Factors That Affect Work-Life Balance among Workers in Canada

Concept of Engagement and Work-Life Balance

What’s The Broad Question You’Re Interested In Answering?

My research includes the study of Work Family Responsibilities to understand the satisfaction level of work-life balance among the residents of Canada. The aim of this study is to examine relationship between work-life balance and participation in employee development activities. To clarify this relationship, my study uses survey results from GSS and references from other researched done previously. We have circled our hypothesis to understand the extent of satisfaction among workers and to identify the reason for dissatisfaction. Also, our hypothesis includes the understanding of effect of factors like age, gender, marital status,  no of children and shift timings on work-life balance.

H1: There is a significant cause of factors mentioned on work-life balance. Due to these factors, people prefer to work for less hours and may cause dissatisfaction in work-life balance.

Commitment, involvement, energy, dedication, passion, and enthusiasm are concepts that are frequently used when practitioners and scholars talk about engagement (Bakker et al., 2012; Schaufeli, 2013). Despite the fact that researchers have a clear understanding of the concept of engagement, there is a lack of consensus on the precise definition of engagement (Schaufeli, 2013). Employees with great balance show productivity in their work even if they face challenges. The commitment towards personal & professional life mainly depends on the level of comfort an individual has. This study highlights the voice of people who are not satisfied, which population is affected the most. And what provisions does Government & Organizations have to provide in order to improve work-life balance. I have also referred to the previous studies that perceive a good work-life balance leads to low levels of stress, happiness factor and engagement to direct a community towards success.

 Why The Question Is Important?

This study plays an important role for reducing stress and other health issues of an individual. Managing family and job takes a toll on individual performance and results in hypertension, digestive troubles, chronic aches and heart problems. It can also lead to reduction in work efficiency and workplace burnout. People working overtime are at high risk and chaos in work-life results in huge health are spending. Therefore, it is important to understand the satisfaction level of people within age groups as well as gender to identify areas to improve balance.

A meta-analysis of the causes of WFE published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior found that social support at work represents a significant cause of work-family enrichment. This includes “general” and “family-focused” support from both supervisors and co-workers, with family-focused support from co-workers garnering the greatest impact. Such support hints at a workplace high in emotional intelligence. Among other findings: Finding a better work/life balance yields superior life satisfaction, greater organizational commitment, and better mental and physical health. The search for work-life balance is a process in which people seek to change things in accordance with changes in their own priorities, physical, psychological or both, and these can be triggered in their turn by factors such as: age; life priorities; the demands of new roles & responsibilities; and poor time & work distribution management.

Importance of the Study on Work-Life Balance

What Have People Said About This In The Past? & What Have They Found? How Does Your Work Fit Into This Existing Literature?

Several articles have been published in context of my research and supporting the importance and results of Work-life balance. There is an estimation of increased workforce by 75% in 2025. Previous work has identified few risk factors: shift work, working on evening and weekends, flexibility in schedules and evaluated based on various surveys. Few surveys also suggest personal consequences like divorce, risk of separation, social engagement and reduction in working hours due to disturbance in work-life balance. "Successful organizations recognize the link between employee well-being and productivity," said Greg Scileppi, president of Robert Half, International Staffing Operations. Also, there are statistical evidence of surveys that 35% people have identified the improvement in work-life balance. Most studies have done research on cross category framework to identify the trends in work-life balance. The major focus on these analyses is based on the study of working time schedule or shift arrangements. These conclusions have very well identified the relation but still unable to get the evidence of causality. We need to do more analysis in areas of shift timings, working hours & reasons for schedule arrangements to extend our understanding of the impact of disturbance in work-life balance on workers, families and community. My research extends the focus on causality of disturbance in work-life balance. I have identified the survey questionnaire that focuses on reasons of less working hours (family, illness, separation, etc) and the satisfaction level of workers with their current jobs and shift timings. This study will help to understand the common antecedents and consequences of work-life balance including personal and professional domains. We can also extend our study to relate the health effects for the people who are unsatisfied with shift hours and work balance.

This study also includes the distribution of work-life balance for different age groups and gender. Workers experience different responsibilities, personally and professionally, at different age levels. Also, using gender as construct would help us understand the satisfaction levels of men vs women as engagement level of women in family aspects is more than male in current community. Taking all these attributes into account, I will use GSS data to understand the variances and conclude my hypothesis.

In the dataset I have continuous & factor variables available. For continuous variables, I will use histograms & boxplots to identify the distribution of total number of working hours, number of working days and work schedule based on sex, age group, martial status and no of children.

For factor variables, I will use histograms to identify the people who have worked less hours due to different reasons specified in different questionnaires. This count can again be observed into based on sex, age group, marital status and no of children.

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Xanthopoulou, D., Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2012). A diary study on the happy worker: How job resources relate to positive emotions and personal resources. European journal of work and organizational psychology, 21(4), 489-517.

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Voydanoff, P. (2005). Toward a conceptualization of perceived workâ€Âfamily fit and balance:

A demands and resources approach. Journal of marriage and family, 67(4), 822-836.

doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2005.00178.x 

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