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Perceived stress and psychological Well-being of

working
well-being of working mothers mothers during
COVID-19
during COVID-19: a mediated
moderated roles of teleworking
and resilience Received 28 May 2020
Revised 18 January 2021
18 March 2021
Vartika Kapoor and Jaya Yadav Accepted 18 March 2021
HR, Amity University, Noida, India
Lata Bajpai
General Management, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University,
Lucknow, India, and
Shalini Srivastava
Management, Jaipuria Institute of Management Noida, Noida, India

Abstract
Purpose – The present study examines the mediating role of teleworking and the moderating role of resilience
in explaining the relationship between perceived stress and psychological well-being of working mothers in
India. Conservation of resource theory (COR) is taken to support the present study.
Design/methodology/approach – The data of 326 respondents has been collected from working mothers in
various sectors of Delhi NCR region of India. Confirmatory factor analysis was used for construct validity, and
SPSS Macro Process (Hayes) was used for testing the hypotheses.
Findings – The results of the study found an inverse association between perceived stress and psychological
well-being. Teleworking acted as a partial mediator and resilience proved to be a significant moderator for
teleworking-well-being relationship.
Research limitations/implications – The study is based at Delhi NCR of India, and future studies may be
based on a diverse population within the country to generalize the findings in different cultural and industrial
contexts. The present work is based only on the psychological well-being of the working mothers, it can be
extended to study the organizational stress for both the genders and other demographic variables.
Practical implications – The study extends the research on perceived stress and teleworking by empirically
testing the association between perceived stress and psychological well-being in the presence of teleworking as
a mediating variable. The findings suggest some practical implications for HR managers and OD Practitioners.
The organizations must develop a plan to support working mothers by providing flexible working hours and
arranging online stress management programs for them.
Originality/value – Although teleworking is studied previously, there is a scarcity of research examining the
impact of teleworking on psychological well-being of working mothers in Asian context. It would help in
understanding the process that how teleworking has been stressful for working mothers and also deliberate the
role of resilience in the relationship between teleworking and psychological well-being due to perceived stress,
as it seems a ray of hope in new normal work situations.
Keywords Perceived stress, Psychological well-being, Teleworking, Resilience, Working mothers, India
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) declared COVID-19 a
pandemic, which means the global and severe outbreak of the unknown life-threatening
virus. COVID-19 disease caused by Coronavirus was first discovered in Wuhan, China, in
December 2019 and blow-out like a wildfire in the rest of the countries (Singhal, 2020). Several Employee Relations: The
International Journal
countries adopted social distancing to deal with this pandemic, and India also declared © Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
a nationwide lockdown on March 25, 2020. Education institutions, childcare services, movie DOI 10.1108/ER-05-2020-0244
ER theaters, museums, restaurants, shopping malls, unorganized retail were declared closed,
transport services suspended till any further notice, public gatherings and events got
canceled, and rapid testing, suspects in isolation started taking place (Pai et al., 2020;
Varghese and John, 2020). In India, due to lockdown, offices got closed and homeworking
became a mandate, schools and childcare services got suspended, and online classes started
taking place, and people were asked to practice social distancing (Bhat et al., 2020; Varghese
and John, 2020). Humankind never experienced the current uncertain and stressful situation
in recent history. The whole world has come to a standstill, and there seems to be no light at
the end of the tunnel. Confronted with catastrophe, individuals displayed anxiety and
stressful behaviors (Shigemura et al., 2020). China reported severe psychological problems in
its citizens (Li et al., 2020). Employees would face mental health challenges (Roy et al., 2020) in
some weeks due to a mandate related to work from home (Staglin Garen, 2020).
Women are prone to more significant stress and respond more intensely than men during
the pandemic time (Zhu et al., 2020). Working mothers are out of the frying pan into the fire in
this challenging time; they anyway confront different stressors owing to various roles and
multiple responsibilities (Wenham et al., 2020; Murtorinne, et al., 2016). Working mothers face
various challenges in balancing work and family obligations and face motherhood and
gender stereotyping in their organizations and society. Generally, women choose their work
according to their family responsibilities and sometimes even take a career break to manage
their family roles well (McDonald and Hite, 2005). Women in India have moved a long way
from independence; they have taken all the stride challenges. Indian working mothers
experience more challenges due to household and work conflict than working mothers
in western countries (Moregenroth and Heilman, 2017) as they face significant stress and
pressure due to inadequate childcare amenities and household workload distribution. They
are expected to be skilled homemakers, childcare experts and excellent managers at work.
Such expectations of managing various roles simultaneously become the significant
stressors for working mothers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, males also tried to support
their female partners with household chores. However, the primary responsibility lies on the
shoulder of females who have to play multiple roles in a family-like cook, housemaid, nurse,
tutor, etc., so many family responsibilities and work pressure and that too telework leave
working mothers restless, anxious, stressed, and tired.
As experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, teleworking is not reflective of
teleworking as it was perceived before the pandemic crisis (Dolce et al., 2020). The unique,
unforeseen, and unpredictable COVID-19 setbacks could have undesirable effects on
teleworking employees’ daily behavioral and psychological outcomes (Chong et al., 2020).
During the lockdown, such working females lost the support of childcare services and
housemaids and got flooded with household work (Ganguly et al., 2020). Lack of outside help
and support has increased their baggage, which leaves them anxious, depressed, and
fatigued, therefore affecting working mothers’ psychological well-being.
Work from home offered flexible working hours; however, females with young kids
experience constant distractions and interruptions, restricting them to focus on work.
Though the boundaries got blurred due to overlap of work and home responsibilities, it made
working females anxious, restless and fatigued. Therefore, there is a resource loss for
working mothers in psychological stress or burnout. The psychological well-being of the
working mother is being ignored during such an uncertain period.
There may be different factors responsible for the employee’s psychological well-being in
collectivist culture (Chang et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). The researchers suggested that
future studies identify individual domains that can affect employees’ psychological well-
being in stressful situations (Wnag et al., 2020). They also suggested studying the factors that
may improve employees’ psychological well-being during weekend activities or personal and
work activities overlap (Jeong et al., 2020). Under such circumstances, resilience among
individuals can be a resource to deal with an uncertain and challenging pandemic time Well-being of
(Conversano et al., 2020). working
The present study examines the mediating role of teleworking and the moderating role of
resilience in explaining the relationship between perceived stress and working mothers’
mothers during
psychological well-being in India. It would help understand how teleworking has been COVID-19
stressful for working mothers and deliberate the role of resilience in the relationship between
teleworking and psychological well-being due to perceived stress, as it seems a ray of hope in
new typical work situations. The article structure includes a review of existing literature on
teleworking, perceived stress, psychological well-being, resilience, and the theoretical
framework that explains the mediating and moderating relationship among the variables.
The next section on hypotheses testing will be followed by a discussion, implications and
limitations of the study.

2. Literature review
2.1 Telework or work from home
Telework or work from home can be defined as the work that can be operated from any
location of employees’ convenience from where they can perform their duties using
technology and applications. It is the best available option for managing a large workforce
and an organized work culture. Different researchers studied the benefits and shortcomings
of the teleworking workforce (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007) and its impact on the
workforces’ work-life balance (Golden and Veiga, 2008). Few previous studies supported the
fact that teleworking helps individuals, establishments and society (Michielsens et al.,
2013). It is beneficial for both the employers and employees as employers get a vast talent
pool for selection with less real estate expenses (Bloom et al., 2015), whereas it helps
employees to be working and managing home responsibilities at the same time (Hall and
Atkinson, 2006: Madsen, 2003). Technology makes it easier to communicate and exchange
information with colleagues frequently (Bailey and Kurland, 2002). It offers freedom in time
management, job autonomy (Harpaz, 2002), improving family time (Atkinson and Hall,
2011; Ammons and Markham, 2004; Johnson et al., 2007) and reducing commuting hours
(Tremblay and Thomsin, 2012). Therefore, many researchers believe that teleworking
improves life and work-life balance (Doherty, 2004; Ammons and Markham, 2004; Johnson
et al., 2007).
Some researchers are in stark contrast; they report that frequent disruptions at home and
longer work time negatively influence an individual’s work-life balance, especially women
(Bailey and Kurland, 2002; Johnson et al., 2007). It becomes challenging to balance family
responsibilities and work; this may negatively impact an employee’s job satisfaction and
hamper their productivity. The literature on telework or work from home reveals that
employees feel stressed out for their career prospects due to their managers’ lesser visibility
(Khalifa and Davison, 2000; Maruyama and Tietze, 2012). The major drawback of work from
home is social isolation since the employee has limited interaction with colleagues (Hill et al.,
2003). Teleworking would hurt family associations between spouses and children due to the
conflict between work and family obligations (Mirchandani, 2000). It is believed that there are
mixed findings regarding teleworking. Hartig et al. (2007) mentioned that teleworkers overlap
between work and home responsibilities, which decreases teleworking aids for them.

2.2 Perceived stress

The current pandemic created stressful situations not just for particular gender but for every
individual, society and nation. The economy of the nation is at stake, and so are the
corporates. Therefore there is constant fear and stress about unemployment. Consequently,
ER employees are working from their homes, taking up heavy workloads, longer work hours,
and unreasonable demands to avoid putting their jobs at risk (Brown, 2010; Tripathi and
Bhattacharjee, 2012). Apart from genuine uncertainty and fear, some individuals experience a
state of perceived stress. The term perceived stress is understood as “an unfavorable person-
environment relationship” during a mismatch between resources of the individual and
situational demands (Lazarus, 1993).
Modekurti and Chattopadhyay (2008) discussed that severity of stress is more in working
women since they need to deal with multiple responsibilities of managing home, kids and
work. Managing so much simultaneously creates ’work-family spillover’ and makes their
lives stressful, and anxiety is their permanent ally. Difficulties that arise due to occupational
stress sometimes force them to give up work and focus more on family (Nezhad and Besharat,
2010). These are some of the stressors, but for working women especially teleworking, and
workload, they have their kids to look after as children attend online classes run by their
schools and tutoring kids without any support of maid, the situation converts into a stress
bomb. These days, teleworking mothers experience excessive information overload, and the
communication demands arising from information communication technologies become a
cause of perceived stress (Reinecke et al., 2017).

2.3 Psychological well-being

The psychological health of an individual is as important as physical health. The symptoms
of physical disease get visible. However, psychological stress does not get visible through
physical symptoms and can cause severe damage to an individual’s mental health.
Psychological well-being is explained in different ways in previous studies. It is
conceptualized as subjective well-being deals with employees’ emotional experiences
related to perceived mental health or psychosomatic symptoms (Keyes et al., 2002; Warr,
2006). Psychological well-being is defined as a state of human functioning, moves beyond the
experiences of happiness involving the realization of individual self and self-potential (Ryff
and Keyes, 1995). This construct includes six dimensions, including autonomy, positive
relations, personal growth, purpose in life, self-acceptance and environmental mastery (Ryff
and Singer, 2008).
Psychological well-being theory mentions that an individual’s mental health is directly
associated with certain aspects of life. Damaged psychological well-being is linked through
augmented hazard for poor health, comprising depression and life stress-causing chronic
disorders (Steptoe et al., 2015). Many studies discussed the positive aspects of psychological
well-being (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005). Psychological well-being is part of a multidimensional
construct, i.e., health, which accelerates good health (Steptoe et al., 2015). Increased
psychological well-being predicts reduced mortality (Chida and Steptoe, 2008; Pressman and
Cohen, 2005). Srimathi and Kiran Kumar (2010) studied the psychological well-being of
working women in the teaching profession and women working in hospitals and corporate
jobs. They found that corporate women scored least in psychological well-being, and women
teachers scored high. Among women, quality of life at home and work environment
significantly affects the psychological well-being.

2.4 Resilience
Life does not develop a road map; everyone has their twist and turns in the life journey. Each
situation affects different individuals differently, leading to different intensity of thoughts
and emotions. People are generally able to adapt well to life-changing/stressful situations,
and this is resilience. Employee resilience can be understood as a set of core competencies and
qualities such as flexibility, problem-solving abilities and associations (Wang et al., 2014;
Cooke et al., 2019). It is a critical hopeful tool to manage puzzling and harsh places of work
(Cooke et al., 2019); thus, it is about bouncing back from difficult situations even if it helps Well-being of
reduce the turnover intention of the employees (Singh and Srivastava, 2021). Psychological working
resilience shields stress (Fletcher and Sarkar, 2013a). When a person perceives that the job
demands are more than available resources, it creates stress (Hasan et al., 2018). These
mothers during
stressors can be professional or personal. In such situations, an individual’s response to stress COVID-19
matters a lot (Narayanan et al., 1999). As per the Conservation of Resources theory, resilience
may be a potential source of energy (Davies et al., 2019) and a tool that allows individuals to
continue energetic, engaged, and immersed in essential life chores, even amid significant
challenges (Hobfoll et al., 2018).
The pandemic COVID-19 created a situation of uncertainty and helplessness across the
globe, and a strong focus on cultivating resilience among individuals would prove to be a
possible resolution. Thus possible and deliberate cultivation of the thoughts towards
contributions, appreciating others, and being grateful for the resources anyone possesses for
helping people in the community is the best possible remedy. The process of resilience
requires these deliberations, which are complicated and contextual, but promotable
(Rosenberg et al., 2020). Women are prone to more significant stress and respond more
intensely than men during pandemics (Zhu et al., 2020). Thus, resilience would prove to be a
solution to the pandemic’s challenges and its consequences on life.

3. Theoretical framework
3.1 Conservation of resource theory
The present study is based on conservation of resource theory, which advocates that
individuals pursue to obtain, retain, foster, and protect things/resources that are of great
importance to them. Hobfoll (1989) asserts that “. . .the degree to which individuals appraise
something as threatening, and the coping choices they make, are largely determined by the
resources they have” (p. 312). COR theory postulates that stress arises when our most
essential resources are exposed to loss or when such resources are lost. This theory explains
that human beings have the intrinsic need to conserve the resources they consider essential
for their survival.
These resources may be valuable physical objects; conditions (hierarchical work status,
marital status); energies (time, money and effort); personal resource including resilience, self-
esteem, psychological capital, and perceptual orientation); social support, opportunities for
better development, belongingness, family, well-being, and a meaningful life (Hobfoll et al.,
2018). As per the theory, in the natural context, human beings are driven to create, develop
and secure their resources in different aspects such as things, work, financial aspects and
assets, regard, and many other (Hobfoll, 2002). The significance of resources differs among
the people based on their priorities, experiences, and circumstances (Halbesleben et al., 2014).
The presented study is based on the psychological well-being of employees during the
COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, the difficulty in controlling the unexpected
spread of the COVID-19 was experienced by almost all the countries. As per the COR theory, it
is hypothesized that the government and top-level management of companies and employees
also got concerned about its human resources’ well-being. Due to the stress of controlling the
spread through joint and collective efforts, governments and industries had to change their
work policies and introduce teleworking. It can be understood that the decision of
teleworking during Covid-19 stress was taken to avoid the threat of losing human resources
and their well-being. In order to cope up with this type of stress, the organizations thought of
introducing the concept of teleworking. However, teleworking further increased working
mothers’ trouble due to overlapping of personal and professional requirements, which
affected their psychological well-being significantly. Psychological well-being is part of
mental health, considered an asset during uncertainty, fear, and stress. As individuals try to
ER retain their resources, psychological well-being, and emotional experience, part of subjective
well-being is the preferred resource that they keep trying to attain and retain. Thus, efforts to
maintain psychological well-being are required through some mechanism, and resilience may
be proved to be the same.
Figure 1 of the study depicts the conceptual model to test the hypotheses of the study.
Perceived stress is taken as the predictor variable, teleworking as a mediating variable,
resilience as a moderating variable, and psychological well-being as a criterion variable.

3.2 Perceived stress and psychological well-being

Moore and Blum (2006) mentioned that work from home does not contribute to improving the
quality of life concerning subjective well-being and also noted that employees working from
home and have young kids and menial jobs are more stressed out, and it negatively affects
their mental health. Work flexibility also has a different effect on different gender; work-life
conflicts are more for women or single parents than men since they prefer to work from home
settings for childcare reasons (Hoque and Kirkpatrick, 2003). The employees involved in
telework work overtime, and they are likely to have negative emotions, stress and poor
mental health (Ojala et al., 2014).
Apart from this, if the working mother does not cope up well with childcare or any other
family member, this can lead to conflict in family and negotiations between the couple
regarding the working hours, house helpers, household chores, causing stress and hurt
subjective well -being (Song and Gao, 2018). The COVID-19 pandemic caused stress among
all (Strauss-Kahn, 2020; Tooze, 2020), especially working professionals, organizational
disruptions (Newton, 2020), and employees’ daily exhaustion. As per the COR theory (Hobfoll,
1989), the individuals experience a threat to their resources; thus, they put effort into retaining
their existing resources. Based on the same, it is hypothesized that there may be an adverse
effect of perceived stress on the working women’s well-being resources.
H1. There is a negative association between perceived stress and psychological
well-being.

3.3 Perceived stress and teleworking

The stress of the COVID-19 pandemic was all over the world. Different economies,
governments, and industries opted for teleworking or work from home due to the fear, sense
of worry, and stress of the pandemic’s possible spread (Dolce et al., 2020). Teleworkers work
from home and experience social isolation, and it has been observed that due to social
isolation, an individual may feel lonely and becomes resentful, leading to increased conflict in
family life (Dolce et al., 2020). Teleworking also increases work pressure, and teleworkers are
more stressed and have more negative emotions like constant worry, guilt, and irritation.
When working from home, employees struggle with time planning due to the overlap of work

Resilience
(Moderator)

Psychological Well-
Perceived Stress Teleworking
being
Figure 1.
Conceptual model
and home responsibilities (Chang et al., 2020; Dolce et al., 2020). Along with this, Well-being of
communicating from time to time with supervisors, subordinates, and clients with working
constant interruptions at home leads to stress, and it hampers the quality of life of an
individual (Konradt et al., 2000). Some researchers report that frequent disruptions at home
mothers during
and longer work time negatively influence an individual’s work-life balance, especially COVID-19
women (Bailey and Kurland, 2002; Chang et al., 2020; Johnson et al., 2007). It becomes
complicated to balance family responsibilities and work; this may negatively impact working
mothers’ job satisfaction and hamper their productivity. As per the COR theory, the
employers, employees, and government opted for teleworking or work from home to protect
the spread of the pandemic; thus it is hypothesized that
H2. There is a positive association between perceived stress and teleworking.

3.4 Teleworking and psychological well-being

The substantial concern related to mandatory teleworking has been evidence of lower
working conditions, increased job demands, untimely professional requirements, and
difficulty in ensuring adequate resources (Kniffin et al., 2021). An individual managing
everything themselves, including home, kids, family members, relatives, work, clients,
colleagues and supervisors, all at the same time and the same place becomes very challenging
(Weinert et al. 2015). Due to work overload, work-family overlap, short deadlines, no time
boundaries, inability to switch off and reduction in relaxation time (Hartig et al., 2007; Mann
and Holdsworth, 2003) leads to reduced mental health, fatigue, and most impoverished health
status (Weinert et al., 2015).
As per the report “State of Remote Work, 2019,” working from home may negatively affect
wellness (Forbes, 2020). It also reveals that 49% of respondents mostly struggle with health-
related issues, including 22% of people unable to plug after their work hours, 19% feel lonely
and isolated, and 8% have lower motivation levels. As per the COR theory (Hobfoll, 1989), the
government and organizations introduced teleworking to avoid losing their well-being
resource. However, working mothers could not cope up with overlap of work and professional
responsibilities while teleworking; thus, it is hypothesized that
H3. There is a negative association between teleworking and psychological well-being.

3.5 Teleworking as a mediator

The employees who work in the home office struggle more with depression and anxiety, and
they lack concentration due to responsibility overlap. It can hamper their productivity, self-
esteem and confidence level (Chang et al., 2020; Konradt et al., 2000). Some researchers
suggest that telework may intensify the work leading to burnout and stress. Work from home
blurs the borderline between work and family time, the constant juggling of responsibilities
makes life more difficult for women (Bulos and Chaker, 1995). There is a positive association
between homeworking and health struggles. An individual managing everything
themselves, including home, kids, family members, relatives, work, clients, colleagues and
supervisors all at the same time, and the same place becomes very challenging. There is
enough evidence that merging professional and personal life can lead to conflict in the family
(Baines and Gelder, 2003), which might be stressful (Weinert et al. 2015). Telework for
working mothers may also cause social isolation and hamper group performance and
dynamics (Sparrowe et al., 2001), leading to low psychological well-being. During COVID-19,
the uncertainty in terms of lockdown, quarantine, social distancing, unfolding lockdown bit
by bit, compulsory work from home, and revising the advisories every other day created
disruptions in the environment (Chong et al., 2020). This uncertain work environment was felt
by the employees and created perceived stress among employees. Though teleworking
ER proved to be the most feasible solution to avoid loss of well-being of human resources from
getting infected during a pandemic; however, among working women, teleworking did not
prove to enhance their well-being. As per the COR theory, during stress, an individual uses a
coping mechanism, but the high involvement of women employees in managing personal and
professional assignments discourages them from bouncing back, i.e., resilience and well-
being affected (Chong et al., 2020).
H4. There is a negative association between teleworking and resilience.
H5. Teleworking will act as a mediator between perceived stress and psychological
well-being.

3.6 Resilience as a moderator

Technology and the Internet ensure the constant presence of work, which can be stressful
at times. Resilient employees are better at managing stress and do not face the same
detrimental effect. They take care of themselves and engage in some useful activity after
any stressful event to avoid burnout. Another trait of a resilient employee is that they are
authentic, and their behavior is aligned with their values and beliefs. Social support has a
significant effect on an individual’s psychological well-being, and resilient employees
perform well at building relationships and effective communication and consider others’
situations and emotions. Such resilient individuals have better mental health than
nonresilient people.
Psychological well-being has a strong relationship with resilience, and an individual with
an advanced level of subjective well-being generally feels satisfied with life (Diener, 2000;
Mak et al., 2011). The substantial concern related to mandatory teleworking has been
evidence of lower working conditions, increasing job demands, untimely professional
requirements and difficulty in ensuring adequate resources (Kniffin et al., 2021). Women
employees manage their work and family time as per their requirements, priority and daily
schedule. However, during COVID-19, uncertainty caused a shock to one’s cognitive
processing that forces an individual to carefully evaluate new information affecting
subjective well-being (Song and Gao, 2018). Individuals have a different level of emotional
stability; during a stressful situation at work, working mothers with higher emotional
stability positively handle the situation while others might feel irritated, anxious, and
stressed. Therefore, teleworking mothers experience a state of stress and burnout, and their
subjective well is affected. Based on the above facts, the following hypothesis is proposed,
H6. There is a positive association between resilience and psychological well-being.
H7. Resilience will act as a moderator between teleworking and psychological well-being.
H8. Resilience will moderate the strength of the mediated relationship between perceived
stress and psychological well-being via teleworking such that the relationships are
weaker for those with high as opposed to the low level of resilience.

4. Methodology
4.1 Sample and study procedure
The present study data has been collected from working mothers in various sectors of India’s
Delhi NCR region. A convenience sample technique was used to collect the data. The authors
contacted their known ones who were working in different companies and requested them to
share the mail ids of working mothers in their group. A list was then prepared for the
prospective respondents contacted by the authors if they were comfortable filling the survey.
Once the consent was taken, a Google form was created for the present study and sent Well-being of
through mail and other media channels like WhatsApp. Those who were having difficulty in working
filling the Google form, they were sent the survey as word document. As all the working
professional were working from home during pandemic situation, data collection was not a
mothers during
difficult task as many perceived it as a stress buster. In fact, during the survey, many COVID-19
respondents felt so excited that they helped the authors in collecting the data by circulating
the survey themselves. The sample data was collected from eight major cities (strata) of Delhi-
NCR: Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, Gurugram, Meerut, Bulandshar. All ethical
procedure of sustaining confidentiality and informed consent was firmly adhered to. Five
hundred fifty survey forms were distributed, of which, the authors received 340. Of 340, 14
forms were discarded due to incomplete nature; hence, a total of 326 respondents were taken
for the present study. Of 326 respondents, 89 were in the age group of 21–30 years, 144 were in
the age group of 31–40 years, 77 were in the age group of 41–50 years and the remaining 16
were above 50 years of age. Regarding no. of children, 124 had one child, 182 had two children,
and 20 had three children. With respect to experience, 64 respondents had the experience
between 0 and 5 years, 128 had the experience between 6 and 10 years, 112 had the experience
in the range of 11–15 years, and remaining 22 had experience above 22 years.

4.2 Measures
The study has used the following measures which have been drawn from extant
literature. All the scale items were measured on a five-point Likert scale ranging from
strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). Some of the items have been reworded to
address the objectives of the study. Resilience was measured through a 6 item Brief
Resilience Scale developed by Smith’s Brief Resilience Scale (2006). Items like, “I tend
to bounce back quickly after hard times” and “I have a hard time making it through
stressful event” are the examples of scale items. To measure work from home
dimension, the teleworking scale was adapted from six-item scale by Mann (2003).
Items like “I often have to work even when sick in order to dispel my employer’s
doubts regarding telework (to maintain the ’privilege’ of telework)” and “I can often
(but not always) choose the hours they work” are the examples of telework scale.
Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWB) by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener (2008)
was used to measure psychological well-being. Items like “I lead a purposeful and
meaningful life, and My social relationships are supportive and rewarding” are
examples of the PWB scale. Ten items Perceived stress scale (Cohen et al., 1983) was
used to measure perceived stress. Items like, “In the last month, I have often felt
nervous and “stressed” and “In the last month, I have often felt confident about my
ability to handle my personal problems.”

4.3 Common method variance

Following the suggestions of Podsakoff et al. (2003), Harman’s single factor test reflected
that the first factor accounted for 39.4% of the total variance extracted after factor analysis;
hence, CMV issue was overruled in the present study.
4.3.1 Measurement model: reliability and validity. The proposed full measurement model
(Table 1) reflected a good model fit. Similarly, the fitting indices of the structural model were
also found to be satisfactory with the values of all the dimensions within the specified limits
(χ 2/df 5 3.12, GFI 5 0.924, AGFI 5 0.920, NFI 5 0.916, CFI 5 0.908).
Table 2 depicts acceptable reliability and convergent validity (Hair et al., 2010). Composite
reliability ranged from 0.76 to 0.91, Cronbach’s alpha ranged between 0.81 and 0.92, while
AVE’s value was above 0.6, and all the factor loadings exceeded 0.6.
ER 5. Data analysis and results
Descriptive statistics and correlations among the study variables are displayed in Table 3. As
the square root of AVE scores is greater than the correlation values, the discriminant validity
of the constructs is satisfactory (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988).

5.1 Hypotheses testing

As depicted in Table 4, an inverse association was found between perceived stress and
psychological well-being (β 5 0.32, p < 0.01), thus substantiating the first hypothesis of the
study. The second hypothesis that a positive association exists between psychological stress
and teleworking is also proved by the result (β 5 0.49, p < 0.01). The result also exposed a
negative association between teleworking and psychological well-being (β 5
0.45 p < 0.01),
thus, proving the third hypothesis of the study. Hypothesis 4 of the study was also proved
when the results showed an inverse association between teleworking and resilience
(β 5
0.35, p < 0.01). A positive relationship between resilience and psychological well-being
(β 5 0.50, p < 0.01) also proved the sixth hypothesis of the study.

Fit indices Measurement model Structural model

χ /df
2
3.22 3.12
GFI 0.923 0.924
Table 1. AGFI 0.924 0.920
Fit indices of the NFI 0.919 0.916
measurement and CFI 0.908 0.908
structural model RMSEA 0.064 0.062

S. No. Item Factor loading range Cronbach’s alpha AVE CR

1 Perceived Stress 0.60–0.83 0.80 0.74 0.81

Table 2. 2 Teleworking 0.66–0.80 0.78 0.66 0.83
Reliability and 3 Resilience 0.76–0.85 0.76 0.72 0.80
convergent validity 4 Psychological Well-Being 0.61–0.88 0.74 0.70 0.87
analysis Source(s): Authors’ Survey

SN Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1 Age 2.14 0.89 –

2 Tenure 2.02 0.86 0.07
0.08
3 No. of children 1.54 0.51
0.12* 0.03 –
4 Perceived 3.33 0.44 0.04
0.02
0.05 (0.86)
stress
5 Teleworking 3.62 0.63 0.08 0.04
0.05 0.47** (0.81)
Table 3. 6 Resilience 3.43 0.18 0.04 0.01 0.18**
0.33**
0.31** (0.84)
Mean, SD, correlation 7 Psychological 2.96 0.80 0.02 0.01 0.03
0.34**
0.44** 0.52** (0.83)
and discriminant well being
validity Note(s): N 5 326; *correlation significant at 0.05 level, **correlation significant at 0.01 level
5.2 Mediation analysis Well-being of
The study adopted Macro PROCESS Hayes (2017), Model 4 to run the mediational analysis to working
see whether the indirect effect (a 3 b) was significantly different from zero. As shown in
Table 5, the indirect effect of perceived stress on psychological well-being through
mothers during
teleworking was statistically significant (
0.076; p 5 0.000), the 95% C.I. is [–0.142,
0.056], COVID-19
thereby proving hypothesis 5 of the study that teleworking will act as a mediator between
perceived stress and psychological well-being. The reason for partial support was the
significant direct effect of the predictor variable (CSR) on the criterion variable (retention), as
observed in Table 5. We also calculated the variance accounted factor (VAF), which also
validated teleworking’s partial mediating effect on the perceived stress-psychological
relationship (see Table 5).

Table 4.
Estimated coefficients
Variables Estimate SE t p LL 95 CI UL 95 CI
for the structural model
PS → PWB
0.32 0.06 8.43 0.000
0.2515
0.1246 and its confidence
intervals of Perceived
PS → TW 0.49 0.05 11.46 0.000 0.3400 0.5126
Stress (PS),
TW → PWB
0.45 0.07 12.47 0.000
0.4136
0.2432 Teleworking (TW),
TW → R
0.35 0.04 7.18 0.000
0.3462
0.1994 Resilience (R),
R → PWB 0.50 0.05 10.16 0.000 0.2138 0.4216 Psychological Well-
Source(s): Authors’ survey Being (PWB)

Mediation paths Indirect effect LLCI ULCI p value Mediation

H5 PS → TW → PWB
0.076
0.142
0.056 0.000 Partial

VAF 5 39.07%
Note(s): Source: Authors’ Survey, **p < 0.01; VAF 5 indirect effect/total effect 3 100, VAF 5 100 percent
denotes full mediation. (Hair et al., 2010); Perceived Stress (PS), Teleworking (TW), Psychological Well- Table 5.
Being (PWB) Mediation analysis

Variables and steps Dependent variable

Step 1: Controls
Age 0.02
No. of children 0.01
Tenure 0.03
Step 2: Main effects of Predictor variables
Teleworking
0.42**
Resilience 0.51**
Step 3: Interaction
Teleworking 3 Resilience 0.36** Table 6.
R2 0.14 Moderating role of
R2 Change 0.06 resilience in
F 8.44** teleworking-well-being
Note(s) 5 350, **p < 0.01 relationship
ER 5.3 Test of mediated moderation
Model 14 of Hayes (2013) PROCESS Macro was used to study the mediated moderation effect
proposed in the research model. The condition of mediated moderation is achieved when the
conditional indirect effect of perceived stress on psychological well-being through
teleworking differs in levels of resilience. The second stage of mediated moderation was
tested by following Hernandez et al. (2016) three conditions. The result shown in Table 4
proved the first condition of mediated moderation that the indirect effect should be
significant.
Aiken et al. (1991), hierarchical regression was used to examine the moderating effects of
resilience on the perceived stress-psychological well-being relationship in order to test the
second stage of moderation mediation (Table 6). The slope in Figure 2 also explains the
moderating effect. The second condition of mediated moderation is also met, when the
interaction between teleworking and resilience was significant in predicting psychological
well-being (0.36, p < 0.01), thereby also proving Hypothesis 7 of the study.
In order to establish the third condition of mediated moderation and hypothesis 8 of
the study, Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to compute the conditional
indirect effect. The indirect effect of perceived stress on psychological well-being was
strongest at the lowest level (
1 SD) of resilience and weakest at the highest level (þ1 SD) of
resilience (Table 7). The indirect effect is weaker for mothers who report high resilience levels,
thereby proving hypothesis 8 of the study.

6. Discussion
This study aims to understand the effect of mandated teleworking on the life of working
mothers. The study investigated the mechanism of linking organizational stress, teleworking
and psychological well-being. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory that asserts
that individuals obtain, retain and protect resources relevant to them (Hobfoll, 2002), the

5
4.5
4
Psychological Well-Being

3.5
3 Low Resilience

2.5 High Resilience

Figure 2.
2
Moderating role of
resilience in 1.5
teleworking-well-being 1
relationship Low Teleworking High Teleworking

Bootstrap
Values of moderator (Resilience) Conditional indirect effect SE Lower CI Upper CI

1 SD 0.25 0.058 0.06 0.23

Table 7. M 0.20 0.045 0.14 0.34
Mediated moderation þ1 SD 0.16 0.047 0.21 0.48
result for perceived Note(s): Outcome Variable: Psychological well-being; CI5Confidence Interval; Predictor variable 5 Perceived
stress stress; Mediator 5 Teleworking
authors examined the moderating role of resilience. First, the result demonstrated that there Well-being of
is a negative association between perceived stress and psychological well-being. Moore and working
Blum (2006) mentioned that work from home did not improve the quality of life concerning
subjective well-being and noted that working mothers who work from home and have young
mothers during
kids and menial jobs are more stressed out. At times when homeworker gets unable to cope COVID-19
with childcare or any other family member related jobs, it can lead to conflict in family and
negotiations between the couple regarding the working hours, house helpers, household
chores, which may hurt subjective well-being (Song and Gao, 2018). As per COR theory,
during stress, the individuals feel a threat to resources, and in the presented study, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic related stress, a threat to psychological well-being was observed.
A positive association between teleworking and perceived stress was observed.
The conservation of resource theory (Hobfoll, 1989) asserts that an individual prefers to
avoid resource loss in stressful situations, restore resources, and acquire new resources
to deal with difficult times. An organization run by leaders devises its plan of action based on
recommendations of senior-level individuals who might behave as per COR theory and try to
restore resources. Based on the above facts, it is understood that the government and senior
leaders introduced teleworking as a coping mechanism to deal with COVID-19 pandemic-
related stress and tried to protect their human resources’ well-being. During analysis, a
negative association between teleworking and psychological well-being was observed.
Teleworking for mothers can be stressful due to overlap of job and home responsibilities
(Johnson et al., 2007), and whenever working mothers perceive stress, they are likely to forgo
their self-well-being immediately. Work from home for professional purposes during any
other typical day occurs, sometimes in a month or two, and the burden of the same is borne
somehow. However, during a pandemic, a lockdown of more than a month, without any
support and professional commitment through teleworking and household care, increased
work pressure stress due to worry, grit and irritation. Literature also highlights that outsiders
do not understand the importance of homeworking; family or friends make calls during work
hours without considering that one is at home but still needs to work. Thus, it seems evident
that teleworking contributes positively to perceived stress.
A negative association between teleworking and resilience was observed during the
analysis. Working mothers go through a tough time working from home while balancing
work and life (Sullivan and Lewis, 2001). Personal resources for coping with the challenges
and distress caused by the pandemic may have a significant effect on the ability of workers to
remain productive at work (Chang et al., 2020). Interestingly it is also proven that resilient
employees bounce back from tough times and overcome unfavorable situations (Fletcher and
Sarkar, 2013b). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the work from home through teleworking
created even more stress on women and their physical and psychological needs of “Me time”
and rest as resources were depleted. Thus, women employees’ extreme occupancy does not
allow them to witness time for themselves and think on the coping mechanism. Thus the
relationship between teleworking and resilience can be justifiable.
Furthermore, a positive relationship between resilience and psychological well-being was
found. It is believed that working mothers resilient by nature will go through the changed
working conditions during the challenging phase of lockdown due to pandemic. However,
working mothers, not resilient enough, need to cultivate psychological resilience to overcome
this phase (Rosenberg et al., 2020) as it contributes positively to psychological well-being.
Furthermore, teleworking partially mediates the association between perceived stress and
psychological well-being. It means the strength of the negative relationship between
perceived stress and psychological well-being is partially reduced due to teleworking. It has
also been mentioned by Johnson et al. (2007) as well that stress occurs due to teleworking,
which further decreases psychological well-being (Song and Gao, 2018). During moderation
analysis, the interaction effect between resilience and teleworking was found significant and
ER indicated. The results validate that the employees possessing strong resilience will
experience a weak negative association between teleworking and psychological well-being.
It can be validated by the motivational concept of conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll,
2002), which asserts that motivated individuals retain their resources. As per the COR theory,
individuals protect their residual resources and avoid stressful situations (Hobfoll, 1989).
In such situations, the individuals either separate themselves from stress or adopt coping
mechanisms that negatively affect the status quo of psychological well-being. The present
study validates that working mothers maintain and retain their resilience and deal with
teleworking avoid deteriorating their psychological well-being, whereas working mothers
with low levels of resilience experience poor psychological well-being during extreme
teleworking situations. As per COR theory, individuals avoid resource loss or detach
themselves from any potential loss (Halbesleben et al., 2014; Hobfoll, 1989). They further
apply the coping mechanism to restore their lost resources. Thus disturbing their routine
work schedule or going beyond the call for duty would affect their well-being (Zheng
et al., 2020).
Additionally, resilience strengthened the indirect negative consequence of perceived
stress on psychological well-being through teleworking. According to adaptive self-
regulation theory (Tsui and Ashforth, 1994), an individual may bring a fit between self-
control and organizational control system. As per the theory, internal control in the form of
working mothers’ resilience to handle stress is found to be related to employee well-being
(Spector and O’Connell, 1994). It means that if working mothers control their resilience and
make it more vital than ever, it would contribute to dealing with perceived stress during
teleworking and somehow avoid a sharp decline in psychological well-being.

6.1 Theoretical implication

The presented study contributes to the literature in several ways. It extends the research on
perceived stress and teleworking by empirically testing the association between perceived
stress and psychological well-being in the presence of teleworking as a mediating variable.
Consistent with previous studies, the presented study provides empirical support that
perceived stress negatively relates to psychological well-being. The concept of teleworking is
also studied previously; however, there is a scarcity of research examining the impact of
teleworking on psychological well-being during an ongoing pandemic, especially in the
Indian working mother’s context. By introducing resilience as a moderator in association
between perceived stress, teleworking and psychological well-being, scholars can gain
insight about who would experience the hazardous impact of the association between
perceived stress and psychological well-being during teleworking.

6.2 Managerial implication

The findings suggest some practical implications for line managers, employers and human
resource managers. The first COVID-19 crisis has been emotionally challenging for many
people, changing day-to-day life in unprecedented ways. The routine business and its
operation is not an option. Thus the organizations must start drawing up and executing a
plan to support employees with flexible working hours and a span of 24 h in responding to
any action. Second, the line managers may be considerate if any toddler pops up on the screen
of an employee, understands that young kids are around, and a simple hello to kids rather
than escalating the issue will immensely relieve the employee stress. Third, the organizations
may conduct some creative games based interaction sessions involving working mothers,
their kids, and or family members to develop informal relations with the family and make
sure that every member is appreciated during the session. It would install a positive feeling
among working mothers and their family members, ease the stress level, and make them
cheerful, which would ultimately affect their psychological well-being. Fourth, the study Well-being of
suggests that during COVID-19, organizations either laid off their employees or opted for pay working
cuts, which puts the employees even under more stress. Thus the employers should avoid pay
cuts, as financial stress is the most significant stressor for everybody. The employees in
mothers during
general and working mothers are experiencing fear and stress, so the organizations should COVID-19
also pay attention to the occupational stress that their employees are going through and
arrange for online stress management programs such as mindfulness meditation.
The managers must understand the significance of weekend activities for improving
employee’s personal quality of life. Thus, the work schedule should be arranged in such a way
that the employees’ weekends remain undisturbed.

6.3 Limitation and future research

The presented study offers substantial opportunities for future research, and it includes
certain limitations as well. The study is based at Delhi NCR of India, and future studies may
be based on a diverse population within the country to generalize the findings in different
cultural and industrial contexts. The study includes a convenience sampling technique, and
different sampling techniques may be used in future research. This literature review can
further help develop a conceptual model for empirical analysis to test the association between
working mothers’ telework and stress during this pandemic. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic
is still going; stressors may change after the outbreak so that research can explore real
stressors in the post-outbreak scenario. This study is also based only on the psychological
well-being of the working mothers only; we can study the organizational stress for both the
genders and other demographic variables. In the future, other moderating variables like
hardiness, mindfulness and organizational support can also be explored. The questionnaire
in the study was self-reported. Thus, it may have potential sociability biases. Future
longitudinal studies can be carried out to obtain better insights about the individual and
organizational level factors affecting the employees’ psychological well-being while
teleworking. Future study can also take teleworking as an antecedent to perceived stress
to enhance the conceptual model of the study.

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Further reading
Smith, B.W., Dalen, J., Wiggins, K., Tooley, E., Christopher, P. and Bernard, J. (2008), “The brief
resilience scale: assessing the ability to bounce back”, International Journal of Behavioral
Medicine, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 194-200.

Corresponding author
Shalini Srivastava can be contacted at: shalini.srivastava@jaipuria.ac.in

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