Employee psychological wellbeing in the face of pandemic: The role of belief in work priority

Traditionally, individuals who prioritize work over other aspects of life have been lauded as ideal employees. Individuals vary in the extent to which they endorse the beliefs that work should be prioritized over other aspects of life, known as the Belief in Work Priority (BWP). Various lockdown restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic have blurred work-family boundary, which consequently made prioritizing work over family responsibilities challenging. A repeated cross-sectional study was conducted to examine the relationship between BWP and employee wellbeing during (vs. before) the pandemic outbreak. We recruited 398 participants who were employed and resided in the U.S. Results revealed that during the pandemic, BWP and employee wellbeing showed a negative relationship through increased work-family conflict. Furthermore, such relationship was particularly strong among married employees and male employees.