When Family Tensions Silence Employees: How Emotion Sharing Keeps Voices Heard

What is it about?

This study explores how rude or disrespectful treatment at home—family incivility—affects employees’ willingness to speak up about workplace problems and how emotional sharing with colleagues can buffer this effect. Based on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, it argues that family strain drains emotional energy and motivation, lowering work engagement and reducing employees’ proactive efforts to identify and report issues, thereby weakening problem-focused voice behavior. Using survey data from employees in a large Mozambican bank, the study finds that family incivility lowers work engagement, which in turn reduces problem-focused voice. However, emotion sharing plays a crucial buffering role. Employees who openly discuss personal feelings with colleagues experience less emotional depletion and sustain higher engagement. Through shared empathy and solidarity, they regain energy and remain willing to speak up, even amid significant family stress. These findings underscore the spillover between home and work, showing that emotional well-being in one domain directly influences proactive behaviors in another. For organizations, the results suggest that encouraging a psychologically safe climate—where employees can express emotions constructively—helps sustain engagement and voice behavior. Supporting open communication is thus not only a relational benefit but a strategic tool for maintaining organizational learning and improvement.

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Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This study is unique in linking family incivility—a personal, nonwork stressor—to problem-focused voice, a vital organizational change behavior. By identifying work engagement as a mediating mechanism and emotion sharing as a relational buffer, it advances COR theory and the voice literature, showing that personal hardships can silence employees unless emotional resources are actively replenished. The study reframes employee silence as not only a workplace issue but also a cross-domain resource problem, where family strain and collegial empathy jointly shape the flow of organizational feedback. This study is timely, as employees face growing work–life integration pressures and blurred home–work boundaries. Conducted in Mozambique, a collectivist and high–uncertainty-avoidant context, it shows that emotional openness among peers can offset family stress and sustain constructive voice behavior. For managers, the takeaway is clear: supportive teams protect engagement and innovation, making emotion sharing essential for resilient and adaptive organizations.