EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON TEACHERS JOB SATISFACTION IN PAKISTAN: THE CASE OF WORK-LIFE BALANCE, WORK FROM HOME AND WORK STRESS
Abstract
Human life is considered the greatest asset that ever existed on the planet Earth. With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the working of the whole world got disrupted and hence the humanity at large was at fear. People were bound and forced to stay and work from home. Teachers were no exception. Since no one was prepared for any such abrupt transition and without any form of proper planning and training, the task was daunting enough to lead to work stress and anxiety. Hence with managing these work delivery tasks with allied stress using new modes, methods, technologies and their associated issues, it was need of the hour to explore the current issues faced by teachers in Pakistani context and how these could have been better managed. Three major variables of Work Life Balance, Work from home, Work Stress and job satisfaction were explored. With a sample of 384 teachers, data collection and analysis was done using multiple statistical tests including Standard deviation, Cronback Alpha, Pearson Correlation and regression. It was concluded that Work from Home is positively related to job satisfaction, work life balance and job satisfaction while work stress was negatively related to job satisfaction. Work Life Balance mediated the effect of working from home on job satisfaction in a positive relationship while it also mediated the working from home relationship on job satisfaction. It was evident from the exploration that external and force majeure can lead to acceptance of work conditions and have lead to understanding the human health, life safety and security as a major factor towards enabling job and work satisfaction based on ensuring the people and the workforce is safe and secure. With people at risk of getting infected, work from home was the only way and hence in order to have a healthy and safe life, coping with work life balance, work stress, work from home were all making better options and were accepted by the teachers.
Keywords: COVID-19, Work from Home, Work Stress, Work-Life Balance, Job Satisfaction.
