Balancing Acts and Breaking Norms: Exploring employee work-life balance within strong work priority norms

Abstract

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.