places to work. It seems that the only other thing to buffer the negative effects of poor management is the excellent people they work with, but even that does not seem to improve the tone of the review, based on our analyses. Figure 3 contains example text from both the best places and worst places to work that complained about management. Employees at both companies feel an injustice, but it does not seem to affect those at the best companies as much.

Figure 3.

Excerpts from employee reviews.

Companies at the “Best Places to Work” seem to excel in helping employees manage their hyperconnected, complex lives. In particular, these organizations provide benefits and a governance structure that supports the merger of the home–work interface. Supportive management works with employees and issues as they come up and assists in developing their employees to be successful in the workplace. In exchange, employees are loyal and are some of the biggest fans of their companies. They provide unsolicited and unrewarded positive reviews of their companies to one of the most used employment websites in the world.

More generally speaking, our findings suggest that many of the policies implemented in the late 1980s and early 1990s aimed at “balancing” work and life remain important to today’s employees, but for a different reason. Recent technological advances have altogether removed the work–life barrier. Thus, discussions of “balance” can be extended to consider how today’s hyperconnected employees seek policies and a management structure that support a new, “flexible” lifestyle. This merging of life and work is explored in more detail below.

Discussion: The Work–Life Merger and Complex Systems Thinking

Our research contains the tale of two types of companies. Both types need to make a profit. Both need employees to make that profit. Both want the employees to work more hours, but the best companies to work at provide ways to get them to stay longer and continue their work even from home. The worst companies to work for seem to demand more time without providing benefits to employees to help them organize their lives to provide more time. The issue of time encompasses both hourly and salary employees. Both types of employees are trying to satisfy the demands of both work and life. Turns out work and life are extremely competitive with one another. Although setting boundaries between the two helps manage the competition, in today’s time, achieving a “balance” is not as possible as it was before.

The overall resultant theme that comes from this analysis of employee reviews is that the relationships among work, life, and the employee are extremely complex. As previously mentioned, controlling time has 200,000,000 more searches on Google than “make more money.” The issue is not balancing time and giving equal amounts to every piece of the complex puzzle, but being able to control it, allotting the necessary amounts to satisfy the demands as needed and when needed. These constant time demands on an employee can be a major burden to bear. Contributors to such complexity include work, family, and social networks, each demanding time and energy from the employee to remain active. Time benefits and governance help to alleviate the external work pressure caused by these complexity contributors, but how possible is work–life balance?

One of the main problems in work–life balance research is that there is no generally agreed upon definition of work–life balance. The problem stems mainly from the keyword “balance.” The definition of balance is not agreed upon, and even if it were, it would be very difficult to measure (Greenhaus, Collins, & Shaw, 2003). All of the definitions can be fit into three main categories (Reiter, 2007). Absolutists believe that the word balance means that a perfect balance exists at all times between work and life. This was the initial goal of the work–life balance research, to find a way to have the employee work a 40-hr workweek (Time, 2012). Situationalists find an acceptable stress level and maintain it, finding an acceptable and maintainable level between work and life. Subjectivists would define work–life balance as participating in work or life as much as needed to achieve their objectives. Managers at the worst places to work seem to take the subjectivist definition of work–life balance. Their focus was on regulating how often non-work activities encroached on the workday. In return, employees did not report being connected to work while at home, although they were expected to be reachable on days off in case coverage was needed. Managers at the best places to work seem to take a more situational approach to work–life balance. Many of their employees discussed the long hours, but the company provided the benefits to allow them to work the long hours. It seems clear in our study that employees overwhelmingly prefer the situational sense of work–life balance to the subjective, but even situational work–life balance has its limitations with today’s employees.

With today’s portable electronics keeping us connected to both work and life at all times, it seems the absolutists’ definition of balance, an almost perfectly equal amount of time and satisfaction is realized in each category of our lives, is impossible. The nature of work has changed. Our lives are far more complex today than 30 years ago. Given the growing trend of connectedness for the future, the confusion around the term balance, and the overwhelming preference of employees to situation-based work–life balance, we suggest renaming work–life balance into what it really is, work–life flexibility, or the ability of a person to control the amount of time he or she dedicates to work and life.

Replacing “balance” with “flexibility” allows us to marry together important nuances in our findings while recognizing the prevalence of hyperconnectivity in today’s workplaces, ultimately leading to a reconceptualization of the working adult as an integrated being with a magnitude of demands. This is different from work–life balance research because work–life flexibility is about controlling time versus balancing time. Work–life balance research was more about compartmentalizing life. In contrast, work–life flexibility is the merging of the two allowing work into life and life into work. Checking emails while at the performance of a child, taking phone calls in the evening, or working long hours is okay as long as the person feels he or she has the power to satisfy both life and work demands. Work–life “balance” is neither attainable nor necessary to maintain a positive relationship with an organization, but the ability to control both the work and life schedules, to integrate them as necessary to satisfy demands, is highly valued.

Previous research (Grzywacz & Marks, 2000) applied an ecological systems approach to the work–life interface, exploring the interactions between the “work microsystem” and the “family microsystem.” Although promising, the authors noted that this framework was still compartmentalizing ”work” and “home” and looking for ways to resolve the conflict therein. They concluded that future researchers needed to seek out a framework that could take into account the simultaneous ways in which work and home life affect one another, “so that policies and programs can remain attentive to the synergistic whole of individual experience” (Grzywacz & Marks, 2000, p. 31).

To understand how this may be possible, we draw from complex systems theory as conceptualized by Boje (2008). In his work, Boje deemed the complexities of daily life “systemicities” (p. 26), defined as “the dynamic unfinished, unfinalized and unmerged, and interactivity of complexity properties . . . ” Between every organization and its employee is a systemicity acting as fabric or relationships to past, and current unfinished and unfinalized partial implementations (Boje, 2008). Previously, such individual systemicities were often of little concern to the organization because they take place outside the system (Agazarian, 1989). Today, these systemicities are what cause work/life “spillover” effects. Organizational complex systems theory recognizes the importance of the employee in the organization and suggests employees are themselves living systems just as complex as the organization, with actors moving in and out of their narratives, problems, threats, opportunities, and risks (Boje, 2001, 2008). This is important for two reasons. First, it suggests that complex systems theory, while theorized at a macro-level, also has implications for micro-level units of analysis (e.g., the individual working in an organization). Second, organizations need to consider the repercussions of ignoring the complexity of their employees. Historically, it was easier to ignore the external influence of systemicities, but given today’s hyperconnected nature, employees’ various associations are prevalent in their work worlds and vice versa.

It appears a key takeaway from our analyses is an enhanced understanding of how organizations are dealing with employees as complex systems, and how their efforts (or lack thereof) are understood and interpreted by employees. More specifically, it appears that employees are seeking organizations that both promise and deliver time benefits and a supportive governance structure as an acknowledgment of employees’ own complexity. At such organizations, employees have an increased ability to manage how life and work interact. Employees appreciate the flexibility these organizations offer and recognize them as a “best” place to work. Organizations that fail to recognize this complexity may suffer a number of deleterious effects, the least of which is being deemed a “worst” place to work.

Conclusions and Limitations

The first purpose of this qualitative research was to better understand how the “best” and “worst” companies approach employees given the hyperconnected nature of today’s workplace. Using the innovative content analysis software Leximancer, we analyzed 1,137 reviews from the best and worst companies to work for, as ranked by independent lists. Based on analyses of unsolicited employee reviews, definitive differences emerged surrounding two major themes—time benefits and governance structure.

Our second purpose was to identify a meso- or macro-level theory to enhance our understanding of why these frictions among various life responsibilities exist in the first place. Essentially, our findings suggest that organizations would benefit from the same revolutionary change in thinking about their employees that they themselves benefited from more than a decade ago—the realization that employees are themselves “complex systems” for which the employing organization is only one of the many members demanding attention. Those companies providing external “perks” such as food, Internet, transportation, gym memberships, and so on were all perceived as assisting the employees in managing their complex lives, breaking down the walls between previously compartmentalized divisions between work and life. This allowed employees to exercise work–life flexibility, bringing their outside social and family lives in and taking their inside work lives out. Relationally, employees also felt helped when managers implemented and followed flexible scheduling policies, were available for coaching, and/or portrayed a general environment of social support in the face of increasingly complex personal demands. These time benefits and governance themes were infused throughout the reviews of “best” places to work but were rarely, if ever, mentioned positively in reviews of “worst” places to work.

Our findings have important implications for both the individual employee and the organization. For the individual employed by an organization failing to help him or her manage daily complexities, research suggests increased emotional labor leading to decreases in employee performance, burnout, low job satisfaction, and a lesser sense of personal accomplishment (Grandey, 2000; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989). Alternatively, individuals currently employed by organizations that recognize the “complex systemicities” of their employees and allow flexibility between work and life may feel an enhanced sense of being valued by the organization, an important feeling for 21st-century employees increasingly working in knowledge and service economies (Boje, 2015; Henderson & Boje, 2015; Miles, 2000). This is especially important considering claims that the 21st-century hyperconnected employee experiences far more resource demands and is far less likely to devote time and personal resources to his or her employment organization (Schaufeli, Leiter, & Maslach, 2009).

The organization has an important stake in the acknowledgment of employees as systemicities—the aforementioned discussions illustrate how failure to do so may result in increased turnover and decreased performance, among other consequences. Either or both of these have the potential to affect creativity and profitability. Furthermore, it is important to note the public nature of such a failure—the companies in our study were all featured on the widely circulated “Worst Places to Work” list—arguably not a goal of most, if any, of today’s organizations.

Despite the importance of these findings, there are limitations to consider when reviewing the work accomplished. First, industry representation is a concern. Whereas the “top” companies are from various sectors, many of the bottom companies are from the retail sector. This may have influenced the results of the analysis, as customer service–driven industries have a unique dynamic in that customers cannot be rescheduled to provide flexibility to employees. They demand attention at that moment. Second, it could be the case that performing a content analysis on reviews is limited in its use because those providing negative reviews tend to be more inclined to write than those with positive reviews. We did find this to be the case as only five companies at the worst places to work had 706 reviews and seven companies at the top only had 479. It is interesting to note, however, that the length of reviews was about the same at 3.6 reviews per page.

Future researchers should take these contextual factors into account in attempts to replicate or extend our study findings. In particular, our findings suggest that people greatly value work–life flexibility, but is there a limit to work–life flexibility? Furthermore, future research may consider the importance of boundary conditions of the culture of employee complexity presented here. For example, a heart surgeon should obviously not be permitted to stop surgery and confer with his wife about dinner. Many would argue that email should not be checked while on vacation. Although seemingly trite, these are important distinctions as recognized by Stanko and Beckman (2015), and should be considered in future research.

Last, based on our findings, it would also be interesting to explore other textual data from the “best” and “worst” places to work. Future qualitative work is needed to further understand the needs of today’s employees. A future research project could use Leximancer to analyze the strategic communications (e.g., annual reports, strategic plans, etc. . . . ) disseminated by the best and worst employers to analyze these for intention toward the themes identified in this study. For example, do the “best” companies make it a point to communicate the presence of time benefits and a supportive governance structure? Do the worst companies fail to mention these in their strategic communications? In addition, just providing benefits might not help the employees at all. It would be interesting to use Leximancer to see how employees actually view the benefits they are being provided and their usefulness in their own lives, perhaps via a diary analysis or other journaling exercise. The ability of Leximancer to process large, unstructured textual data sets with relative ease of use and increased reliability is gaining traction among researchers across disciplines, and we believe this study demonstrates an alternative for researchers interested in analyzing textual evidence in a timely, rigorous manner.

In closing, employees are not trying to balance their lives, they are trying to be flexible. Allotting time among work life, social life, and family life is difficult. Employees are looking for organizations that recognize their complexity and understand the struggle employees face every day. The perks provided by the best places to work are not highly valued because of money saved but rather the time saved, which provides for better work–life flexibility. Not every company will be willing to adopt this flexible philosophy. Quite recently, Amazon received negative press for its treatment of white-collar employees (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015). According to The New York Times article, employees regularly cry at their desks, work nights/weekends/holidays, and are offered no time benefits or work–life governance support (Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015). This 2015 New York Times article has been discussed by more than 40 recognizable websites, and several YouTube postings of video commentary are now available. Past Amazon employees as well as employees of other companies are speaking out, demanding organizational change at Amazon. Even executives from other major U.S. companies have spoken out against an Amazon-style management stating that they do believe that work should be flexible with life (Demmit & Cook, 2015). Although Amazon’s potential negative backlash from this coverage remains unknown, our research supports this newsworthy example. Time benefits and governance structures supporting those benefits are key factors considered in an employee’s evaluation of an organization. Thus, organizations and scholars alike may benefit from the inclusion of complexity in management best practices and studies of these practices, respectively.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

John P. Ross is in his fourth year at New Mexico State University. He is an award winning speaker and teacher. He first started his career as a seventh-grade history and English teacher, then was a program manager of musical events before joining one of the top manufacturing companies in the world. It was there he decided his passion for business was far more than a workplace passion. John looks forward to continuing his research on organizaitonal resources and work-life flexibility at his future university.

Melissa L. Intindola is an assistant professor of management at the Haworth College of Business, Western Michigan University (WMU). Her research focuses on multi-sector collaborative endeavors and the resulting effects on the employees, volunteers, and managers involved in such collaborations. She has been featured on WMU’s Radio News Service as a faculty expert in the areas of employee engagement and job satisfaction and was previously recognized for “Outstanding Research” and “Outstanding Teaching” by the New Mexico State University Management Department.

David M. Boje is a public intellectual. He holds the Wells Fargo Professorship, is a distinguished university professor, and is a Bill Daniels Ethics Fellow in Management Department at New Mexico State University. He also has an honorary doctorate from Aalborg University, with a special affiliation to the Material Storytelling Lab founded by Anete Strand. He is leading the efforts in New Mexico to create the “Embodied Restorying Processes” (ERP) lab, which is affiliated with the worldwide “Material Storytelling Lab” community. The New Mexico ERP lab does work with veterans including the homeless veterans, student veterans, and their family members.

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(2000). Generations at work: Managing the clash of Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters in your workplace (p. 280). New York, NY: Amacom.