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The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the relevance of the intersections between work and personal life. Measures introduced to slow the spread of COVID-19 have included an increase of working from home and the temporary closure of schools and child-care facilities, leading to a lighter workload for some and a heavier workload for others. These consequences are likely to affect employees’ work–life balance (WLB), although the impact may differ across groups of employees depending on the nature of their work, family and personal demands and resources. This mixed-method study examined how Dutch government employees perceive their WLB during the pandemic and how differences in what employees are experiencing can be explained. In May/June 2020, an online survey (N = 827) and an interview study (N = 17) were conducted at a government organization whose employees were obliged to work from home partly or exclusively. Results indicate that demands changed when working entirely from home and resources became more important to maintain WLB satisfaction. Being able to manage boundaries across life domains and find a new routine also appeared to be crucial for WLB satisfaction.

A core concept of work–home interface research is boundary permeability – the frequency with which elements from one domain cross, or permeate, the boundary of another domain. Yet, there remains ambiguity as to what these elements are and how these permeations impact important outcomes such as role satisfaction and role performance. The authors introduce a multidimensional perspective of work–home boundary permeability, identifying five forms of boundary permeation: task, psychological, role referencing, object, and people. Furthermore, based on the notion that employee control over boundary permeability behavior is the key to achieving role satisfaction and role performance, the authors examine how organizations’ HR practices, leadership, and norms impact employee control over boundary permeability in the work and home domains. The authors conclude with an agenda for future research.

Working from home has long been considered an exception applicable to freelancers and a limited number of jobs. In Nigeria, past research revealed that flexible work arrangements were attractive to many employees irrespective of gender but that managers were generally reluctant to accept flexibility in time and in space. The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged this managerial mindset, obliging both men and women to move their workstation from the company premises to their home. This chapter tells what happened at the onset of the pandemic in Nigeria and looks at its impact on employing organisations, employees and families. It is found that (1) employers can benefit from substantial savings when employees work from home, (2) personality types, poor infrastructure, lack of digital skills, unequal access to internet and inadequate family support affect the experience of work from home for employees. Employers must be willing to provide necessary training and to give adequate support to employees working from home to help them defray additional expenses a home office entails.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home (WFH) has become the norm for many employees and their families in Germany. Although WFH has been suggested as a form of flexible work to foster work–life integration (especially for workers with greater care responsibilities), studies have also pointed to its risks when the boundaries between these two life spheres become blurred. To help disentangle these inconsistent findings in relation to work–family conflict, this study focuses on two main concerns: the relevance of additional forms of flexibility for those who work from home (i.e., temporal flexibility, job autonomy, fixed rules about availability) and the implications of WFH for employees’ social relationships with co-workers and supervisors. Based on linked employer–employee data collected in the spring of 2021, the study examined work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC) among a sample of 885 employees who worked from home. The results indicate that three factors – temporal flexibility, job autonomy, and fixed rules about availability as a way to set boundaries between work and family life – are important predictors of fewer work–family conflict. This equally applies to employees with caring obligations who overall experience more work–family conflicts while WFH. For those who cared for relatives, autonomy contributed even to fewer work–family conflicts. Supportive relationships with supervisors and co-workers are certainly directly beneficial when it comes to avoiding conflict, but they also reinforce the positive implications of flexible work, whereas poor relationships counteract the benefits of such flexibility. Thus, employers need to provide additional forms of flexibility to employees who work from home and should pay attention to social relationships among their employees as a way to support families and other individuals.

The COVID-19 pandemic spurred major, and possibly enduring, changes in paid work. In this chapter, we explore the continuity and change in several work day dimensions, including where it is performed, the amount of time spent working, the length of the work day, and who people are with when they work, as well as variation across population subgroups. We use nationally representative data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to analyze change across the 2019 to 2021 period. While the shift to working primarily at home in 2020 is dramatic and continuing into 2021, working primarily at the workplace remains the modal experience for Americans. We find differences by gender, education, parental status, and age in which workers perform their jobs at home, and we find much more continuity in how much people work and when they work.

This study investigates work and non-work antecedents for the work–life balance (WLB) development of remote employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Longitudinal data (N = 1,146, T1; N = 737, T2) was collected in May–June 2020 and December 2020 in one multinational company (MNC) in Finland. In data analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM) with a cross-lagged panel model was utilized. The results revealed that during the pandemic, WLB slightly decreased. The quantitative job demands increased and predicted a decreased WLB at T2. Job autonomy decreased but did not have an effect on WLB development or buffer the negative effect of quantitative job demands on WLB. Time saved from commuting was positively related to WLB development, but the number of children living at home and the age of the youngest child had no statistically significant link to WLB development over time (similar finding for men and women). Although care responsibilities from the gender perspective is not the focus of our study, the additional analysis show that WLB at T1 was more challenging for women the more children they had, or the younger the youngest child was. For men, children did not make a difference for their WLB at T1. This finding indicates that WLB has been more challenging for mothers compared to fathers already when our first data had been collected, and the continuance of the pandemic did not change the situation in any direction. This research contributes to the knowledge about work and non-work related demands and resources as antecedents for WLB development during the pandemic. As a practical implication during the pandemic, the authors suggest that employers should follow development for employees’ WLB as a measure of well-being in remote work. In addition, the workload of remote employees should be followed, and time saved from commuting should be preserved as employees’ non-work time and protected from work-related tasks.

In this chapter, the authors study work from home (WFH) and work from office (WFO) formats using institutional logic. Four start-ups in India have been studied using qualitative interview data reflecting their transition to WFH during the COVID-19 crisis and subsequent nationwide lockdown. Institutional logics is the framework drawn upon to enhance our understanding of the phenomenon. While conceptualising institutional logics in the context of WFH and WFO, the authors discuss the implications of WFH for both entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. Finally, it is proposed that hybrid workspaces may be the way for the future.