Research Proposal: Impact of Work-Life Balance on Employee Performance

This research proposal investigates the impact of work-life balance on employee performance in both public and private sectors in Egypt. It aims to address how work-life balance contributes to improved employee productivity and performance, examining its importance in both sectors and exploring strategies for organizations to enhance it. The literature review covers various aspects of work-life balance, including its relationship with job satisfaction, affective commitment, and the role of workplace flexibility and transformational leadership. The proposed methodology involves collecting primary data through surveys in a private organization (Travco Group) and a public sector organization (The Egyptian Exchange), using simple random sampling and quantitative data analysis with regression methods. The expected results include identifying patterns in the impact of work-life balance across sectors, contributing to academic knowledge and providing insights for policymakers and practitioners to promote better work-life balance policies.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Research Proposal on ‘Impact of work life balance on the performance of the employees of an
organization’
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Introduction
Work-life balance is an important concept in the modern world. Work-life balance refers
to the balance that a person requires between the time allocated for their job and other facets of
life. The other aspects of life include many things such as personal interests and hobbies, family
time, social activities, leisure activities, etc. Thus, in other words, work life balance is a process
that helps the employees of a company to create and maintain a balance between their personal
and professional lives (Jones, Burke & Westman, 2013). It is an important aspect of a healthy
working environment. However, in the modern world, as the competition in the market is
continuously increasing, the companies are engaged in tremendous work pressure to achieve the
competitive advantage in the industry (Michel, Bosch & Rexroth, 2014). That results in very
poor work life balance for the employees. This phenomenon is mostly present in the private
sectors of the economies. Thus, through this research paper, the researcher will evaluate the
importance of work life balance factor on the performance of the employees in the public as well
as private sector of Egypt. This study will try to examine the aspects of work life balance in both
the public and private sector and compare its impact on employee motivation and satisfaction, as
those are important determinants of employee performance and productivity.
Research questions
Primary question
1. How the aspect of work life balance contributes in improving the performance and
productivity of the employees in the public and private sectors of Egypt?
Secondary questions
2. What is the importance of work life balance in both public and private sector?

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3. How the organizations can improve the work life balance of the employees?
Research objectives
The objectives of the research study are:
 To examine the importance of work life balance in the personal and professional lives of
the employees of an organization
 To evaluate the impact of work life balance on the improvement of performance and
productivity of the employees in both the public and private sector organizations in Egypt
 To make an assessment of the factors of work life balance and how to implement those to
establish a healthy working environment in the organizations
Literature review
Work life balance is a very significant aspect of job satisfaction and motivation of the
employees in the modern world. It helps to establish a balance between the personal and
professional lives of the employees of an organization. As highlighted by Munn (2013), the
individuals, organizations and the government are not independent systems that contribute in
influencing the work life balance of the employees, rather it can be used as a means to evaluate
the three forces. It has been found from the study that meaningful work and organizational
culture are two important aspects that affect not only the work life balance of the employees but
also their performance.
Kim (2014) showed in his study that affective commitment plays a major mediating role
to bridge the gap between work life balance and in-role performance of the employees in the
Korean economy. Affective commitment refers to the positive emotional attachment of the
employees towards the organization. It has been found by Kim that work life balance has no

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direct influence on the in-role performance of the employees, but the work life balance has a
positive impact on the affective commitment and in turn, the affective commitment has a positive
impact on the in-role performance of the employees.
Chimote & Srivastava (2013) explored the benefits of the work life balance from the
perspectives of the employees and their organizations. They found that according to the
organizations the effective work life balance policies help to reduce the absenteeism among the
employees, while the employees perceive work life balance as a factor of autonomy and job
satisfaction. Hence, as per the organizational perspectives, reduced employee turnover and
absenteeism by improving employee loyalty and the retention rate, improved productivity and
brand image are some major benefits of work life balance, while according to the employees, the
benefits include higher job satisfaction, autonomy, job security, stress reduction and improved
health. However, correlational study showed a very poor correlation between the two
perspectives.
Haar et al. (2014) found in their study that work life balance is positively associated with
the job as well as life satisfaction, while it is negatively associated with depression and anxiety.
The gender egalitarianism and individualism/collectivism have a moderating impact on those
relationships, with work life balance having a more beneficial impact on those.
Syrek, Apostel & Antoni (2013) explored the highly stressful jobs in the IT industry that
hampers the work life balance of the employees. The authors explored the role that
transformational leadership plays as a potential moderator of a negative relationship between the
work pressure and the work life balance and the positive relationship between the work pressure
and exhaustion of the employees. Thus, it can be said that transformational leadership has a

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significant role in moderating the relationship between the work life balance and exhaustion
from work pressure among the employees of an organization.
Allen et al. (2013) highlighted the aspect of workplace flexibility as a significant factor in
influencing the work life balance of the employees in the organizations. Flexible workplace
arrangements help the employees to maintain a healthy balance between their family lives and
professional lives, which is a satisfactory factor for them. It is beneficial for reducing work-
family conflict and hence, the organizations must put effort into designing the flexibility policies
to make a difference and establishing a healthy working environment.
There are some theories of work life balance, such as, spill-over theory, compensation
theory, resource drain, enrichment, congruence, segmentation, facilitation and integration,
ecology, and inter-role conflict. Pradhan (2016) says that among these theories, the spill-over
theory, congruence, ecological, integration, resource drain and compensation theories are mostly
used in the organizations. All these theories have used the aspects of work life balance and the
emotions related to those to highlight their impacts. For example, the spill-over theory explores
the phenomenon that occurs when one domain affects the other domain in the similar manner,
despite established boundaries exist between the personal and professional lives of the
individuals.
On the other hand, the congruence theory says there many variables, such as, personality
traits, socio-cultural and genetic forces and the behavior styles can affect the work life balance of
the employees (Rajan-Rankin, 2016). In the integration theory, a holistic view says that the work
life balance and the social life domains can be facilitated through a flexible and permeable
system. Thus, community or society is a major influential factor in this theory (Paustian-

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Underdahl et al., 2016). The other theories also include various factors that affect the relationship
between the work life balance and the social, personal and professional lives of the employees.
Thus, it can be said that there are numerous literatures on highlighting various aspects
and impacts of work life balance of the employees, which shows that work life balance is a factor
contributing in the job satisfaction of the employees and that helps in increasing loyalty towards
the organizations and increases employee retention. However, there is no comparative study that
explores the impact of this aspect in private and public sector organizations. This study aims to
explore the difference in the impact of work life balance in the different sectors and thus, help
the organizations to formulate the policies accordingly.
Research methodology
Research methodology refers to the strategies of the researcher and the procedures to
collect, analyze and interpret the data in order to get the findings to the research topic (Mackey &
Gass, 2015). In the given research the researcher will explore the elements of work life balance
in a public and a private sector organization and how those impact the productivity and
performance of the employees. Thus, the data collection will be done in the following way.
Data collection process
The researcher will collect primary data based on the nature of the study. The research
topic involves a comparison between the work life balance in the public and private sectors of
Egypt and their impact on the performance of the employees; hence, primary data collection
would be useful for the study. Primary data is the one that is collected directly from the field of
study through interview, survey, focus group, observations etc (Quinlan et al., 2019). Travco

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Group will be chosen as the private organization and The Egyptian Exchange will be chosen as
the public sector organization for the data collection.
The survey questionnaire will contain two sections, demographic and non-demographic,
with 10-12 close ended questions with replicable scales. The demographic section will contain
questions on age, gender, years of association with the organization and the non-demographic
section will focus on the specific aspects of work life balance in the company and how those
affect the personal and professional lives of the employees.
Prospective samples
The workforce of both the public and private sector of Egypt comprise the population for
the study. However, it is not possible to study the entire population as it is quite large. Hence, a
small subset, known as sample, is drawn from the population by applying relevant sampling
technique. The researcher will apply the simple random sampling technique for drawing the
sample. It is a type of probability sampling, in which each sample has an equal and random
probability of being selected. This technique results in less sampling bias and fluctuation errors
(Puy et al., 2018). 40 participants will be selected from both the public and private sector
organizations for conducting the survey.
Data analysis process
The researcher will apply the quantitative data analysis process in this study. The survey
responses will be converted into numeric data using the values of replicable scale, that is, 5 point
rating scales, such as, the Likert scale. In this process, 1 denotes the least favorable option, and 5
denotes the most favorable. After the conversion, mathematical and statistical tools and functions
will be applied on the data to find out the response pattern and correlations among the variables.

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Regression method will be applied to find out the causal relationship between the dependent and
independent variables.
Variables
In this study, the work life balance is the independent variable and performance of the
employees is the dependent variable.
Expected results
The expected outcome of this study is to get a pattern in the impact of work life balance
on the performance and productivity of the employees in both the public and private sector
organizations. With the help of these patterns, the comparison between the importance and
influence of the work life balance between the private and public sector can be made. Thus, this
will help to assess the nature of work pressure in two different sectors.
Prospective contribution
The research study will contribute in both the academic world and industrial world.
Firstly, the study aims to gather an in-depth knowledge about the difference in the work life
balance between the public and private sector and a comparative study will be made, which will
make additions in the already existing literatures on this topic. This will create scopes for the
future researchers, who will further explore this research subject to get new aspects on the work
life balance and its impacts on the professional and personal lives of the employees in different
types of organizations. Secondly, the study will present some important information to the policy
makers and practitioners in the organizations regarding the practice and policies of promoting
work life balance for the employees. The study aims to find out the importance of work life

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balance and how the balance differs in different sectors. The difference in the impacts will help
the organizations to analyze the reasons further and put special focus on those areas to improve
the work life balance for the employees and enhance their job satisfaction. This will benefit the
organizations in the long term.

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References
Allen, T. D., Johnson, R. C., Kiburz, K. M., & Shockley, K. M. (2013). Work–family conflict
and flexible work arrangements: Deconstructing flexibility. Personnel psychology, 66(2),
345-376.
Chimote, N. K., & Srivastava, V. N. (2013). Work-life balance benefits: From the perspective of
organizations and employees. IUP Journal of Management Research, 12(1), 62.
Haar, J. M., Russo, M., Suñe, A., & Ollier-Malaterre, A. (2014). Outcomes of work–life balance
on job satisfaction, life satisfaction and mental health: A study across seven
cultures. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 85(3), 361-373.
Jones, F., Burke, R. J., & Westman, M. (Eds.). (2013). Work-life balance: A psychological
perspective. Psychology Press.
Kim, H. K. (2014). Work-life balance and employees' performance: The mediating role of
affective commitment. Global Business and Management Research, 6(1), 37.
Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2015). Second language research: Methodology and design.
Routledge.
Michel, A., Bosch, C., & Rexroth, M. (2014). Mindfulness as a cognitive–emotional
segmentation strategy: An intervention promoting work–life balance. Journal of
occupational and organizational psychology, 87(4), 733-754.
Munn, S. L. (2013). Unveiling the work–life system: the influence of work–life balance on
meaningful work. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 15(4), 401-417.

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Paustian-Underdahl, S. C., Halbesleben, J. R., Carlson, D. S., & Kacmar, K. M. (2016). The
work–family interface and promotability: Boundary integration as a double-edged
sword. Journal of Management, 42(4), 960-981.
Pradhan, G. (2016). Conceptualising work-life balance. Institute for Social and Economic
Change.
Puy, G., Tremblay, N., Gribonval, R., & Vandergheynst, P. (2018). Random sampling of
bandlimited signals on graphs. Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis, 44(2),
446-475.
Quinlan, C., Babin, B., Carr, J., & Griffin, M. (2019). Business research methods. South Western
Cengage.
Rajan-Rankin, S. (2016). Paternalism and the paradox of work–life balance: Discourse and
practice. Community, Work & Family, 19(2), 227-241.
Syrek, C. J., Apostel, E., & Antoni, C. H. (2013). Stress in highly demanding IT jobs:
Transformational leadership moderates the impact of time pressure on exhaustion and
work–life balance. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 18(3), 252.