2.1 Daily consequences of working from home

In building our conceptual model, we draw on the resource (drain) perspective in work-family spillover theory (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). Resources, such as time, attention and energy, are finite and once expended in one domain become unavailable for other domains (Eckenrode & Gore, 1990). We focus on work interfering with family1 as an outcome related to the work-home interface, as previous studies have shown that working from home affects work-to-home conflict more so than home-to-work conflict (Allen et al., 2015; Delanoeije et al., 2019). On a demanding workday, employees' personal resources are more likely to be drained, leaving them with fewer resources in the family domain (Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). Time-based and strain-based work-family conflicts refer to situations in which work consumes time and energy, respectively, that cannot be spent at home (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Interestingly, individuals' work-family conflict experiences are likely to vary daily as a result of day-to-day fluctuations in job demands (Ilies, Schwind, Wagner, et al., 2007; Pluut et al., 2018). Employees' daily work environment may be an important antecedent of daily variations in job demands. In fact, past research has found that telework may influence the extent to which individuals experience job demands (Peters & Van der Lippe, 2007). Following this logic, employees' daily experiences of work-family conflict may be influenced strongly by whether they work at the office or from home on a given day.

Yet, studies on the consequences of telework for work-family conflict have primarily taken a between-person approach (for exceptions, see Delanoeije et al., 2019; Delanoeije & Verbruggen, 2020). Based on the above and considering that employees' use of the telework practice is volatile (i.e., employees rarely work from home every day), we conceptualize telework at the intraindividual level and examine its effects on work-family conflict on a daily basis. Here we propose time pressure as a mediator because time is a scarce personal resource for employees that they might find easier to protect in a work environment that allows for a more fungible use of time (Borpujari et al., 2020). Employees' daily work environment (i.e., home or office) may impact the drain of this resource such that time pressure varies across days. Time pressure is a commonly experienced job demand that has been found to cause work-family conflict (Brosch & Binneweis, 2018; De Carlo et al., 2019). Hence, we take a resource (drain) perspective and examine how working from home is related to a key precursor of work-family conflict, namely time pressure.

2.2 Cross-day effects of work-family conflict

We further use the resource loss spiral principle of conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989; Hobfoll et al., 2018) to propose that the resource drain associated with work-family conflict may extend to the next workday. In particular, we integrate COR theory with the resource (drain) perspective in work-family spillover theory (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000) to extend our understanding of what happens when work and family interfere (i.e., consequences of work-family conflict). COR theory posits that once resources are lost, individuals become more vulnerable to further resource loss and may find themselves in a resource loss spiral. Researchers have examined the long-lasting impact of resource loss as well as the role that resources play on the shorter term, such as across days or weeks (Airila et al., 2014; Demerouti et al., 2015; Donald et al., 2016). We propose that work-family conflict (which refers to a situation in which resources are depleted) influences how employees feel about their upcoming workday. Specifically, we examine how experiences of work-family conflict in the evening influence work-related well-being the next morning. In our examination of work-related well-being, we follow a recent line of research that integrates positive and negative perspectives on well-being in the workplace (Van den Tooren & Rutte, 2016) by focussing on work engagement, emotional exhaustion, and positive and negative affect towards the organization.

2.3 Hypotheses

Individuals experience work-family conflict when demands from work deplete personal resources (e.g., time and energy) and consequently hamper performance at home (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000; Ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012). On days when employees work from home instead of at the office, they may find execution of their work role less demanding. In fact, a vast body of research has shown that telecommuting is negatively related to work role stress (Allen et al., 2015; Delanoeije & Verbruggen, 2020; Gajendran & Harrison, 2007) and work exhaustion (Sardeshmukh et al., 2012). In line with work-family spillover theory, this would imply that working from home reduces the likelihood of experiencing negative spillover from work to family because employees are left with more resources that can be used to actively participate in the family role. While working from home may blur the boundaries between work and family (Pluut & Wonders, 2020) and hence result in work-family conflict (Schieman & Young, 2010), from a resource (drain) perspective, it should reduce work-family conflict. Indeed, the majority of studies on the relationship between telework and work-family conflict show a negative association between the two constructs (see Allen et al., 2013, and Gajendran & Harrison, 2007, for meta-analyses). Although most research on the association between telework and work-family conflict has employed a between-individual approach, recent intraindividual research supports our claim by showing that on teleworking days individuals experience less work-to-home conflict than on office days (Delanoeije et al., 2019). We aim to replicate this finding and hypothesize:

Hypothesis 1.Within individuals, working from home (compared with at the office) will be negatively associated with work-family conflict.

Next, we expect that time pressure elucidates the negative relationship between telework and work-family conflict. Time pressure is a work-related stressor that refers to the experience of having to work at a fast pace or having insufficient time to complete work-related tasks (Baer & Oldham, 2006). We argue that on days when employees work at home, they experience less time pressure. There are several reasons to expect such an effect. First, on working from home days, employees have significantly reduced contact with their colleagues and supervisors that may keep them from focussing on their work duties (Windeler et al., 2017). Fewer work-related interruptions and distractions may enhance individuals' concentration levels and help employees in completing more (complex) tasks (see Smit et al., 2016). This increased productivity may reduce employees' sense of urgency and feelings of having to speed up the work pace. A second explanation for why employees may experience less time pressure on a working from home day is the greater autonomy in deciding how and when to perform tasks (Gajendran et al., 2014). Control over scheduling one's own working day can be used to schedule work in an efficient manner, thus saving energy and time. Finally, working from home may have a time pressure-reducing potential because it eliminates commuting time and effort (Peters et al., 2004), leaving the employee with more time for work duties. When employees know they have more time to allocate to work, they are less likely to feel anxious and under pressure about the work-related tasks they have to complete that day.

Lending support to the above arguments, research suggests that working from home reduces experiences of time pressure (Peters & Van der Lippe, 2007). In their cross-sectional study among 807 employees in the Netherlands, Peters and Van der Lippe (2007) showed that employees working from home more than one day per week on average experience less time pressure than full-time on-site workers. Thus, we expect that on working from home days, individuals experience less time pressure than on office days. Time pressure, in turn, may be a strong predictor of daily work-family conflict. Dealing with time pressure on a given day may keep individuals from actively participating in the family role because of depleted (emotional) resources (Pluut et al., 2018; Prem et al., 2018). In line with the resource (drain) perspective in work-family spillover theory, we put forward the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2.Within individuals, time pressure mediates the negative relationship between working from home and work-family conflict experienced at home.

On days when employees are not able to satisfy the needs of the home domain due to the demands of the work role (i.e., work-family conflict), they may experience stress because they could not successfully manage both roles (Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999). We posit that work-family conflict is an exhausting and resource-draining experience for two reasons. First, past research has suggested that experiences of work-family conflict may lead to a negative state of being, including negative emotions such as anxiety and dissatisfaction (Greenhaus et al., 2006). Judge and colleagues (2006), for instance, showed that on days when employees' work interferes with the family role, they experience more negative emotional responses (i.e., hostility and guilt) at home. Second, when stress arises from the incompatibility of two salient life roles, the individual is likely to ruminate about ‘whether and how one can fix the issues causing the conflict and the potential consequences of the conflict’ (Davis et al., 2016, p. 330). In order to overcome negative emotions and prevent becoming stuck in rumination, the individual is likely to engage in self-regulation (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000) and employ personal resources (e.g., optimism) that he or she possesses (Liu et al., 2015), to offset further resource loss. Put differently, an individual who experiences work-family conflict may decide to expend additional mental effort to think optimistically and alter their naturally occurring negative emotions.

In line with the resource loss principle of COR theory (Hobfoll et al., 2018), then, conflict between work and family may negatively affect well-being the next morning. We know from past empirical work that work-related well-being has a state-like component and fluctuates on a daily basis (Pluut et al., 2018; Sonnentag et al., 2012). Day-level variations in well-being constructs can be explained by fluctuations in personal resources (Liu et al., 2015). As we argue that individuals who experience work-family conflict are more likely to start the next morning with inadequate personal resources, we expect that day-level variations in work-family conflict explain fluctuations in employees' levels of emotional exhaustion and work engagement the next workday.

First, several studies have shown that work-family conflict is positively associated with burnout and emotional exhaustion (for a review, see Allen, Herst, Bruck, & Sutton, 2000). Taking a resource drain perspective, Simbula (2010), for instance, showed that at the within-person level, work-family conflict experiences predict emotional exhaustion. Moreover, there is empirical evidence for the longitudinal effects of work-family conflict on emotional exhaustion and burnout (Hall et al., 2010; Leineweber et al., 2014). Although previous research has shown that work-family conflict predicts emotional exhaustion on the day level and the long term, we know little about how daily work-family conflict experiences influence the next day, specifically how employees feel about the upcoming workday. Based on the above theoretical arguments and empirical insights, we put forward the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3.Within individuals, work-family conflict experienced at home in the evening is positively related to emotional exhaustion the next morning.

Second, we expect that the effect of daily work-family conflict on next morning work-related well-being is not limited to feelings of exhaustion but that it also affects engagement. Employees who have enough personal resources (e.g., high levels of energy) are likely to be engaged in their work. Research has indeed demonstrated that feeling recovered and refreshed in the morning (i.e., having energetic resources) helps employees to feel engaged in their work during the day (Kühnel et al., 2012; Lanaj et al., 2014). When employees find themselves in a resource-depleting situation (i.e., work-family conflict), however, they may decrease their level of engagement to protect their remaining resources (Babic et al., 2017). Cross-sectional studies have indeed shown that work-family conflict is negatively associated with engagement (Opie & Henn, 2013), and this negative association (with vigor in particular) appears to hold over time (see Mauno et al., 2007, for a 2-year study). It remains to be studied, however, how work-family conflict and engagement relate across days. Based on the above empirical insights and in line with the resource loss principle of COR theory, we expect that experiences of work-family conflict in the evening reduce individuals' work engagement the next morning.

Hypothesis 4.Within individuals, work-family conflict experienced at home in the evening is negatively related to work engagement the next morning.

So far, we have proposed that experiences of work-family conflict deplete personal resources and leave employees with scarce energy to start the next workday. We further argue that work-family conflict influences individuals' affect towards the organization. Failing to meet family demands because of work is unpleasant and thus may trigger negative affective reactions (Livingston & Judge, 2008). Studies using within-individual designs have indeed found that work-family conflict predicts negative emotions, such as guilt and hostility (Judge et al., 2006). Importantly, when work and family interfere, employees seek a cause for their negative emotions (Ilies et al., 2012). The source attribution perspective of work-family conflict (Shockley & Singla, 2011) entails that employees are likely to psychologically attribute blame to the source of the conflict and become dissatisfied with that role (see also Zhao et al., 2019, and Speights et al., 2019). In the case of work interfering with family, it means that individuals may perceive the organization they work for as the cause (because work is the source of conflict) and thus attribute their negative emotions to their organization. This perspective is supported by past cross-sectional research showing that when work interferes with family, individuals appraise their work negatively, become dissatisfied with their job, and show less commitment to their organization (see Amstad et al., 2011, for a meta-analysis). Integrating previous within-individual research that has shown that state-level emotions can last until the next day (Tremmel & Sonnentag, 2018) with the source attribution perspective of work-family conflict (Shockley & Singla, 2011), we hypothesize that experiences of work-family conflict in the evening increase feelings of negative affect and reduce feelings of positive affect towards the organization the next morning.

Hypothesis 5a.Within individuals, work-family conflict experienced at home in the evening is positively related to negative affect towards the organization the next morning.

Hypothesis 5b.Within individuals, work-family conflict experienced at home in the evening is negatively related to positive affect towards the organization the next morning.

In sum, we propose that on days when employees work from home, they are less likely to experience work-family conflict than on office days, and this relationship is explained by reduced time pressure. Moreover, we propose that the effects of work-family conflict spill over to the next workday, in terms of employees' exhaustion and engagement levels in the morning and how they feel (i.e., positive and negative affect) about the organization they work for.