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.

混合办公模式（指员工在远程办公[通常为居家办公]与传统办公室办公之间分配时间的工作安排）如今已成为主流办公实践，这使得员工需应对虚拟办公带来的额外工作要求（如技术使用相关事务）。然而，现有研究对混合办公环境下的负面效应关注不足。本研究探讨了虚拟办公需求引发的工作-家庭冲突对员工心理健康福祉的影响。在启动数据采集工作前，本研究已获得人力资源管理部门（EMS269/24）的伦理审查与研究许可。获得许可后，本研究采用立意抽样、便利抽样与滚雪球抽样相结合的方法，从多个行业招募了479名参与混合办公或远程办公的员工作为研究样本。本研究采用横断面调查设计，借助在线调研工具Qualtrics收集参与者数据，并通过SPSS与Mplus软件开展统计分析。预分析阶段，本研究通过验证性因子分析对研究量表进行了效度验证。随后开展相关分析与中介效应分析，以考察研究变量间的关系，包括虚拟办公需求、工作-家庭冲突、生活满意度以及压力与焦虑。此外，本研究还进行了共同方法偏差检验。