Is working from home a blessing or a burden? Home demands as a mediator of the relationship between work engagement and work-life balance

Abstract

As COVID-19 pandemic made its incursion into the world of work in early 2020, many employees were compelled to work from home to slow down the transmission of the disease. Since then, it has been asked whether working from home is a blessing or a burden. We respond to this question by building on the Affective Events Theory to examine whether work engagement is related to work-life balance (WLB), and whether home demands mediate this relationship, using data from 219 knowledge workers drawn from universities in the South-eastern region of Nigeria primarily working from home when they were surveyed. Results of regression analysis using PROCESS macro showed that work engagement related positively to home demands; in turn, home demands related negatively to WLB. The results further revealed that work engagement related negatively to WLB and that home demands mediated the negative work engagement-WLB connection. Theoretical as well as practical implications of the study are discussed, limitations are highlighted, and suggestions for future research are outlined.