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Top1. Introduction
The focus of every organization is on developing and retaining the best possible human resources to achieve the overall objectives. To succeed in the long run, the management should seriously consider its employees’ welfare in a broader way (Wei et al., 2020). Software development business is dynamic, and IT industry is using different methodologies to meet the new changes in the environment was created by Covid 19 (Butt et al., 2021). One of the leading factors that determine the success of an employee is having a justifiable work-life balance (Emslie & Hunt, 2009). Currently, the paradigm of the work environment has been shifting to a new culture of work, that is, work from home (WFH) (Bick et al., 2020). The Covid-19 pandemic has elevated WFH into mainstream work culture (Vyas & Butakhieo, 2021).
Globalization and technological advancement have enabled people to connect to their work remotely and allowed them to maintain a proper work-life balance (WLB) (Mas-Machuca et al., 2016). This has facilitated the emergence of the WFH concept, and it refers to work that is done remotely, mostly at the employee’s home. WFH is also called ‘remote work’ and ‘telecommuting’. Covid-19 globally compelled almost all IT sector companies to be institute WFH model (De et al., 2020). Kim (2020) observed that the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic pushed all workers to observe social distancing and forced them to shift from the workplace to WFH. Bataineh(2019) suggested that WFH has gained significantly in the changed work environment. Companies are now planning to develop new hybrid models that integrate WFH with work from office (WFO) (Mariniello et al., 2021).
WFH is a new model of work that has become mandatory due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the shift of the workplace from office to home has resulted in many positive and negative outcomes (Kramer & Kramer, 2020). This paper attempts to conduct an inquiry on the WLB, job satisfaction of WFH of IT employees during the pandemic period. In brief, we mainly investigate the effects of WFH on the WLB of IT sector employees.
For adopting the structure of this manuscript, we modelled a systematic approach and step by step structure of research papers as rightly suggested by (Misra, 2021). The rest of the body of this paper is organized into eight major sections accordingly. Section 2 presents the literature review of study, section 3 consists of research questions, concept map, and research methodology, and section 4 describes the results and discussion, theoretical contributions, and policy implications and section 5 deals conclusions.
There has been a rapid shift in the work culture of IT sector companies due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic (Hern, 2020). The work culture of IT sector companies is comparatively different from that of other companies. IT sector companies implemented the WFH policy and their employees were supposed to start working from their homes (Gottlieb et al., 2021). Remote work raises a vast array of issues and challenges for employees and employers (Mckinsey, 2020). On the one hand, the companies are pondering how best to deliver coaching remotely, while on the other hand, employees are struggling to find the best home-work balance and equipping themselves for working and collaborating remotely. With this critical importance, the current study focuses on the influence of work from home on the work-life balance of IT sector employees. Also, it is noted that studies that touched upon the IT sector employees who constitute the predominant sector in WFH during this pandemic period are very few. The absence of empirical studies to support the prevailing models of WFH is a real bottleneck in the present academic research. The present paper attempts to bridge the research gap by assessing the effect of WFH of IT employees based on an empirical investigation. This study can provide more insights into the feasibility and sustainability of the WFH model of IT companies.