New research shows overqualified employees who prioritise work over family are more likely to let anxiety and fear about their careers spill into their home lives, creating damaging conflict.
On the flipside, overqualified workers who value family over work are less likely to experience work-family conflict – instead seeing the benefits of a taking a job that comes with less pressure and allows more time and energy for family.
Published in The International Journal of Human Resource Management, the research explored whether employees with more education, skills, abilities and experience than their job requires experience more or less work-family conflict than other employees.
Co-author Associate Professor Alex Luksyte, from The University of Western Australia Business School, said work-family conflict occurred when family and work role pressures were mutually incompatible and could impact health, wellbeing and life satisfaction as well as work performance, absenteeism, motivation and turnover.
"We wanted to investigate whether this is more or less of a problem for people who are overqualified for the jobs they hold," Associate Professor Luksyte said.
"On the one hand these employees are unlikely to be exhausted at work because they are usually under-utilised and under-loaded – hence unlikely to arrive home so tired they can't fulfil their family responsibilities.
"On the other hand, they may experience more work-family conflict because they're bored at work and bring their frustration and anger about wasting their talents home with them."
To answer the question Associate Professor Luksyte and colleagues from Beihang University and Tsinghua University in China conducted two studies looking at levels of career-related anxiety, anger, depression and work-family conflict experienced by hundreds of workers from Chinese banking and other industries.
"We found the level of work-family conflict very much depended on the overqualified worker's values," Associate Professor Luksyte said.
"Overqualified employees who valued work more than family experienced more anxiety and fear regarding their professional development and hence reported more strain-based work-family conflict, where they were too frazzled to participate in family activities and responsibilities.
"However, those who valued family more than work experienced less time-based work-family conflict.
"These employees viewed their overqualification as a chance to reduce their work overload, with their surplus capabilities allowing them to complete their core tasks with relative ease and greater efficiency and leaving them with more time for their families."
Associate Professor Luksyte said the findings had important implications for managers and organisations that wanted to maximise talent utilisation but also ensure strong wellbeing outcomes.
"Our study is a timely reminder for managers to pay closer attention to the work-family values of their overqualified staff, rather than simply focusing on their performance," she said.
"They can achieve this by establishing flexible schedules or supportive family strategies, particularly for overqualified employees with higher family centrality.
"Overqualified workers who prioritise work over family could proactively approach their managers to be assigned more tasks or responsibilities that could help them fulfill their work centrality values and reduce career-related anxiety, in turn lowering the risk of work-family conflict."
