Work life balance and job-related affective wellbeing: moderating role of work autonomy

Abstract

Studies have been suggesting that millennials put a higher emphasis on their subjective wellbeing experience at work as an aspect in their decision to stay in an organisation. In this paper, we investigated how work-life balance explained job-related affective wellbeing among millennial employees. In addition, we investigated how work autonomy moderated the relationship between work-life balance and job-related affective wellbeing. Our assumptions were; 1) those who had higher work-life balance experienced better job-related affective wellbeing, and 2) when under high work autonomy, job-related affective wellbeing levels will be higher compared to when in lower levels. To test our proposition, we surveyed a total of 272 millennial workers using PROCESS MACRO SPPSS extension. Our results suggested that work autonomy had an extremely important role in increasing millennial workers’ affective wellbeing. Affective wellbeing state of millennial workers were significantly higher when under high work autonomy levels compared to when they were lower. Implication of this paper includes understanding the importance of work autonomy inside the organisation towards millennial workers. It also offers several managerial implications on key areas to improve affective wellbeing of millennials at work.

Taking on the “new normal”: emerging psychologists' reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic

“…As we continue to live in an increasingly accelerating digital world where WFH workers are projected to make up four times the level of the pre-pandemic workforce (Barrero et al ., 2021), employers must implement measures to ensure positive WFH environments. As perceived autonomy and social support are essential in supporting employees' wellbeing (Wang et al ., 2021; Yap and Badri, 2021a, 2021b), encouraging these positive job constructs in particular may buffer against negative effects of WFH.…”