Work-family conflict: Who is at risk?

Abstract

Background: Work-family conflict has increased relevance in today’s work environment, as both men and women are working full time to a greater extent, due to increased gender equality. Work-family conflict has become one of the 10 most common stressors experienced by employees. An increasing proportion of individuals are managing both the family and the work role simultaneously which might lead to an inter-role conflict where the work role inhibits the proper fulfillment of the family role and therefore is experienced as a stressor. Previous research has shown that this domain-crossing stressor is associated with negative consequences such as burnout, marital and life dissatisfaction as well as other health issues. This implies that it is a serious stressor as it affects both the work as well as the family domain. Therefore, research on work-family conflict should receive high priority, and investigate factors that can help identify employees who are more at risk than others, as well as study factors which might work as buffers to decrease the experience of work-family conflict, which is going to be addressed in this study. Primary antecedents of work-family conflict have been structural factors in the work domain, such as work overload, distress, as well as work-role ambiguity. Aims: The present study aims at integrating a stress perspective with work-family conflict research and investigates a model where work-family conflict is predicted by certain demands such as role conflict, powerlessness, job insecurity and carry over between work and family. Potential resources such as the perception of control and goal clarity, as well as trust in the organisation are also included in the model, in order to investigate whether they lead to decreased experiences of work-family conflict. In addition, social support from the supervisor as well as colleagues is introduced as a potential moderator of the relation between demands and the experience of work-family conflict. Such support can be influenced by the organisation and therefore might be a first step towards potential interventions with the aim to decrease work-family conflict. Methods & results: This study was conducted with a longitudinal Swedish samples from the service sector. The aim of the current study is to test a model including variables which can be modified by organisations as well as employees themselves, so that it is applicable in practice.