Different factors of Work Life Balance Affecting Employee Job ...

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Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management Journal Volume 4, Issue 3 Pages: 98-109

August 2016

e-ISSN: 2311-1836 p-ISSN: 2310-0079

Different factors of Work Life Balance Affecting Employee Job Satisfaction: A Study of Banking Sector of Sargodha Region Qurrat-ul-ain Sultan1, Junaid Aftab1, Saif ul Amin1*, Uzma Anjum1 1COMSATS

Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan.

This research was accomplished to explore the effect of different factors of work-life balance on employees’ job satisfaction. Sargodha being revenue generating city in terms of exporting citrus (fruit) deals with banks for large payments. This research is to clarify the relationship between job satisfaction and work life balance factors in banking sectors. There were about 120 questionnaires circulated among the employees of banking sectors. Out of which 88%) questionnaires were returned. The data analysis was done by using SPSS and multiple regression analysis was performed to find out the impact rate of different factors. All the variables discussed in this study results in positive relationship with job satisfaction of employees. In null hypothesis all variables were same as derived except job stress and intention to leave. In derived results job stress and employees’ intention to leave job shows positive relation with employee job satisfaction. The reasons found are the improper voice mechanism and improper distribution of work load among employees. This research can be helpful in analyzing the issue of work life balance in banking sectors in other cities and would enable to conduct different programs /seminars to resolve or minimize this issue in Pakistan as well as in abroad. Key words: Work life balance, Job satisfaction, Job stress, Job autonomy, Banking sector.

*

Corresponding author: Saif ul Amin, COMSATS University, Department of Management Sciences, Pakistan. E-Mail: [email protected]

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Entrep. innov. manag. j. p-ISSN: 2310-0079, e-ISSN: 2311-1836 Volume: 4, Issue: 3, Pages: 98-109

INTRODUCTION The world has become global village. This globalization phenomenon has created the competition trend in almost every sector of organization. Every sector is trying to create more innovation in their respective products/services to meet the criteria of success. It’s a natural phenomenon, when there is boom in one aspect, the fall may occur at other step. As we are going to do research in banking sector of Sargodha region, the above trend has also influenced the banking sectors of Pakistan. The banking organizations have become more competitive now days. This business changes demand more dynamics from employees but making a great hurdle in balancing their lives and job in one row. The satisfaction of job is an inconsistency among wants and expectations of people about their job, and the actual offering to them regarding their jobs (Heslop, et al., 2002). Since old times, banking sector is labor intensive profession. From the top level management to the middle and low level management, their jobs are very tough. The management used to get screwed whole year in making annual reports and analyst research to complex financial models, writing large offering documents and pitch books. Normally it is informed to employees that banking jobs are flexible and they don’t need to work too hard, but in real perception, they have to work for hours other than their job timings, to meet their deadlines and demands of their clients. As the technology makes our lives more convenient, yet it has created hurdles for many of the employees in different ways. When employees of banking sectors engaged their most of time at working places, they don’t get leisure time at their homes in off-hours because they have to be updated about their work through internet. They have to be asked by the employers to check their subordinate works from home also, so the mistakes in work could be rectified early. But when these official requirements are seen by the employee, he himself and his family remained always in trouble and disturbed. Employees want work life balance, so they may fulfill their official as well as personal needs. In this research work we are going to discuss few

important factors (i.e., work stress, job autonomy, intention to leave job and flexible working hours) which are creating hurdles in work life balance especially in banking sectors. Pakistan is not very different in this regard. Sargodha being the traditional and revenue generating city of Pakistan is considered the extremely occupied and quick moving city. By taking in consideration, the banking sector of respective city, we have noticed that work load and long working hours has greatly influenced the concentration of job satisfaction of employees. Ample research has been done already on work-life balance and employees’ job satisfaction in developed countries. The developing countries are also working on work-life balance and employees’ job satisfaction in many fields. A considerable research is done in Pakistan on work life balance and employee satisfaction but only in bigger organizations like telecom sector and banking organizations, where working for long durations is an ordinary issue. Nadeem and Abbas (2009) stated that at upper level of management, there is a negative relationship of job satisfaction with work life balance, while on other hand, job satisfaction; work life balance and stress has positive relation with job autonomy. At middle level of management when work stress and work life conflict increases, the satisfaction of management decreases. For the inferior management, work stress and work life conflict has negative relation with job satisfaction but with job autonomy it has positive relation. Job satisfaction is evenly crucial for the employees and success of the enterprise. It had made hard for the workers to maintain equilibrium between work and personal commitments due to inflexible working hours, high demanding jobs, work stress and sophisticated technology (Nadeem and Abbas, 2009). Jobs are mostly offered to employees by showing them the brighter scenario of nature of job. Most of the cases employees are more receptive to the real scenario of their job’s nature. Tanvi and Fatama (2012) stated that job seekers are not making decisions on the basis of remuneration and promotional aspects but on how well their workplace can support them by balancing their work and life commitments. Problem statement

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In previous research, the work life balance has less effect on employee job satisfaction in banking sector of Karachi. The reasons might be the high level of inflation, unemployment rate and poor environmental conditions. In this study, some other factors of work life balance have been used to analyze employee job satisfaction in banking sectors of Sargodha. This study was focused to find out the loopholes affecting the employee job satisfaction. By overcoming those issues, it will boost employees’ job satisfaction and devotion within the banking sectors. The problem statement for this research identified is as under; ‘To what extent the factors of work life balance such as job stress, job autonomy, intention to leave job, and flexible working hours affect the employee job satisfaction in banking sector of Sargodha’.

Work Stress can be defined as “the expressive, mental and corporeal feature which produces physical and psychological disturbance in work place. The performance of job fall off at organizational level due to work load (Jamal, 1984), he also proposed that work load was greatly interrelated with satisfaction of job (Jamal and Baba, 2000; Younas, et al., 2013; Rizwan, et al., 2013). Work load is an incentive for the human resource and inspired the workers regarding their outcome for better performance in enterprise, while there is injurious effect when the workers do not execute as per institutional anticipations (Dhurkhani, et al., 2016) Job autonomy

1. To determine the effect of work life balance on employee job satisfaction. 2. To investigate which element has effect on employee job satisfaction. 3. To examine which element of work life balance has more impact on employee job satisfaction.

Job autonomy is defined as the quantity of person’s power and prudence given in a working place. Employees empowered with job autonomy yields high satisfaction level within the organization (Bhatti, et al., 2011). Numerous works that link job satisfaction with autonomy at work and research of Pousette and Hansen (2002) shows a statistically significant association among them. Autonomy in the enterprise is defined as, substantial accomplishment, or series of performances connecting to the tasks’ provision and chain of authority to provide the decision making power to the workers more than before given (Leach, et al., 2003).

LITERATURE REVIEW

Intention to leave

Work life balance

Intent to leave the job is defined as the plan of employee’s intention to leave the current job and search another job in the upcoming future. Tett and Meyer (1993) stated that intention of leaving the job is a psychological process, and researchers hardly comprehend it but they said its informed and its need to be focused on the reasons of leaving the organization. According to Churchill et al., 1974, many researchers correlate satisfaction of job with employees’ income like rate of quitting the jobs in unpleased workers are more than that of pleased workers.

Research objectives To find out different factors of work life balance affecting employee job satisfaction following were the research objectives of this study.

Work-Life balance is defined as the equilibrium between work and personal lives. Many researchers defined work-life balance in different researches and make easy for further researches to proceed in the same area of research efficiently. Resch (2003) stated that work-life balance creates a boundary between private life and work. Frone (2003) defined this term in views of other authors as harmonious interface between different spheres of life. Work life balance have obtained ample consideration in past few years (Deery, 2008), while little awareness have been provided to find out the real cause of satisfaction in work life equilibrium of higher educational sectors (Mohd, et al., 2009; Mohd & Amat, 2010). Job load

Porter and Steers (1973) suggested that both individual and factors at directorial level should be integrated to find out the employee’s views and thoughts enforced them to stay or leave the organization. Some researches show that efficient dedication has strong negative influence on

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employees’ intent to quit job in enterprise (Conway & Monks, 2009). The contextual model of employee intent to quit job has recommended that customization, interaction, fair dealing, and promotions are important for the employee’s decision for staying in or leaving the organization (Martin, 1979). Flexible working hours The intrinsic meaning of flexible working hours is the nature of adjustment and modification. Lewis, et al. (2003) proposed that flexibility sometimes stated as ‘win-win solutions’ to individual needs, it enables the employees to connect their occupational and un-occupational world together, where family requirements and work needs can be dealt favorably. Felstead, et al. (2002) indicated that when employees work from home they achieve quality work life balance; it enables the parents to take care of their sick child at home or helps them to continue their work if transport facility is not running. Its worthy for the employees to work from home, men give it importance to work with autonomy and to increase work efficiency, while women demand flexibility to manage different tasks such as child care and salaried job (Felstead & Jewson, 2000). Job satisfaction Job satisfaction is believed to be how comfortable/satisfied an employee is with his or her job, whether he/she like his/her job or nature of job. Dissatisfaction in employees, anger and inefficiency in organization is due to the ambiguous role definition of employees, who have important influence in the entrepreneurial and personal aims (Briggs, 2005). Lack of self-assurance, job independence, lack of promotion chances and fewer salaries have negative effect on employee job satisfaction (Guest, 2004).Satisfied workers are found to be more hospitable and caring which fascinate the clients, whereas the unsatisfied employees in the organization do not catch the clients (Kamal and Hanif, 2009). Satisfaction of job primarily influenced the employees’ skill, competence, and potential (Wright and Davis, 2003). There has been constructive and important connection between satisfaction of job and organizational procedures like job autonomy,

managerial positions (Hunjra, et al., 2010).

and

collaborative

work

FIGURE 1 HERE Research model The proposed research model is comprised of one dependent variable i.e., job satisfaction and five other independent variables i.e., work life balance, job stress, job autonomy, intention to leave job and flexible working hours. The proposed research model given below is based on previous research (Shujat, et al, 2011). H1: There is positive impact of work life balance on employee job satisfaction in banking sector of Sargodha. H2: There is negative impact of job stress on employee job satisfaction in banking sector of Sargodha. H3: There is positive impact of job autonomy on employee job satisfaction in banking sector of Sargodha. H4: There is negative impact of intention to leave job on employee job satisfaction in banking sector of Sargodha. H5: There is positive impact of flexible working hours on employee job satisfaction in some departments of banking sector of Sargodha. METHODOLOGY Research designs also known as strategies of inquiry (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011), are comprised of three approaches, such as qualitative, quantitative, and mixed approaches which provide particular course of methods in research designs. Here descriptive design was used because researcher wants to find the relationship between criterion variable (employee job satisfaction) with the projected variables (work life balance, job stress, job autonomy, flexible working hours, and intention to leave). The questionnaires were formulated to extract information from the respondents (males/females) across 12 banks of Sargodha to evaluate the effect of different elements of work life balance on job satisfaction of employees.

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The area from where sample collected for our proposed research was Sargodha City, Punjab. According to (SBP 2014), there are 31 registered Pakistani Banks while 18 registered foreign banks in Pakistan. There were 14 banks in Sargodha according to (SBP 2014) Out of which 10 banks were selected for survey and each bank have been distributed equal questionnaires for data collection. Stratified sampling has been used for the responses at different managerial levels starting from top, middle to low level management.

is 0.82, which indicates that it has high reliability. For job autonomy, the obtained alpha score is 0.76, which indicates that it has good internal consistency. For intention to leave, the obtained alpha score is 0.92, which indicates that it has higher level of internal consistency. For flexible working hours, the obtained alpha score is 0.88, which indicates that it has high reliability. For job satisfaction, the obtained alpha score is 0.92, which indicates that it has higher level of internal consistency.

Questionnaire was constructed by the researchers there self. Questionnaire has been constructed by keeping in view the variables’ requirement for research. The research was conducted by distributing questionnaires among upper level management and lower level management to collect the information. Questionnaire was constructed on the basis of close-end questions with 5- point Likert scale such as 1= (strongly disagree) , 2=(disagree), 3=(neutral), 4=(agree), 5= (strongly agree). Twenty five structured questions were formulated for this study both consisting of open & closed end questions. The first part of the questionnaire contains personal information such as gender age and experience. While second part of the questionnaire was comprised of 25 questions, in which the questions are categorized on the basis of discussed variables. Out of which, five questions were formulated for work life balance, three for job flexibility, two for job autonomy, three for job load, six questions were made for job satisfaction and five questions were developed for intention to leave job.

Demographic information

Reliability coefficient Cronbach’s alpha reliability is used to check the reliability of different variables used in study. Garson (2008) proposed that when the significance of alpha will be greater, it will be considered good. Cronbach’s alpha measures to which degree one variable effect the other variable in the meantime (Garson, 2008). TABLE 1 HERE For the calculation of Cronbach’s alpha, 106 respondents were used to check the reliability of work life balance. The obtained alpha score is 0.72, which indicates that it has good internal consistency. For job stress, the obtained alpha score

The socio-demographic characteristics of the interest according to the need of study were formulated by the researcher. The number of male respondents was 77 while the female respondents were 29. The age group of respondents is distributed in 4 portions. We found that largest respondents group were 36.8% which belong to 4150 years of age .The smallest age group of respondents were 8.4% which belong to 20-30 years of age, while 37.9% belong to 31-40 years age group and 19.8% respondents were of the age 51 and above. When the experience of respondents working in different banking sectors were assembled, it has been found that large group of people about 45.4% people have more than 6 years of experience. The second highest group comparing to previous one having experience of 4-6 years is about 30.2%. About 15% of people have 1-3 years’ experience in the banking sector of Sargodha. While the last and least group is about 9.4% who has about less than a year experience. On question about designation, the following responds we got 21.7% respondents were upper level manager; 46.2% were middle level manager and 32.1% were lower level managers in different banks of Sargodha city. TABLE 2 HERE Regression analysis The R=0.842 is the simple correlation between observed and predicted values of job satisfaction (dependent variable). The large amount of R Square=.709 (70.9%) of extent of variance in Job satisfaction (dependent variable) is due to the above discussed independent variables ( i.e., work

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life balance, job autonomy, job stress, intention to leave job and job flexibility). This is the combined strength of association of independent variables which effect on dependent variable of job satisfaction; it does not show to which extent any particular independent variable effects on job satisfaction. There is 60% unexplained error due to other variables not discussed in the study, which we don’t know shows the variation in dependent variable of job satisfaction. TABLE 3 HERE The exact significance is p=.000 which shows the effects are statistically significance. The hypotheses set by the researcher were correct. This table does not explain the researcher what were the effects, rather it explains that the effects used were based on reality. It shows true hypothesis, that variation in dependent variable is significantly explained by the multiple independent variables discussed in this study.

except job stress and intention to leave job. In null hypothesis they both shows negative relationship with employee job satisfaction, while in derived results job stress and employees’ intention to leave job shows positive relation with employee job satisfaction. The overall analysis of variables shows that there is positive relationship between them and employee job satisfaction. When we analyze, we will come to know that in work life balance, the proper balance between work life and job life stimulates the employee job satisfaction. Working women and old citizens particularly cannot afford to work overtime. They have to give time to their families so their personal lives could not disturb.

TABLE 4 HERE

In terms of job stress, we see when a single employee is overloaded with due burden of work, or when there is less work force and one person has to deal with multiple duties, his functionality hampered. He would not be able to concentrate on one task and his productivity decreases.

The coefficients table depicts that work life balance had the highest value of β=0.534 at p=.000 which shows that it was statistically significant Moreover, flexible working hours and job autonomy both were positively significant at p