The origin of the interest in the balance between work and private life can be traced in various forms several years ago. The first close study of Work Life Balance (WLB) was the work of Frone, Russell, and Cooper in 1992, who found that Work Family Conflict (WFC) consists of the following two interdependent dimensions: Work Interference with Family (WIF) and family interferes with work (FIW). The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the factors that influence work-life balance (WLB) among hotel employees in connection with a luxury hotel complex.
Cross- and within-case analysis if the data were collected to compare the perceptions about WLB of all participants and also identify common meaningful statements among them based on the three research questions. This choice was made to highlight the exact causes of the problems of WLB in the hotel sector and not in general. Data analysis comes in the fourth chapter where an extensive analysis of the sample characteristics is presented.
The results of the personal interviews are presented in the fifth chapter of the thesis. The findings of the personal interviews are commented on and analyzed in order to find similarities and differences with the existing literature.
Literature review introduction
This includes a brief presentation of the questionnaire and the types of questions used, as well as the way in which they will be analysed. Conditions such as productivity and goal achievement, company development and dominance over the competition are the only goals that employees should definitely achieve in modern workplaces. Due to the complexity of human nature, physical and mental rest are not limited to the amount of rest, but require quality time for socializing and meeting the needs and obligations of a person outside the workplace.
In this chapter, a literature review of the current situation in the hotel industry has been carried out. This study is an attempt to identify the ways in which WLB problems are expressed by the employees in the hotel industry and also to identify the origin of this problem in an organization. Due to this fact, the review that will be present in the next section is only limited in research regarding WLB in the hotel sector.
The aim of this approach is to identify the special characteristics of the hotel sector as a workplace and not to mix the results of the empirical approach with results from workplaces with different characteristics and working conditions. In addition, the results of the literature will be used to compare the results from the empirical part that follows in the next section.
Literature review findings
This means that long working hours and physical fatigue of employees is characteristic of the hotel industry. Also, some key characteristics of the hotel sector, such as the 24-hour operation of the units, require the constant presence of employees to maintain the continuity of the service. The main conclusion of her work focuses on the new practices that need to be addressed to help resolve work and family concerns. 2016), review the literature and categorize the empirical results of the relationship between work and health.
Casual workers were also found to have little or even no control over their working hours. The author mentions that working too much without control led to greater disruption of WLB for casual employees. Santercole (1993) investigated employee perceptions of quality of work life to gain a better understanding of employee responses and preferences and also help organizations improve employee efficiency and satisfaction. The analysis of the research results shows that the variable Quality of Work Life (QWL) has a significant positive effect on the variable Productivity.
In the concluding remarks, managers are suggested to use research findings to design organizational policies to increase the level of engagement among their employees. The results showed that there is a correlation between work-related, social, demographic characteristics and the level of work-related stress among the employees in the hotel sector.
Literature review remarks
Given the very busy working hours due to the upcoming start of the tourist season and the fact that the hotel was not yet fully operational with the required staff, the sample is satisfactory. The results of the data analysis in the empirical part of this paper will be presented below. The analysis continues with the presentation of the demographic data of the sample and more specifically of the age groups of the participants.
A very interesting element of the research is the years of experience that employees have in this workplace. It is notable that only 9.5% of employees have 0-4 years of experience, while 71.5% of employees have experience that exceeds a decade. At this point, the analysis will focus on the analysis of the open questions and more specifically the answers received in the personal interviews of the hotel employees.
Each question of the questionnaire will be analyzed separately and at the end a comparison will be made with other empirical data. The results in this set of questions show that, on average, more than 60% of the participants believe that they cannot handle simultaneous tasks. This fact reveals that employees generally agree that they themselves are responsible for managing this balance, but do not agree with the exclusivity of responsibility.
Regarding the management of their personal time, 66% of respondents answered that they did not manage it properly. A very interesting result is that only half of the employees anticipated any conflict in their WLB. Asked about the advantages or disadvantages of work-life balance, the answers are somewhat peculiar, as 43% of employees directly spoke about disadvantages or advantages (24% found advantages and 19% disadvantages).
While a percentage (57%) of the employees did not know how to give a direct answer, as they listed the weaknesses and strengths arising from their work. The third set of questions attempts to capture employees' job and personal satisfaction by using simple questions about their feelings about work and the time they spend with their families. In addition, most employees believe that work-life balance is solely a matter for employees.
Future research must take into account the various factors that create the imbalance of the work life and personal life of the employees and investigate which of them lead to serious work and health implications. The limitations of the future research can be found on the different types of employees working in a hotel and high mobility of hotel employees. The influence of working time arrangements on work-life integration or 'balance': a review of the international evidence.
An Investigation of the Relationship between Hospitality Employees' Work-Family Conflict and Relaxation/Social Intentions, CHRIE International Conference Refereed Track.
