Not All Work-Life Policies Are Created Equal: Career Consequences of Using Enabling Versus Enclosing Work-Life Policies

Many employees hesitate to use work-life policies (e.g., flexible work arrangements, leave, on-site services) for fear of career consequences. However, findings on the actual career consequences of such use are mixed. We debundle work-life policies, which we view as control mechanisms that may operate in an enabling way, giving employees some latitude over when, where, and how much they work, or in an enclosing way, promoting longer hours on work premises. Drawing on signaling and attributional theories, we construe the nature of the policies used as a work devotion signal; specifically, we argue that supervisors attribute lower work devotion to employees who use more enabling policies than to employees who use more enclosing policies. However, this relationship is moderated by employees’ work ethic prior to the use, by supervisors’ expectations of employees, and by the family supportiveness of organizational norms. In turn, the work devotion attributions made by supervisors lead to positive and negative career consequences for work-life policies users, depending on organizational norms. Our model opens up new avenues of research on the work-life policies implementation gap by differentiating between the policies and by teasing out the roles played by policies, organizational norms, supervisors, and employees.