EFFECT OF WORK-LIFE BALANCING ON EMPLOYEES TURNOVER (A CASE STUDY OF GT BANK, NIGERIA)
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF STUDY
Work-life balance is about creating and maintaining supportive and healthy work environments, enabling employees to balance work and family responsibilities and thus strengthening employee loyalty and productivity.
Work-life balance is a daily effort to make time for family, friends, community participation, spirituality, personal growth, self-care, and other personal activities, in addition to the demands of the workplace. Work life balance is about the efforts of employees to split their time and energy between work and the other important aspects of their lives (Hobbler and Lemmon, 2009).
Work life balance generally is a daily effort in managing competing roles and responsibilities at work, at home and in the community. One of the strategies of attaining work-life balance is flextime and compressed workweeks, which would assist employees to maximize greater enrichment at home and these would spell higher job satisfaction and lower turnover intentions.
Work-life balance has become an important concept for both employers and employees of most organizations all over the world. The employees are not willing to work in such organization where the prevailing culture is not supportive and many even quit the job; retention happens to be critical then.
Off late, it is the realization of most companies that if the work life conflicts of employees can be taken care of in an appropriate way, it can help in the retention of the talent. Work-life balance primarily deals with employees’ ability to properly prioritize between their work and family life.
Where there is appropriate balance between work and personal life, employees give their best shots at work, because their families are contented. Finding a suitable balance between work and family life is a big challenge. Where there are happy homes and pleasant work places, there is conflict free work environment, employees work with zeal .Thus demand for work-life balance practices have made it compulsory for organizations to look outside human resource interventions.
Schemes such as flexible working hours, alternative work plans, and compressed working hours, leave plans, family care responsibilities, employee assistance programs have become an important part of organization benefit programs and reward packages especially in developed economies.
Therefore, employers should know the benefits of implementing Work-life balance practices for employees and their families, organization, and society. Work-Life balance practices are changes that organization made in their programs, policies and organizational culture that are designed to reduce work-life conflict and enable employees to be more effective at work and in other roles.
There are wide varieties of practices currently being used to help employees to achieve work life balance. It is important to note that some work life balance programs help employees to handle stress or helps to reduce absolutely stress level by rebalancing life. Increasing competition in today’s time and multi faced demands between work and home responsibilities cause tremendous stress on employees.
Changes in social and demographic variables like increase in nuclear families, greater numbers of women in the workforce, dual-career couples, rise in the number of single parents, long working hours and technological advancements bring toll on the health of employees.
In response to these changes work life conflict occur among the multiple roles that individuals play in everyday life. Organizations are increasingly pressured to design various kinds of Work-Life Balance Practices, intended to facilitate employees’ efforts to fulfill both their employment related and their personal commitments.
The way of how work-life balance can be achieved and enhanced is an important issue in the field of human resource management and has received significant attention from employers, workers, government, academic researchers, and the popular media
According to Win-Win Theory by (Covey, 1989) improving employee work-life balance helps bolster morale and enables firms to retain and attract better quality workers. For example, potential employees with children will not supply their employee to firms with poor work-life balance so such companies will miss a pool of potential talent.
Why, then, do employers not adopt these good practices. it may be that some firms are simply badly managed and are making mistakes as information spreads about the benefits of work-life balance this will change (or else the firms was driven out of business).
The government could have a role in information provision or, more radically, in forcing employers to do the right thing. Alternatively, firms may know that improving work-life balance will increase productivity but they do not want to incur the costs of change. in other words, a firm currently running a low work-life balance strategy may not find it profitable to move to a high work-life balance strategy because of the costs of changing.
Since having more work-life balance is good for people in general, it is then argued that the government needs to intervene to shift employers to a better high work-life balance, high productivity equilibrium.
Research conducted by Malik et al., (2010) shows that unbalanced work-family life caused by increased work demands leads to higher levels of stress. Stress caused by higher demands from work results in family-work conflicts and work-family conflicts. work-life balance policies have been found to reduce absenteeism and positively impact employees’ job satisfaction, productivity and retention.
Grady et al., (2008) emphasize the importance for organizations to implement work-life balance initiatives. These initiatives include flexible working hours, temporal agreements, childcare facilities, and supports such as counseling (Grady et al., 2008). Organizations providing such benefits seem to understand the relationship between greater work-life balance and retention of a competent workforce, and its effect on organizational commitment and profitability.
Studies conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom show that one of the most common consequences of work-life imbalance is depression, resulting in decreased productivity and higher absenteeism (Layous, Chancellor, Lyubomirsky, Wang & Doraiswamy, 2011; Seligman, 2011). Low Work Life Balance can also lead to employees experiencing low morale and higher absenteeism and organizations experiencing higher staff turnover, lower productivity and poorer work quality (Seligman, 2011).
Aslam, Shumaila, Azhar and Sadaqat, (2011) stated that work-family conflicts occur when contribution in work role creates problems in contribution of family role. Furthermore, work-family conflicts are borne out from situations of tough time demands and stress, which can be traced back in a particular role that spilled-over to other role,
which results in the disturbance of the quality of life, and behaviors that were suitable in one domain (such as work) but are seen as inappropriate in other domain (such as in the home) when demands from family and work were equally mismatched and meeting demands of one field created difficulties in meeting demands of other field, it led to work-family conflict (Aslam, Shumaila, Azhar & Sadaqat, 2011).
Watson, Galway, O’Connell and Russell (2009) argue that apart from the variety of family-friendly policies mentioned above, some organizations in the private sector provide work-life balance initiatives that do not directly affect the number of hours worked.
Despite the availability of a range of work-life balance initiatives across the public and private sector, McCarthy (2008) reports that employees tend to work longer than their contracted hours. In the private sector a weekly average of worked hours is 42, and in the public sector a weekly average of worked hours is 34.5.
Individuals working in the public sector indicated higher levels of work-life balance satisfaction than those employed in the private sector (Watson et al., 2009; McCarthy, 2008).
A study on fatherhood (Tahmincioglu, 2010), shows that more men are looking for alternatives to their 40 hour work week in order to spend more time with their family. Though working less means a smaller pay check and higher stress levels, men are looking for flexibility just as much as women.
Work life balance policies can assist employees to achieve a balance between their work and personal commitments that is right for them. However, availability of policies is not necessarily enough for these policies ‘to work’. The policies need to be supported by the workplace culture, which reflects the beliefs, values and norms of the whole organization from the CEO to staff members (Schoenfeld, 2005).
Other important factors in the success of work life balance policies include proper communication of commitment to the policies to existing and future employees, raising awareness of the policies, education of managers about the importance of policies, and training of managers on ’how to’ implement these policies.
By implementing work life balance policies, employers can help to reduce stress in their employees. This can lead to a more motivated and loyal workforce, increased productivity, reduced absenteeism and an enhanced public image.
There is also evidence which suggests that employers who implement work life balance programs and offer flexible working arrangements are likely to have a competitive advantage in the employee market, and in particular in relation to the new generation of employees (Morgan, 2009).
According to Cleveland, et al, (2007), evidence from the organizational stress literature suggests five major categories of sources of job stress and these are: First, stress associated with the job itself, including work overload, the hours of working, decision making latitude,
and the physical work environment; second, role-based stress that includes role conflict, role ambiguity, and job responsibility; third, stress associated with the changing nature of interpersonal relationships, including those with managers, supervisors, subordinates, and coworkers;
fourth, career stress identified with the lack of opportunity for career development and promotion and job insecurity; fourthly, there are stressors associated with the work family interface, including conflicts of loyalty, spill-over of demands from one domain to the other, and life events.
Benefits of work life balance programs for employees include increased employee control over time and place of work (Thomas & Ganster, 1995) and reduced work-family conflict (Kossek & Ozeki, 1998). These types of practices are seen as a basic requirement for any employee so they can reduce tensions that occur in the working environment.
On the other hand, benefits of work life balance for organizations include reduced absenteeism (Dex & Scheibl, 1999), increased productivity (Sands &Harper, 2007) and improved employee retention (Allen, 2001).
There is also evidence which suggests that employers who implement work life balance programs and offer flexible working arrangements are likely to have a competitive advantage in the employee market, and in particular in relation to the new generation of employees (Morgan, 2009).
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
When employers come to understand that employees are the life wire of any organization, then a lot can be achieved. Many organizations are posed with the challenge of retaining their employees, especially competent and productive employees, whose contributions to the organization are immeasurable.
(Vimala, 2012; Kumar & Govindarajo, 2014) has it that, without effective retention measures, organizations will lose their key employees and result in employee turnover. Work-life balance is a powerful strategy that can be used by organizations to retain their workforce.
Employees with adequate work-life balance feel fulfilled in work and non-work roles and equally experience absence or little conflict between work and non-work roles. Employees in this context tend to have higher levels of satisfaction with their jobs and personal life and equally lower levels of pressure, stress, depression and tension (Iaon, 2010; George, 2016).
Fapohunda (2014) avers that high rate of employee turnover in Nigeria is not unconnected to poor work-life balance policies in some organizations. When employees find it much difficult to have time for personal activities, they tend to be dissatisfied. This dissatisfaction consequently leads to poor job performance, which can prompt such employees to leave their organizations for another.
To buttress this position, Klucyzk (2013) states that one of the reasons why employees continue to work in a particular organization especially in the public organizations is partly because their job gives them time to attend to other personal issues.
Most organizations have lost competent personnel because of their inability to create proper work-life balance policies. This is prominent in the private sector where an average employee complains of little or no time to attend to non-work responsibilities (Rizwan, etal, 2014).
The inability to manage work and non-work duties can eventually make an employee resign from his job. In this regard, an organization loses its workforce to other firms, and will have to incur costs to acquire new personnel.
Maphanga (2014) posits that many organizations especially in third world countries have cold attitude towards work-life balance policies such as job sharing, breaks from work, leave, compressed working hours, job rotation, flexible work schedule, child care assistance and employee assistance programs while some are unconcerned about the non-work responsibilities of their staff.
It is therefore imperative for organizations to judiciously make use of work-life balance schemes to retain their workforce. The employees and organization benefit most when workers experience greater balance between work and personal life. Hence the study effect of work balancing on employees turn over.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The main of the study is effect of work balancing on employees turn over (a case study of GT bank, Nigeria). Other specific objective includes:
1. to determine the relationship between work-life balancing and employees turnover in GT bank, Nigeria.
2. to examine the effect of work balancing on employees turn over in GT bank, Nigeria.
3. to identify the benefits of work-life balance to GT bank Nigeria.
4. to identify the factors that lead to employees turnover in GT bank Nigeria.
5. to examine work-life balance and turnover intention of employees in GT bank Nigeria.
RESEARCH QUESTION
1. what is the relationship between work-life balancing and employees turnover in GT bank, Nigeria?
2. what is the effect of work balancing on employees turn over in GT bank, Nigeria?
3. what are the benefits of work-life balance to GT bank, Nigeria?
4. what are the factors that lead to employees turnover in GT bank, Nigeria?
5. How does work-life balance affect the turnover intention of employees in GT bank, Nigeria?
STATEMENT OF RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
1. H0: work-life balance has no significant effect on employees’ turnover in GT bank, Nigeria.
2. H1: work-life balance has significant effect on employees’ turnover GT bank, Nigeria.
SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
This study is beneficial to management practice, industry, government and society. The study will inform management of GT bank Nigeria on how to design or redesign friendly work-life policies to instill employees’ retention intention.
Management of other organizations will be enlightened on how to make judicious use of work-life balance schemes to retain competent workforce. This will go a long way to reduce the cost of recruitment and selection processes in the banking industry especially in GT bank Nigeria.
Government through its relevant agencies will be educated on the need to enact friendly work-life policies in labour law regulations. It is believed the promulgation of work-life policies will minimize the high rate of employee turnover in Nigerian work environment.
This study serves as an embodiment of knowledge and a research tool to other researchers to conduct research on the subject matter.
SCOPE OF STUDY
The scope of study will cover effect of work balancing on employees turn over (a case study of GT bank, Nigeria).
LIMITATION OF STUDY
1. Financial constraint- Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).
2. Time constraint- The researcher will simultaneously engage in this study with other academic work. This consequently will cut down on the time devoted for the research work.
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DEFINITION OF TERM
Effect: a change which is a result or consequence of an action or other cause.
Work-life balancing: the division of one’s time and focus between working and family or leisure activities.
Employees’ turnover: Employee turnover refers to the number or percentage of workers who leave an organization and are replaced by new employees. Measuring employee turnover can be helpful to employers that want to examine reasons for turnover or estimate the cost-to-hire for budget purposes.
EFFECT OF WORK LIFE BALANCING ON EMPLOYEES TURN OVER (A CASE STUDY OF GT BANK, NIGERIA)
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