An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Work-life Balance And Productivity In Ghana

Abstract

The study examines the relationship between work-life balance and Productivity among Employee in Medium Organizations in Ghana. The study adopts a quantitative research method. The data of 240 Employee respondents were analyzed using different statistical techniques such as reliability survey, descriptive of variable analysis, correlation analysis using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). The correlation results indicated that work-life balance is positively correlated with Productivity. Also, for effective Productivity to be enhanced, the level of motivation needs to be improved.

Introduction

Before many companies have the idea that spending more time in the workplace is the best way for success, Nowadays we find many companies applied another method which is helping in making a balance between work and personal life. We can define work-life balance as a way of living which help people to achieve success in work by satisfaction in personal life. It is a concept in which the satisfaction and happiness of an employee act as the power for their productivity at work. In today’s society, the idea of managing a stressful job and also dedicating quality time to the family is definitely becoming a major challenge. More and more women have managerial jobs. Even so, they want to have happy private lives as well and do their best in order to succeed in both domains of life: professional and personal. Even if it has been predominantly viewed as women’s problem, especially of those who are in corporate employment and have family obligations, work-life balance represents an issue of prime concern for working men too. Data suggest that in families where childcare is shared, men are likely to experience similar levels of work-life conflict as women (Duxbury and Higgins 2008). With regard to family-related effects, the findings show that work-family conflict leads to a decrease in family satisfaction, parental overload, delays and absenteeism in family, a poor performance in family roles and a lack of family member support. As data suggests, a rigid organizational culture, focused mainly on performance and disregarding employees’ needs can create a stressful climate which in turn constitutes a determinant for a high conflict between quality family time and job performance. There is no doubt that the employers play a major role in managing this conflict and creating a family-friendly organizational culture which promotes flexible work schedules, access to kindergartens or after-school and career management programmes would prove to be a useful solution. Yet, in order to lead to positive results, this kind of measures should be addressed to a wider variety of employees. Balancing work and non-work demands is an issue that pertains to all individuals who are in paid work, regardless of whether they have family responsibilities or not. It’s clear that there are three types of employees: those who have a family with children, those who have a family without having children and those who aren’t married. All of these types can experience a low level of work-life balance too and need to be taken into consideration while implementing actions that promote flexibility in the workplace. Thus the extent to which each one of them needs to benefit from work-life balance programmes could be identified. Employee productivity is very important for the success of the company in today’s globally competitive environment. So this research is working on the relation between work-life balance and productivity of employees.

Literature review

Edwards and Rothbard (2000) rejected considering balance as a linking mechanism between work and personal life because we cannot measure how experiences and duties in one role of them affect the duties and experiences of the other role. Instead, work and personal life balance reflect an individual’s orientation across different life roles, an inter-role phenomenon. The level of work-life balance was measured with the Romanian version of Work-Life Balance Scale reported by Jeremy Hayman by presenting a scale which consists of 15 items, divided into three factors: work interference with personal life, personal life interference with work, work/personal life enhancement. Using a seven-point time-related scale responses has been written accurately (for example, 1=Never, 4=Sometimes, 7=All the time). The ensuing values of Cronbach Alpha for the 3 factors of the form were: 0. 73 for the first issue, 0. 78 for the second issue and 0. 76 for the third by using a non-random convenience sampling. Balancing work and family life has become a great challenge for almost every organization. Work-life concerns have tremendously become important for both employers and employees, and these issues became a universal phenomenon. Research implies that the necessity for work and family policies is being driven by Demographical changes in societies. The work and family life issues are growing Intricate due to a range of factors including increased participation of women and Mothers into workplaces, and the escalation of couples in a dual career. In 2004 a survey of work-life balance was conducted by Community Business Which reported that out of 1,000 respondents around 75% were going through pressure and complained about their unhealthy balance between work and personal lives. Growing level of stress can swiftly result in poor productivity, low employee morale and decline in job satisfaction. An increasing number of employees is putting across considerable emphasis over work time and the pressure resulting from the workload. Former studies confirmed that the benefits of executing family-friendly policies in organizations can considerably address better productivity, increased employee morale and job satisfaction. Also providing work-life balance policies can influence employees attachment to their work and they may contribute with better loyalty and improved morale. Family friendly or work-life balance policies is defined as any working environment or benefits that an organization provides to its employees for a healthy balance between their work and personal life. As a must, Literatures presented family-friendly policies which help employees to accomplish a balanced work life. Work-life balance is a helpful tool in supporting higher productivity, greater job satisfaction. Some researchers found that employees with access to family-friendly policies demonstrate greater commitment to the organization. Also, social academic researchers predict that employees, if treated fairly, will have more positive attitudes toward their organizations. There are many aspects of Family-friendly policies like reduced working hours, Flexible starting time, time off for family emergencies or events, compressed working weeks. Many studies have proved that the implementation of policies does not promise the success of it as a tool for increasing productivity because the culture of the company, and particularly supervisors and colleagues may not be accommodating at all.

Why should work and personal life balance enhance an individual’s quality life? First, involvement in multiple roles protects or buffers individuals from the effect of negative experiences in any one role (Barnett & Hyde, 2001). Beyond this buffering effect work and personal life balance is thought to promote well-being in a more direct manner. According to Duxbury and Higgins (2008), a large body of research links the parental responsibilities of working couples to the incidence of work-family conflict. Because they have more demands and less control over their time, parents seem to encounter more difficulties in balancing work and non-work activities than nonparents. Likewise, Galinsky, Bond and Friedman (1996) found that parent employees exhibit considerably higher levels of conflict between work and family/personal life than non-parents. The transition to parenthood is a stressful period (Owen and Cox 1988), in which significant changes in the couple's relationship, responsibilities and preoccupations happen. The way women and men juggle their paid work with their household and caring responsibilities is a topic that requires even more attention when considering the negative consequences of work-family conflict. The previous studies indicated that work-related effects comprise job dissatisfaction, absence, turnover intention and stress. A high level of work-family conflict seems to be correlated with a low organizational commitment as well.

Research Methods

To test these hypotheses, the researcher made a field study using questionnaires to collect the data in a cross-sectional design. This approach was chosen to allow the researcher to evaluate organizational processes in the settings where he has minimal intrusion (McGrath 1982). Burgelman (1983) suggests that determining organizational orientations requires gauging the resource allocations that support these activities. However, the researcher was not able to access secondary source data which provided adequate details to accurately estimate constructs pertaining to different strategic orientations and to reflect the theoretical concepts employed. Despite some shortcomings, prior research indicates perceptual measures have a high correlation with objective measures and facilitate comparisons among firms in different industries. A pool of items was generated for measuring each of the constructs using in-depth relevant literature search. A questionnaire was designed to ask various managers and owners for their perceptions on a range of organizational variables including the nature of inter-firm market collaboration and the link with business performance. This information was collected using a seven-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree) in response to statements about these variables.

The researcher distributed 262 sets of questionnaireson the employees of Emaar Company, Al Medina company, Rana motors, Modern Multimedia company, Silver Star Auto Ltd. and AMS company which are located in Ghana. During the process, only 248 set of the questionnaire (94. 7%) was received. Among the 248 sets of the questionnaire, only 240 sets of questionnaire were satisfactorily completed and tested by the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software as the other questionnaire sets were excluded because of incorrect answers or the duplicated results that are deemed invalid. There are 36. 7% of female respondents and 63. 3% of male respondents in this study. The majority of the respondents for this study are Ghanian (96. 7%) and only some of the respondents are from other nationalities (3. 3%). The respondents are required to rate the relationship between work-life balance and productivity in Ghana based on their own judgment of given scale.

Result

Although the Ghanian people have very special characteristics like the ability to accommodate a difficult and hard lifestyle, the research found that poor performance in family roles causes poor productivity at work. Poor performance in family roles can be seen clearly in two aspects first: decreasing the time spent in taking care of the family and being exhausted not able to achieve the family roles appropriately. Also, the lack of a good relationship with employees whether it is between an Employee and his colleagues or it is between an employee and his direct and indirect managers lead to poor productivity at the end.

There are many aspects which affect the working environment like health and safety, working hours and security. According to the research employees who suffer from poor working environment their productivity is less than those who work in a good working environment. The results of declining job satisfaction and having hard and exhausting work are similar to the results shown above as they also have a negative effect on productivity All of these hidden aspects cause employee stress which can be increased to the level of burnout, resulting in lower productivity at work, a higher potential for stress-related health problems like Heart diseases, high blood pressure and depression.

Conclusion

Ghanian people have special characteristics makes them a little bit different from other nationalities they are very sensitive to the strict orders and they deal with it in a reversed way affecting the work badly, they also need work which achieves a balance between their personal life and their duties in the workplace in order to achieve the companies productivity targets. The company which needs to achieve its goals quickly and efficiently must care about its employees' needs in the workplace and in their personal life too, aiming to have an active, self-motivated and high productive employee wouldn’t come except by having a balanced and psychologically stable employee who doesn’t have unbearable work in a stressful working climate.

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