Impact of Work-Life Balance on Employee Work Performance in the Hotel Industry of Sri Lanka

Abstract

With ever changing business world, achieving higher level of work performance through managing employee’s work-life balance is still challenging and remains as an issue in literature as well as practically in organizations. Unlike in most of other industries, the situation of the hospitality industry is more critical and the work life balance issue has become an inherent characteristic of the industry. According to Deery (as cited in Monathy, 2014), work-life balance is heavily impact on employee’s performance and since the work-life balance issue is an inherent characteristic of hotel industry, their work performances are mostly at lower levels. Therefore, the study focuses on the work-life balance of the hotel industry employees and its impact on employee performance. The study is based on three main dimension of the work life balance i.e. Job Content, Personal Factors and Family factors. The study was carried out at the John keels (Cinnamon) Hotel chain in Sri Lanka using 187 executive level employees. Data were collected through a standard and validated questionnaire survey and face to face discussions with family members of the selected employees. Data which collected through questionnaire survey were analyzed by using multiple linear regressions and content analysis was employed to summarize the data which collected through discussion. The result revealed that there is high positive relationship between all three dimensions and employee performance. The factors related job content, personal and family are positively contributed for the employee performance. The hotel industry can further improve the employee performance through creating a conductive work environment which allows the employee to have a work-life balance. Confirming the previous findings the current study reveals that the work-life balance positive impacts on work performance. This study will contribute to hotel industry to improve the work- life balance of the employees in order to improve the employee work performance.