Work-life Balance: A Key to Positive Workplace Attitudes.
| Author | Sharma, Ekta |
Introduction
With the advent of globalization and privatization, the country has opened its doors for diverse business organizations. The business environment has become extremely competitive and has led to increasing competitive pressures to provide superior quality service and products, in turn aggravating the pressure to perform on employees. The employee burnout rate is immense and is spiraling. But the agony does not end here rather the socio- demographic trends have initiated the diversity of workforce with dual career couples and the joint family structure has given way to nuclear families(Green &Zenisek,1983). This has added to the familial and societal responsibility to the individual's profile as a working professional (Skinner,1980). This often leads to the work-family conflict (Narayan &Bhardwaj,2005) affecting the job attitudes like organizational commitment and employee behavior like organizational citizenship behavior (Benligiray & Sonmez, 2012 ; Patra &Suar,2009). It is important to comprehend the interface between professional and personal lives. Work life balance (WLB) is considered simply as a tradeoff between professional and personal life. With the change in the social structure (nuclear families and dual career couples) there has been change in the employee expectation which the organization need to adhere to and therefore the employers are focusing on initiating work life balance policies like providing flexi time, supportive superior and facilitating a friendly work culture (Baral & Bhargava, 2010). WLB is instrumental in changing job attitudes like job satisfaction and organizational commitment which helps to foster the organizational citizenship behavior. (Osterman, 1995). They have obligatory feeling towards the organization as a result of perceived organization support and exhibits citizenship behavior. (Eisenberger, Fasoloand Davis-LaMastro, 1990). Therefore, our focus through this empirical research is to study the work life balance dimensions; organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior and explore the relationship between them.
Work life Balance
Available body of knowledge defines work life balance in innumerable ways. Felstead et al. (2002) defines WLB as "the relationship between the institutional and cultural times and spaces of work and non-work in societies where income is predominantly generated and distributed through labor markets". WLB refers to the equilibrium that an individual strikes between his/her personal and professional roles and how s(he) intends to alleviate the work family conflict to support the effective handling of both the roles. The successful balance helps the employee as well as the employer (Arif& Farroqi,2014; Mukuri & Ngari,2014). The practices include flexi time, tele-working, work sharing, family leave policies, on-campus creche and facilities for children and the elderly care. When the organization helps to reduce the interference from the work through WLB practices, the demands of family are met much better and it is evident to reduce the disruption to the work (Kirchmeyer &Cohen, 1999). Hence it not only reduces the stress levels of the employee but also the clash between the professional and personal spaces which ultimately lead to reduced turnover (Arif& Farroqi,2014) enhanced employee performance and productivity (Mukuri & Ngari,2014). Work-related stress, supervisor support, flexi time, work interference with personal life are some key dimensions affecting the WLB. Work Stress is an important determinant of the conflicting role at work and at home and thereby disrupting the work life balance. The past research highlights the importance of the supervisors in helping the subordinates maintain the work life balance, as the superior support helps in clarifying the work role ambiguity and thereby ensuring the balance of work life. (Au& Ahmed, 2016). Additionally, Pisarski et al. (2006) found that those who have stronger support from their bosses can regulate their work-settings. Such employees confront less conflict between personal and professional roles and provide support to instill WLB, satisfaction towards work and ultimately affects their commitment towards the organization
Organizational Commitment (OC)
The extant literature suggests the linkages between WLB and OC. Organizational commitment is the feeling of belongingness experienced by the employee towards its workplace (PSUWC, 2013. Allen and Meyer (1990) defined types of OC as 'affective, continuance and normative'. Affective construct relates to the emotional attachment of the employee towards the organization whereas continuance construct is the apprehension of the employee about the cost that he/she would have to bear if he/she leaves the organization. Normative component makes the employee obligated to stay with the organization. The extant literature shows the positive impact of WLB policies which intends to alleviate work family conflict, on organizational commitment (Kim, 2014; Biijandi et al., 2013). Birjandi et al. (2013) identified that work life balance and organizational commitment are positively associated. The dimensions considered were "the fair and sufficient payment, secure and sanitary working environment, growth opportunity, observance of law, working life social attachment, working life general atmosphere, social unity and integration and development of human capabilities and relationship with organizational commitment". Kim (2014) further posits that. "Work life balance tries to increase the affective commitment and thereby positively influences the in-role performance".
Hypothesis 1: There is a significant relationship between work life balance and organizational commitment.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB)
The available...
To continue reading
Request your trialCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
