Introduction - As a common phenomenon in organizational settings, illegitimate tasks are widely recognized for their detrimental effects on employees. However, most of the existing studies have focused on work-related and well-being related outcomes, overlooking how illegitimate tasks are linked to outcomes in the family domain.
Purpose - Drawing on the work-home resources model, we propose that illegitimate tasks experienced during the workday trigger rumination in the evening, resulting in decreased home performance. Moreover, we hypothesize that humor acts as a key resource and buffers the relationship between illegitimate tasks and rumination.
Method - We collected 373 daily observations from 87 employees at work in the afternoon and at home in the evening per day for 5 consecutive workdays.
Results - We found that daily illegitimate tasks were positively associated with evening rumination and further negatively related to home performance. Humor buffered the negative work-to-home process from daily illegitimate tasks to home performance via rumination by mitigating the positive relationship between daily illegitimate tasks and evening rumination.
Conclusions - Building on the work-home resources model, we found that daily illegitimate tasks decrease home performance through evening rumination. Humor, as a key resource, can buffer the negative work-to-home process associated with illegitimate tasks. Our study reveals the cross-domain effects of illegitimate tasks on a daily basis and highlights the importance of enacting humor skills in protecting employees from this negative effect.