Work/home spillover when working from home

This chapter draws on theories of work/home interface, specifically spillover, in the workplace. The COVID-19 pandemic has speeded up changes in working life, particularly as working from home has become a world-wide trend. Lockdowns and stay-at-home policies have led to reduced personal face-to-face contacts and created more work-family conflict, particularly for those who have children and elders at home. The authors evaluate the potential impacts of work/home spillover on the development and consequences of job burnout. In addition, this chapter explains these relationships from the perspective of individuals’ cognitive appraisal of adverse events. Empirical findings from some cities in the Greater Bay Area of China can provide context to illustrate the mediators and moderators in the relationships between the work-family interface and job burnout, including aspects of workplace safety. At the end of the chapter, the implications of the findings in relation to the literature on work psychology and clinical psychology are discussed.