Work-Life Balance During COVID 19: Views from a developing Country Outline: 1. Abstract 2. Introduction 3. The Concept of Work-Life Balance 4. On Pandemics 5. Work-life Balance and COVID-19 in...

WORK-LIFE BALANCE DURING COVID 19: VIEWS FROM A DEVELOPING COUNTRY
WORK-LIFE BALANCE DURING COVID 19: VIEWS FROM A DEVELOPING COUNTRY
Report on Work-Life Balance in India
Abstract
Professional work can have a strong intersection in the personal life. There are many facets of one's personal life which can form intersection with work that includes health, family and leisure.
Work-life balance can be defined as the art and science of balancing professional careers with personal responsibilities. This can be a daunting task, especially during lockdowns when people are expected to perform at work along with handling various household activities. This aspect of maintaining a healthy work-life balance was a major pain area for the entire working class during the coronavirus pandemic. This is because it had added to the already complicated challenges and life had shifted to the entire remote model making the home the office as well. The spread of the coronavirus and penetration of COVID-19 along with subsequent lockdowns all across the world had blurred the boundaries between the home as well as the workplace. By the virtue of this assignment, I have performed an extensive analysis of studying the aspect of work-life balance in the context of a developed economy. For the scope of this assignment, I have based my research and findings on India, which is the fastest-growing economy. India is regarded as the sixth largest economy of the world with GDP as $2.7 trillion. It is considered as the fastest growing developing nation. India is expected to exponentially grow over the rate of 7% in the current fiscal year FY2022-23. Primary objective of this research to find the intensity and relationship between work-life balance with the emotional exhaustion. This largely experienced by the people who are employed in the service/business while working from home during the outburst of COVID-19 pandemic (Lee, J., Chin, M., & Sung, M., 2020).
Contents
1    Abstract    1
2    Introduction    3
3    Concept of Work-Life Balance    4
4    On Pandemic    6
5    Work-life Balance and COVID-19 in developing countries    7
6    Lessons on Work-Life Balance during Pandemics like COVID-19    8
References    11
Introduction
Work-life balance essentially implies focussing on maintaining a positive balance between the home and work. It has been recognized as a core for the organisation that can boost efficiency of work and elevates performance of employee. This term was included in the English and Oxford dictionary around four decades back. Ever since its inception, it has been utilised to indicate everything from need to leisure oriented. While the intention of term is perhaps strong in psycholofy however its practically flawed. Creating any kind of divided between the professional life and personal life dosent really exist. This has became perhaps very evident in te outbrust of coronavirus (World Health Organization., 2021). COVID-19 pandemic spread like forest fire especially in highly dense country India making it even more difficult to curtail the penetration of the virus. Therefore, the pandemic had put a lot of pressure on people to maintain a balance between their work and personal life. Threat and turbulence was experienced with every single person in working class group in the country. This move to shift the office at the premise of home has been emotionally straining for people especially women who has to deliver at professional front along with taking care of family like cooking, cleaning and nursing the child. Primary objective of the research was to comprehend the flexibility of the integrating the work and private life of the Indian employee all across various socio-demographic groups while in the COVID-19 emergency condition. Furthermore, it investigates how personal life was influence with employees ability to perform the work duties since there also additional household chores involved while working from home during pandemic. Overall load of the work also changed which was a major concern during the COVID-19 emergency condition.
Initial section of FY2020 witnessed a glibal public health crisis because of the spread of coronavirus disease, COVID-19 which was orginated from the Wuhan in China in the later section of December 2019 (World Health Organization., 2021). On 12th March 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) was regarded as controllable pandemic. Especially for India, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in January and by mid-March around 25-30 cases were confirmed. Considering the nature of the virus, no vaccine or medicine was present to treat the pandemic and social distancing was consideres as the only possible preventive measure to shield the peple from being infected or even infecting others. Furthermore, on March, 24th, Prime Minister of India had officiated a 21 days lockdown all acorss the country until April 3, 2020. This lockdown was further extended till May, 3rd 2020. Therefore, majority of the organisations like government and industries made their employees "Work from Home" (WFH) during this lockdown period. These two years have been beyond difficult for those who need to be handle the pressure of being always available along with handling the household chores for 24*7. There is no dennying to the fact that, people also enjoyed their time since they saved on not travelling to office yet on the downside they juggled with different family commitments with work, they also felt isolated and secluded since there were continuous hours of work. Hence, people definately felt burn out. Hence, the concept of work-life balance became much more important during and after pandemic. From the research it is evidednt that in relation to male and female, latter experience more emotional fatigye because of the personal life interference while working from home during pandemic (Asian Development Bank., 2020). Furthermore, relationship between the personal life and interference of work didnt had much impact on emotional exhaustion based on gender. It is very much relevant to comprehend that participative leadership can contribute in minimisation of work that leads to reduction of overall burn-out. Overall data is been gathered by extensively studing more than 250 working professional from India who were working from home during the lockdown. WFH also referred as telework or telecommuting which has now become a norm. With growing technology and penetration of internet to the deepest level enabling employees to perform their tasks by being at...