The Effect of New Normal Leadership and Workplace Flexibility on Employee Burnout and Work-Life Balance During COVID-19 Era

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic created a “New Normal”. Lockdown measures forced everyone to remain at home and compelled organizations to fully embrace flexible work arrangements in an effort to maintain sustainability. Overnight, work from home, previously considered as a luxury and conditionally applied by certain organizations, becomes the norm. Employees had to swiftly adapt to remote working lifestyle while juggling between home chores and home schooling and facing the uncertainties related to health and safety. This blurred the boundaries between home and work interfaces resulting in burnout and work-life balance disruption. Likewise, leadership realized that managing remote employees is quite challenging and requires specific set of skills and behaviors; hence the emergence of new normal leadership, that is people-oriented and characterized by its flexibility and resilience. Resilience becomes a vital characteristic of an organization during disturbances like the COVID-19. Furthermore, resilient employees will have the ability to strike a balance between work and home interfaces. Studies on employee resilience, although in its infancy, is progressing rapidly since resilient organizations rely on resilient employees to survive. Hence the aim of this thesis is to study the relationship between flexible work arrangements and employee burnout and work life balance in the presence of employee resilience and new normal leadership. Particularly the roles that employee resilience and new normal leadership play in the relationship between flexible work arrangements and employee burnout and work-life balance will be investigated. The conceptual model is empirically tested through an online questionnaire circulated among employees working in the Lebanon and the region. The proposed relationships were supported by the findings generated by PLS-SEM equation modeling.