Work-family role blurring and conflict among South African construction professionals

A research model was proposed investigating the relationships between work demand, role blurring, work-to-family conflict, and health and wellbeing consequences, and the model was tested on registered South African construction professionals. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyze the data collected from an online survey. The research results show that work pressure is a salient antecedent to all role blurring activities, i.e. after-hours work contact, pre-occupation with work, and multi-tasking between job tasks and family tasks whilst at home. Work hours directly predict work contact but indirectly affect pre-occupation and multi-tasking via the mediating role of work contact. All role blurring activities are positively associated with construction professionals’ experience of work-to-family conflict, which subsequently leads to depression and sleep problems. The results also show that depression affects the quality of sleep and construction professionals are likely to use alcohol consumption to cope with sleep problems. However, depression was found to be negatively associated with alcohol consumption, which calls for a more fine-grained analysis of the relationship. The study highlights the importance of appropriate work design with manageable workloads and reasonable work hours, and the promotion of boundary tactics for reducing work–family role blurring and conflict experienced by construction professionals.