Development of An Instrument To Measure Work Life Balance of It Professionals in Chennai
Development of An Instrument To Measure Work Life Balance of It Professionals in Chennai
Development of An Instrument To Measure Work Life Balance of It Professionals in Chennai
Journal of Management
(IJM), ISSN 0976
6502(Print), ISSN 0976(IJM)
- 6510(Online),
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
OF MANAGEMENT
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
IJM
IAEME
K. DURAIPANDIAN2
ABSTRACT
Though Work Life Balance (WLB) studies have been reported from India, there is lack of
suitable scales to measure work life balance, especially of IT professionals in Chennai and hence the
present work. Chennai continues to be favored location and home for software industry in India
attracting IT job seekers from all over the country. An instrument comprising 46 statements with five
factors has been developed to measure the WLB of IT professionals in Chennai. The data to develop
the scale was collected from 387 IT professionals among premier IT industries in Chennai. KaiserMeyer Olkin test and Bartletts test were conducted to check the sampling adequacy and sphericity
of the data and factor analysis confirmed five-factor solution. The WLB measurement scale was
found to have adequate reliability and validity. Description of generation of factors and their effect
on WLB to measure WLB of IT professionals has been attempted.
KEYWORDS: Work Life Balance, WLB Measurement, WLB Scale, WLB Instrument,
IT Professionals, Chennai.
1. INTRODUCTION
Work-life balance (WLB) refers[1] to the ability of individuals to pursue successfully their
work and non-work lives, without undue pressures from one domain undermining the satisfactory
experience of the other. A good work-life balance is defined as a situation in which workers feel
that they are capable of balancing their work and non-work commitments, and, for the most part, do
so[2]. Work and family are the two most important domains in a persons life. Work-life balance is a
major aspect of the quality of work and life of individuals and couples trying to manage multiple
roles. In India, organizations have recognized the need for and value of Work-Life Balance policies.
21
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
From the late 1980s and early 1990s, the IT sector, in India, has been the fastest growing industry
in the country with an impressive compound annual growth rate of around 50 per cent during the
1990s. Several challenges are faced by Indian IT industry today[3] and as a result, work norms and
work culture of IT industry in India are very different from the conventional manufacturing
industries. Working under pressure, working across time zones and working on real time, indefinite
and flexible work hours are key differentiators. The IT industry in India is dominated by younger
workers with the median age of the IT professional being 28 years and 70 percent of employees are
within the age group of 26-35 years. In the IT industry, 76 percent of workers are men and women
comprise 24% of the workforce[4]. Marisa DMello[5] has highlighted that IT workers in India
experience conflict and stress in balancing the work demands that compete with personal and family
time. It is not easy to find many references to Work-Life Balance policies and issues in Indian
context, which indicates its relative unimportance as a strategic business issue in the country.
Nevertheless, attempts were made to study the various aspects of WLB [6-10] and WLB
imbalance[11] of different target groups and to develop instruments to measure the WLB[12-21] and
some of these instruments were reported to have been validated. The culture of a country is an
important determinant of how work-life balance issues prevail and permeate and therefore the
instruments cited were developed for different contexts.
Chennai is a heavily favored location and home for software industry in India since mid
1980s, attracting IT job seekers from all over the country. Working late hours, often until midnight,
as well as working on weekends, inevitable in this industry, emerged as very stressful for employees
in Chennai city[22]. Balancing work and family domains is increasingly becoming a difficult task for
various employees and they are concerned about the boundary between their work and non-work
lives. It appears that no precise WLB measurement tool had emerged so far for IT professionals in a
metropolitan (Chennai) context. Therefore the objectives for this study are (a) generation and
description of items relevant to target study, (b) to design and evaluate an instrument to measure the
work life balance of IT professionals in Chennai, which will be used to construct dimensionality.
2. METHOD
2.1 Data Collection
The city of Chennai was chosen for the purpose of study because Chennai city continued to
be the favored location for several software giants like CTS, TCS, Infosys, HCL, Oracle, Wipro,
IBM, Accenture, Allsec, Aspire, Alcatel, L & T Infotech, EDS, Syntel, Sun Microsystems etc. The
working conditions of the IT employees of Chennai were quite similar to that of IT employees
placed in the rest of the locations of the country.
Data was collected from the IT professionals among premier IT industries in Chennai. Nonrandom sampling method was adopted and a structured, self-administered questionnaire was used as
a tool of data collection. The questionnaire was administered and interviews were carried out during
the period June 2011 - December 2011. The tool used to collect data from the IT professionals
comprised of two parts. The first part of the questionnaire sought to reveal the socio-demograhpic
details of the respondents while the second part contained 46 statements altogether to measure the
WLB of IT professionals in Chennai. Second part of the questionnaire employed five point Likerts
scale ranging from Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree and Strongly Agree to elicit
responses. This allowed the standardization of results as well as making it easier for respondents to
complete the questionnaire. Out of the 600 questionnaires distributed directly, only 387 duly filled
up questionnaires were returned yielding a response rate of 64.5%. A sample of 50 questionnaires
was collected from the targeted respondents before going to the actual data collection. In the case of
pre-test sampling size, there is little agreement in the literature[23]. A summary of the sociodemographic profile of the respondents is presented in Table 1. 46 statements belonging to five
22
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
factors(Work Place Support, Work Interference with Personal Life, Personal Life Interference with
Work, Satisfaction with Work Life Balance and Improved Effectiveness at Work) addressing the
issues of WLB were developed based on literature review designed to measure the WLB of IT
employees.
Table 1: Demographic profile of the respondents
Gender
Age
Designation
Marital Status
Spouse employment
No. of children
Annual Income
Total experience
Current experience
Category
Male
Female
20-30
31-40
Above 40
Programmers
Team Leaders
HR Assistants
Unmarried
Married
Divorcee
Employed
Not employed
Not applicable
None
1
2
3
Alone
Nuclear Family
With dependents other than Children
Others
Up to 2,00,000
2,00,000 4,00,000
4,00,000-7,50,000
Above 7,50,000
Up to 40
41-48
49-60
Above 60
Yes
No
Up to 4 days
5-8 days
9-12 days
Above 12 days
Up to 5 years
06-10 years
11-15 years
above 15 years
0-3 years
3-5 years
5-7 years
7-10 years
Above 10 years
Less than 1hour
1-2 hour
2-3 hour
Above 3 hour
23
%
76.0
24.0
68.0
30.5
1.50
66.7
24.0
9.30
56.6
38.5
4.90
19.4
19.1
61.5
53.0
27.4
17.9
1.70
24.8
14.7
51.4
9.10
12.4
27.7
32.0
27.9
4.40
24.0
60.0
11.6
26.4
73.6
60.8
15.7
15.7
7.80
49.4
27.4
21.7
01.5
59.4
33.1
5.40
0.80
1.30
22.5
46.5
25.6
5.40
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
Minimum
Mean
Score
Obtained
Maximum
Score
Obtained
Standard
Deviation
14.00
55.00
32.50
7.36
25.00
63.00
42.53
8.21
25.00
58.00
39.91
8.79
9.00
30.00
17.57
4.56
Improved Effectiveness at
work(IEW)
5.00
15.00
11.59
2.16
It is evident from Table 2 that the mean values of the factors range from 11.59 to 42.53.
The highest mean score of 42.53 is that of work interference with personal life while the lowest
mean score of 11.59 is that of improved effectiveness at work. The consistency in responses as
shown by standard deviation is high for improved effectiveness at work(standard deviation= 2.16)
and low for personal life interference with work(standard deviation =8.79) which implies that the
IT professionals accepted their work life and personal life to have played important roles in their
WLB.
Table 3 to Table 7 show factor loadings for each statement and also the eigen values,
percentage of variance explained. Eleven statements were loaded in WPS, fourteen statements in
WIPL, twelve statements in PLIW, six statements in SWLB and three statements were loaded in
IEW. The factor analysis of the statements confirmed five dimensions to the work life balance scale
which demonstrates five factor solution.
24
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
Statements
Factor
0.824
0.790
0.785
0.777
0.724
0.678
0.663
0.650
0.650
10
0.641
11
0.639
Eigen value
11.180
Percentage of variance
12.562
Aspects
organizational support
manager support
7,8,9
co-worker support
10,11
2,3,4,5,6
25
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
Statements
Factor
0.786
0.770
0.742
0.730
I come home from work too late to look after family roles
0.718
0.712
0.710
0.695
0.670
10
0.664
11
0.650
12
0.628
13
0.622
0.613
Eigen value
13.843
Percentage of variance
15.554
The scale used to measure work interference with personal life(WIPL) was mainly described
in terms of time-based conflict, strain-based and behaviour-based. Aspects used in defining WIPL is
described in Table 4(a).
26
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
Aspects
time-based
1,2,3,4,5,6
strain-based
7,8,9
behaviour-based
10,11,12,13,14
Statements
Factor
0.757
0.741
0.719
0.696
0.663
0.661
0.641
0.639
0.632
10
0.629
11
0.617
12
0.616
Eigen value
9.155
Percentage of variance
10.287
27
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
Aspects
stress-related
1,2,4,7
marital-related
time-related
5,6,9,10
family intrusion
8,11
dependent-related
12
Statements
Factor
0.707
0.700
0.664
0.653
0.625
0.617
Eigen value
8.537
Percentage of variance
9.592
Statements
Factor
0.660
0.660
0.638
Eigen value
5.631
Percentage of variance
6.327
28
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
After verification of the dimensionality, the reliability of the factors was assessed using
Cronbach alpha coefficient which resulted in alpha scores surpassing the minimum recommended
value of reliability, that is, 0.70, as suggested by Nunnally[25]. The result of the KMO measure was
0.729 which is higher than the threshold value of 0.6. This explains 46 statements that are included
in factor analysis are sufficient to conduct this study. Bartletts Test of sphericity explains the
variations among factors which is highly significant at p=0.000, which is less than 0.05. All 46
statements together in this study contributed to 54% of total variance.
This study seeks to understand the aspects of work-life balance which include the
causes(determinants) such as Work Demand(WD) and Family Demand(FD), resources such as Work
Place Support(WPS) and family support and consequences such as Work Interference with Personal
Life(WIPL), Personal Life Interference with Work(PLIW), Satisfaction with Work-Life
Balance(SWLB) and Improved Effectiveness at Work(IEW). Demands are defined as structural or
psychological claims to which individuals must respond or adapt by exerting physical or mental
effort. Work related demands contribute to work interference with personal life(WIPL) and family
demand is positively related to personal life interference with work(PLIW). Causes contribute
towards work-life balance or imbalance. Demands are generally seen as causing interferences and
resource(Work Place Support) result in facilitation. Facilitation occurs when engagement in work
and home roles contribute positively to and benefit each other. Alternatively, interferences occur
when the demand of work and family roles are incompatible in some respect so that meeting the
demands in one domain(work or family life) makes it difficult to meet the demands in the other
domain. Further, lower levels of interferences and higher levels of resources are likely to be
associated with higher levels of work-life satisfaction. Improved effectiveness at work(IEW) can
thus be considered to be the consequence of satisfaction with work-life balance.
Work demand and family demand are foremost among the most important yet problematic
factors surround work interference with family and family interference with work. Specifically,
there has been inadequate conceptual work and measurement on these demand constructs. Moreover,
definitions of work demand or family demand have been ambiguous or too narrow. Researchers
claimed to have measured work or family demand when they actually measured hours worked, or
number of children[26, p217]. The demographic variables of age and marital status were chosen
because they have been found to be related to well-being[27, p301]. The work-related variables
included were number of work hours, number of years in the present employment, total number of
years worked which were objective and straightforward measures[27, p302].
SWLB is a newly developed construct[28] defined as an overall level of contentment
resulting from assessment of ones degree of success at meeting work and non-work role demands
and it is most suitable construct in evaluating an employees work-life balance. This construct is
unique for reasons: there are both a cognitive and an affective component; does not centre on
conflict; distinguished from constructs that describe cross-domain transfer processes, such as workfamily spillover, enrichment, or facilitation; differs from constructs that imply directionally from
work to family or from family to work; unitary and holistic construct; directly measure individuals
overall satisfaction. Thus the scale used to measure SWLB consisted of six statements.
Work-life balance is about developing practices to encourage a culture in which people are
happy about being able to meet the demands of work and responsibilities of interest outside work.
The employer recognizes that staff may need to change hours, require special leave or other forms of
support to enable them to do this properly. Employees are willing to support this because they
recognize that the key benefit is improved effectiveness at work(Work/life Balance). Thus the scale
used to measure IEW consisted of three statements. IEW[29] refers to workforce rapidly adapting to
its changing profile and how workplaces are supporting their needs through work-life and family
friendly programs and policies making ones life at work more effective.
29
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
WIPL
-0.360
**
PLIW
-0.231
**
-0.205
**
SWLB
0.658
**
-0.519
**
-0.152
*
IEW
0.293
0.058
-0.277
0.138
**
NS
**
*
**Correlation is significant at 0.01 level(2-tailed)
*Correlation is significant at 0.05 level(2-tailed)
NS=Not significant
It is evident that work interference with personal life(WIPL) is not only negatively correlated
with personal life interference with work(PLIW)(r= -0.205) but also with satisfaction with
WLB(SWLB)(r= -0.519) and this is statistically significant at 0.01 level. There exists negative
correlation between personal life interference with work(PLIW) and satisfaction with work-life
balance(SWLB)(r= -0.152) which is statistically significant at 0.05 level and negative correlation
exist between personal life interference with work(PLIW) and improved effectiveness at
work(IEW)(r= -0.277) and this is statistically significant at 0.01 level. It is evident that WIPL and
PLIW are inter-related and as well as they form an important combination of factors influencing the
overall satisfaction with WLB and IEW. It is clear that there is positive correlation between
satisfaction with work-life balance(SWLB) and improved effectiveness at work(IEW)(r=0.138) and
this statistically significant at 0.05 level. While WIPL and PLIW have negative effect on SWLB,
higher satisfaction with WLB with a positive effect contribute to the improved effectiveness at
work(IEW).
30
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
4. CONCLUSION
Unlike traditional occupations and professions of the Indian middle-class, such as teaching,
banking or government positions, which are more grounded in local contexts of time, space and
place, IT professionals encounter mercurial swings in both global and local cycles and events, almost
on daily basis. Salary, status and other benefits promote high commitment to work and long working
hours where necessary. Various mobilities coupled with temporal and physical separation of work
were seen to compound the blurring of boundaries between work and family spaces. Issues of stress
and burnout are often ignored by workers themselves. Although some functional level of stress is
necessary to improve employees performance, high or low level of stress is the cause of actions of
management. The solution lies with sound planning at individual level and initiatives from the
organizations to aid productivity of the new age employees. Work-life balance of an employee is as
important for the employing organizations as it is for individual employee. Work-life balance of an
individual employee when viewed collectively for the total workforce of an organization results into
a colossal impact on the qualitative and quantitative organizational performance. Those who had
satisfactory work-life balance with the assistance of the policies implemented by the employing
organization, tend to be more effective at work. This five dimensional scale developed with 46
statements can be used to understand the employee perceptions of work and personal life balance and
to evaluate the effectiveness of work life balance programs provided by IT organizations, which in
turn can impact the HR manager to understand the critical issues of work-life balance and champion
work/life programs. The strength of this study is the use of multiple samples from different IT
organizations which itself may be a limitation in the sense that all the respondents may not have
experienced at juggling multiple life roles. Having confirmed the distinctiveness of these five factors
as a construct to work life balance, our next step will be to develop a conceptual model for their
interaction.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
31
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
[10] S. Suman Babu, A.R. Aryasri, K.V.S. Raju and K. Bhavana Raj, Impact of Flexi-Time(A
Work-Life Balance Practice) on Employee Stress Reduction in IT Sector-Indian Perspective,
CAMS Journal of Business Studies and Research, I(2), 2010, 7-17.
[11] J.S. Gunavathy, and R. Thenmozhi, Decision Latitude, Psychological Job Demands and
Work-Life Imbalance- A Study among Software Professionals, Management and Labour
Studies, 34(3), 2009, 315-328.
[12] G. Fisher, Work/personal life balance: A construct development study, Dissertation Abstracts
International, 002119 August 2001.
[13] J.H. Greenhaus, K.M. Collins, and J.D. Shaw, The relation between work-family balance and
quality of life, Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 63, 2003, 510-531.
[14] J. Hayman, (2005), Psychometric assessment of an instrument designed to measure work life
balance. Research and Practice in Human Resource Management, 13, 2005, 85-89.
[15] E.J. Hill, V.K. Martinson, M. Ferris, and R. Zenger Baker, Beyond the mommy track: The
influence of new concept of part-time work for professional women on work and
family, Journal of Family and Economics Issues, 25, 2004, 121-136.
[16] A.H. Huffman, S.C. Payne, and W.J. Casper, (2004), A comparative analysis of workfamily balance on retention: single earner versus dual earner family employees. Paper
Presented at the 19th Annual Meeting of the Society for Industry and Organisational
Psychology, Chicago.
[17] Pratap Acharya, Abhisek Semlani, Ajay Kamath, Avishek Tiwari, Nicy Cheriyath, Rahul
Joshi, Maulik Kothari, Parin Savla and Jayanti, Work Life Balance, available from
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13639123/worklifebalancefinal-report.
[18] N. Reiter, Work life balance: What do you mean of the ethical ideology underpinning
appropriate application, The Journal of Applied Behavioural Science, 43, 2007, 273-294.
[19] V.M. Rincy, and N. Panchanatham, Development of A Psychometric Instrument To Measure
Work Life Balance, Continental J. Social Sciences, 3, 2010, 50-58.
[20] Sarker Saonee, Sarker Suprateek , and Jana Debasish, Exploring Work-Life Conflict in
Global Software Development Contexts: A survey of IT Professionals based in India, ICIS
2009 Proceedings, paper 75, available from http://aisel.aisnet.org/ICIS2009/75.
[21] L. Suganthi, D. Divya, and A. Samuel Anand, Work Life Balance of IT Women
Professionals belonging to the age group 20-35 in India, Advances in Management, 3(1),
2010, 37-46.
[22] R. Sujatha, Lack of work-life balance rising in city, The Hindu, April 25, 2010, 2; Vasudha
Venugopal, A big challenge for IT employees. Work-related stress needs to be addressed
without delay: experts, The Hindu, September 13, 2010, 3; Vasudha Venugopal, A stressful
reality, The Hindu, July 9, 2011.
[23] Ahmad Bahjat Shammout, Evaluating an Extended Relationship Marketing Model for Arab
Guests of Five-Star Hotels, Thesis, December 2007, School of Hospitality, Tourism and
Marketing, Faculty of Business and Law, Victoria University, Melbourne, 130-132, available
from
http://wallaby.vu.edu.au/adt-VVUT/uploads/approved/adt-VVUT20080408.100446/
public/02whole.pdf, p112.
[24] J.H. Greenhaus , and N.J. Beutell, Sources of conflict between work and family roles,
Academy of Management Review, 10(1), 1985, 76-88.
[25] J.C. Nunnally, Psychometric Theory, (2nd ed.), (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978).
[26] S.L. Boyar, C.P. Maertz Jr, D.C. Mosley Jr, and J.C. Carr, The impact of work/family
demand on work-family conflict, Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 2008, 215-235.
[27] N.M. Noor, Work- and family-related variables, work-family conflict and womens wellbeing: Some observations, Community, Work & Family, 6(3), 2003, 297-319.
32
International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 - 6510(Online),
Volume 5, Issue 11, November (2014), pp. 21-33 IAEME
[28] Muhamad Khalil Omar, Work Status Congruence, Work-Related Attitudes, and Satisfaction
Towards Work-Life Balance, International Review of Business Research Papers, 6(1), 2010,
145-156, available from www.bizresearchpapers.com/14.Mohamed.pdf.
[29] Work/life Balance, compiled by Dina Etmanskie, Social Planning Council of Cambridge and
North Dumfries, available from www.socialplanningcouncil-cnd.org/index_htm_files/wlb.
pdf.
[30] R. Crompton, and C. Lyonette, Work-life Balance in Europe, Acta Sociologica, 49, 2006,
379393.
[31] D. Gallie, The Quality of Working Life: Is Scandinavia Different? European Sociological
Review, 19, 2003, 6179.
[32] M.Surya Kumar and Dr.N.Shani, A Study on Quality of Work Life Among the Employees
at Metro Engineering Private Limited, International Journal of Management (IJM),
Volume 4, Issue 1, 2013, pp. 1 - 5, ISSN Print: 0976-6502, ISSN Online: 0976-6510.
[33] Dr. C.Natarajan and V.Kiruthika, Factors Contributing Quality of Work Life of Employees
in Select Magnesite Companies: An Empirical Study, International Journal of Management
(IJM), Volume 4, Issue 2, 2013, pp. 188 - 194, ISSN Print: 0976-6502, ISSN Online:
0976-6510.
[34] N. Mohan, N. Prabha and P.Mohanraj, Work Life Balance through Flexi Work
Arrangements: Empirical Study on Bank Employees, International Journal of Management
(IJM), Volume 1, Issue 2, 2010, pp. 53 - 61, ISSN Print: 0976-6502, ISSN Online:
0976-6510.
33