Work Life Balance During Lockdown

Abstract

The concept of Work-life balance was considered to be finding equilibrium between family and professional life. Young executives were struggling to balance the time they spent on their career and the quality time they spent with their families. The ambition to succeed in the career resulted in their spending long hours in the work. At the same time, the demands of the family with the birth and rearing of children was getting higher. With both the husband and wife working, it became very much stressful and it is much harder for the women, especially in our culture. This work-family conflict was significant source of stress. Current concept is broader and is balancing between work and non-work activities. It consists of managing self, time, stress, change, technology and leisure. Commuting long distances in heavy traffic during peak hours followed by meeting after meetings and target oriented work culture put people under tremendous stress. People were looking forward for flexible working hours and work from home as solutions to these. During the lockdown, people are forced to work from home. In the process they found that now they are just one call or message away from the work and are thus expected to work 24/7 and are not able to concentrate on other works. The quality of time spent with the family in the period of uncertainty without leisure is giving more stress.

The research objective of the article is to understand about Work Life balance by reviewing the earlier literature and connecting them with the current situation of lock down when people realized that what the very theme of work lie balance is blurred due to FUD. The article then gives suggestions to overcome the same.

Full paper available at
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345385692_Work_Life_Balance_during_Lockdown

Keywords: Work Life Balance, Lockdown, FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt)