Keeping Work and Family Separate: A Serial Mediation Analysis of Social Workers' Work-Family Segmentation, Work-Family Enrichment and Job Performance in Australia

With increased blurring of boundaries between work and family lives, work-family segmentation has been suggested as an effective work-life strategy for social workers who are involved in complex human service work, to reduce work-family conflict and enhance work-family enrichment. Yet, numerous studies have examined social workers' work-family conflict experiences, and only a few have focussed on social workers' work-family enrichment experiences. Correspondingly, drawing on boundary theory, conservation of resources theory and work-family enrichment theory, we investigated how family-to-work enrichment and work-to-family enrichment help social workers to benefit from work-family segmentation to increase their job performance. Using an online survey of Australian social workers (n = 504), we tested the impact of work-family segmentation on the job performance of social workers through family-to-work-enrichment and work-to-family enrichment. The study found evidence for the positive impact of work-family segmentation in helping social workers to experience family-to-work enrichment and work-to-family enrichment, thereby enhancing their job performance. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings for social workers, supervisors and the social service agencies are discussed.