Work-Life Balance As A Strategy For Improving Organizational Performance

INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
In today’s dynamic environment, it is evident that employees’ face long working hours and heavy work load and this has significant effect on their lives and families. There are some questions that are not only posed by employees, but also important for employers as regards any possibility of having career, and life together. Organizations have the responsibilities of assuring, that the work life balance of their employees is improved, not just for the mere compliance of laws and statutes; but rather to mitigate the pitfalls of high turnover and high health care cost associated with work family conflicts.
Work family conflicts have been shown to be financially disadvantageous over putting into place healthy human resources recruitment and retention strategy (Cleveland, O’Neil, Himelright, Harrison, Crouter and Drago 2007). Work is generally considered as a part of life. Though, work and life are separated by certain psychological, physical and temporal boundaries and are operationalized within the same context of space and time. The nature of work itself has changed from the norm of 9-to-5 affair to 24 hours, 7-days society, where customers expect services at times that suits them (Adetayo, Olaoye & Awolaja, 2011). Where there is proper balance between work and life organizations tend to put in their best effort because their family is happy.
Work life balance has become an important concept for both employees and employers of most organizations all over the globe. According to Greenhaus, Collins and Shaw (2003), work life balance is the extent to which an individual is equally engaged in and equally satisfied with his or her work role and family role. The concept of work life balance is based on the notion that paid work and personal life should be seen less competing priorities than as complementary elements of a full life. In some studies, work-life balance is considered as the absence of work –life conflict (Kim, 2014).
Although, work family balance and work life balance are used interchangeably in the literature, work-life balance refers to a more comprehensive concept. The importance of work life balance whether implicit or explicit, to the organizations and family lives, their families and work will be negatively affected (Gryzwacz and Carlson, 2007). Mcshane and Glinov (2010), asserts that work life balance can affect the conflict between work place and non work issues of employees. Through effective work life balance, organizations can support substantially, reduce turnovers and burnout rate, therefore taking necessary steps for maintenance of healthy balance between work and special life gives the opportunity for long term benefits (Karthik, 2013).
In an attempt to achieve a work life balance, Western Organizations have tended to adopt a limited set of policies such as onsite child care facilities, on-site gymnasiums, telecommunicating opportunities and even on-site sleeping quarters for the employees and their family (Hyman and summers, 2004). Each has attempted to increase the flexibility by which employees can enact their work-roles, while simultaneously enabling them to enact their family based roles to the minimum extent necessary.
Today, work life balance has become the subject of discipline ranging from psychology to sociology, from management of human resources to organizational behaviour. Employees as well as the organization performance will be low or poor where the prevailing culture is not supportive and which has or will lead to many quitting the job.

1.2 Statement of the problem
In Nigeria today, enough emphasis is not placed on organizations balance between work and family. This in return has effect on organization’s stability which in turn affects their performance, which also affects the turnover rate in the organization. The pressure of work, for those in work place has been escalating over the latest decades.
Factors such as advances in information technology, and information load, the need for speedy response, the importance attached to the quality of customer service and its implication for constant availability and the pace of change all demand our time and can be sources of pressure. High work pressure, lack of work flexibility and longer working hours are stressing out many Nigerian money deposit organization, reducing their productivity and performance as well as causing broken homes.
These have resulted to poor organizational input and performance at work place because an organization that finds it difficult to properly prioritize between work and family life tends to also have difficulties managing tasks in the organization, therefore resulting to poor organizational performance.

1.3 Objectives of the study
The broad objective of the study is to assess the strategies with which organizations can improve their performance. The specific objectives are;
• To ascertain the nature of the relationship between work leave program and improvement of employee skills
• To identify the nature of the relationship between restrictive work hours and employees commitment
• To determine the nature of the relationship between telecommunicating and speedy service delivery.

1.4 Research Questions
The following research questions are;
• What is the nature of the relationship between work leave programmes and improvement of employees skills?
• What is the nature of relationship between restrictive work hours and employees commitment?
• What is the nature of the relationship between telecommunicating and speedy service delivery

1.5 Research Hypothesis
The following research hypotheses are formulated
i. Hoi: There is no positive and significant relationship between work leave programmes and improvement of employees skills
ii. Ho2: Restrictive work hours and employees commitment have no positive relationship
iii. Ho3: There is no positive relationship between telecommunicating and speedy service delivery

1.6 Significance of the study
The study will be relevant to the following:
• Organization: This study will be of help to the organization in implementing the most appropriate and effective work-life balance programmes. The benefit is that it exposes the organizations or managers to different work life balance strategies and programmes in order to improve the performance of the employees in the organization.
• Individuals: It enlighten individuals on need to prioritize between their work life and personal life thereby making them happy with their work and family and also creating job satisfaction and job security of individuals.
• Institutions of higher learning: This study will be of important to students of different higher institutions of learning as it would enable them to know the need for work and personal life to be balanced in order for them to be aware of it before gaining work or job in any organization. It will also serve as a reference point for future researchers.
• Government: The government will benefit from this study as it tends to inform the government the efficacy of not allowing the jobs and personal lives of their citizens to be in conflict thereby creating a conducive atmosphere for work.

1.7 Scope of the study
This study covered three (3) selected deposit money banks in Okigwe which are;
S/N BANKS ADDRESS
1 Fidelity bank No 61, Owerri Road Okigwe Imo State
2 Eco bank No 106, Owerri Road Okigwe Imo State
3 Access bank No 58, Owerri Road Okigwe Imo State
Source: Organization Record

1.8 Organizations of the study
This research work is organized into five chapters for easy understanding. Chapter one is concerned with the introduction which consists of the background to the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, research questions, hypotheses, significance of the study, organization of the study and definition of terms. Chapter two (2) review of related literature: conceptual review, theoretical framework and summary of related literature. Chapter three (3) which consist of research methodology, research design, selection of data, collection of data, design and identification of questionnaires, population, sample size determination, sample technique, operational measures of variables and data analysis technique. Chapter four concentrated on the data analysis and presentation of findings, while chapter five gives the summary, conclusion and recommendation of the study.

1.9 Definition of terms
Work-Life balance: This can be defined as the amount of time one spends in doing his or her professional job compared with the amount of time he spends with his family and doing those things he enjoys.
Strategy: This can be defined as the total of organization effects geared towards achieving the success of the organization.
Improving: This means state of increasing or making progress in one’s endeavour
Organizational performance: Organizational performance comprises the actual output of result of an organization as measured against its intended output or goals and objectives of the organization.