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Tag Archives: Work life balance
New Starts at Home, New Focus at Work – Autumn 2025
This time of year always brings a sense of new beginnings—buying school uniforms at home and preparing for the arrival of new students at work. This autumn adds another milestone: getting my eldest ready to start their new adventure at university.
As they head off into this new chapter of their life, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned from my sabbatical and what the coming academic year might hold for me. My diary is already filling up with interesting things, and I’m excited for the months ahead. But I also know I’ll face the familiar challenge of not overloading myself by saying “yes” to too many opportunities.
Recently, I had the chance to talk with Geraldine Fitzpatrick about how I’m trying to stay in control of my commitments by:
a) working out how much of my time is already spoken for, and how much is still available to promise to others, and
b) keeping a very short list of main goals for the year, giving each one its own season to be my priority.
You can catch our conversation on the latest episode of Geraldine’s podcast. And if you’d like to try the same exercise, check out the approach described by Loleen Berdahl for calculating your commitments and your remaining time to promise.
What if a shorter work week could make us healthier, happier, and more productive?
I had a fun conversation with Professor Rochelle Burgess & Dr Xand van Tulleken on their podcast about the public health case for a four-day work week.
🚨 New episode of Public Health Disrupted out now!
Is it time to rethink the 9 to 5?
In this episode, we explore the public health case for a four-day work week.
Joe Ryle, from the 4 Day Week Foundation, shares compelling new data from pilot studies showing:
✅ 62% reduction in burnout
✅ 41% improvement in mental health
Joined by UCL’s Professor Anna Cox, they unpack how flexible working, digital technologies, and cultural shifts could reshape our relationship with work for the better.
🎧 Listen on Apple: https://lnkd.in/g-RNaezH
🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/giQF4jRT
Public Health Disrupted is a podcast by UCL Health of the Public.
’Jumping Out from the Pressure of Work and into the Game: Curating Immersive Digital Game Experiences for Post-Work Recovery
Mella, J., Iacovides, I., & Cox, A. (2024). ’Jumping Out from the Pressure of Work and into the Game: Curating Immersive Digital Game Experiences for Post-Work Recovery. ACM Games: Research and Practice.
In this paper we explore how digital games can be used for psychological recovery after work. We conducted a study involving eleven participants who played games post-work and participated in follow-up interviews.
Key points:
- Immersion in Gaming for Recovery: The study focuses on how immersion in gaming can aid in the recovery from work-related stress. Immersion is seen as a multifaceted experience that can help players detach psychologically from work stresses and recover their mental resources.
- Strategies for Immersive Experience: Participants reported various strategies to enhance their gaming immersion to optimize recovery. These strategies included selecting games based on their ability to provide challenge, mastery, relaxation, or a sense of control.
- Framework of Immersion Optimization: The research contributes a framework for understanding how different elements of games can be used strategically to facilitate recovery. This includes aspects such as game choice, gameplay settings, and in-game goals.
- Impact of Gaming on Recovery Experiences: The study found that strategic gaming can effectively provide recovery experiences such as psychological detachment, relaxation, and mastery. These experiences are crucial for recuperating after work and preventing long-term stress effects.
- Methodological Insights: The use of a laddering methodology provided detailed insights into the specific components of gaming that support recovery. This approach highlighted the direct connections between game features, player experiences, and recovery outcomes.
- Implications for Game Design and Use: The findings suggest that both game developers and players can benefit from understanding how different game features can be used to enhance post-work recovery. The study advocates for games designed with features that support recovery needs.
“Sometimes It’s Like Putting the Track in Front of the Rushing Train”: Having to Be ‘On Call’for Work Limits the Temporal Flexibility of Crowdworkers
Lascău, L., Brumby, D. P., Gould, S. J., & Cox, A. L. (2024). “Sometimes It’s Like Putting the Track in Front of the Rushing Train”: Having to Be ‘On Call’for Work Limits the Temporal Flexibility of Crowdworkers. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 31(2), 1-45.
This paper examines how the design of crowdsourcing platforms impacts the temporal flexibility of crowdworkers. We argue that being ‘on call’ limits workers’ ability to control their schedules and pace of work due to the unpredictable availability of tasks on these platforms. Despite the promise of flexibility, crowdworkers often have to be constantly available, which disrupts their ability to plan work and personal time effectively.
Key findings include:
- Impact on Schedule Control: Workers struggle to stick to planned work hours due to the unpredictable posting of tasks. This results in less actual work time and more time spent in unpaid ‘on call’ activities like waiting for new tasks.
- Impact on Work Pace: The on-demand nature of task availability forces workers into a state of constant readiness, which interferes with the natural pacing of work and break times. This can lead to increased stress and decreased job satisfaction.
The paper also discusses broader implications for the platform economy, suggesting that real temporal flexibility is often not realized for many workers in these environments. It calls for platform design changes to enhance real flexibility and improve working conditions for crowdworkers.
How did people respond to the disruption to work caused by the pandemic?
Our paper “The new normals of work: a framework for understanding responses to disruptions created by new futures of work” has just come out in Human-Computer Interaction Journal.
Open access to the paper is available here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07370024.2021.1982391
In the paper, we explore how people adapted to work during the pandemic and how we might understand people’s response to disruption in the new future of work. We highlight a number of issues, tools and strategies that people used in their work to support them while working remotely. For example, virtual commutes, having dedicated space, new scheduling techniques or staying connected with colleagues through virtual chats and async chats
Exploring these with the Genuis and Bronstein model of “new normal” we show 3 kinds of responses:
- waiting to return to old normal,
- finding a new normal and
- anticipating a new future of work.
These new normals of work help us to understand how we can help workers going forward.
We’d like to thank our reviewers for their feedback and our participants for helping develop our work within eworklife.co.uk and a special shoutout to @DilishaBP whose work with the new normal model inspired this work 😀 You can find their paper on Finding a “New Normal” for Men Experiencing Fertility Issues here: dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.114…
If you find this interesting you might also like our other papers on work during the pandemic:
- Disengaged From Planning During the Lockdown? An Interview Study in an Academic Setting Yoana Ahmetoglu; Duncan P. Brumby; Anna L. Cox (2021) IEEE Pervasive Computing
- Staying Active While Staying Home: The Use of Physical Activity Technologies During Life Disruptions Joseph W. Newbold, Anna Rudnicka and Anna Cox (2021) Frontiers in Digital Health
- Eworklife: Developing effective strategies for remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic A Rudnicka, JW Newbold, D Cook, ME Cecchinato, S Gould, AL Cox (2020) The New Future of Work Online Symposium
The first draft of this blogpost was written as a twitter thread by Joe Newbold and unrolled using ThreadReader
Media interview: Deutsche Welle TV News
Dr Marta Cecchinato was interviewed by Deutsche Welle TV News , Germany’s international broadcaster on their show ‘The Day’ about our work on work-life balance during the pandemic.
Media interview: Londoners urged to do ‘pretend commute’ during Covid-19 lockdown to protect health
Prof Anna L Cox is quoted in the London Evening Standard. Londoners urged to do ‘pretend commute’ during Covid-19 lockdown to protect health By Nicholas Cecil
Talk: Facing the Future: what lessons have we learned?
Prof Anna L Cox gives an invited talk at the Facing the Future: what lessons have we learnt? event to celebrate National Work Life Week 2020.
Boundary Management and Communication Technologies
Marta E. Cecchinato and Anna L. Cox have published a chapter titled Boundary Management and Communication Technologies in The Oxford Handbook of Digital Technology and Society.
Abstract
We live in a world of communication overload, where there is a wide range of platforms and devices to choose from, each providing massive content, offering different affordances, and fighting for our attention. Mobile technologies have contributed to expectations of anywhere anytime connectedness, making it hard for individuals to switch off. As a result, it can be hard to feel truly disconnected from work. A lack of control over work-home boundary cross-overs and interruptions can reduce post-work recovery, reducing productivity and increasing stress. Technology is not inherently good or bad, but rather, the way it is adopted and used can positively or negatively color one’s experience. As such, in this critical review we take a social constructionist approach to emphasize how communication technologies are challenging, as well as supporting, work-home boundary management. In doing so, we bring together work from occupational psychology (boundary theory) and human-computer interaction (computer-mediated communication and cross-device interaction). Understanding how these aspects interact and influence each other is important in order to support individuals appropriately, inform policies and guidelines, and ensure both social and digital interactions are designed carefully.
Digital work-life Boundaries for when you’re working from home
Prof Anna L Cox talks to Andrew Kun and Orit Shaer about Digital work-life Boundaries for when you’re working from home on their Future of Work Conversations webinar
