Family boundary permeability, difficulties detaching from work, and work-home conflict: what comes first during the lockdown?

Abstract

The challenges posed by the urgent demand of the lockdown to start working from home and successfully manage work-family interface have also triggered the increased boundary permeability, difficulties detaching from work and work-home conflict. However, little is known about the temporal dynamics between these challenges, therefore more research-based data could facilitate not only a better understanding of the risks for employee well-being but also finding the best practices to counteract work-home conflict when working from home. Our study aimed to examine the direction of cross-lagged effects among family boundary permeability, psychological detachment, and work-home conflict in the context of the pandemic. In all, 375 employees participated in a two-wave study. We used structural equation modelling to test and compare several models that were deployed for describing the hypothesised temporal relationships. The results of our study revealed that psychological detachment predicted boundary permeability and work-family conflict four months later, but not vice versa. Thus, the ability to detach from work should not be considered a consequence of low family boundary permeability. Instead, it seems to serve as a strategy to keep work and non-work spheres separate, eventually, to avoid work-family conflict. As a result, practical efforts should focus on helping remote workers to detach from work when they are not working rather than on the prevention of boundary-blurring. Finally, the discussion of the results of the impact of both, the context of the pandemic and the nature of the mandatory transition to working from home is presented and practical guidelines on how organisations may help employees better manage the work and home interface in telework settings are offered.