By R.V. Baugus
If someone was not out of a job due to COVID-19 and the inevitable job layoffs that followed, then one was still employed and working way beyond intended human hours. For the sake of discussion at VenueConnect this July in Phoenix, Dr. Matt Huml will share in a University Sector keynote session, but one truly geared toward every attendee, the angle of the intentional workaholic and tips on how to get out of the work rut.
Dr. Huml, Assistant Professor in the School of Human Services at the University of Cincinnati, was 
gracious to give us some time in advance to share more about his background as well as the topic matter he will present. Again, this is suitable subject matter fitting for every attendee at VC22.
The presentation will discuss the relationship between work engagement and workaholism drawn from recent research on the experiences of college and recreational sports employees.
Topics will include:
(1) balancing work and family responsibilities,
(2) tipping points between work engagement and workaholism,
(3) the benefits for employees living a calling,
(4) employee coping abilities,
(5) remote work strengths and weaknesses,
(6) and detriment effects of an overwork climate, among other topics.
Dr. Huml will provide recommendations on how venue managers can minimize employee challenges and cultivate strengths to improve employee satisfaction.
Share with our readers some about your background and then bring us up to speed about your current role at the University of Cincinnati.
I’m originally from the far West suburbs of Chicago (if any of you are from that area, say hi after the presentation and I’ll share the name of the really small town where I grew up!) and grew up a big fan of University of Illinois athletics and all of the professional Chicago sport teams. I started my college experience at Kishwaukee College (community college) that is near Northern Illinois University. After that, I transferred to Grand Valley State University in West Michigan (go Lakers!) where I completed my undergraduate and graduate degrees. I was fortunate to play baseball in college at both Kishwaukee and GVSU. I met my future wife at GVSU, as she played soccer there (was a much more successful athlete than I was). After completing my masters, I worked at the University of Tennessee for a year as an academic advisor before leaving to take an advising job (and start my PhD) at the University of Louisville. After four years at UL, I completed my PhD and accepted my first faculty position at Texas Tech University. My wife and I lived there for three years, had our first child in 2019, and then moved on to the University of Cincinnati in Fall 2019. I am now about to start my fourth year at UC in the fall and we also added to our family a second child in 2020. Currently, I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati in our sport administration program.
Your presentation will be on Insights into Workaholism & How Venue Managers Can Avoid It. Without giving away the kitchen, what will be some of the things you will share with your audience?
Workaholism is an issue across all labor forces, but it’s especially pervasive within sport and facility sectors. I am going to be talking about what is workaholism and identifying it within yourself and others. I will also talk about how workaholism is activated through environmental factors, family factors, colleagues, etc. Finally, I will address limiting or overcoming workaholic tendencies for employees. But we’ll also go beyond workaholism, as we’ll also talk about work engagement (think of it as a good version of workaholism), how employees apply coping strategies within the workplace, the involvement of occupational calling for venue managers, insights into remote work, and the push-and-pull between work and family.
Has work/balance become just a cliche? We hear so much about it, but have you found in your studies that most people actually try to find that balance?
It is definitely not a cliché, but you can make a great argument that there is no perfect balance and its individual dependent. My focus will be on a couple different, more accurate concepts for the push-and-pull between work and family, called work-family conflict (when those two areas clash) and work-family spillover (when one of the areas has a positive or negative effect on the other). More importantly, my research is going to talk about how the presence of work-family conflict/spillover can actually create a POSITIVE effect on work, even though most folks think of these as negative workplace issues.
Workaholism sounds like an addiction or disease. Is it that or can it become that?
Absolutely, workaholism functions as a behavior addiction. Some folks can become so passionate about their work that they consume our other identities. I’m also sure many of you have heard of people “throwing” themselves into their work when dealing with grief in another area of their lives. Work can become a crutch for us as we seek out validation, desire for micro-managing others, or a distraction from other responsibilities. We need to seek out ways to help employees break from this addiction and create an environment that doesn’t cultivate it from our workforce.
How about a main takeaway you would like people to leave with and take back to the venue where they work?
My hope is that attendees will think about all of these concepts are related to workplace culture and the characteristics exhibited by organizational leadership. If supervisors are working 70+ hours a week, have expectations for prioritizing work over other components of their employee’s lives, take advantage of people’s passions, it’s going to create an environment that can breed these workplace traits. I’ll recommend easy fixes but there will be others that require more effort from leadership to cultivate good workplace practices. It will create huge dividends down the road to implement these changes, as you’ll have less people leave their organization or even profession, increase work engagement, and reduce negative behaviors like workaholism, among others.
