Human Resource Management Strategies and Economic Stability of Virtual Assistants: The Mediating Role of Job Autonomy and the Moderating Effect of Work-Life Balance

Despite the increasing dependence on virtual assistants by industries worldwide and in the Philippines, there is no empirical research that explores the interaction between HRM practices, job autonomy, work-life balance, and economic stability. While HRM theories have been widely researched in conventional office-based work, whether these are applicable to remote working contexts remains questionable. The current research addresses these gaps by examining how HRM strategies can influence economic stability of virtual assistants, where job autonomy act as mediating variable and work-life balance as moderating variable. The linkage among variables gives a full picture of the direct and indirect effect of HRM interventions on the financial well-being using the motivation, autonomy and work-life balance. Quantitative research design was used, with 146 active virtual assistants selected using snowball sampling. HRM strategies, work autonomy, work-life balance, and economic stability were assessed using standardized scales. The spearman's (ρ) rho was calculated to be 0.696 with p-value