A study on factors affecting to work-life balance of employees: with special reference to manufacturing organizations in western province, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Work-life balance is an increasingly demanding issue. Nowadays organizations are more focusing on staffing function by capturing talented human capital and great efforts are made to the occupational wellness of the employees. Researchers have been done many studies to measure the work-life balance that prevails in various countries. Although work has been done in many areas of work- life balance of employees, occupational wellness much more need to address in Sri Lankan context in order to maintain a healthy environment. With the theoretical approach of Seiwart’s Life Balance Model and “Enrichment theory” as a joint function the purpose of this study was constructed as identifying underlined factor that explains the model towards work-life balance of selected population. The research question addressed by the study is what is the underlined factor which best explains towards the work-life balance of the employees? A questionnaire was developed by using Life-Balance Questionnaire, a self-report scale (Gropel, 2004) which covered four life areas namely 1.Contact/Relationships 2.Work/Achievement 3. Body/Health and Life Meaningfulness. Internal reliability was also confirmed using the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (0.97) which consisted of 20 items. By taking KMO value 0.702, sampling adequacy is higher than minimum index which indicates “sampling adequacy’ is an acceptable level. The results suggested body/health is best variable to underline indicating 0.72 of communality value. Based on the findings, the researchers would recommend organizations should concern about the wellness approach when they make the company policies in order to fulfill its version through maintaining work-life Balance.