Work-to-Family Enrichment: The Explanation from the Mentoring Prospective

In the contemporary Chinese society, personal values and humanities are increasingly emphasized, so that employers have to take care of employees' needs for the work-life balance. If work-family enrichment ( WFE) is achieved, employees win be motivated in the long run. The existing literature has paid heavy attention to work-family conflicts and gotten important implications. The current study examines the employee's WFE and tests the impact of having a mentor on WFE. We propose that in the early stage of organizational socialization, mentoring provided by the mentor will help resolve work-family problems of the protege and achieve WFE. Results from a field survey of 287 proteges in a manufacturing company indicate that mentoring function has positive impacts on proteges' work-family enrichment. Other important findings include that the relationship between mentoring function and work-family enrichment is partially mediated by task performance that is also moderated by proteges' motivation to learn. Implications of the findings are offered.