Psycho-Social Impact of COVID-2019 on Work-Life Balance of Health Care Workers in India: A Moderation-Mediation Analysis

Abstract

Innumerable studies related to COVID-19 carried out across the globe have demonstrated that HCWs worked in stressful and difficult socio-economic environments and, therefore, had a disturbed work-life balance. However, negligible efforts have been made to analyze the factors that impacted it. In order to investigate this phenomenon, a cross-sectional study was undertaken utilizing data obtained directly from a sample of 799 healthcare workers (HCWs) employed in eight hospitals who were actively working throughout the period spanning from April 2020 to March 2022 within the COVID-19 pandemic. Five latent variables, namely, Psychological Stress (PS), Socio-Economic Impact (SEI), Interpersonal Relationships (IPRs), Government Intervention (GI) and Work-Life Balance (WLB), have been developed using a self-designed questionnaire with separate sections for each of them. A comprehensive structural model to determine the variables influencing WLB is estimated using PLS-SEM. The mediating role of IPR in the relationship between PS and WLB is investigated, and the moderating effect of two variables on WLB, 'Government intervention' and 'whether a worker is affected by COVID or not', has been examined. T-test and ANOVA techniques are also applied to examine the impact of these variables across different socio-demographic characteristics. Our findings indicate that variables PS and SEI negatively impact WLB whereas IPRs have positively impacted it. Government intervention, however, did not exhibit any significant impact on it. Further, IPRs partially mediated the relationship between PS and WLB. The role of government is completely non-significant in moderating the relationships of PS and SEI with WLB. A healthcare professional affected by COVID significantly moderated the mediating relationship between PS and IPR and the direct relationship between IPR and WLB. Subsequently, it favourably affected the WLB of HCWs. Our study recommends that the government and hospital authorities should strengthen the resilience-building interventions and expand their efforts to provide social support to HCWs at the hospital and community levels. Concerted actions must be taken to preserve HCWs' work-life balance amidst the challenging circumstances they face, especially during the pandemic.