Overworked Families Have Issues At Home

First Posted: Mar 10, 2015 11:14 PM EDT
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Recent findings published in the Journal of Applied Psychology show that people whose family life regularly interferes with work are significantly more likely to become emotionally exhausted and hurl verbally abusive insults at each other, as well as friends and work colleagues.

However, having a supportive manager can really make a huge difference in decreasing risk of the problem.

"It appears that having a supervisor who is aware and supportive of work-family balance may not only reduce the work-family conflict itself but also weaken its downstream effect on verbal aggression," co-author Chu-Hsiang Chang, associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University, said in a news release.

For the study, researchers examined data on 125 employees from five different technology companies who had been surveyed four times a week for three weeks.

"We wanted to see if people who experience work-family conflict are less able to suppress their dark tendencies and more apt to act out on their aggressive impulses," Chang added.

Findings revealed that people who were significantly more likely to feel tied down if family life interfered with their jobs were at a higher risk of feeling emotionally exhausted and significantly more likely to verbally berate family members.

Being supportive of staff is key. Researchers recommend excellent training programs that foster this kind of environment.

"Supportive managers should model the right behavior -- in other words, don't send your employees emails at 11 p.m. and expect them to respond, for example," Chang concluded.

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