Social Media and Work-Life Balance Among Corporate Employees

Social media usage has grown tremendously over past few years. As more people connect with each other through online medium, it becomes essential to find a balance between virtual life and real life. Corporate world requires a balance between work and life priorities. Employees often struggle to manage different responsibilities in their lives within and outside work. Advancement of technologies has helped in connecting with family and friends during work hours. This has bought about a change in nature of work, blurring the boundaries between work and life commitments. The present study aims to understand if there is a relationship between social networking and work life balance. This study will also look into gender difference amongst the two variables and the level of work life balance due to online usage. Samples of 60 corporate employees from different work setting in Bengaluru were used for the research. Correlation research design was adopted and statistical test of Spearman rank correlation, Mann Whitney-U test and Kruskal-Wallis was run for the purpose of the study. The results of the current study show that there is a negative significant correlation between internet addiction and two dimensions of work life balance. The study also found that there exist no gender difference when it comes to online usage and two dimension of work life balance- Intrusion of Personal Life into Work and Work Enhancement by Personal Life while there exist a difference in gender in the other two dimension of work life balance-Intrusion of Work into Personal Life and Personal Life Enhancement by Work. The study reveals that the more time an individual spends online, more interference in work and/or personal life exists. The implication of this study will help corporate companies plan effective ways for their employees to maintain work life balance in this technological world.