COVID-19 challenges and employees' stress: mediating role of family-life disturbance and work-life imbalance
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-03-2021-0090 |
| Published date | 03 May 2022 |
| Date | 03 May 2022 |
| Pages | 1318-1337 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Subhash C. Kundu,Prerna Tuteja,Purnima Chahar |
COVID-19 challenges and
employees’stress: mediating role
of family-life disturbance and
work-life imbalance
Subhash C. Kundu, Prerna Tuteja and Purnima Chahar
Haryana School of Business,
Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar, India
Abstract
Purpose –The paper focuses on examining the relationship between challenges caused by COVID-19
pandemic and employees’stress through the mediating role of family-life disturbance and work-life imbalance.
Design/methodology/approach –A total of 1,556 respondents from 45 countries across all continents were
included in this survey. Statistical techniques such as exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor
analysis (CFA), correlations, multiple regression and bootstrapping were used to analyse the data.
Findings –The results depicted that COVID-19 challenges induced stress among employees. In combination
with this, family-life disturbance and work-life imbalance mediated the relationship between COVID-19
challenges and employees’stress individually as well as serially. The paper further suggests some
recommendations to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 challenges on employees’stress.
Research limitations/implications –The major limitation of the study was in the data collection process.
As the data were collected during the time period of pandemic, so, limited respondents were approached.Also,
the international and cross-sectional design of the study can limit the applicability of the results.
Practical implications –The study suggests organizations and HR managers to help in balancing family
and work-life of employees, so that their mind can be kept stress free.
Originality/value –The study has added knowledge to the existing literature of stress created due to the
COVID-19 pandemic by explaining the serial mediation of family-life disturbance and work-life imbalance
between the relationship of COVID-19 challenges and employees’stress.
Keywords COVID-19 challenges, Family-life disturbance, Work-life imbalance, Employees’stress,
Continents, Serial mediation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The novel coronavirus believed to be originated from the city of Wuhan, China has spread
almost to the entire world within a few months (Hamouche, 2020). The WHO finally decided to
declare it as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. World has also witnessed some earlier pandemics
such as Spanish flu (H1N1) in 1918, Asian Flu (H2N2) in 1957, Hong Kong Flu (H3N2) in 1968
and Pandemic flu (H1N1) in 2009 (Liu et al., 2020). As of now 11,41,40,104 confirmed cases of
COVID-19 and 25,35,520 deaths due to this pandemic across 223 countries have been recorded
[1]. The current pandemic has forced almost all the nations to adopt quarantine directives and
undergo strict lockdown measures. In compliance with the lockdown measures, schools,
colleges, offices, kindergartens and cinemas have been closed to control the spread of deadly
virus (Sahu, 2020). Due to these lockdown measures, around 140 million people around the
globe have lost their jobs (Chakraborty, 2020). Further, COVID-19 pandemic has highly
impacted some specific segments of workforce such as women, self-employed, low wage
workers, temporary workers and atypical or non-standard employees such as freelancers and
gig workers (Pouliakas and Branka, 2020;Hamouche and Chabani, 2021). The impact of this
pandemic has been quite asymmetric as the workforce segment has suffered the most in
almost all the countries (Fana et al., 2020). The magnitude of the pandemic was so huge that
ER
44,6
1318
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 3 March 2021
Revised 1 February 2022
31 March 2022
Accepted 14 April 2022
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 44 No. 6, 2022
pp. 1318-1337
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-03-2021-0090
the governments enforced lockdown restrictions so impromptu making it difficult for
organizations to figure out what policies needed to be adopted to continue their businesses.
The organizations functioning globally has also been facing the repercussions of COVID-19
pandemic since it has led to a complete transformation in the ways they were functioning
earlier (Arora and Suri, 2020). The existing organizational arrangements have proved futile,
and their substitutes have not been found yet (Bailey and Breslin, 2020). The current situation
of COVID-19 is anomalous, and researchers find it not only a health crisis but an economic
crisis as well resulting in challenges of inequality, racism and poverty (Stephens et al., 2020).
Some policy measures introduced by the governments such as self-isolation and
quarantine even had negative and indirect effects on people (Del Boca et al., 2020). These
measures affected the daily routine activities of individuals and in the long run may lead to
depression, anxiety, insomnia or suicidal behaviour (WHO, 2020). The organisations are
struggling to meet their customers’expectations and therefore pressurizing the employees
and overloading them with tremendous amount of work while working from home.
Teleworking has been found to be a prominent solution to continue business operations while
ensuring the safety of employees during a pandemic (Greer and Payne, 2014) but it has led to
dissatisfaction among employees as it has increased the feeling of social exclusion in them
(Henke et al., 2016). These kinds of sudden changes are possessing negative impact on mental
health of employees (Hamouche, 2020;Butler and Jaffe, 2020) and have led to various
difficulties in maintaining a proper work-life balance, proper working environment, sound
mental and physical health (Waizenegger et al., 2020). In addition, some other practices
adopted during COVID-19 like work from home, telecommunication, remote working, etc.
without providing a proper setup facility at home were found to be negatively impacting their
effectiveness resulting in higher level of stress and burnout (Altena et al., 2020). Thus, based
on these past investigations and to study in depth the impact of COVID-19 on stress level of
employees, this study has taken employees’stress as a dependent variable.
The “lockdown”protocol has pushed many organizations to observe work-from-home
policies as a preventive measure to control the further spread of virus (Lichfield, 2020). It has
pressurized the individuals as well as the organizations to go into drastic transformation
where the work boundaries are no more confined to offices. The change in the work
environment has definitely put forward several challenges of maintaining a balance between
personal and professional lives of employees along with other challenges of maintaining
health, fitness and childcare (Gupta, 2020). It has joggled up the life of working individuals
because the demarcation between one’s private life and work-life has been blurred due to the
work-life practices being enforced on the employees (Aviva, 2020). Therefore, undeniably, the
current pandemic has brought several unexpected challenges for individuals and
organizations and forced them to accommodate themselves from the conventional mode of
office working to the current situation of working from home. In accordance with it, this study
focuses on assessing the implications of COVID-19 on various aspects of employees’life.
Therefore, the current study has included family-life disturbance and work-life imbalance as
potential mediators between the relationship of COVID-19 challenges and employees’stress.
Influenced by the conflict theory, Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) argue that work-life and
family-life are together incompatible, and this situation of work–family conflict got more
triggered in the times of COVID-19 pandemic due to the complete shutdown of offices and
adoption of work-from-home policies by the organizations. Although researchers in the past
have addressed the issue of work–family conflict, but its impact on stress level of employees
during a pandemic still remains uncovered. In order to have an effective interaction of work
and family dynamics with each other and fulfil high demand pressure from both the domains,
people often experience fatigue, stress and anxiety issues (Ro
zman and Tominc, 2021).
Existing literature on the current pandemic has taken into account the direct impact of
COVID-19 challenges on family disturbances (Hsu and Henke, 2020;Marimuthu and
COVID-19
challenges and
employees’
stress
1319
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