Balancing Acts and Breaking Norms: Exploring employee work-life balance within strong work priority norms
Summary
Work-life balance has become increasingly prominent in public disclosure and has been
frequently discussed to be implemented in corporate settings, to enhance employee well-being.
However, there is still a gap when it comes to applying theory into practice. Existing research on
work-life balance has mostly focused on the role of support from colleagues and supervisors. By
further examining the role of support, now in the presence of work priority norms, the present
study aims to increase our understanding of its effect on work-life balance outcomes. Private life
satisfaction, job satisfaction, job engagement and concealment of care responsibilities are the
work-life balance outcomes being tested. Specifically, I expected that work priority norms will
negatively impact the work-life balance outcomes, females are more likely to experience the
negative outcomes more and emotional and instrumental support would attenuate the effects of
work priority norms. Work priority norms and concealment of care responsibilities were the new
addition to the existing research. The present study utilized secondary data collected from a
sample of 1131 working adults, spanning various industries. As expected, results showed work
priority norms were associated with lower job satisfaction, engagement and private life
satisfaction, and emotional support marginally attenuated the impact of work priority norms on
private life satisfaction. Contrary to our expectations, gender differences on work-life balance
outcomes and significant interaction effects of instrumental and emotional support on other
work-life balance outcomes couldn’t be drawn. Regardless of the results not being statistically
significant, the results still provided a comprehensive understanding of the concept of
work-priority norms and its correlation with work-life balance.