Managing Family Demands in Teams: The Role of Social Support at Work

A majority of today's workforce juggles work and family roles, whereby family life often interferes with work. Thus far, not much is known about work-family interference at the team level. This study explores how team members' family demands influence team processes (taskwork and teamwork) and consequently, team performance. In addition, we investigate whether social support at work helps to prevent possible disadvantageous effects of team members' family demands on team processes. Using a sample of 61 teams (520 employees), we found that team members' average family demands were negatively related to supervisor-ratings of team performance, through reduced taskwork. Supervisor and organizational social support attenuated this negative relationship. Family demands were positively related to teamwork when coworker and supervisor support were high. These findings specify that under conditions of adequate support at work, harmful effects of a team's family context on team performance are less likely, whereas teamwork is even enhanced.

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