During the global COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns imposed an unprecedented disruption to life and work of millions of people worldwide. A significant portion of these individuals not only found themselves confined to their homes but also engaged in remote work. For example, in 2020, approximately 12.45% of EU workers aged from 20 to 64 years-old worked from home, whereas in 2019 this number was only 5.5% (Eurostat, 2021). More specifically, according to Eurostat (2021) when urban areas and capital regions are considered, such as Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal, the number of teleworkers increased to one fifth of the workforce in 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic created a real-world scenario in which individuals were forced to adapt to various changes in their work and personal lives. During lockdowns the rapid shift to telework and the blurring of boundaries between work and home made personal and professional life more intertwined. Home became the hub for all daily activities, serving as a workspace, leisure area, family space, and, occasionally, a makeshift school for remote classes (Pennington, 2021; Uddin, 2021). Thus, COVID-19 lockdowns closely resemble what might be achieved in a controlled experiment. It presents a unique and unexpected opportunity to collect data on how individuals perceive the distinction between work-life and life-work conflicts and whether these conflicts have distinct consequences for their well-being and professional outcomes.
This study addresses key gaps in understanding the bidirectional nature of work-life and life-work conflicts within the context of extreme teleworking during the COVID-19 lockdowns, examining how these conflicts predict university teachers’ burnout and performance and their willingness to continue teleworking post-pandemic. Existing research has largely focused on a unidirectional view of work-life conflict, often neglecting the interplay between work intruding into personal life and personal life interfering with work, which this study aims to explore as distinct yet interconnected dimensions. From an applied perspective, approaching work-life and life-work conflicts as distinct yet related concepts, allows organizations to tailor their practices and manage each dimension, and their respective consequences, effectively. This is particularly relevant given the continued prevalence of teleworking after the COVID-19 lockdowns which significantly impacted people’s lives worldwide, affecting various aspects of their daily routines, well-being, and mental health. Specifically, companies’ leadership face the challenge of devising strategies that align with the “new” reality and maintaining the well-being of workers and their performance (Dias-Oliveira et al., 2022; Lyons et al., 2009) in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2020). By doing so, companies can mitigate the consequences of work-life and life-work conflicts on employment relationships and directly contribute to the achievement of two SDG goals: Good Health, and Well-Being (SDG 3) and Decent Work, and Economic Growth (SDG 8).
Theoretical framework and hypothesis
Individuals respond to demands in various domains of their lives, such as personal and professional, that may be conflicting. Indeed, individuals’ participation in one domain affects their participation and experiences in another domain (i.e., family to work or work to family). The response to multiple demands is exacerbated when the cognitive ability of individuals is impaired, for example due to fatigue. In these situations, it is more challenging to compartmentalize, using “mental fences” (Zerubavel, 1991: 2), the different domains within which individuals move. As a result, it is difficult for individuals to assess when to open and close the gates that separate the different domains. Conceptually, Border Theories (i.e., Ashforth et al., 2000; Matthews and Barnes-Farrell, 2010) and Work-family Border Theory (Clark, 2000) advocate that the distinction of boundaries is critical. These boundaries must be perceived as being flexible for the fulfilment of basic psychological need for autonomy. In the work context, for example, if the employee has the ability or power to change when and where their work gets done and whether they can leave work for the family domain, then the boundaries are perceived as flexible.
Each domain has its own culture and provides different motivations for the behaviors performed. In this sense, workers are border-crossers making continuous, daily transitions between their work and family lives. The level of adjustment required for the transition between domains can be framed in terms of Spillover Theory (Bolger et al., 1989). For some individuals, the adjustment for the transition between domains (border-crossing) may be slight, for example when language and customs are highly similar in both domains. For others, the language and behavior expected in one domain are very different from what is expected in the other domain and, therefore, the adjustments for the transition between domains are more severe and might result in conflict (Clark, 2000). Thus, it could be argued that when the individual’s adjustment to the transition is severe, the boundaries between domains is well-defined. Conversely, if an individual’s adjustment to transitions between domains is slight, then the boundaries between domains are blurred.
In teleworking, the boundaries between work life and personal life may be even more blurred then in face-to-face working environments. Teleworking offers workers the benefits of working in silence with fewer interruptions and distractions (Carillo et al., 2021), leading to higher levels of concentration, increases in work efficiency, and a better balance of work and life demands (Charalampous et al., 2019). According with the European Commission (European Commission, 2020) prior to the COVID 19 pandemic, teleworking was used mainly by highly-skilled workers in knowledge-intense activities, who did most of their work on computers and enjoyed high degrees of autonomy. For knowledge workers, the highest prevalence of teleworking was amongst teachers (43%); which largely reflects informal overtime work at home, for example time spent for preparing lectures, conducting research, and marking assessments. Academia is one of the most flexible work environments. University teachers have a high level of self-autonomy and manage their work at their discretion (Damaske et al., 2014; Fontinha et al., 2019; Pitt et al., 2021). In addition, their academic work is closely linked to their identity, which correlates to the amount of time that they give to their work (Fox et al., 2011). Indeed, the literature shows that college and university teachers, tend to work longer hours than people in other professions and as a result they have less time to spend on their family and personal life (Jacobs and Winslow, 2004; Misra et al., 2012). Moreover, the culture in academia tends to reward university teachers who constantly perform at high levels often leaving them with little room to accommodate activities outside work (Fox et al., 2011). Furthermore, as Carlson et al. (2000) assert, in this context of extreme boundary flexibility, university teachers may struggle to meet the demands of their work and family and personal responsibilities at the same time.
The successive lockdowns caused by the COVID 19 pandemic resulted in abrupt and unexpected changes in working patterns, for example in universities, as in many sectors in society, work that was previously done on site was suddenly done remotely. These new ways of working might have further hindered the ability of university teachers to manage transitions between domains. Indeed, home became the place where all daily activities were carried out, at the same time. Home was the space for work, leisure, family, and for parents, an improvised classroom for remote teaching (Pennington, 2021; Uddin, 2021). During the pandemic, university teachers were required to adapt their home, pedagogy, and work methods to accommodate digital interactions and technical equipment and to deliver their teaching online (Lizana and Vega-Fernadez, 2021). These changes had various consequences on academics’ work-life and life-work boundaries including having less energy for leisure (Raišiené et al., 2022); extending their working hours and lowering their performance (Ahmadi et al., 2022); and impacting their mental health such as increased levels of exhaustion and fatigue (Raišiené et al., 2022), depression and anxiety, technostress and burnout syndrome (Lizana and Vega-Fernandez, 2021; Chirico et al., 2021). In addition, female academics reported increased domestic and childcare responsibilities (Guy and Arthur, 2020). In fact, as Hobfoll (1989) asserts, individuals typically strive to achieve and maintain their resources at work and at home. A disruption to one of these domains, such as the COVID 19 pandemic, led to an inability to protect resources and balance roles in either domain, resulting in a decline in well-being. As such, if the integrity of domains is difficult to maintain then the roles that individuals must perform within home and work might conflict.
Work-life and life-work conflicts occur when individuals must perform multiple roles at the same time. For example, being a worker, spouse, parent, and neighbor (Edwards and Rothbard, 2000; Carlson et al., 2000). This type of inter-role conflict operates in two distinct directions (Frone et al., 1992; Greenhaus and Beutell, 1985; Mäkelä and Suutari, 2011; Byrne and Barling, 2017; Netemeyer et al., 1996). One’s work role can hinder one’s role in the life domain. A negative spillover from work to the family domain, for example, when individual gives more time to their work, may result in a work-life conflict. In addition, one’s family role can jeopardize one’s role in the work domain. A negative spillover from family to the work domain, for example, when individuals give more time to family, may result in life-work conflict (Yucel and Latshaw, 2020; Frone et al., 1992; Rothbard, 2001; Mäkelä and Suutari, 2011; Soomro et al., 2018). Family and work domains invoke different norms, expectations, and requirements. When these pull an individual in opposite directions it results in an inevitable inter-role conflict, that is, work-life and life-work conflicts (Fredriksen and Scharlach, 2001; Shaffer et al., 2016). Research suggest that the two conflicts are sufficiently different in nature and scope to warrant independent examination (e.g., Byron, 2005; Mesmer-Magnus and Viswesvaran, 2005; Elahi et al., 2022). Indeed, a meta-analysis by Byron (2005) found that work-family and family-work conflicts have unique antecedents and attitudes (e.g., demographic, work, and non-work-related variables). Therefore, current research on this topic (Beigi et al., 2016; Elahi et al., 2022; Moreira et al., 2023) examines both work-life and life-work directions of the conflict and how each affects the work-related outcomes, for example employee’s burnout and performance.
Burnout is a state of exhaustion which occurs when a worker lacks the emotional resources to perform their tasks. Maslach (1976) described this condition as a detachment from others and from work which results in a shift towards cynical feelings and poor work performance. The negative impact of burnout on distinct domains of human life justified the inclusion of this syndrome by World Health Organization (WHO) in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11; World Health Organization, 2019). Currently, burnout is one of the most important work-related psychosocial threats. It is prevalent amongst many professions and occupational groups with significant costs for individuals, organizations, and society at large (Edú-Valsania et al., 2022; Epstein et al., 2020; Medina et al., 2021). The imbalance of work-life and life-work is a potential cause of stress and unconstructive work attitudes, which are positively related to burnout (Tziner et al., 2015; Rubio et al., 2015). Like other workers, when university teachers’ work spills over into the family domain, or family issues spills over into the work domain, this may have a negative impact on their psychological and emotional health. University teachers with work-life and life-work conflicts are more likely to report higher levels of metal health problems (Denson et al., 2018; Badri, 2019; Pitt et al., 2021).
In a context of the COVID 19 lockdowns, when university teachers are teleworking the potential for burnout can be even more prevalent. As Molino et al. (2020) argue the pressure to be online, whether to work or to socially interact with colleagues, makes it more difficult to disconnect physically and mentally from work and to recover between workdays, with consequences on teleworkers’ ill-being. Therefore, university teachers working remotely might be more prone to burnout, less willing to continue teleworking after the pandemic lockdowns and exhibit a decline in their performance.
Employee performance is a multidimensional concept. It refers to workers’ behavioral engagements, that is, the action individuals take to carry out their work, as well as expected work outcomes which are the consequences of workers’ job behavior (Pradhan and Jena, 2017). Previous research suggests that work-life and life-work conflicts causes a decline in workers’ work attitudes (Schieman et al., 2003; Rothbard, 2001; Rotondo and Kincaid, 2008; Cohen and Liani, 2009; Mohsin and Zahid, 2012; Thompson and Aspinwall, 2009) and work effort (Konrad and Mangel, 2000) that in turn causes poor performance (Grzywacz and Marks, 2000; Ahmad, 2008; Mohsin and Zahid, 2012). In addition, Beauregard et al. (2019) reviewed existing research on teleworking prior to COVID 19 and concluded that the relationship between teleworking and employee performance is not clear. Some studies report a positive impact on individual and team-related performance (e.g., Golden and Gajendran, 2019) whereas others suggest negative consequences for workers’ performance (e.g., Sardeshmukh et al., 2012; Van der Lippe and Lippényi, 2020). Research carried out during COVID 19 on the relationship between teleworking and workers’ performance has produced similar mixed findings on job-performance outcomes related constructs. For example, Mohring et al. (2020) assessed individual panel data collected before and during lockdowns and found an overall decline in work satisfaction regarding remote work. Likewise, Abdel et al. (2021) reported a negative spillover effect of work demands over family demands during teleworking on workers’ emotional health. By contrast, research by Saba and Cachat-Rosset (2020) found that although teleworking was associated with an increase in workload, modification of tasks and social isolation, workers perceived that they were more productive and able to reduce work–life conflict.
As work-life conflict and life-work conflict are two distinct constructs, they might affect workers’ performance differently. As Anwar et al. (2013) argue work-life and life-work conflicts can affect employee performance positively or negatively. For example, Soomro et al. (2018) study of university teachers reported a non-significant negative relationship between life-work conflict and perceived performance, but a significant positive relationship between work-life conflict and perceived performance. Thus, it could be argued that a negative spillover effect in the personal domain, such as when an employee takes work assignments home, will disturb the employee’s personal life but might have a positive effect on their professional life and their perceived performance. Teleworking outside business hours is normative, expected and rewarded amongst university teachers particularly for those who are pursuing a high-level career (Fox et al., 2011). Thus, due to university teachers’ high level of investment in the work domain, work-life conflict might contribute to a more positive perceived performance. However, whereas before the COVID 19 pandemic university teachers had the autonomy to choose whether to work from home or not, during the pandemic, teleworking was mandatory. These conditions might increase the work-life conflict and result in a positive perceived performance. In addition, a life-work spillover effect, such as when a university teacher brings their personal problems into work, would have a negative effect on the perceived performance. Indeed, if their career ambitions are constrained by responsibilities and issues in their personal life this may contribute to a negative perceived performance. As current perceptions of the work context influence future actions, and given that the connection between teleworking and performance is not clearly defined, we investigate whether university teachers who perceive their teleworking positively report a stronger inclination to continue teleworking. Thus, the research hypothesis are as follows:
H1: Higher levels of work-life conflict and life-work conflict predict higher levels of burnout for teleworking university teachers during COVID 19 lockdowns.
H2: Higher levels of work-life conflict predict higher perceived performance, whereas higher levels of life-work conflict contribute to lower perceived performance, in teleworking university teachers during COVID 19 lockdowns.
H3: Higher levels of burnout predict lower willingness to continue teleworking and lower perceived performance for teleworking university teachers during COVID 19 lockdowns.
H4: Higher levels of perceived performance predict higher willingness to continue teleworking for teleworking university teachers during COVID 19 lockdowns.