Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Work-Life Balance Among Professionals

ABSTRACT

COVID 19 pandemic has affected everyone’s life. The daily routine of individuals was disrupted due to the pandemic. Employees were instructed to work from home and subsequently, the home became their office. This work-from-home culture had a negative impact on household activities. The daily routine of employee and their family members got disturbed. Work from home/online activities from home leads to an extra burden to the working professionals apart from the other domestic chores or responsibilities. The imposed restrictions, limitations, and changed work patterns make work and family life balance more challenging. This transition leads to different emotional and behavioral problems in the employees and their families. In many instances, different mistakes were made at the organizational level, as employees and employers were finding it difficult for this sudden in the work environment, resulting in disturbance in the workflow. Due to this, demand and supply chain was disrupted and many of the working professionals lost their jobs and many were always in fear of losing their job. This sudden change created the necessity to understand the importance of work-life balance. This present narrative review is just an attempt to understand the importance of work-life balance for employees during pandemics. Potentially eligible articles were searched on PubMed, PsycINFO, IndMed, Microsoft Academic Search, and Google scholar. In the following searches, studies related to work-life balance published in a peer-reviewed journal, written in the English language, were included for the review.