Editorial Board

A Refereed Monthly International Journal of Management

An Analysis of Work-Life Balance in the Healthcare Industry

 

Devinder Singh Hooda

Assistant Professor,

Department of Economics,

Indira Gandhi University,

Meerpur, Rewari, Haryana-India

dshooda.igu@gmail.com / dshooda@igu.ac.in

ORCID: 0000-0002-1026-2122

 

Dr. Jasbir Singh

Associate Professor (Dy. Director)

 Maharaja Surajmal Institute New Delhi

jasbirdeswal@rediffmail.com / jassideswal1974@gmail.com

ORCID: 0000-0001-8752-0057

 

Abhijit Ashok Patil

Assistant Professor,

Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University)

1. M. Institute of Management, Karad

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0767-6436

 

Sohaib Alam

Assistant Professor,

Department of English,

College of Sciences and Humanities in Al-Kharj,

Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University,

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

s.alam@psau.edu.sa

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9972-9357

Corresponding Author

 

Abstract

Both business practices and scholarly study have significant effects on work-life balance. According to the research, work-life balance is an important issue which affects well-being because the family and profession both are need to keep on priority for most of the persons. Any conflict amongst the responsibilities of work and family life has a detrimental effect on the welfare of the employee. The key aim of this paper is to examine the effects on work-life balance as it can be understood that the impact of family work conflict and work-family conflict on the health of persons employed in the healthcare sector. Levels of family’s happiness and well-being has  measured by using psychological distress and work satisfaction.

 

The data analysis revealed that healthcare employees are more stressed than other professions, especially nurses and paramedical staff. Because of late shifts and overtime, they are less motivated. The salary satisfaction level among healthcare professionals is satisfactory. They are not happy with the rewards and festival bonus that were given to them. However, night shift and overtime are two factors that make life difficult for healthcare employees. It is not very easy to make a healthy work-life balance because working shifts significantly interfere with taking care of your family and your job. If taken proper measures by the healthcare organisations these problems can get resolved.

 

Keywords: work-life balance, healthcare professionals, satisfaction, motivation.

 

 

 

Introduction

It can be difficult to maintain a healthy work-life Integration in the healthcare industry because employees commonly put their personal needs aside for their careers. Work-life balance involves striking the right balance between personal and professional objectives, which are inextricably entwined by every means.  Night hours, extended schedules, fewer breaks, and intense work pressure are just a few of the problems that come in the healthcare industry profession.To advance in an organization, one must put in a lot of time in the office and handle challenging situations. It may be pretty engaging and thrilling some days and stressful and tense other days. Many people struggle with finding a way to balance their professional and personal lives. Employees who feel they don't have time for a personal life feel distracted at work. The best way to increase work-life balance is to uphold and cultivate a healthy workplace where employees have a balance between work and family, which will improve one’s honesty towards their family and job. Negative aspects of an employee's personal life can cause job tiredness and disturb family relationships. Figure 1 provides the conceptual framework of work-life balance. It shed light on what professional and personal factors can be responsible for maintaining balance in work and personal life. Disturbance or changes in any one factor or factors can cause serious uproars in work-life balance.

Factors influencing work-life balance and its effects

Conceptual framework of Work-Life Balance (Rao &Shailashri, 2021)

Importance of work life balance

Work should not interrupt on our personal time because it is only one component of life. As a matter of fact, the labour is a means of support, the opposite is also true. As it promotes to lead a balanced life at home and work place also, the idea is becoming more prevalent. Maintaining a balanced schedule encourages ideal working hours, which subsequently raises productivity as a whole. It is common knowledge that when quantity increases, quality tends to suffer. The doctor will be inspired to take on duties if he is not overworked. He is not worn out and is prepared to work every day. He is enthusiastic to work and his workload does not dampen it. Working gladly results in satisfaction, and a happy individual is destined to succeed.

Work is the effort a person does to complete a task or generate something, whether that effort is physical, mental, or both. It refers to a routine, constant action that we engage in generating income, typically expressed in monetary terms. Non-monetary benefits may also be added to or augmented by this monetary income. Life is a condition of being characterised by different drives and ambitions, including the need to develop, accomplish, and obtain. These motivations and aspirations add stress to one's life and have an effect on the work one does.

As a nearly elusive and multidimensional phenomenon, "work-life balance" lacks a generally agreed-upon definition. Job-family balance is the "extent to which an individual is equally involved in and equally satisfied with his or her work function and family role," according to Greenhause et al. (2003). In other words, there is a positive work-life balance when there is job satisfaction and the person can perform effectively since there are few conflicts between the roles they play.

“The degree to which an employee perceives feeling fulfilled and having his or her needs addressed in both work and non-work parts of life" is what work-life balance refers to(Rife and Hall, 2015). When a person has a better work-life balance, he feels better about himself, displays more job satisfaction, and exhibits positive work-related behaviours including increased productivity, decreased absenteeism, and decreased attrition.

Literature Review

There are two main work settings in the healthcare sector: the hospitals for in-patient care and clinics for out-patient care (Hussenoederet al. 2021. Hospital-based physicians and nurses have lower WLB (work-life balance) compared to their outpatient counterparts.

The WLB situation become more common with the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic especially in the healthcare industry (Ghasemi, 2021; Humphries et al., 2020. The crisis may have affected the WLB of the medical staff as they are stretched beyond their maximum working limit. They guided about numerous strategies for work-life balancing under stressful situations such as a pandemic.

(Khan, 2010) made an effort to assess the effects of job satisfaction, burnout at work, work-life balance and conflict on the intentions of doctors in Pakistan to leave their positions. According to the study, burnout at work has a considerable impact on doctors' work-life conflict and job satisfaction but has a little less impact on doctors' ability to maintain a healthy work-life balance. The doctor would experience more conflict in balancing work and personal obligations which would lead to job dissatisfaction and making them feel  more burnt out at work.

The leading causes of organizational stress among doctors are a heavy workload, time constraints, poor administration, work/home conflict, working nights at least twice a week, patient expectations, and emergencies (Ifrana, 2012).

Work-life efforts and employee’s views about work-life conflict and the workplace in general are compared. Employee’s perceptions of work-life balance  is also identified by which advocated that both the employer and the employee should share responsibility for it. (Aggarwal, 2012).

(Shabir and Gani, 2020) found that families are becoming more reliant on to bread earners, and a significant percentage of women are entering to the medical field. They alsomanage more household chores, child careand elder care than males. These personal responsibilities paired with those at work have an impact on women employees on a physiological and psychological level, creating an imbalance between work and life.

The review of literature revealed that the study of work-life balance are more focussed on the workers of management, IT, bank sector, education sector and other private organisations (Rao et. al, 2022; Pahuja, 2016; Kul Shrestha, 2018). There are a few studies on work-life balance of health care workers are available.There is the need for a study on the WLB of doctors and nurses especially after Covid -19 which was a very inspiring situation for health workers and resulted in great amount of stress both on professional and domestic fronts as well (Rao and Shailashr, 2021)

Objectives of the study

1. To determine the stress level of healthcare professional.
2. To determine the elements which affect a healthcare worker's ability to balance work and life on the basis of stress level.
3. To ascertain whether the employees' work-life balance is impacted by the current working environment on the basis of their motivation level.

 

Research methodology

Research design: descriptive

Descriptive method of research is used in this study which is qualitative in nature.

Research instrument- Questionnaire

Questionnaire method is used as the research instrument. Demographic profile, factors affecting and helping work life balance were asked.

Sample Size

The survey is conducted from the responses and considered for the data analysis from of 200 healthcare workers (Doctors, Nurses, Paramedical Staff and Admin Staff) of Government and Private hospitalsof Delhi-NCR.

Data collection method

The study is based on primary as well as secondary data. The primary data is collected by circulating the questionnaire to staffs of Private and Government Hospitals of Delhi-NCR. The secondary data collected from written and printed electronic sources like news,  journals, research articles, books, case study of organizations etc.

Tools for data analysis

For data analysis various statistical tools like mean standard deviation analysis, Chi-squaretestand one sample t-testare applied.

Results

Regional distribution of respondents

The below table 1 exhibitsthe details of regional distribution of the respondents. For this study, a total of 200 healthcare workers (doctors, nurses, paramedical staff and admin staff) of Government and Private hospitalsfrom Delhi-NCRare selected. Both Male and Female healthcare workers are included in this. The percentages of different types of respondents is given in figure 1.

 

Table1: Regional distribution of respondents (Respondents)

S. No.	Area Name	No. of respondents
1.	Delhi-NCR	200
	Total	200

 

Figure 1: Distribution of healthcare workers

Table 2 presents the age-wise distribution of 200 healthcare workers participated in the study. The respondents were in the range of 25 years to 54 years of age and above. There are40 doctors almost equally distributed across the age groups. Maximum percentage of respondents were nurses (44%), most of them (55) were below the age of 45 years (62.5%). There were 32 percentageparamedical staff among the respondents with most of them being over the age of 54 (43%) and 8 fromadmin staff.

 

Table 2: Distribution of respondents across age groups

Number of Respondents	Age Group	Doctor	Nurses	Paramedical Staff	Admin Staff	Total
200	25 - 34	9	25	11	4	49
	35 - 44	10	30	8	3	51
	45 - 53	11	23	17	1	53
	54 - Above	10	10	28	0	47
		40	88	64	8	200

 

Figure 2 Distribution of healthcare workers across age groups

Stress level of health care employees

Table 3 presents the responses given to the question how often do you feel stressed. It is observed that 79 of the 200 respondents (39.5%) said that they are always stressed and only 13.5 % total respondents say that rarely feel stressed (Figure 3). If we look across the types of respondents, it is observed that doctors are the least stressed of all. Only 20% of doctors felt always stressed as compared to nurses (45.4%), paramedical staff (42.8%) and admins (50%).

 

 

 

Table 3: Responsesonstresslevel of healthcare professionals

Number of Respondents	Do you feel stressed?	Doctor	Nurses	Para Medical Staff	Admin	Total
200	Always	8	40	27	4	79
	Often	10	23	15	2	50
	Sometimes	9	14	20	1	44
	Rarely	13	11	2	1	27
		40	88	64	8	200

 

Thestudy found that the most stressed were in the administrative staff. This can be justified by the fact that they have to deal with patient’s relatives regarding administrative problems as well with medical staff. Another possible explanation can be that administrative staff are understaffed so their workload is heavy. After admin, the nurses are the most stressed. The nurses have to work for almost 12hour shift making them overworked and exhausted.

Figure 3: Response to the question- Do you feel stressed?

 

Health care employees were asked to indicate the frequency of stress faced by them on four point scale ranging from rarely (1) to always (4). The table 4 is showing the mean, S.D. and C.V. of stress faced by health care employees. It can be observed that highest level of stress is being faced by admin employees (Mean=3.125) followed by paramedical staff (Mean=3.047) and nurses (Mean=3.045). Among the four categories the minimum level of stress was being faced by doctors (Mean=2.325), however the coefficient of variation is highest for doctors which indicated the heterogeneity in responses.

Table 4: Stress level of Health Care Employees

Type of Health Care Employee	Stress Level
	Mean	S.D.	C.V.	Rank	Frequency of Stress
Doctor	2.325	1.13	0.49	4	Sometimes
Nurses	3.045	1.05	0.34	3	Often
Paramedical Staff	3.047	0.93	0.31	2	Often
Admin	3.125	1.05	0.34	1	Often

 

Although table 4 indicated that health care employees are facing stress, but still to measure the significance of stress faced, following hypothesis has been taken:-

H₀1:Health care employees are not facing significant stress

H_a1: Health care employees are facing significant stress

 

The study applied the sample t-test to estimate the significance of stress faced against the theoretical mean 2.5. The results presented in table 5indicates that t-statistic is significant at 5% level of significance for all the employees except doctors. For nurses, paramedical staff and admin staff, the calculated value of means is higher that the theoretical mean (2.5), so it can be concluded that the theses employees are significantly facing stress at workplace.

Table 5: Student’s t-test results to measure significance of stress

Type of Health Care Employee	Test Value = 2.5				Result
	Mean	t-value	degree of freedom	p-value
Doctor	2.325	0.979	39	0.833	Not Significant
Nurses	3.045	4.869	87	0.000	Significant
Paramedical Staff	3.047	4.705	63	0.000	Significant
Admin	3.125	1.6836	7	0.003	Significant

Level of Significance = 5%

 

Motivation level of healthcare professionals

Table 6: Motivation Level

Number of Respondents	Do you feel Motivated?	Doctor	Nurses	Para Medical Staff	Admin	Total
200	Always	8	15	8	1	32
	Often	8	24	14	4	50
	Sometimes	7	15	15	3	40
	Rarely	17	34	27	0	78
		40	88	64	8	200

 

Figure 4: Reponses on motivational level

It is indicated from abovetable 6 that out of total 200 respondents, 32 respondents i.e., only about 16% said that they always feel motivated while 39 % (78) respondents said that they do not feel motivated. So, the ratio of motivation is very less among healthcare professionals. This clearly indicates that they are impacted by the dissatisfaction about their work. If we look across the different groups, we observe that here doctors’ response was a little bit surprising. It is seen from the table 6 that, though doctors mostly don’t feel stressed but they also don’t feel motivated. Whereas, considering the workload of other staff their responses are in agreement with their stress level that they do not feel that motivated.

Impact of Employee Stress on Motivation

The review of literature suggested that employee stress has inverse relationship with the employee motivation. Keeping this in mind this research has taken following hypothesis.

H₀2:There is no significant impact of Employee Stress on Employee Motivation

H_a2: There is a significant impact of Employee Stress on Employee Motivation

To test this hypothesis the data of stress was cross tabulated with employees’ motivation and then chi –square test was applied as presented in table 7. 

 

 

Table 7: Chi-Square Test results to Measure Impact of Employee Stress on Employee Motivation

Frequency of Stress	Frequency of Motivation					Chi-Square Value	p-Value	Result
	Always	Often	Sometimes	Rarely	Total
Always	9	20	19	31	79	28.924	0.0006	Significant
Often	4	7	14	25	50
Sometimes	16	13	4	11	44
Rarely	3	10	3	11	27
Total	32	50	40	78	200

Level of Significance=5%

 

The chi-squarevalue is significant, that leads to the rejection of hypothesis so we canconclude that there is a significant impact of Employee Stress on Employee Motivation. It can be seen that maximum of stressed candidates are least motivated which proves that employee’s stress has negative impact on employees’ motivation.

Satisfaction level of healthcare professionals

 

Table 8: Job Satisfaction Level

S. No.	Parameters	Responses
			Doctor	Nurses	Para Medical Staff	Admin
1.	Salary	Satisfied	31	36	28	5
		Not Satisfied	9	52	36	3
2	Working Environment	Very Satisfied	21	25	14	2
		Satisfied	12	45	32	6
		Not Satisfied	7	18	18	0
3	Night Duty and Overtime	Satisfied	19	32	27	7
		Not Satisfied	21	56	37	1

 

 

A

B

Figure 5: Reponses on salary satisfaction

The table 8 presents the responsesof three criteria related for satisfaction. It is clear fromthetable that salary satisfaction and non-satisfaction responses was similar among the respondents. Half of respondents were satisfied and half were not. However, if we look closely, it is observed that more nurses and para medical staff are dissatisfied about their salary, 59.1% and 56.2% respectively (Figure 5 A). However, few doctors were dissatisfied with their salary. If we look among the respondents who were not satisfied with their salary, nurses are on the top i.e. 52% of respondents not satisfied with their salary are nurses (more than half) (Figure 5B). This clearly indicates that nurses are underpaid. This fact can be used when making decisions regarding nurses’ salary bonuses or incentives by the management of hospitals. 

 

Figure 6: Responses for working environment satisfaction

On closely observing the satisfaction level of healthworkers regarding the working environment, it is evident that 47.5% were satisfied, 31% were very satisfied and 21.5% were not satisfied  (Figure6). So, most of them had no complains about their working environment. This clearly indicates that healthworkers are rather inclined to perform their duties and do not give unnecessary attention to other factors.

 

Figure 7: Reponses for night duty and overtime satisfaction

Figur 7 presents the responses how they feel about night duty and overtime. As expected most of them, i.e. about 57.5 % of them are not satisfied. Also if look across the groups, all of them were more dissatisfied except for admin (87.5% were satisfied).

Impact of employee motivation on employee’s satisfaction with work environment

Motivation leads to happiness and happiness leads to satisfaction, in short a motivated employee remain satisfied with the work environment. This research also intended to measure relationship between employee motivation and employees’ satisfaction with work environment in health care industry. The third hypothesis was taken to serve this objective as follows:-

H₀3:There is no significant impact of employee motivation on employees’ satisfaction with work environment

H_a3: There is a significant impact of employee motivation on employee’ssatisfaction with work environment

To test this hypothesis the data of motivation was cross tabulated with employees’ satisfaction and then chi –square test was applied as presented in table 9. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 9: Chi-Square test results to measure impact of employee motivation on employee’ssatisfaction with work environment

Frequency of Motivation	Satisfaction with Work Environment				Chi-Square Value	p-Value	Result
	Very Satisfied	Satisfied	Dissatisfied	Total
Always	27	4	1	32	80.658	0	Significant
Often	19	21	10	50
Sometimes	15	21	4	40
Rarely	1	49	28	78
Total	62	95	43	200

Level of significance=5%

The chi-square value is significant, that leads to the rejection of hypothesis so the paper conclude that there is a significant impact of employee’smotivation on employee’s satisfaction with work environment. It can be seen that maximum number of motivated employees (N=27) are satisfied with their work environment whereas the least motivated employees (N=28) are dissatisfied with work environment. This relationship proves that there is a direct relationship between employee’smotivation on employee’s satisfaction with work environment.

Satisfaction of healthcare professionals on the basis of financial rewards

 

Table 10 presents the results of responses given to the questions regarding the financial rewards. For the performance appraisal every group was satisfied with except for nurses. 72.5 % of doctors, 70.3% of paramedical staff and 75% of admin were satisfied, but only 51.1 % of nurses were satisfied with their performance appraisal (Figure 8). Clearly, nurses have the most workload and working hours, but the compensation received by them is not satisfactory as implied from their responses in the survey.

 

Table 10:Analysis of healthcare professionals on the basis of financial rewards

S. No.	Parameters	Responses
			Doctor	Nurses	Paramedical Staff	Admin
1.	Performance Appraisal	Satisfied	29	45	45	6
		Not Satisfied	11	43	19	2
2	Festival Bonus / Incentives	Very Satisfied	17	56	32	3
		Satisfied	16	22	14	4
		Not Satisfied	7	10	18	1

 

But, if we look at the festival bonus responses, 63.6% of nurses are very satisfied, 25% are satisfied and only 11.4% are not satisfied. Similarly, doctors, paramedical staff and admins also seems to be quite content if we club the two response levels of very satisfied and satisfied. This may suggest that absenceof financial appraisals werepaid offin the form of festival bonus by the management.

 

Figure 8: Responses for Financial Rewards

 

Discussion

Present study sheds light on the work-life balance of healthcare workers. The term work-life balance has emerged  since 1980s and 1990s when companies in America started addressing the issue of work-life balance, though it was especially meant for women and children (Lockwood, 2003). From the employee perspective, work-life balance means maintaining an equilibrium between the work commitments and family responsibilities. Work-life balance of employees can be greatly affected by the work-life culture of any organisation, which can be described as the level of an organisation’s comprehension about the problems faced by their employees in their professional and personal lives and degree to which they make efforts and take actions towards making the working environment plausible for them. Hence, this study is conducted to investigate on the work-life balance of workers of hospital in Delhi-NCR region, in an effort to know how satisfied they are working in a hospital setup. The working staff of a hospital consists of Doctors, Nurses, Paramedical staff and Administrative workers.

When asked about how stressed they feel in their life due to low work-life balance, only 13.5 percent said that they rarely feel stressed, implying that most of the health-workers are in stress though at different levels. Among all, doctors were the least stressed (67.5 % felt stress at different levels). But when other staff is considered, about 97.4% paramedical staff and 87.6% of nurses were under stress at different levels.For nurses, paramedical staff and admin staff the calculated value of means are higher that the theoretical mean (2.5), so it can be concluded that the nurses, paramedical staff and admin staff are significantly facing stress at workplace. This may indicate a difference in inter-departmental stress factors.

On the contrary to aforesaid results the observations made on the question of motivation were surprisingly different. About 39% of all the health workers did not feel any motivation in their lives, even the doctors who were less stressed than the other staff workers were rarely motivated (42.5%) more than they felt motivation at any level. These results may call for a deep inquiry on why and what factors are responsible for such low motivation among them. However, similar observation was made bySangeetha and Roopa Temkar (2020) while doing a study on Work-Life Balance of healthcare employees in Bangalore, where employees neither feel tired nor energetic about their work. The chi-square value is significant which leads to the rejection of hypothesis so it can be concluded that there is a significant impact of Employee Stress on Employee Motivation. It can be seen that maximum of stressed candidates are least motivated which proves that employee’s stress has negative impact on employees’ motivation.

The job-satisfaction is an important variable for maintaining work-life balance. In fact, a positive relationship among stress and job satisfaction was found by Balamurugan and Sreeleka (2020).In the present study, the job-satisfaction was assessed by using three criteria; salary, working environment and night duty and overtime. It was observed that more nurses and paramedical staff were dissatisfied with their salary. Hence, it can be suggested that better financial compensation for their extended work hours can be given to alleviate theirs stress level. This was in fact the thinking of more than 60 percent of the paramedical staff of ABC Health Care, Karnataka, who felt that better incentives/rewards for working longer hours would reduce the feeling of strain at work (Shivakumar and Pujar, 2016). Same conclusion was made in a study by University of Western Ontario stating  that pays and benefits played a  crucial  role  in  determining  employees’  quality of work-life satisfaction (Pattnaik et al.,2022). If we look at the results of present study, all the health workers were fairly satisfied with the performance appraisal (75.6%). Moreover, they were also greatly satisfied with the financial bonus and incentives (82%).So, it may be assumed that hard working workers were getting noticed and were rewarded with appropriate appraisals as well as the incentives or festival bonuses were fairly given by the management. This may be the organisation’s way of keeping the healthcare workers motivated as a compensation of their drearier salaries. However, the results on the motivation level do not support this assumption.

Working environment also has significant effect on causing stress to healthcare workers. Gautam and Jain (2018) found that workenvironment such as flexible working hours,  good interpersonal relations with superiors, technology, spending quality time  with  family  and  friends and support from family  plays  a  very  important  role  in  their  work  life  balance. In the present study,all the health-workers were mostly satisfied where only doctors chose the option of ‘very satisfied’ (52.5%) more as compared to nurses, paramedical staff and administrative whose response level was mostly only ‘satisfied’ (51.1%, 50% and 75% respectively). This result may indicate towards a difference in the working environment of doctors and other staff of hospital. Also, this may warrant the organisations to work towards the improvement of working environments more for the workers of hospitals other than the doctors. This may seem necessary in light of the suggestion made by Pattnaik et al. (2022), stated that negative work environments could results low performance and poor  interpersonal  relationships  among  nurses and could lead  them  to  leave  the  facility  or  even  the profession itself.According to Shivakumar and Pujar (2016), doctors, nurses and paramedical staff’s work is such that they are required to be present at odd hours and hence made to work for long hours especially during their night shifts causing a conflict between their personal and professional roles. As can be seen from the result section of the present study, there was quite a mixed response obtained, when question was asked about their satisfaction level on night duty and overtime, majority of health workers felt dissatisfied(57.5%). This can be attributed to change in the attitude of hospitals which now has become more target oriented. The workers are given a target for a day, and they cannot leave until they have finished it (Peter and Kavitha, 2020).

This research also intended to measure relationship between employee motivation and employees’ satisfaction with work environment in health care industry. To test this hypothesis the data of motivation was cross tabulated with employees’ satisfaction and then chi –square test was applied.  The chi-square value is significant that leads to the rejection of hypothesis so it can be concluded that there is a significant impact of Employee Motivation on Employees’ Satisfaction with Work Environment. This relationship proves that direct relationship between Employee Motivation on Employees’ Satisfaction with Work Environment.

In view of the results of the present study, it can be said that the work-life balance of healthcare workers is greatly affected by the job satisfaction which include salaries, working environment and financial rewards. They feel stressed and less motivated in their work which may impact their personal lives too. This study is only a preliminary investigation shedding light on how the health-workers of Delhi-NCR region feel about the work-life balance. There is a need to conduct more elaborate study in order to identify the factors responsible and measures needed to address the problem of work-life balance issues in health-care sectors. 

Conclusion

Thegood healthcare sector play an important role in the human life. The promotion of health and the healing, the provision of treatmentand the enhancement of people's quality of life are the goals of anyefficient health care sector. Everyhealth/medical expert wish to choose sincerely and objectively to make a career in patient care. It has been observed from the data analysed that there are factors which directly affects the life of healthcare workers.In terms of stress level healthcare workers have more stress especially nurses and paramedical staff. They have less motivation level because of night shifts and overtime work. Satisfaction level in terms of salary is satisfactory among healthcare workers. They found working environment satisfactory. They are not satisfied with incentives and festival bonus provided to them. But the fact that hinders the life of healthcare workers is night shift and overtime. It is a challenge in terms of work life balance because to maintain healthy work life balance in terms of family and work gets seriously affected with shifts. 

Recommendations

While reviewing the literature we came up with a number of recommendations that can be followed for improving work-life balance among the workers of hospitals which are summarize as follows:

• Equal pay for Male and Female Staff
• Allowance for long working hours
• Minimizing long workdays
• Flexible time frames
• Penalties for staff members who repeatedly ask the nurses and doctors for extra work.
• Contracts that provide physicians and nurses more flexibility
• Preventing burnout
• Relaxation time and brief work breaks
• Staff friendly working condition
• Earned and sick leave for staff
• Support for social and organizational systems
• Family events such the festival celebration, yearly day, and WLB programmes
• Arranging yoga, stress-reduction techniques, and emotional intelligence training and seminars
• Supplying amenities for staff well-being such as a gym, a meditation room, and frequent health checks
• Management of time
• Make women's difficulties more conscious of, and develop solutions for them.
• Involvement in professional organization
• Policies of organizations that benefit employees

Limitations of the study

• The present study is depend on the accuracy of the data collected from primary sources. A group of population selected from which sample units were designated.
• The study has conducted for thelimited areas due to time constraints and limited access.
• The study is based on respondent’s opinions collected through a questionnaire, which may be biased.
• The samples were selected randomly.
• Because certain significant factors may have been left out of the questionnaire, therefore, analysis and interpretation part may be exhausted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funding

“This study is supported via funding from Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University project number (PSAU/2023/R/1444)”

 

Authors' contributions

All authors contributed toward data analysis, drafting and revising the paper and agreed to be responsible for all the aspects of this work.

Declaration of Conflicts of Interests

Authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Data Availability Statement

The database generated and /or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to privacy, but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Declarations

Author(s) declare that all works are original and this manuscript has not been published in any other journal.

 

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