Employee's Workload Stress, Work-Family Conflict and Displace Aggression before, during and after Quarantine COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly transformed remote work from a distant dream to the reality of most workers. This was a change that brought with it the introduction of games in which there were new challenges, most prominently increased workload and stress because part time working also causes to work more overtime as well; family-work conflict emerged and displaced aggression.

This study aimed to investigate the associations between work overload related stress, WFC and displaced aggression of employees who worked from home during COVID-19 quarantine time as well as prior and following the quarantines.

A quantitative cross-sectional correlational design was used. Participants comprised 111 males, 60 females comprising a total of one hundred and seventy-one employees who were working remotely due to the pandemic. Workload stress and work-family conflict were assessed with standardized measures as per the surveys to which participants responded. Descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation and one-way ANOVA were employed for different kinds of analyses. The results showed that there were significant differences between quarantine phases in trait anger, workload stress, work-family conflict and displaced aggression. Workload stress was at its highest level pre-quarantine, with some reduction during and post-quarantine. Displaced aggression was highest prior to and then significantly decreased following the quarantine, while work-family conflict registered its peak during quarantine. The study showed how psychological stressors varied in different pandemic stages of COVID-19, that need to be targeted by specially designed interventions for crisis management and employee support during and post a significant healthcare or similar other crises.