The negative spillover effect of sandwich-generation caregiving on employees’ job satisfaction: does work time matter?

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the effect of sandwich-generation caregiving (caregiving for elders and children simultaneously) on employed caregivers’ job satisfaction when compared with non-sandwich caregiving patterns of no caregiving, children-only caregiving and elders-only caregiving. This study also aims to explore whether depression mediates this effect and whether three types of caregivers-friendly work time (less work-time length, less nonstandard work-time schedule and more work-time autonomy) buffer these direct and indirect effects.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 7,571 Chinese employees is chosen from the 2020 China Family Panel Studies through a multistage stratified sampling design.FindingsAfter controlling for employees’ sociodemographic, work and other caregiving characteristics, this study finds that sandwich-generation caregiving is indeed more likely to negatively affect employees’ job satisfaction when compared with no caregiving and elders-only caregiving, but to the same extent as children-only caregiving. This study also suggests that the effect of sandwich-generation caregiving on job satisfaction is mediated by employees’ depression and that three types of caregiver-friendly work time help to weaken the negative effects on employees’ depression and job satisfaction.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the negative spillover effect and its mechanisms of caregiving on employees’ job satisfaction through focusing on a special caregivers group: employed sandwich-generation caregivers. These results shed light on the importance of extending caregiver studies to the workplace and provide implications for organization managers and human resources practitioners to design caregiver-friendly workplace policies to maintain employed caregivers’ work-family balance.