Jeff Graham
University of Tennessee - Knoxville Assistant Professor
jgraha38@utk.edu
Research examining work and family consistently indicates that work-family conflict results in negative outcomes for individuals, families, and the organizations they work for (Byron, 2005). Research also indicates that support from the workplace can mitigate the frequency and strength of work-family conflict (Fiksenbaum, 2014). Consequently, some sport organizations provide a variety of formal and informal supports for families that are embedded in the organization’s policies and normal operating practices (e.g., flextime, dependent care, parental leave), although this is not common. The norm in sport organizations is to have managers and employees obsessing about work and exploiting their families to feed their need to continually prioritize work, even to the point of work addiction (Taylor et al., 2018). This study’s purpose was to ask the question, what is it like to work for a sport organization that values and supports the family role? Less is understood about how family supportive policies and practices are received and experienced by employees, especially in the context of sport organizations. In this session we will discuss the experiences and perceptions of individuals working for a family supportive sport organization, and how this experience reduced their work obsession and increased their family engagement in healthy ways.