Introduction
Today, work as well as personal life has been drastically changed by Covid-19 and now there is a very thin line of demarcation left between work-time and home-time which is almost unclear and sometimes even hard to differentiate. Balance of work-life actually let people enable to discard the thought of being a perfect performer in both home as well as at work, instead they work on being more focused, sincere, and even ready to take risky tasks. The changes which have been inculcated in day today life due to COVID-19 pandemic has been accepted and acknowledged. The precautionary measures that have to be taken care to stop the spreading of the virus has wiped out the gap that separated the work from our comfortable personal life. This situation left us to think about the work- life balance. This term came into limelight in the 1980s, when the increasing number of women entered the paid work force, they have been additionally took up the charge of domestic and household chores. It’s somewhat hard to define the concept of term work-life as it is primarily based on many assumptions. The concept actually describe mainly on the “absence of clashes” between work and private life. The situation which people are facing due to Covid 19 pandemic is actually started fading the lines between work and leisure. As people started working from home and thanks to the social distancing norms that have been issued by Government time to time which left working people with no personal space to take breaks. The weekend breaks are very much-needed as it's been claimed that the breaks actually increases the productivity and stabilizes the mental health. Families with kids and elderly members are especially facing difficulty while working from home as they have to take up the responsibilities of home and school simultaneously along with office work. In this situation, the problems related to workplace allow family support and thus perceive a sense to be part of lives of each other. Those leaders or individuals who helped in such transformations realised well that their efforts to adapt the current situational changes strengthened as the nature of about accepting and inculcating various demands upon once talents and time, without making attempts to spin many plates at a time.
Importance of work-life balance
Increase individual efficiency — people are more productive in-office when they’ve had leisure time out-of-office. Relaxing and breathing space is needed for fresh ideas. Increase crew effectiveness — The Mental Health Foundation found that about 27percent of people working long hours feel depressed, 34percent feel anxious and 58percent experiences irritation. To reduce those feelings and prosper team work is of great help. Improve employee engagement — many studies show that people are not happy in the workplace. Encouraging work-life balance helps individuals feel more positive — which is the key to increased productivity, performance, and retention. Easing recruitment — when organisation culture genuinely promotes work-life balance, that fact becomes an important part of the employer brand. Which makes talent brand more competitive, so it easy to attract better people, faster. Boost diversity — work-life balance makes company accessible and attractive.
Review of Literature
Lockwood, N. R. (2003)1 Analysed about the challenges like global competitiveness, personal life, and aging workforce that are creating problems in work-life balance. Further suggested that the companies should invest and look after in these factors to meet the challenges to take one step forward in global market. Rajadhyaksha, U. (2012)2 through a case study of different organizations analysed the problems faced by Indians in work-life balance like caste system, gender inequality in work place, large informal working sectors which creates difficulty in work-life balance. The author also discussed about the suggestive policies and measure that should be implemented by organizations to strengthen the morale of their employees. Kanthisree, G. (2013)3 studied that more than 89 percent employees of targeted organization has a positive response towards work-life balance and they are able to manage both personal and professional life smoothly but rest are not able to do so due to various reasons like lack of motivation, low morale, labour turnover, and so on. The researcher further suggested that the organisation should adopt some good practices like recreational facilities, restrooms, regular breaks to keep the employees motivated to help them have a balanced work-life.
Kim, H. K. (2014)4 found in his study on Work-Life Balance and Employees’ Performance that there is no direct relationship between work life balance and employees’ performance. But it was found after the quantitative study that experience of work-life balance has enhanced the attitude towards commitment and that attitude has a positive impact on in-role performance. Fisher, J. et al.(2020)5 in their empirical study found that there is a positive relationship between employees’ work-life balance and job satisfaction as well as the reputation of an organization. They also studied on hoe the support of employers of any organisation can help to enhance and motivate employees for a balanced work-life. Anderson, D., & Kelliher, C. (2020)6 examined that in the situation of pandemic, the employee managed to work from home without fail and both organization as well as employees should be grateful towards each other for such working arrangements.
Research Methodology
The objectives of the study are
To know the priority during epidemic family safety or job security
To know the level of management to complete work from home
To find out the strategies to make work life balance during covid-19 lockdown specially when working from home.
The method of study
A study was conducted empirically to authenticate and corroborate the conceptual model. For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed and online survey was adopted to manage the questionnaire. The random sampling technique was adopted to collect information. The questionnaire was administrative to the respondents by mail. The respondents were asked to answer those questions. The work obstacles they faced at this pandemic time were noted to understand their satisfaction level.
The various research studies identified many variables that are actually responsible for the work life balance level. Family size, children age, number or working hours outside home, the flexibility of working hour, one's control over his or her hours of working, and the support of society or home affect the experience of work life balance level. Though, these variables are taken as base of work life balance level but the impact these variables have on the emotional and lifestyle of working women should also to be considered., This research has been conducted to study about the factors and reasons that could lead to work life balance level among those who are married as well as employed. Their work and life at this covid-19 lockdown. They were also asked what they had opted and what they would like to change to make it more feasible in future.
Questionnaire development
The questionnaire was developed based on study variables and administrator to both male and female working people.
An analysis and results
Table 2
Work status
|
Sector |
Number of Participants |
Percentage |
|
Private Sector |
30 |
56 |
|
Public Sector |
10 |
19 |
|
Self Employed |
13 |
25 |
Table 3
Job security
|
Response |
No. of Participants |
Percentage |
|
Strongly Agree |
5 |
9 |
|
Agree |
9 |
17 |
|
Neutral |
7 |
13 |
|
Disagree |
12 |
23 |
|
Strongly Disagree |
20 |
38 |
A comparison was made with regard to responses of participants and whether there is a significant perception difference in respect of mess up in the family during COVID- 19 or not. The summary of responses is tabulated below:
Table 4
Gender cross tabulation
|
|
Strongly agree |
Neutral |
Disagree |
|
|
Gender |
Male |
13 |
10 |
77 |
|
Female |
0 |
13 |
87 |
|
|
Chi-Square Tests |
||||
|
|
Value |
Df |
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) |
|
|
Pearson Chi-Square |
3.343a |
2 |
.188 |
|
|
Likelihood Ratio |
4.827 |
2 |
.089 |
|
|
N of Valid Cases |
53 |
|
|
|
The above table shows that majority of participants disagree that there is a mess up in the family during COVID-19 and there is no significant difference between genders on this response.
Conclusion
This is a study on work life balance among male and female professionals during this covid-19 lockdown led to the following: The research conducted through various studies, has recognised various variables that affects the level of work as well as family balance. Variables such as working hours , family size, job security, job flexibility, support the organization provide, have an impact on these. However, these variables also have emotional impact on anxiety and well-being of the working women. Since there were less researches done on this in India as compared to other developed countries the study was conducted to make an attempt to find the balance between work and personal life of the working groups due to this pandemic.
