Acting and Reacting: Work/Life Accommodation and Blue-Collar Workers

Written by Jaime E. Bochantin and Renee L. Cowan stressed the importance of communication between blue-collar employees and their superiors. Bochantin and Cowan’s (2016) study showed that skilled and unskilled blue-collar employees use proactive and reactive strategies when making work/life balance accommodation requests. The eloquent strategies identified in this study may be relevant to our company for how workers maintain their own work/life balance and communicate with their superiors.

Proactive Strategies

Bochantin and Cowan (2016) analyzed the first theme of strategies workers used to ask for accommodations were proactive, “meaning that the employees’ work/life requests were carefully planned out and rehearsed.” Four types of proactive strategies were found to be used in the study- circumvention, relating, factual appeals, and honesty. As a whole, requests using proactive strategies were more successful in this study

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Reactive Strategies

Bochantin and Cowan (2016) analyzed the second theme of strategies workers used to ask for accommodations were reactive, “in that the employee was prompted to make a request ‘off the cuff’ because of a comment made by a supervisor or the unanticipated reaction a supervisor had to the initial request.” Two types of reactive strategies were found to be used in the study- ultimatums and other focused or accusatory.

Recommendations For our Company

Based on this study by Bochantin and Cowan (2016), blue-collar employees will communicate using an array of strategies when requesting work/life accommodations. Even though we work in a majority white-collar environment, many of the communication strategies are still exercised. Based on Bochantin and Cowan’s (2016) findings, our work/life balance communication between employees and superiors can be improved in three ways:

Employees will use multiple approaches to obtain an appropriate work/life balance and superiors should be prepared for any style of approach. The study showed that superiors should be aware that any request made is of legitimate importance to the employee. Accommodation requests should not be treated as a joke.

Superiors should find ways to accommodate more requests for work/life balance and be aware of the types of strategies used by their employees. This can help build self-esteem and lower stress levels of employees in and out of the office.

Using proactive strategies for requests should be encouraged by superiors to employees because they led to more successful outcomes in the study. These strategies were more mutually understood and demonstrated shared respect. Reactive strategy attempts in the study were less successful and resulted in superiors becoming more defensive in granting accommodation requests.

Based on the strategies identified by Bochantin and Cowan (2016), communication is key between blue-collar workers and their superiors in order to maintain a healthy work/life balance. It should be the same for our work-place.

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