The radical changes that have overwhelmed the labor market in recent years have led scholars and practitioners to focus attention on the conditions that could best support individuals and organizations in maintaining high production standards and thriving even in a difficult scenario. In particular, the investigation of the mechanisms governing the organizational system (e.g., the organization of work and/or the conditions that might nurture employees’ well-being) is strategically used to read the signs of changes and to direct the management process. In light of the profound wider changes that have impacted the labor market (e.g., technological advancement and global competition among the main ones), to survive, organizations have been forced to redefine their working processes, consequently revising job descriptions and role requirements, rediscovering WD as a good practice of HR and organizational management. Hence, WD “concerns the content and organization of one’s work tasks, activities, relationships and responsibilities” [16] (p. 662).

Historically, the interest in WD has stemmed from the widespread application of the principles of scientific management in the design of initial industrial jobs. But, if, on the one hand, this approach aimed for a simplification of any management process, the motivational WD perspectives appear much more focused on the enhancement of the positive effects that work design might have on positive organizational behaviors. For instance, the job characteristics model [17] maintained that an effective WD should consider five core job characteristics (i.e., variety, autonomy, feedback, significance, and identity) to produce three individual positive psychological states (i.e., experiencing meaning, feeling responsible for outcomes, and understanding the results of their efforts), which, in turn, were proven to impact on positive work outcomes (e.g., intrinsic motivation, job satisfaction, and work performance). In this vein, the adequate WD of tasks, activities, relationships, and responsibilities could be highly strategic to manage human resources with respect to several organizational goals, such as safety, competitiveness, and innovation.

The contemporary perspective on WD [18] focuses on the four dimensions of work characteristics: task, knowledge, social, and work context characteristics. Task characteristics refer to the complexity of the tasks involved to accomplish the work of a particular job. In particular, they include the following specific aspects that characterize job tasks: autonomy, task significance, and feedback from the job. Knowledge characteristics refer to the individual requirements of a job in terms of knowledge, skills, and ability. They include the extent to which information processing and skill variety are required at work. Social characteristics refer to the nature of relational interactions involved in the execution of work activities. They include not only the social support that comes from the work climate, but also the specific feedback that comes from colleagues and supervisors. Work context characteristics refer to the physical and environmental aspects of a particular job. They include the physical demands required from the job and the conditions of the work environment [19,20]. Accordingly, the relationship between the person and work is often regulated by job characteristics and WD strategies also influence work–life balance. For many employees, work and family are the prevailing domains of life. The need to balance the two domains has become a part of all employees’ daily lives because of the increase of dual-earner households and non-traditional gender roles [21,22].

WF conflict is commonly defined as “a form of inter-role conflict in which the role pressures from the work and family domains are mutually incompatible in some respect” [23] (p. 77). WF conflict is interpreted in two directions: work interference with family (WIF) and family interference with work (FIW) [24]. WIF is caused by the work demands (e.g., long working hours and work overload) that compromise the family role [25,26]. FIW is caused by those family demands (e.g., responsibilities toward family members) that that have detrimental effects on the work domain [27]. Based on this theorization, empirical evidence has shown that WIF and FIW are influenced by work and family demands and they also have consequences on work and family outcomes, such as performance and satisfaction, e.g., [28,29,30]. Among the predictors of WF conflict, several studies ascertained that role demands have relevant effects on WF conflict, showing that work demands associated more with WIF than with FIW and family role demands associated more with FIW than with WIF [10,29,31]. Michel and colleagues’ [10] meta-analysis on the antecedents of WF conflict supported the relevance of work role stressors (e.g., role overload and time demands), work role involvement (e.g., job involvement and work centrality), work social support (e.g., organizational and peer support), and work characteristics (e.g., task variety and job autonomy) as predictors of WF conflict.

Given this evidence, the content and context features of the job were proven to play a crucial role in favoring a balance and reducing the conflict between work and family domains. For instance, job complexity is an enabling resource that could increase individual performance in the work domain as well as in other domains [32]. Hence, job complexity requires the development of skills and abilities (e.g., handling multiple tasks, planning, and organizing) to complete the work, which could also become useful skills to manage the WF interface. Likewise, the positive characteristics of the job (e.g., autonomy and decision control) have been proven to promote WF enrichment and decrease WF conflict through adequate work resources that sustain individual coping [10,33].

Recently, scholars have investigated the influence of the WF interface on individual attitudes and behaviors. These studies have led to the development of different constructs such as positive spillover [34,35] and WF facilitation [36,37,38] or work–family synergy [39]. Among these, WF enrichment was proven to have a relevant role in the process of WF balance [40,41,42]. Greenhaus and Powell define WF enrichment as “the extent to which experience in one role improves the quality of life namely performance or affect, in the other role” [12] (p. 6). However, further studies have largely suggested positive relationships between job characteristics and some nuances of WF enrichment, such as positive spillover [43,44] and WF facilitation [32,45]. The underlying assumption common to many of these approaches is that motivating job characteristics (e.g., autonomy, variety, and feedback) could provide successful and satisfactory work experiences, which, in turn, might contribute to facilitating the family role [17,46]. These characteristics are related to specific resources (e.g., time management skills and self-confidence) that could be applied to family activities and relationships to enrich the family domain though the work role [32].

The search for a balance between work and personal domains is a very expensive activity in terms of resources and energy for workers. Generally, the balance between work and family fosters psychological and physiological health and organizational outcomes [47]. On the other hand, the conflict between work and family roles leads to negative outcomes in both domains, such as emotional exhaustion and burnout [11,48]. Maslach defines burnout as “a psychological syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among normal individuals who work with people in some capacity” [49] (pp. 20–21). A recent attempt to overcome this traditional conception of the construct and its related measurement tool came from a recent study by Schaufeli, De Witte, and Desart [50] who developed the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT). The theoretical framework that inspired the authors sees burnout as a syndrome that consists of four interrelated components. The first component is exhaustion, which involves the depletion of physical and psychological resources. The second one is mental distance, which involves the indifference and disenchantment toward the meaning of work; the third is emotional impairment, which refers to overwhelming negative emotions at work; and the last one is cognitive impairment, which refers to the indicators of declined cognitive processes.

Among the several antecedents of burnout, WF conflict is considered a prominent one [48,51,52,53,54]. WF conflict drains individual mental and physical resources to face the imbalance between work and family demands [54]. Therefore, burnout could arise at work because of the mental and physical fatigue caused by the detrimental process of WF conflict. At the same time, in line with the COR theory [55], WF enrichment is negatively associated with burnout, because a resource gain spiral may be sparked by WF enrichment, producing an increase in physical and psychological resources which compensate for the difficulties of work demands [56,57]. For instance, developing new work competencies and applying them to the family domain may decrease burnout components because it sustains the family role with new resources. Moreover, the family domain may give employees additional resources (e.g., esteem, support, and flexibility) that may sustain the work role performance [12,44].

Another outcome considered here is represented by work performance. In contrast to job burnout, work performance is considered a positive outcome of individual and organizational health. It is difficult to provide an unequivocal definition of work performance as it is a multifaceted construct with numerous meanings: from performance assessment to proactive behavior [58], organizational citizenship behavior [59], counterproductive behavior [60], adaptive performance [61], and contextual performance [62]. Proficiency refers to work performance in terms of the accomplishment of activities that are required for a specific job. Adaptivity refers to the extent to which employees adapt and cope with changes in the job and work environment. Proactivity refers to the extent to which employees take initiative and propose ideas to enhance work activities and contexts.

In this direction, as previously stated, WF conflict is associated with a decrease in performance. Previous research has shown that WF conflict impacts on work performance [13,14,15]. The influence of WF conflict on work performance is supported by the role theory and by the scarcity of resources hypothesis, which state that individual personal resources are limited and can be depleted by the demands of one role, such that they can also be insufficient for other roles [64,65,66]. Moreover, heavy workloads drain the individual capacity to balance different roles, leading to emotional exhaustion and poor performance at work. For the same reasons, WF enrichment is positively related to work performance [67,68]. The role accumulation [66,69] and the conservation of resources (COR) [70,71] theories support the idea that individual resources can also be expanded. Using and developing resources in one domain may bring improvement in resources that can be used in other domains. For instance, learning strategies for managing conflict at work may help individuals to use that skills in the family domain to obtain positive effects and enrich both the work and family roles.