Resilience in Crisis: How Pandemic Stress and Family Conflict Affect Workplace Creativity

What is it about?

This study explores how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted employees’ creative work behavior, particularly when personal and family responsibilities interfered with work. Using Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, the research examines how rumination about the crisis—persistent worrying about health, safety, and uncertainty—can reduce creativity by increasing family-to-work conflict. Employees who feel emotionally drained by pandemic-related stress may struggle to focus or generate new ideas. Based on a survey of 710 employees from a large pharmacy chain in southern Mexico during the pandemic, the study finds that employees who constantly worried about the virus faced greater life-to-work conflict, reducing workplace creativity. When family pressures and crisis worries overlapped, employees conserved energy instead of solving problems creatively. However, resilience—the ability to recover and adapt—buffered this effect, helping employees stay focused and generate new ideas despite pandemic stress. These results suggest that personal resilience acts as a crucial psychological resource that buffers the negative effects of crisis and family-to-work interference. Supporting resilience-building programs and flexible work arrangements may therefore help organizations sustain innovation during crises.

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Photo by Good Faces on Unsplash

Photo by Good Faces on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This study is unique in linking pandemic-induced crisis rumination, family-to-work conflict, and creativity through the lens of COR theory. It identifies family-to-work conflict as a key mediator that translates emotional exhaustion from the pandemic into reduced creativity, while also demonstrating that resilience moderates this pathway, helping employees retain their innovative energy. Unlike previous crisis studies that emphasize organizational factors, this work focuses on individual resource preservation and recovery, offering a nuanced view of how employees maintain creative engagement amid adversity. It is also timely, as organizations continue to face lingering aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other global crises that blur the boundaries between home and work. Conducted in Mexico, a context with strong family orientation and collectivist values, the study demonstrates how resilience enables employees to sustain creativity despite emotional strain and personal disruptions. The findings provide managers with concrete insights on how fostering resilience and work–life balance can help preserve innovation capacity in times of widespread stress and uncertainty.

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