Abstract
Working from anywhere or Working from Home has been prevalent in many developed countries, specifically in the IT sector. Still, the pandemic brought in the wave for such concepts in India, and the people here were not ready for it socially and culturally. As it was an unforeseen and forced situation here in the country, its adaptability raised several questions and issues in the minds of employers and employees. With the shift happening in work culture, which is, working from home due to the pandemic, many changes have crept into the employees’ minds. One such notable arena, which should be addressed for better human resources management and efficiency, is perceived job satisfaction and understanding the employees’ work-life balance amidst these changes. In the study, 90 employees from selected IT companies at various levels are under consideration to understand their perseverance of job satisfaction and work-life balance in and before the change. The stability and the effects of the different attributes on the subject are studied. Statistical tools like Multiple Regression Analysis, Pearson Correlation, and Z-test are used.
Introduction
To improve an organization’s internal and external functioning today, the management or top-level executives are strongly looking forward to implementing effective decision-king processes (Caetano, 1999). For better strategic decision-making in this competitive market and to cope with the changing dynamics, it is constant pressure on the organizations to gather actionable information for better performance. Environments, where they are working, are diverse cultures and full of challenges. To deal with all these conflicts and complexities, organizations need to develop learning opportunities and identify the right competencies (Ulrich, 1998). In modern organizations, the trick for survival is to adapt to the change, and managers have already started identifying how to change, why to change, and when to change. In IT organizations where the competition is immense and job-hopping is normal among employees, it is essential to understand the contextual changes required and act upon them as fast as possible.
To be effective in bringing upon change or managing change processes, organizations need to face substantial challenges, as the path that leads to the change is full of thorns. However, the development is in a structured way with various customized courses of action according to the need of organizations (Robbins, 1999). The first step is to identify the need for the change, and this identification is as complex as it is to lead an entire change process. When dealing with the change process in an organization, there are various issues, situations, and factors that require strong understanding to be controlled, particularly the factors that are bringing in the change process. The trick is to understand the effect of these factors on the employees and the relation with the organization and understand the changing dynamics of this relationship.
Here it is essential to consider that there is a lot of perception in the employees’ minds in an organizational change process, which has relations in their perceived job satisfaction and thus performances. In addition, this perception may be responsible for the generation of weird behavior indicators such as affecting performance appraisal performances and their consequences on job satisfaction. This study aims to understand the change in perceived job satisfaction in the context of work-life balance amongst the IT sector employees, particularly in the current times of working from home.
Conceptual framework
Understanding organizational change
With the abundance of meanings available for organizational change in literature, it is difficult to pinpoint one definition in particular for organizational change. Within an organization, change can generate impacts in the strategic environment, cultural context, and human resources. Human behavioral understandings, technological transformations, structural hierarchies, and many more are within the change purview (Wood, 2000). To improve efficiency and bring about change in the working environment of organizations, organizational change can be viewed with different sets of scientific theories, value systems, strategies, models, and techniques (Porras, 1992). Amidst the plethora of definitions available on organizational change, it characterizes a response or a result that occurs in an organization under the current context to meet the need of development.
Considering the current context of the ongoing pandemic, economics and markets today hint towards competitiveness and immense turbulence, which calls for immediate change amongst organizations. With plenty of research in this context of organizational change, until then, managing change remains to be a mystery for managers, supervisors and immediate change managers despite the abundance of models and knowledge generated over the years (Bartlett, 1994; Palmer, 1996; Tsoukas, 2002). It makes it more evident that there is a need for more efficiency in knowing managing change processes and dealing with complications resistance and emerging complexities and demands within the mechanism of change management processes.
The situation calls for knowing why, what, and when organizational changes following the current context best suits organizations. One of the easiest ways of understanding this expertise of the topic is to make it clear that not all the changes have the same level or degree of depth in nature. In the above line of context, it is correctly mentioned that first, second and different degrees of organizational changes have other impacts, and again, planned and unplanned have altogether different consequences (Van de Ven, 1995; Weick, 1999). The first degree of change can be linear in nature and much superficial in context, whereas the following degrees, the second degree or the preceding degrees, are deeper in resistance or even other complexities. The first degree of change has been defined as being linear continuous. And the degree which involves adjustment according to the characteristics of the particular organization’s systems that occur concurrently (Weick, 1999). Where is the second degree of change is with more dimensional has different levels and can deal with multiple characteristics and mainly targeted at bringing balance between a paradigm shift in an organizational context (Porras, 1992).
Understanding job satisfaction and work-life balance
Technically, an employee’s life, irrespective of any sector, can be bifurcated into two parts, i.e. the life at work and the other one outside work. The study or research between these two parts has been a hot topic amongst academicians in work-life or work-family literature (Greenhaus, 1985). Believes that the conflict between these two parts of life is mutually incompatible in every aspect. In the beginning, the assumption is that the battle pertained from work life to family life. Still, the study became bidirectional to understand that conflicts could also be from family to work-life (Frone, 1992b). The advanced studies have displayed a negative scope of disagreement between the two domains. However, it also highlights positive aspects wherein the two have proven symbiotic relationships enriching one another (Greenhaus, 2006), thus considering the power in achieving the right balance (Jain and Nair, 2013). In the era of corporatism, how these the work sector and the home domain are interrelated in good and bad aspects and are much-discussed research topics (Lourel, 2009). The study, in particular, talks about both the kind of constraints and conflicts that bring problems in striking a balance in an employee’s mindset.
Background and hypothesis
Work-life balance has been a topic of research across the globe. Researchers have also drawn its relationship with job satisfaction, saying that when an employee is more involved in the job, the work-family conflict is higher. It leads to a misbalanced work home lifestyle and shallow job satisfaction (Adams, 1996). Work from Home has also been a prevalent concept worldwide, but the pandemic set it as a new normal in India. To the best of my knowledge, this research is the first to compare perceived job satisfaction before and after this pandemic, which shifts the habits from Office work culture to Work from Home in the particular industry and talks about work-life balance in the changed context.
Here, Social exchange theory has been the theoretical underpinning for the paper. The theory talks about how an employee’s perception of the organization is deeply dependent on the thoughts of the organization’s attitude towards the particular employee (Eisenberger, 1986). In the specific study, we posit that if employees can balance work and personal duty, they work from home in the middle of this pandemic. If they could not have balanced while commuting to their workspaces every day and even, in any case, the reverse situation, we would understand the change in their work-life schedules and, in turn, perceived job satisfaction. Social exchange theory also talks about the relationship between work-life balance and an employee’s commitment to the organization. The theory fully supports that employees feel committed towards the organization in a balanced work-life and can go the extra mile for the organization. If the employee feels for that extra mile, he is getting some good benefits. Not the additional mine or the extra effort the employees are putting in is not mandatory. Still, these are, of course, beneficial for an organization and a good work-life balance that indicates their work commitment as well (Lambert, 2000).
Both organization and an employee faces a significant challenge in managing/her job and balancing personal life (Zhang, 2012). Even before the pandemic and the change in work culture, there have certainly been some consequences in managing and balancing the job and family. One of the major components of managing and balancing the career and family is the work environment (Sousa-Poza, 2000). The work environment’s division is into two dimensions: the work and the surrounding context of the work (Gazioglu, 2006). The work includes how or characteristics the job is likely to be carried out and performed involving various task and task-related components (Skalli, 2008). A research paper has focused on the task-related parts and related them with job satisfaction. In one such article, working conditions particular social working conditions description is one of the dimensions of Job Satisfactions in the context of what environment. The work environment continues to be where an employee spends half the office day contributing his knowledge skills and energy there. Therefore, what environment is one of the critical factors contributing to job satisfaction in both office and work from home?
Organizations have ignored the importance of the working environment as one of the components of job satisfaction, bringing efficiency in performance (Lane, 2010). Coworkers play a crucial role here in braking for building the work environment bringing a sense of achievement in the various task and task-related activities (Spector, 2009). Coworkers include supervisors, subordinates and people in the same level in the higher key contributing to good performance, motivation, appreciation, sense of security and other social factors (Arnetz, 1999). Thus, the involvement of coworkers with the people at the same level, upper level and on the lower level remains a contributor in the work environment in both office and work from home.
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Figure 1 gives a pictorial representation of the above set of hypotheses.
Work environment and job satisfaction.
Today’s work-life and family life intersect, so it is not easy to discuss one without another. The roles are interrelated, and expectations are negotiated and shared between the context and the members present (Hayman, 2005). When the expectations are not coordinated, it disturbs the work-life balance. Research has been bringing sync between the two to develop enrichment in both domains (Carlson, 2009). In work-family harmony or work-life balance, both the roles demand few accomplishments, and in either of the cases, if the expectations are not met, it gives rise to these balanced conditions (Fisher, 2001). Employees’ allocation of resources amongst the domains decides the conflicting or the facilitating nature. In work from home where the family is present within the job premises, balancing resources here becomes more challenging (Greenhaus, 2011).
Work-family conflict demands equitable and justifiable allocation of resources for the helping in bringing compatibility between the two. It is not just about role expectations in the distribution of resources. Several components are to be considered. The time spent with family (Casper, 2011) is one such to be taken into account in bringing work-life balance. As home life has a lot to do in an individual employee’s life, happiness also matters.
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Personal life and work life balance.
Sample and procedure
The participant of this study is the employees of the selected IT industry in India. A pilot test was run to ensure that the respondents of this survey understood the questions. Five employees from different hierarchical levels in four various IT organizations were considered random for the pilot study. Their active consideration helped fill the questionnaire and give their opinion on the understanding of the questions at all levels in the organization. Here the intention was to enhance the acceptability of the questions to the study population at large. Based on the feedback received from the pilot study, changes in the questions done by removing technical languages and words would confuse the respondents. Even double-barrel questions were removed. The idea was to get concrete answers from the population.
The questionnaire was then in circulation amongst the employees through Google form in emails, WhatsApp, and various social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Facebook, and others. The participation of the IT sector employees in the study was voluntary. With the survey questionnaire, a small mass message containing the purpose of the study d and a note that information provided would remain confidential was in circulation to the population. The column of an employee’s name was not there in the survey sheet to maintain the individual’s anonymity. As in the questionnaire, there was a column to mention the organization’s name. It could have been the case that employees would feel threatened to put their name along with the name of the organizations fearing that the correct responses would put their job security at stake.
The entire survey conduction was during the pandemic situation. As mentioned earlier, the mode of data collection was through Google forms, which is online. No option was there for a paper and pencil questionnaire available to any employee at any higher key. Hundred and three responses were collected in Google sheet wherein data cleaning was in the linked Excel sheet by removing incomplete data sets, and 90 valid responses remained for analysis.
Measures
The questions were presented to the population in the form of statements to which they had to give their agreeableness or disagreement in a five-point Likert scale of (1) Strongly Disagree (2) Disagree (3) Neutral (4) Agree (5) Strongly Agree. The rating, as mentioned above, is the scale used to collect interval data (Likert, 1932). Apart from this, demographic data were also collected from the population. Explanation of each component of the study is as below:
Job Satisfaction (JS) (Dolbier, 2005; Nagy, 2002) is an essential element that changes significantly with a bit of change in the Work environment (WE). Thus considered as a critical component in understanding the study. For the research, Coworkers (CO), Subordinates (SUB) and Superiors (SUP) (Carlson, 2013) have been considered identified as the component of Work Environment and has been used as a measure to collect data.
Work-life Balance (WLB) (Hayman, 2005) is another element of the paper, wherein Personal Life (PL) is the indicator and (Kossek, 1998). Family Time (FT), Home Life (HL), and Social Life (SL) are the components of the indicator (Fisher, Work/personal life balance: A construct development study).
Work from Home (WHO) to Work from Office (WFO) is the change (Prithwiraj Choudhury, 2020) has considered.
Several statistical tools are in use to analyze the collected data.
Initially, a Two-Sample Z Test is of use in the paper to understand if there is any possibility that the two samples (working hours in WFO and working hours in WFH) have equal mean using the formula:
Wherein,
Then, to understand the association of the continuous variables of work environment and Personal life, Pearson Correlation is in use with the formula:
Here,
Multiple Linear Regression analysis is in use to understand the relationship of the components of Work Environment and Personal Life in both WFO and WFH.
Where,
Results
Demographic analysis
The demographic profile of the study population is analyzed using the Descriptive Analysis tool of MS-Excel.
A significant chunk of the population, are within the age group, 21 years to 38 years, which could be because of the sampling technique used. According to convenience, people above the stipulated age group are generally in higher positions and hard to approach. In contrast, in IT Sector, there are many standard connections in various Social Media platforms, in friends and family from whom data collection becomes convenient. Although there were people above the age of 38 and more but the percentage was limited to 15–20 percent in this study.
The Indian Information Technology sector indulges women in the workforce (Bharathi, 2015), and it reflects in the study. Men and women were more or less equally participative in the study, giving it a good gender balance.
Next, the current family status of the individuals are under consideration. As the survey was in conduction during the pandemic, respondents are mostly staying with family. Here, there is a classification in terms of family: living either with parents or partners or both of them together. Again, the families with/without kids have also been accounted to understand family life accurately. In addition, the maximum of our study respondents have dependents. These factors are critical in understanding Job Satisfaction and Work-Life Balance (Carlson, 2013).
Statistical analysis
The parametric two-sample Z-test is performed in the following study to determine the population mean differences. Here, H
The value of the test lies within the range of
Here, the Pearson correlation is performed to understand the relatedness between the components of personal life and job satisfaction. It is visible that the coworkers have an excellent role to play in the joy from the family time of an individual. Employees who are satisfied or dissatisfied with coworkers in an organization are respectively happy or dissatisfied with the family time in their personal lives. Interestingly, the relatedness increases by 3% from an office environment to work from home. The exact balance works with the behaviour from the superiors and the happiness from home life. In addition, its work from the home environment has increased by 4% from then in an office environment.
When it comes to the influence of subordinates’ behavior in a work environment to its relationship with the time spent with families or friends that is the social life, although there seems to be a good relationship or relatedness, this decreases when it changes from work from the office to work from home. There could be several reasons behind this; it could be so that in an office environment, it is more likely that subordinates are more under control when they are in front whereas in work from home it is required to spend more time to control the associates and the sacrifice the social life accordingly.
To understand the significance of Work Environment and Personal Life factors on Job Satisfaction and Work-Life Balance, respectively, Regression Analysis is performed separately under Work from Office and Worked from Home conditions.
Then, Multilinear regression is used to understand the work environment and personal life in both offices and Work from the Home environment. The confidence level in consideration is 95% in the said study.
The first regression model helps understand that the factors of the work environment, the coworkers, subordinates, and the superiors, have a significant role in Job Satisfaction in a Work from Office situation. The results indicate that these factors are essential, and the model holds. According to the results, coworkers have the most impact on job satisfaction in an office environment.
Other factors contribute to job satisfaction in an office environment, which is under consideration in the study.
Here, the regression analysis helps to understand the resemblance of the same work environment factors in job satisfaction but work from home. Although the model holds significance, the elements are reliable, and even in this case, coworkers have a significant contribution.
If we compare, we can see that the factors are more significant and reliable in the office when compared to working from home. Thus, we can understand from here that the perception of job satisfaction changes with change in environment, and here, in this case, the difference is from office to Work from Home.
Next, coming to the context of personal life and its impact on work life balance, the study considers three factors of private life: quality time spent with family, the overall home life, and the third one is social life, which is the time spent with family and friends. In addition, the analysis was done in two situations, one is the Office situation, and the other is the changed Work from Home circumstances.
Results depicts the significance of personal life factors in work-life balance in an office environment, making the model successful. Here, the elements hold more value in contributing to the work-life balance than the work environment factors in job satisfaction, in both office and work from home environments.
All the three personal life factors show more or less the same significance in work-life balance, giving the overall life an extra edge. It could be because the home life includes partners, parents, kids and relatives as well and we have seen our survey concentrates on people who are living with their family.
There is analyses the factors of personal life on work-life balance in work from home. Here, the model is significant, making individual life factors reliable. The most crucial factor is the time spent with family in this situation. It could be so because of no particular scheduled work timings in work from home routine and thus making quality time spent with family an essential factor.
Although there can be several other factors that influence the work-life balance of employees, here, these three factors have been considered.
When comparing we can see that the factors are more reliable in work from office environment than in work from home. This indicates that the work-life balance and the importance of its elements have also changed as the work culture has changed to work from home in the Indian IT industry.
Conclusions
The study pertains to selected IT companies. The respondents mainly pertained to young job positions because of their convenience. Thus, they have a lot of scope to understand the perseverance of job satisfaction and work-life balance in high job positions in the sector across organizations. Again, there can be many factors contributing to the work environment and personal life, which is in consideration here and considered into account in future research.
In conclusion, the study supports work environment factors on job satisfaction and personal life on work-life balance in two different situations. Comparing the results of the two environments, work from office and work from home, indicates the change in perceived job satisfaction and work-life balance.
