“Thank Goodness it is Friday!”: A Latent Growth Approach to Understanding Work-Family Balance

Abstract

This study aimed to provide a dynamic picture of changes in satisfaction with work- family balance over the course of a five-day work week. Daily changes in work- family balance were measured in response to fluctuating levels of workload. Further, we examined the role of job crafting behaviors in buffering the negative impact of daily work overload on daily work-family balance. By grounding the study within the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, we hypothesized that (a) there will be a steady decline in work-family balance over the course of a work week, (b) resource losses elicited by daily workload will lead to lower levels of work-family balance, and (c) job crafting behaviors in the form of task crafting will mitigate this negative relationship. We tested these predictions in a sample of 200 full-time working employees over five consecutive workdays in the United States. The results indicated that employees’ satisfaction with work-family balance demonstrated a declining trajectory from Monday to Friday. We also found that when the workload increased excessively, the decreasing trajectory of work-family balance was steeper. Finally, we found that employees’ task crafting behaviors buffered the negative effects of increasing workload on declining levels of work- family balance. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.