UNLOCKING THE FUTURE OF WORK: BALANCE WITHOUT LOSING YOUR COMPETITIVE EDGE

Hybrid working, where workers spend some time in the office and some remote working remotely, has moved from an emerging to the globally preferred option in this post-pandemic world. This is certainly the case in New Zealand, with about 80% of employers allowing hybrid work, and in Vietnam too, where the figure is 40%. Negotiating the boundaries between work and home life is never easy, and hybrid work has the potential to further blur these boundaries. In this presentation, we will look at the five tactics for managing boundaries – physical, temporal, behavioural, communicative and cognitive. We report on research that examines how dual-career couples with some form of hybrid work arrangement manage their boundaries to negotiate the demands between work and home. Drawing on boundary theory, we bring together three key aspects of the work-life nexus – the trend towards the adoption of hybrid work, the increasing focus on employee well-being and work-life balance, and the now dominant model within intimate relationships of both partners being committed to their careers (dual-career couples).