Work and Leisure

Work, leisure, time-pressure and stress 131with job satisfaction, although the relationship is weak (r = 0.04 (GSS) and0.06 (NPHS)) 2 . This relationship may seem surprising at first, but it has beenobserved by other researchers, including Barnett (1998). Subjective feelingsof time pressure, on the other hand, are negatively associated with all aspectsof emotional well-being.Additional analyses (not reported in the tables) suggest that a positiverelationship between the length of paid work time and job satisfaction isstronger for employees in white-collar, management and professional positionsthan for those in blue-collar occupations. Managers and professionals,who typically work long hours, usually like their jobs and report high levelsof job satisfaction. Not surprisingly, in the 1988–9 Experience SamplingMethod survey, which focused on white collar and management personnel,the correlation between respondents’ paid working hours and job satisfactionwas strongly positive (r = 0.43).It is clear that work overload and feelings of time crunch are negativelyassociated with respondents’ emotional well-being, in particular satisfactionwith the balance of work–family life and the use of non-working time. Thedifference between the effects of long hours of paid work and subjective senseof time pressure on job satisfaction is due to the dissimilarity of the twoconcepts. People can work long hours without feeling ‘time crunched’ if theyhave freely chosen their work and are interested in it. People working shorterhours, on the contrary, may feel time-stressed if they are not interested inwhat they are doing and have little control over their work. Consequently, thepresence or absence of feelings of ‘time crunch’ emerges from our analyses asa better predictor of respondents’ emotional well-being than the length ofpaid working hours.Table 7.6 Relationships between workload, perceived time pressure and well-being,Canada, employed population, 1994, 1998Estimated weeklyhours of paid workFeelings oftime pressure aSourcePearson ‘r’GSS 1998 Job satisfaction 0.04 -0.2Life satisfaction Ns -0.28Satisfaction with work–family balance -0.17 -0.38Satisfaction with the use of nonworking-0.07 -0.37timePerceived stress 0.11 0.49NPHS 1994 Job satisfaction 0.06 -0.05Feeling happy -0.01 -0.05Sources: GSS and NPHS – see Table 7.1Note: a GSS = Composite index (1–100) NPHS = Taking on too many things