Over the past years, research has consistently traced life satisfaction to be associated with the following factors: health, financial situation, social relationships, one’s self-worth, leisure-time, family, and work. The last two are probably the most crucial and success in these domains ensures greater chances of success in the other ones.
When it comes to work, attending to our basic needs and improving our lifestyle are some of the reasons which motivate us to put in long grueling hours to get that paycheque. If you are earning just enough that a substantial amount is left over after catering to your basic needs, then you may feel inclined to invest in memorable experiences or focus on providing comfort and luxury to your family.
The end goal of performing well in one’s career is to improve life at home and generate greater life satisfaction in return. But striking the right balance between work and family can be challenging, and failing to do so can lead to Work-Family Conflict: a psychological phenomena of imbalance between an individual’s home and work life.
A new research published in the Frontiers in Psychology analyzes the effects of Work-Family Conflict on psychological security and psychological wellbeing. The researchers note that some contributing factors for Work-Family Conflict are job burnout, dissatisfaction, work stress, long working hours, and role conflict. Work overload and increased stress at the workplace may emotionally and physically drain an employee and result in tension at home. The inability to juggle between work and family leads to growing feelings of frustration which further hampers job performance.
The researchers studied a sample of 277 company employees in Bahrain. An online questionnaire was used utilizing five-point Likert-scales. The results suggest that work-family conflict harms psychological safety and psychological well-being decreasing performance in the workplace.
The study observes that low levels of psychological safety translated into employee withholding information from team members, being less engaged in assignments, and reluctant to share their ideas. This resulted in conflicts and an overall negative environment at the workplace which affected the morale of the other company employees.
The researchers suggest that an organization could contribute to the psychological safety of employees by taking steps to avoid conflicts from occurring and offering counseling for family or work-related stress. The study observes that following conflicts in the workplace the performance of the organization as a whole was negatively affected. It was also noticed that on an individual level employee performance largely depends on their perception of psychological safety.
It was further noticed that work relationships based on mutual goals, shared knowledge, and respect for each other increased feeling of psychological safety and lead to create a nurturing and worry-free environment. Moreover, these traits were observed mostly in employees exhibiting good compatibility between family and work. The researchers conjecture that when employees believe that their company cares for their wellbeing, they tend to spend quality time with their family which reduces stress and increases psychological safety thereby leading to a more positive disposition at work.
The researchers hope that in light of their study managers and leaders aim at not only encouraging employees to perform better at work but make efforts to reduce work-family conflict as well which can lead to negative organizational behaviors.
