Allana Management Journal of Research

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Pages: 1-5

Date of Publication: 30-Nov--0001

Work Life Balance

Author: Swarn Priya

Category: Human Resource Management

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Abstract:

Purpose - Work life balance is a highly researched topic which mainly emphasizes on one thing - we work to live or live to work. Is the quality of life being maintained? In this era, the old-style breadwinner-homemaker family is switched by the dual-earner family as the main family model, and it is expected to remain the leading family form for the coming future. This change in the family model has carved the interest in understanding the work-and-family interface. Elements which are quite researched are job satisfaction, time for self/leisure activities, work-family conflict (WFC) and family work conflict (FWC).

Objective of this work-and-family balance research is to try to find the relationship between job satisfaction of employees and number of working days. Second objective is to compare the work-family conflict and family work conflict of both the genders.

Findings of the research are that the working days do not affect the job satisfaction of the employees. Second finding of the research is that gender does affect the way family-work conflict and work-family conflict is perceived.

Keywords: Work Life Balance, Employee Job Satisfaction, work-family conflict, family-work conflicts.

Full Text:

  1. Introduction

Work life has undergone profound changes within the last few years. Basically, work-life balance is nothing but how we handle work while taking care of the life, which includes family, leisure and personal development and vice-versa. It is about the balanced blend of the individual__ampersandsign#39;s involvement in the work and family and other aspects of their life. It doesn__ampersandsign#39;t remain the same; rather it is dynamic in nature.

Time and again, researchers have proved that this work life conflict can have a vital effect on the quality of both work and family life. Many researchers have also proved that if work life balance is not met, it has a definite impact on the employee__ampersandsign#39;performance and the job satisfaction at work. Today__ampersandsign#39;s organizations have started realizing the significance of the work life balance. Today, it__ampersandsign#39;s a known fact that productivity and effectiveness of the employees are touched by work-life balance. There are many new concepts which are introduced by the employers for the employees like flexible working hours, team building outings, day care centers, health checkups and family trips etc. to motivate the employees to attain or strike a balance between work __ampersandsign family or self-development. The reason behind this is to let employees enjoy both work and family life.

The purpose of the present study is to draw an understanding on relations between different construct - job satisfaction, work-family conflict and family-work conflict.

Job Satisfaction:

Basically, work-life balance is nothing but how we handle work while taking care of the life, which includes family, leisure and personal development and vice-versa. It is about the balanced blend of the individual__ampersandsign#39;s involvement in the work and family and other aspects of their life. It doesn__ampersandsign#39;t remain the same; rather it is dynamic in nature.

Time and again, researchers have proved that this work life conflict can have a vital effect on the quality of both work and family life. Many researchers have also proved that if work life balance is not met, it has a definite impact on the employee__ampersandsign#39;s performance and the job satisfaction at work. Today__ampersandsign#39;s organizations have started realizing the significance of the work life balance. Today, it__ampersandsign#39;s a known fact that productivity and effectiveness of the employees are touched by work-life balance. There are many new concepts which are introduced by the employers for the employees like flexible working hours, team building outings, day care centers, health checkups and family trips etc. to motivate the employees to attain or strike a balance between work __ampersandsign family or self-development. The reason behind this is to let employees enjoy both work and family life.

Work-Family Conflict __ampersandsign Family-Work Conflict

These two words were coined to highlight the conflict which is arises when we play the different roles. It brings out the inter-role conflicts. (Greenhaus __ampersandsign Beutell, 1985; Kahn, 1981; Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek, __ampersandsign Rosenthal, 1964; Pleck et al., 1980)

Work-family and family-work perspectives are nothing but the degree of role responsibility taken on work front - on cost of family responsibility or on family front - on cost of work responsibilities. It is nothing but the __doublequotosingparticipation in the work (family) role is made more difficult by virtue of participation in the family (work) role__doublequotosing (Greenhaus __ampersandsign Beutell, 1985, p. 77).

As such, the demands of one role make performance of the other role more difficult (Katz __ampersandsign Kahn, 1978).

Based on the above discussion, these scales are developed. Work Family Conflict and Family work conflict is a form of inter-role conflict which depends on the time we devote for certain work and don__ampersandsign#39;t participate in the other scheduled activity on a different front.

  1. Problem Statement

Employees are the most priced assets of an organization. They are the asset through which organizations achieve a competitive advantage. But in this time, work demands efficiency. Every organization is trying to take that extra mile to attain the benchmark performance. As an employee, one needs to meet their benchmarks on their work and at the same time, also meet with all the family responsibilities and demands. At times, either the responsibilities or the demands surpass another. This leads to an imbalance in work-life.

Hence, the present study is to analyze work life balance of working fraternity.

  1. Research Objectives

The general objective of this study was to identify the relationship between the work and life balance. This study attempts to achieve the following objectives:

  1. Literature Review

Research paper __doublequotosingImpact of working hours on Work Life balance__doublequotosing by Sarah Holly and Alwine Mohnen (2012): In their study, the main objective was to observe the relation between the working hours of the employees with their job satisfaction. According to their findings, on an average, employees want to reduce their working hours. In this study, it was found that long working hours led to satisfaction. Less working hours, led to dissatisfaction. Their result proposed diverse observations.

Mohammad Niaz (2008) in his research titled __doublequotosingWork life balance practices and gender gap in job satisfaction__doublequotosing examines the role of women and the effect of work life balance on them. In his research, he has emphasized that in comparison to men, women reach to higher level of job satisfaction.

  1. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This research paper study is descriptive type. The sample size taken was 50. Structured questionnaire was designed and participants were reached through e-mail to collect the primary data. All participants are from the working class. Most of the respondents are of female gender who were keen in understanding their own work-life balance. Statistical techniques such as correlation analysis to done to analyze the data.

  1. RESULTS

The questionnaire was mailed to 50 participants and 47 responses were received.

The following very interesting facts are found:

TABLE 1: Number of working days in a week.

Number of Days

No of respondent

Percentage

5

22

46.81

6

19

40.43

7

6

12.77

From the above table 1, we can see that 22 respondents work for five days, 19 works for six days and there are 6 respondents who also work for all the seven days of the week. Graph 1 depicts the same data in graphical form, representing number of respondents and their working number of days.

Graph 1:

Table 2: NUMBER of workings days and Job satisfaction

Number of Days

Job Satisfaction

1

2

3

4

5

5

0

0

0

20

2

6

0

0

0

6

13

7

0

0

0

1

5

Table 2 tabulates the job satisfaction achieved by respondents against the number of days. Graph2 depicts the same in a graph.

Graph 2:

Table 3: Gender and Family-Work Conflict Table

Gender/FWC

1

2

3

4

5

Male

3

1

3

0

Percentage

0%

42.86%

14.29%

42.86%

0

Female

7

18

14

1

Percentage

0%

17.50%

45.00%

35.00%

2.50%

The above table 3 tabulates the gender and their family-work conflict opinion. Graph 3 following this, depicts the same values in graphical manner.

Graph 3:

Table 4:

  1. Result And Conclusion

The first objective is to study the relationship between job satisfaction of employees and number of working days and as the statistics shows, that number of working days is not affecting the overall job satisfaction. As the fact states, the respondents who have five working days, attain job-satisfaction ranging from Neutral to Applicable. While the other segment, respondents who have six or seven working days are more satisfied and hence most of the respondents__ampersandsign#39; results range from Applicable to Most Applicable. Looks like, number of working days has a positive impact on the job satisfaction.

The second objective is to study the relationship between family work variables and gender. Male gender: 3 respondents (about 43%) feel no pressure of family-work conflict and there are 3 respondents (about 43%) who agree to feel the pressure of family-work conflict. Comparing the female respondents, seven respondents (which is 17% of female respondents), who feel that they do feel little less pressure of family work conflict. But the majority of the respondents, around 45%, do not feel that family-work conflict is felt. They are neutral about the family-work conflict. While there is still a large segment of 35% respondents who feel that they can feel the family-work conflict to a considerable amount. While remaining 2.5% female respondent feel family-work conflict to a high amount. To my opinion, male gender does not react to the family-work conflict in the same way as the female genders reacts to. According to my opinion, female gender holds more responsibility towards house and family; hence they feel the pressure to more extent.

References:

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  3. Holly, S. and Mohnen, A. (2012). Impact of Working Hours on Work-Life Balance.
  4. Hoppock, R. (1935). Job Satisfaction, Harper and Brothers, New York, p. 47
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