The use of work-life balance supporting cultures to provide and support the welfare of both the individuals and their families is expected to improve organisational outcomes by enabling company members to improve levels of job satisfaction and commitment to work.However, creating or introducing another culture in the company frequently generates internal problems when it conflicts with the current culture in terms of the beliefs, habits and things managers take for granted.In this paper we develop a framework for modelling how the unsuitable knowledge may be mitigated in order to strengthen a WLB culture.It is based on the idea that the presence of an unlearning context that fosters the updating of knowledge is likely to be essential for SMEs that are trying to implement a WLB culture.The research model and hypothesized relationships are empirically tested using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach, validated by factor analysis of 229 SMEs in the Spanish metal industry.Our findings show that in order to strengthen a work-life balance culture and thus positively influence innovation related outcomes, SMEs meet the challenge of developing an unlearning context to counteract the negative effects of the outdated of knowledge in relevant areas and to facilitate the replacement of out-of-date or obsolete knowledge.