A Study of factors affecting work-life balance connected with work stress at a software company

Abstract

This exploratory research study centers on the work-life of software industry professionals in Sri Lanka and the idea of the work-life balance. The research work was conducted with the primary objective of evolving a set of recommendations on how work-life balance could be accomplished. For this purpose, four independent factors of high relevance to the work-life balance issue were identified through a comprehensive survey of prior work. The identified factors of working conditions, role conflict, workload at hand and organizational relationship were analyzed in their relationship to the dependent factor of work-life balance. The carefully formulated research methodology that began with the comprehensive literature survey for factor identification was followed by the identification of multi-dimensional measurements for each of the factors, construction of a self-administered questionnaire as the main research instrument, and a set of open-ended questions for conducting a limited set of interviews for in-depth collection of data. The research was conducted as a quasi-case study by focusing on a single medium-size software company that was structurally representative of the software companies in Sri Lanka in the profile of workforce, management structure and practices as well as organizational culture and environment. The collected data was processed through a set of statistical analytical techniques widely used in similar research work. The findings from this research showed that working conditions at an organization to be significant with a positive correlation on the balance of work-life. At a Pearson Correlation value of 0.617 at a significant value of 0.00, it was a strong positive correlation. Furthermore, the interpersonal relationship factor was also significant with a positive correlation on the balance of work-life. It had a Pearson Correlation value of 0.722 at a significant value of 0.00 showing a strong positive correlation. The other two factors on which this research study centered, role conflict and workload were both found to be negatively correlated to the balance of work-life. The research concludes by providing a set of recommendations based on the proven hypotheses that management could utilize to improve the work-life balance of the most valuable asset of software development companies, their professional workforce.