THE IMPACT OF REMOTE WORKING ON MENTAL WELLBEING WITH MEDIATION ROLE OF WORK LIFE BALANCE OF IT PROFESSIONALS IN WESTERN PROVINCE

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to identify the impact of remote working on the mental wellbeing of IT professionals in the Western Province of Sri Lanka with the mediation role of work life balance. In addition to that, this study intends to contribute to filling the knowledge gap by looking into the relationship between remote working and mental wellbeing of IT professionals. Although there is enough literature on remote working and mental wellbeing, the literature context focusing the IT industry and Sri Lankan context is less. This research is deductive (theory testing) research. This research was conducted using a survey research strategy and quantitative research method. The employees of the IT companies within the Western Province which are registered in SLASSCOM were chosen as the population of the study. The sample size was 375, data collection was done through a self-administered questionnaire and simple random sampling technique. A Google Form was created and distributed to collect data. The number of employees who responded was 393 and 375 were considered for conducting the research further and 18 responses were discarded due to incompletion. Both descriptive and inferential statistics, namely correlation and regression, were used to analyze data. In addition, process macro was used to find the mediation effect of work life balance. The results indicate that remote working has a positive impact on the mental wellbeing of IT professionals while work life balance does not specifically mediate the relationship between remote working and mental wellbeing.