The Relationship between Work-Life balance and Job satisfaction of Working Women in Corporate sector

Abstract

As the world moves into the 21st century the role of more than 52% of its population, women, is evolving as well. Women are not only, consistently affirming themselves in the corporate sector as equivalent to their male counterparts but also achieving greater success at a personal level, thanks to the growing amount of awareness amongst the society, about gender equality. However, this success is somewhat hampered by the challenges and hurdles placed in the corporate sector, countering the hard work done by women and keeping a gender biased environment. These challenges are mostly part of the old traditions and customs, which are not only hard to overcome but in some cases impossible. This study establishes a relationship between personal harmony (between work and life) and job satisfaction and provides recommendations for organizations to retain and better utilize their female work force. This study also identifies the factors impacting this relationship, like, personal time, health care, vacations, family friendly policies, flexible work arrangements and other independent and dependent variables. The foundation of this exploratory research includes determining those factors which affect work life balance and its impact on job satisfaction of working women in corporate sector of Islamabad. Therefore a quantitative study was carried out by using formalized questionnaire. The study was designed to find out the relationship between Family Friendly Policies, Flexible Work Arrangements, Work-to-Family/Family-to-work Conflict (independent variables) and (dependent variable) Job Satisfaction. A sample of 100 respondents was taken out of approximately 5000 population of working women and the hypothesis was that all the Independent variables were positively related with the Job satisfaction of women employees excluding work to family intervention. The interpretation of result is done by using SPSS software. Maximum no. of women respondents fall in the age group of 28 to 34years, and mostly were married and having children.The hypothesis was attested by using regression and correlation analysis and it was found that job satisfaction is positively correlated with the family friendly policies and flexible work arrangements whereas to some extent family to work conflict has negative impact on job satisfaction. Some further findings were that family friendly policies were more appreciated by the women workers who were married or single but for divorced women family friendly policies did not increase job satisfaction. Women within the age limit of 40 to 50 believe that family friendly policies provided by the organizations does not increase their satisfaction level as at that age they face less family responsibilities and don’t need such initiatives. While estimating the factors which lead to job dissatisfaction, unfair salary and benefits, immediate supervisors and performance appraisal are some of the factors that influence job dissatisfaction. Though organizations who want a happy, contented and motivated workforce should take care of salary, it should be very fair and the deserving should get equal reward, they also should plan some family friendly policies and arrange flexible working initiatives like rest time, child care center on the job location , no. of paid leaves, etc. as women are more hard working and committed to their job , so organizations should prepare such flexes for them to remain in organization and boost their job satisfaction.