Influence of work life conflict on performance of the banking industry in Kenya
Abstract
The government has encouraged private organizations and social services to deliberately
introduce family friendly policies in the workplace to help employees to balance their work
and family life. International labor organizations global report on work life conflict of 2010
rates Kenya among those with the highest prevalence of long working hours more than 48
hours per week. The objective of the study was to determine the influence of work life
conflict on organizational performance in the banking industry in Kenya. The null
hypothesis was that there is no significance influence of work life conflict on performance
of the banking industry in Kenya.This study adopted survey research design using both
quantitative and qualitative approaches. The study covered all the 43 banks registered by
Central Bank of Kenya focusing on branches in Nairobi with the target population of 36,212
employees. Primary data was collected using questionnaires that had both structured and
unstructured questions. The researcher used descriptive statistics including frequency
distribution tables, percentages and measures of central tendency such as mean. In addition
to this advance statistical techniques were also considered particularly measures of
variations such as standard deviation and others like regression analysis to establish
relationships among variable. The study results indicated that this relationship was negative
which means it was not significant in influencing performance. This implies that work life
conflict is in contrast with the implications of performance hence did not have a linear
relationship with performance which was measured in terms of customer satisfaction, target
standards and employee satisfaction. Based on the findings of this study, it can therefore be
concluded that majority of the banks sampled in this study, work life conflict did not
influence their performance. In qualitative responses, respondents indicated that they were
able to balance their schedules and time between work and other aspects may it be family,
personal and social aspects. The study recommends that banking institutions need to address
issues of too much work, long working hours, work and family balance of its employees
because respondents reported to having inadequate time to spend on personal, leisure and
family, although work life conflict was not significant in influencing performance.