Identifying how virtual work demands influenced work–family conflict and employees’ overall psychological well-being

Hybrid working (a work arrangement where employees split their time between working remotely [often from home] and in a traditional office) has come to be considered a mainstream practice, which has led to the need for employees to manage additional demands (e.g., using technology) that stem from working virtually. Nevertheless, research has not given much attention to the negative aspects related to working in hybrid work environments. The present study explored the impact of work–family conflict (resulting from dealing with virtual work demands) on employees’ psychological well-being. Prior to proceeding with collecting data for this study, ethical clearance and approval from the Department of Human Resource Management (EMS269/24) was obtained. Following the approval, the study used purposive, convenience and snowball sampling to recruit a sample (N = 479) of employees who were engaged in hybrid working or who worked remotely in various industries. Through using a cross-sectional survey design and an online tool named Qualtrics, the study collected data from the participants, and conducted statistical analyses using SPSS and Mplus software. During the preliminary analyses, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to validate the instruments. Thereafter, correlation and mediation analyses were run to examine the relationships between the study variables, i.e., virtual work demands, work–family conflict, life satisfaction, as well as stress and anxiety. Tests to detect common method bias were also conducted.