Definition of Work-Life Conflict
Work-life conflict and its characteristics
Work-life conflict can be defined as the problem individuals face with their work responsibilities due to interference with their off-life activities. It is an important factor that affects the productivity of working employees and reduces the potential capability that they can give to their job. It can also be defined as the inter-role struggle in which their work and they are family burdens has been conjointly incompatible (Gisler et al., 2018). It is observed that the demands of one side make it a problem to fulfil the demands of the other side. The work-life conflict may include different types of conflict that may arise between the workers and/or the managers, potentially the conflict among the employees outside of the working hours. The work-life conflict is a broader concept that includes different problems and conflicts usually treated separately, including employment and labor-management conflicts. The work-life conflict would mediate the relationship between the workplace characteristics and the workers’ psychological distress (Foy et al., 2019). Work-life conflict characteristics include extreme job pressure, job autonomy, mismanagement of work hours, co-worker support, uneven working hours, and supervisor support. This leads to several psychological distress in an individual. Several research has suggested that work-life conflict contributes to psychological distress and different negative outcomes for mental health in the general working population. Extreme job pressure could lead to unbalanced working hours due to excessive demand in the job to be fulfilled by an individual. Such a situation might lead to disturbance of the personal life and family time, and the individual loses the capability of balancing work life and personal life. This leads to the development of work-life conflict experienced by the person and several psychological distress, which might be the reason for developing conflict with colleagues over minor issues (Gupta & Srivastava, 2020).
For the past few years, the altered work pattern had significant constrain on the working adults’ family members and social life. Within the limit of 24 hours during which the resources are available in the day, the working adults might be confronted by several challenges that include meeting targets within deadlines, the family’s responsibility, and financial obligations (Huseyin, 2018). This could lead to work-life conflicts associated with several health issues in an individual. The work-life conflict among the employees has been reported to be associated with different health problems that include poor physical health, life dissatisfaction, psychological distress and poor mental health (Kayabinar et al., 2021). It has been observed that work-life conflicts and the health outcome might differ based on the gender of the working adult because of the uneven distribution of the roles data related to the work responsibility. In some studies, it has been observed that a positive relationship has been developed between the work-life conflict and the poor health outcome among the working women than that of the men. However, in some other studies, it has been observed that poor health outcome has been linked with a positive relationship with work-life conflict for both men and women equally (Dorenkamp & Ruhle, 2019).
Types of Work-Life Conflict and Characteristics
The topic is important for every working adult because it directly impacts the mental and physical health of the individual. Since health status is directly related to work-life conflict, it is an important area for discussion for every working individual, especially for educators (Foy et al., 2019), as they help build a proper career for the children in different educational institutions.
The paper’s main purpose is to discuss psychosocial hazards observed in the workplace, which are the aspects of the world that causes psychological harm and contributes to physical harm. The paper evaluates the work-life conflict observed in pre and post COVID 19 situations for the primary and secondary school teachers and some other aspects of the work-life conflict during the pandemic. The people conclude by discussing potential areas for further research and the overall perspective on the topic.
Teaching is regarded as a profession that is chosen out of passion. Several types of research have concluded that teaching is a stressful profession, and it has been recorded that about 15 to 27% of the teachers are stressed due to workload (Huseyin, 2018). Compared with some other professions, teachers show a much higher level of fatigue and pessimism net is regarded as the court dimension of the work-life conflict. In the pre-COVID-19 situation research conducted, teachers have the highest level of burnout compared to other services and executive workers (Soomro, Breitenecker & Shah, 2018). It has been recorded that work-life conflict has cost several additional problems, including job dissatisfaction, lack of commitment from the organization, and job stress, which also influences the educator’s life at home. Therefore, it can be said that work-life conflict among the teachers was prevalent before the pandemic.
However, the pandemic has increased work-life conflict for every working adult, especially for the teachers. The rapid spread of coronavirus in different nations forced several work organizations to adopt various measures to protect public health. One of the major adopted measures was social distancing to reduce viral dissemination, which enforced a massive shift of the working method toward Teleworking (Zhang et al., 2020). Teleworking has been recorded as a major factor that has been a vital challenge for the working adults, especially for the teachers with the lack of control over the working hours and has led to the development of psychosocial risks associated with the stress of the workloads. Teleworking had an important impact on the professional and personal life, triggering work-life conflict among the teachers, leading to physical and mental burnout and exhaustion (Johari, Tan & Zulkarnain, 2018). The introduction of digital technologies in education has increased the teachers’ stress due to the rapid change of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the entire teaching world globally. This approached strict confinement of every individual in the nation, closing the educational establishment that obligated the teachers to adopt distance learning (Maulida & Widiaty, 2022). This enforced the teachers to adopt several technical ways of continuing their work. As a result, the teachers experienced several vital changes in the work format. Several reports indicated that the stressors that were present among the teachers included difficulty while adopting the online mode of teaching, poor work conditions, difficulties with the families and the students and some working organizational factors. The teachers were forced to organize the work while allotting extra time to prepare the study materials and planning required for the new teaching mode (Punithavathi, 2018). This workload hampered the teachers’ family life, triggering the work-life conflict. Several teachers have reported different health outcomes comprising the psychosocial hazard that included musculoskeletal disorder, depression, anxiety, the prevalence of obesity, and reduced physical activity associated with fatigue due to post work and late working hours, which resulted in burnout syndrome (Kayabinar et al., 2021). Additionally, the problems were exacerbated among the females, regarded as an important socio-demographic factor since women have been a high proportion in the teaching profession.
Impact of Work-Life Conflict on Psychological Distress
A major fragment of the world’s population has gone through severe restrictions that primarily restricted them in the home due to lockdowns and home confinement strategies implemented in most countries to prevent the spread of the transmissible disease. These unpredictable and rapid changes have been reported to cause universal anxiety awareness and depression (David & Lukacs, 2018). World Health Organization has described these conditions as natural psychosocial hazards triggered by work-life conflict among working adults. It has been observed that psychosocial hazards constituted occupational risk in the working life besides physiological, biological calm mechanical and chemical hazards. Most of the psychosocial hazards are created by an imbalance between the work-life and family life due to excessive workload, management pressure, adapting to the new working method, inadequate support and an unsafe work atmosphere. The teachers and the educators add the most affected professionals due to post pandemic work-life conflict. It has been observed that around 47% of the teaching professionals have reported suffering from psychosocial hazards due to work-life conflict post pandemic (Maulida & Widiaty, 2022). This resulted in physical and mental distress leading to severe anxiety and depression among the teachers, which affected their profession more broadly.
Several researchers have established that work-life conflicts have been a major part of the teachers of private educational organizations compared with the government and its sponsored organizations. Teachers of the private organization carry out several other responsibilities apart from teaching in the educational institution. However, in the case of government organizations, the major role of the teachers is to provide education to the students and usually do not carry out any other responsibility apart from this. It has been reported that most of the teachers in private educational institutions have working hrs around 40 to 45 hours every week, and around 59% of them have been struggling to cope with work-life conflict. On the contrary, teachers of government educational institutions have successfully established work-life balance and reduced the chance of triggering work-life conflict compared to the teachers of private educational organizations (Baluyos, Rivera & Baluyos, 2019).
Again, it has been observed that teachers of the secondary level have a lower level of work-life conflict than teachers of the primary level. This is because the responsibility of the primary teachers towards saying students is more as compared to the secondary teachers to interact with grown-up and mature students. Elder students can perceive the teachings provided by the teachers much more than that of the younger students, which increases the work pressure and workload for the primary teachers. Moreover, popping up with the new method of education is much easier for the elder students at the secondary level than for those enrolled in the primary sections. Therefore, the responsibilities and workload of the primary teachers are much more, which have increased during the post pandemic (Huseyin, 2018). Work-life conflicts have been triggered in most primary teachers.
With the continuous increase of women, single parents and dual earning couples, the work-life conflict has been increasing with the growing challenges of the modern society. Since women are more engaged in the teaching profession, they have been experiencing much higher work-life conflict than men. Women have the responsibility for both work and family, while the responsibility of the men towards the family and household work is observed to be lower than women (Schieman et al., 2021). Women are responsible for carrying out the household world, taking care of the children and the elder members, and educating the children in educational institutions. Previous studies reported that teachers are overloaded with several responsibilities and workloads working for the organization. A woman being a teacher, have to take all those duties and responsibilities as a part of their job. Such workload, accompanied by several family responsibilities, leads to much higher work-life conflict and an imbalance of work and professional life for a woman (Clark et al., 2021).
Work-Life Conflict and Health Outcome
On the other hand, men do not face such a similar situation since their family responsibility are much lower in most cases and so they can maintain work-life balance as compared to that of the woman (Zhang et al., 2020). The post pandemic has increased the woman’s work-life conflict due to the additional responsibility of maintaining the health and hygiene of the family members more often to reduce contamination. Moreover, it has been observed that children are more dependent on their mothers for their education and daily activities than their fathers. As a result, the women have to support them in maintaining their responsibilities towards their work. All the evidence suggests that the women face work-life conflict much more than the men and, therefore, face several challenges with their mental and psychosocial hazards (Trzebiatowski & Triana, 2020).
It has been observed that every individual has a distinct way of working, personal beliefs, values, and personality. Work-life conflict can be mitigated by following a simple method in education institutions. The aim of mitigating work-life conflict is to establish peace and work-life balance among the teaching professionals, which would help maintain a stable working environment in the institution (Karakose, Yirci & Papadakis, 2021). Teachers and educators should act promptly to address the complex situation that evolves due to work-life conflict and act professionally in the situation. The teacher should be aware of the responsibility they need to address in their work-life and limit their capability. They should not overstress themselves with a workload not part of their job role and responsibility. The teachers and educators should plan the education they would provide to the student, which would help to reduce their workload and work pressure. It has been observed that most teachers continue to think about their work when they are not working, which affects their work-life balance and triggers stress build-up in them (Thomas, Kumar & Parkash, 2020). Therefore, the teachers should separate their working time from their time and avoid thinking about work apart from their working hours. Moreover, the teachers should be aware that their working life should not affect their private life, which would help reduce the chances of work-life conflict. The teachers should also participate in extracurricular activities to help them refresh their minds and other issues related to their work to maintain a balance between work life and family life (Chitra, 2020).
To maintain a balance between work life and family life for a teacher, the institution should help them to reduce the chance of work-life conflict. The institution’s infrastructure should be adequate and properly improvised, and training must be provided to the teacher so that they do not face any technical problems while providing education on an online platform Lizana et al., 2021).
Conclusions
Gaps and areas for further research
Although several studies have been conducted to study the work-life conflict of teachers in the pre-COVID 19 situations, there are several gaps in the research on work-life conflict in post-COVID 19 situations. Several studies have been conducted to analyze the work-life conflict phone different professions, but studies regarding the work-life conflict among the teachers are limited. Since the level of work-life conflict and the factors related to it varies between organizations and are different among the nations worldwide, the result of a particular study might not be established as universal. Since the development of work-life conflict has diverse and vast reasons, the proper relationship between the cause and the effect of the work-life conflict could not be established in previous studies. Therefore, future researchers have the scope of addressing the limitations that have been obtained from the studies that have been conducted so far.
Importance of Work-Life Conflict in the Workplace
Overall perspective
According to me, the balance of work-life has a vital role in the lives of every working individual, especially for the teachers, which determines the efficiency and the productivity of the teachers to provide proper education to the students. Therefore, the chances of work-life conflict should be minimized in case of the teachers for maintaining their efficiency and capability to provide quality education to students in the first place. The educational institution should help the teachers so that they can maintain a balance between their work and their life. Overall, teamwork between the teachers and the management of the educational institution is the way to reduce work-life conflict among the teachers.
References
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