Work From Home (WFH) and Its Impact on Work-Life Balance (WLB) and Wellbeing: A Case Study of the Saudi Working Women

Introduction

Work from home (WFH) refers to the employees' willingness to work in an agile setting being outside the company's premises using advanced technology, and it offers many benefits, primarily the flexibility (Gajendran & Harrison, 2007; Grant et al., 2019). WFH got a new fillip with the outbreak of the new virus COVID-19 which was labelled as a global health emergency on January 30, 2020, and being called a pandemic on 11^th March, 2020 (WHO, 2020). It resulted into affecting 81% of the workforce, and forcing the full or partial closures of the workplaces (ILO, 2020). It drastically impacted nations worldwide to adopt measures in restricting its spread, and limiting access to the public transit and public spaces for their people. In that context, the impacted nations adopted a policy allowing workers to WFH in order to contribute effectively, and sustain the employment relationship (Arwin et al., 2021). Despite the fact that the remote working was popular before the epidemic but it has become the default setting now. Its forceful adotion has resulted into eroding the employees’ interest as well, and they are having difficulty in attaining work-life balance, increased work stress, anxiety, blurring of the barrier between the work and homelife, and leading to the overwork (Grant et al., 2019, Purwanto et al. 2020). In contrast to the rhetoric and proclamation of positive aspects of the WFH, social media revealed heightened anxiety, increasing concern for the health, social isolation and “Zoom exhaustion” among the employees (Anderson & Kelliher, 2020), and the COVID-19 lockdown appeared to reinforce the traditional gender roles as it tended to fall heavily on women (Chung, 2020).

In the present context, employees’ well being has become a rallying point due to the increased stressful work environment, and its need for employee performance and organizational survival. Many studies have highlighted the importance of wellbeing and happiness at work for both employees and employers (Diener & Seligman, 2002). Employees who are happier tend to be in better physical and psychological health, live longer (Roysamb et al., 2003; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005), perform better, can cope better with the stressful events (Wood & Joseph, 2010), have more positive workplace relationships, and are found to be satisfied with their jobs (Boehm & Lyubomirsky, 2008; Connolly & Viswesvaran, 2000). They have better work performance, are more cooperative (George, 1991), have more satisfying interpersonal relationships, have stronger immune systems, fewer sleep problems, lower levels of burnout, greater self-control, better self-regulation and coping abilities, and are more prosocial in their behavior (Chida & Steptoe, 2008; Diener & Seligman, 2002; Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002; Howell et al., 2007; Kubzansky et al., 2001; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005; Segerstrom, 2007; Seligman & Schulman, 1986; Seligman et al., 1990; Williams & Shiaw, 1999).

Wellbeing has been defined as having a balance point between an individual's resource pool and the challenges being faced by him or her to return to a set-point for equilibrium or homeostasis (Dodge et al., 2012). Many researches has highlighted the problems of well being and its impact on the employees’ performance (Diener et al., 1999; Dodge et al., 2012; Keyes et al., 2002; Medvedev & Landhuis, 2018). O'Donohoe and Turley (2006) found that employees’ wellbeing is associated with their willingness to make personal sacrifices for the customer and to go beyond the call of duty and expectation. Despite, the research highlighting the importance of well being on the performance and WLB, it has been seen that women's happiness and wellbeing have declined in comparison to males (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2009).