The study explored how employees from an East Asian city make sense of and attribute their work-life experience to various interconnected factors. The ‘western’ positivist approach to studying work-life interface has been the mainstream method for understanding its contributing factors. As such, past studies have often focused on the separate factors contributing to work-life interface. However, in reality, many of these factors are intertwined and dynamically influence the work-life experience and the choices employees make regarding their work and life. Through the analysis of interview data from 32 Hong Kong participants, we applied the ‘eastern’ holistic approach that participants used, in which they linked multiple factors in explaining their work-life experience. Our findings identified various cross-layer configurations that may have been previously overlooked in the field and provided examples for such configurations. Our study shows that polycontextual configurations need further investigation to reflect the dynamic and complex reality shaping work-life experience.
