Effect Of Workplace Flexibility On Employees’ Engagement In Selected Deposit Money Banks

1.0 INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
The business world is dominated in the current era by a group of strong trends such as globalization, digitization, and the increasing importance of both tangible and intangible assets, and then organizations and employees need more flexibility and adaptability in support of a culture of productivity and for more progress and growth, which are the slogans raised by the most effective and successful business organization in this our time. However, with the increase in the level of technology around the globe, organizations were suddenly forced to change their practice and thus find new solutions to challenges arisen in many areas of their operations (Carneval & Hatak, 2020). Many organizations offer flexible working hours to employees because of benefits of flexibility for both employees and organizations. Work-life balance has shown its importance since the past decades, it has already been found that work-life balance is a major factor to improve employee’s productivity which impact the overall performance of organizations positively (Semlali & Hassi, 2016). According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD), (2012) and Rees and French, (2013), people management in organizations today has been carried out amidst the various challenges posed by turbulent and rapidly dynamic context. Evidently, majority of the developed economies have been noted to have moved away from mass production of standardize commodities or even day-to-day white-collar administrative work, because lots of such services are now been migrated to other places (Rees and French, 2013). At the same time, it has been noted that employees in the workplaces are increasingly clamouring for more flexible, autonomous and creative functions. This is argued by French (2011), he conducted a research in favor of work-life balance by many employers for their employees in order to prevent burnout and encourage the achievement of high organizational performance. Consequently, there have been increasing interest from employers in flexible working and majority of the employers have already introduced a variety of flexible working choices for their staff in order to encourage the creation of employee engagement within their organizations.

Employee engagement has been identified by both the academics and practitioners in human resource management in recent years as a concept of growing interest (CIPD, 2013). This is because majority of employers have come to recognize the importance of the way their staff perceive their work places, as well as how much they relate with the culture in shape of goals of the organization, objectives and their stated values (although the perception of the concept of employee engagement may be different dependent on the individual organization and context understanding of the concept. However, each firm still attends to its establishment one way or the other, consciously or unconsciously). In one of the recently published report of the CIPD (2012) employee engagement is described as a passion to work and engage workers as feeling positive about their jobs and being ready to go the extra mile in order to make sure they do their jobs and assigned tasks to the best of their ability.

Moreover, the pertinence of employee engagement on organization’s bottom line cannot be over emphasized as it is recognized to have an effect on firm’s performance, as well as been found to relate to other factors such as job involvement (develops a connection or bond with their job and shows fervent concentration); job satisfaction (feeling fulfilled with their job and are happy to go back to the same work always as well as encourage prospective employees to work for their organization); and organizational citizenship behavior (Feeling a sense of ownership or stakeholder-ship in their workplaces and would protect the interest of the organization at all times) (Rees & French, 2019; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2016).

Flexibility in this context means the quality of having alternatives and easily change working conditions such as working hours, work schedule and general work agreement. Workplace flexibility is the ability of the organization to adapt to change in order to achieve desired goals and objectives. Ugargal and Patrick (2018) noted that workplace flexibility is used as a strong mechanism for employee retention and engagement in the organization. Workplace flexibility is a process in which employees are allowed to work from outside the organisation and are allowed to change hours of work as well as location. According to Hill (2018), Workplace flexibility is a process whereby organisation allows workers to choose on work-related activities. Flexible workplace includes part-time work, full-time work from home, shifts and departure time. Amah (2020) noted that workplace flexible is a type of work arrangement like time to take leave, departure time, flexible arrival at work, remote and shift in working hour. Workplace flexibility can also be measured as remote, flexible working hour, flexible work location and schedule.

Employee who is given the opportunity to work from home and outside the organisation will be more committed to work and engage in organizational activities effectively. Helm (2018) supported that employee engagement is the degree to which workers feel passionate about their works and put more effort to task. Engaged workers perform effectively in a flexible work environment because it gives them work freedom and autonomy. Weideman and Hofmeye (2020) assert that flexible work positively influences employee engagement. They also state that workplace flexibility provides workers the opportunities to work from a desired and comfortable location. Chen and Fulmer (2017), noted that flexible working hours and flexible scheduling as well as flexible location improve employee engagement. A flexible work agreement attracts competent workers, reduces absenteeism and improves job satisfaction as well as employee engagement…..