Work Life Balance of Health Care Workers during COVID-19 in India

Abstract

The term work-life balance is a blend of two words, work and life. In the context of the extant research, the focus is on the health care workers, who are the front-line warriors during the Covid-19 pandemic. They include amongst others doctors, nurses and health care administrators. The contributions of these front-line workers during this pandemic are invaluable. However, they have to face the brunt of the pandemic which affected work life balance enormously. In this background, the present paper is an initiative to understand the various dynamics related to the work life balance of health care workers, particularly during the pandemic, and for this purpose four leading hospitals in the study area were selected for collection of data. The entire data were analyzed under four parameters, work pressure related issues, infrastructure and family issues, organizational policy, and work related cash and non-cash benefits. Overall, twenty two hypotheses were developed and out of these seven null hypotheses and fifteen alternative hypotheses were accepted. As regards to the work pressure related issues three null and three alternative hypotheses were developed, whereas basing on infrastructure and family issues one null and three alternate hypotheses were accepted. On the basis of organization policies, seven hypotheses were developed and all of them were accepted as all alternative hypotheses and similarly, out of five hypotheses related to cash and non-cash benefits, three null and two alternative hypotheses were accepted. Concerns and difficulties in the workplace and personal problems in life affect each other. The equilibrium of work-life is conceived as a dual system that gives fair weightage to the demands of both the employees and employers. There cannot be an equal balance between work and life, rather, it is a matter of prioritizing and managing the burden of each field in order to align time, energy, and resources so that work and life are satisfied. The present paper is an endeavor to decode the various issues related to work life balance of health care workers in the new normal. The paper is hoped to be an additional contribution to the existing literature.