As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to upend the lives across the world, even in 2021, it has caused turbulence in the professional lives, especially that of working women and single mothers. Regardless of redefined gender roles, women are indeed having a hard time coping with the transitioning work routine. From juggling careers to monitoring household chores and from attending unending conference calls to adhering to the needs of their children, these she-heroes are struggling with literally everything in the contemporary era.
Undoubtedly, working from home and avoiding social gatherings is one of the crucial things that can save you and your family from coming into contact with the virus. But it comes with added responsibilities, consequences, and challenges. Besides technical and communication challenges, there is one such underrated challenge that working women have to face amidst the pandemic.
And that’s redefining work-life balance. Yes, that’s right! Prior to the pandemic, women managed to strike a balance between their personal and professional life, but after the virus outbreak, they had to do everything all over again. Here we have outlined Covid’s effect on “Work-Life balance” in the professional and personal lives of working women. Let’s take a quick look!
- Mental health became a priority.
Let’s start with some good news. The virus outbreak and the forced lockdown forced people to set up remote offices to avoid the spread of the virus. Everyone knows that. But what you don’t know is that the pandemic actually forced the professionals to take mental health practices such as meditation and self-care much more seriously than they took in the past.
Believe it or not, but medical reports in 2020 confirmed that the rate of mental disorders such as unipolar depression, anxiety, and somatic complaints, doubled in women at an alarming rate. Since they were forced to shift to remote working at very short notice, they had struggled to deal with the strains and stress that came along with it. And let’s be honest, 2020 was full of miseries, fear, and anxiety.
But 2021 is a bit different. People have managed to crack the code balanced and happy work life. Business owners started talking about mental health and encouraged their workforce working from home to seek help if needed. This actually helped in prioritizing their employee’s mental health over profits. And that was undoubtedly a positive step that helped everyone strike the right balance between work and personal life.
- Elevation in stress levels
Every coin has two sides. Although there were some positive changes in the lifestyle of working women after they started working from home and business professionals started taking mental health seriously, we can’t be ignorant to the fact that there were some negatives too. One of them is fluctuating stress levels.
According to renowned counselors, the disease pandemic also led to an epidemic of stress amongst remote workers. In fact, 41% of the employees working from home admit that they feel highly stressed, frustrated, and annoyed.
Let’s not forget that having a busy work-life and keeping harmony in the personal life can be challenging, and Covid-19 indeed had a ripple effect on working women’s work-life balance. Due to imposed lockdown and financial uncertainty, many started turning on their families. As a result, the behavior started placing additional strain on their personal lives.
Employees found it harder to adjust to a less than perfect working environment. Obviously, not all have high-speed internet connections or adequate equipment to carry out their assigned work. Such hurdles became the foundations of stress and frustration. Plus, when you start working from home, you tend to take either too many breaks or none. And in both cases, the efficiency gets compromised, which further becomes the reason for delayed deadlines and increases stress levels.
Thankfully, you can now choose to talk to the professionals about the imbalance created due to work-life in your personal life. They’ll fix you with some solutions that can help in and balance workplace stress in the personal life. Regular counseling sessions might act as an elixir for your anxiety.
- Distracted work routine
If you are a mother or a pet parent, or both, you’ll surely relate to the fact that work from home is full of distractions. Sometimes it’s your needy dog who just wants to crawl into your lap, and sometimes you need to leave work to cook for your children, and sometimes it’s just the noisy neighbors. Such situations can’t be avoided but certainly breaks the workflow.
Thus, it is significant that you set some boundaries for your family and friends so that they don’t disturb you during working hours. Not being able to concentrate while working can hinder and affect your productivity. And you definitely can’t afford that at any cost.
- Organizational challenges
When you are in your office, you already know what goes where. You have a routine, and the management perfectly organizes everything. But that’s not the case when you are working from home. Things get topsy-turvy as you are the only one who is responsible for managing everything.
From scheduling your children’s naptime to attending all the Zoom meetings ON-TIME and from entertaining visitors to dealing with clients, everything needs to be perfectly planned to save you from the chaos. For this, you need to set your priorities straight and start delegating chores and responsibilities to other members of the families so that you are not the only one doing everything.
Wrapping Up!
Additionally, employees also complained that they felt lonely and secluded after being confined to their homes. Obviously, zoom calls can’t make up for those mandatory tea breaks with colleagues. And that certainly created a social imbalance in everyone’s life.
Therefore, if you are also struggling to cope with Covid’s effect on your personal or work life, it is advised that you speak about it to trained and experienced counselors so that they can help you out with the issues that come up with remote working and will definitely help you find your way through it.
So, now that you’ve faced your challenges, why are you waiting any longer to resolve them?