Relationships Between the Flexible Working, Intention to Leave and Subjective Well-Being

Abstract

The purpose of research is determining the effect of employee’s flexible working attitude on intend to leave and subjective well-being. The sample of this research is employees of a company which applies flexible working and operates the area of organized industrial zones in Manisa. In this regard,164 employees which generally work in call center, joined the research as filling questionnaires. Non-being of the research which examines the flexible attitude, intend to leave and subjective well-being together in the body of literature becomes more attractive the topic. So, the result of this research will help not only academicians who interest the topic but also managers who apply flexible working with giving up-date information. Moreover, results may contribute to further researches which examine the topic from different aspects and relate different terms. Two research questions are concentrated here. One of them is whether existence of statistically meaningful connection between flexible working attitude and subjective well-being in offices. Whether existence of statistically meaningful connection between flexible working attitude of employees and intend to leave or not is the latter one.

Keywords: Flexible Working ArrangementIntention to leaveSubjective Well- Being

Introduction

Effort to harmonize employee's and organization's purpose changes the habits radically in business life. In recent years, flexible working which is different from traditional working arrangements has begun to practice by organizations. Today, the needs and expectations of employees compel organizations to change working practices. The employees who have become more educated and skilled than before want to spend more time for themselves, their families and hobbies. Also, employees want to control when they go to work and when they spend their time for themselves. Moreover, the participation of women into working life and the increasing divorce rate change the idea of traditional family nowadays. In present family structure, individuals have difficulty to balance work and life due to increased statuses and responsibilities in family and business life. This situation has required flexible working hours. Considering the requirements, organizations have reshaped the employment conditions and working conditions in order to satisfy employees' demand and benefit with advantage of technology (Doğan et al., 2015).

After the second half of 20th century, second industrial revolution's improvements, especially the developments in information, communication and transportation technologies have influenced labour market significantly and changed the type of production, pattern, employment and labour relations (Yavuz, 1995). Fordist production model based on division of labour, mass production and full-time working condition was applied prevalently until 1970 has started not to satisfy cyclical fluctuation in economics, product range and changing customer demand. Then it lost popularity (Okkalı-Şanalmış, 2006). Economic crisis and unemployment at the end of 1970's were caused to begin a new era. Here, the state took some precautions and reduced own intervention and strict regulations. In this era which called flexibility period, the relationship between employee and employer has changed; flexibility has been added in working principle, and the type and period of flexible working have gained importance (Yavuz 1995; Okkalı-Şanalmış, 2006). It can be said that flexible working models are adopted by employers because of the cost-oriented approach towards economic crises, and by employees because of the provision of more free time, freedom and the work-life balance (Uyargil, 1984). The human resource element which was considered as a cost-element by the "Fordist-Taylorist" paradigm until the 1980s has gained a strategic importance along with globalization, developing technologies, changing production and management models. Today, most managers have begun to perceive that the human resource management has important strategic implications for organizations. It might be stated that the reason of this strategic importance is the contribution to organizational commitment and to create a competitive advantage. Human resource management, through its ability to hire the right person, creates an effective performance evaluation system, motivates and provides the organizational commitment of employees, ensures companies sustainable competitive advantage by means of important contributions to achieve companies' goals. New working arrangements experienced by employers to gain competitive advantage affect work attitudes along with some of the advantages and disadvantages of employees. Because of the convenience they get in their private lives, individuals' approaches to new ways of working have become positive and their job satisfaction and job commitment level have increased. From this point of view, the aim of this research is to examine the relationship among the attitude toward the flexible working which is increasingly spread nowadays, the subjective well-being and the intention to leave. It is expected that the research will contribute to the literature since there is very limited empirical research on flexible working in the field of human resources management and organizational behavior.

Literature Review and Theoretical Framework

Research Method

Findings

Firstly, the Descriptive Statistics test was applied in order to obtain descriptive information about respondents. The values obtained from the test are given in Table 1 .

Before starting to analysis, missing data are completed with "mean substitution method". This method is used to filling missing data with taking average of the other data in the data set where the data is lost. Not losing the distribution features of data which is studied is the fundamental reason of this need. After that, to control normal distribution of data, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used. The outcome of normal distribution rejects the hypothesis which accepts the normal distribution of data (p< 0,05) (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2013). Because of the narrow data set, data which is not appropriate to normal distribution and high standard deviation in data set, nonparametric tests were used.

The reliability coefficients for variables are given in Table 2 . Alpha coefficients obtained were accepted because they were higher than 0.50, as defined by Bagozzi and Yi (1988), and 0.70 as defined by Nunnally (1978), respectively.

To test hypothesis, Wilcoxon signed rank test was used. This test helps to find significance of relevance the points related two measurement sets. Wilcoxon signed rank test is used in measurements instead of t test, when the conditions related parametric tests does not meet. In addition, this test takes into account not only the directions of two-measurement sets’ points but also their quantities. (Büyüköztürk, 2013; Ural and Kılıç, 2013).

While compering nonparametric tests’ variables, mean rank is used instead of mean. Table 3 shows the mean ranks of variables. When the results are examined, discrepancy of mean rank attracted the attention (89; 44; 87; 59). In the table 3 , fundamental H_0A and H_0B hypotheses were rejected since the probability of Z test is under the significance level which is 0.05 ((p 0.000< 0.05)) (Kalaycı, 2010). So, the employees’ attitude towards flexible working has statistically meaningful difference with subjective well-being and intention to leave.

The results regarding the hypotheses are shown in Table 4 .

Conclusion and Discussions

In this research, statistical and significance difference between employees’ attitudes towards flexible working, subjective well-being and intention to leave was examined in the organization which uses flexible working method. After analyses are completed, it has been determined that there is a significant and statistical difference about employees’ attitude towards flexible working associated with subjective well-being and intention to leave. It has been obtained in this research that while the mean of flexible working attitude is high, the mean of subjective well-being is low. It means that employees’ positive attitude towards flexible working is more than the subjective well-being. While scanning related literature, it is observed that the subjective well-being is effected by wage, work place, policy of human resources, contribution, performance and personality characteristic etc. (Knabe and Rätzel, 2010; Luttmer, 2005; Easterlin, 2001). Also there may be a lot of variables which make employees unhappy in this research. As seen on the Table 1 , the most employees who joined the survey work for under 1300 TL. Hence, it cannot be expected from the employees that the lower money the higher happy level. Also, when the literature is examined, (Golden and Wiens-Tuers, 2006; Dakin and Wampler 2008) there is a close relationship between subjective well-being and income. If there is no increase in the individual's position, status, prestige and income in the workplace, happiness level begins to decrease and lose value. According to standard economic models, only to have leisure time is not enough to increase happiness level (Golden and Wiens-Tuers, 2006).

In the research, a significant difference was found between the attitudes of the employees in flexible working and their intention to leave work. When previous researches are examined, it is seen that the results of them are diversified. For instance, in a study (Stavrou and Kilaniotis, 2010 related to the connection between flexible working and employee turnover rate comparatively between Anglo and Nordic, the positive relationship between programs that provide flexibility in amount of hours worked and employee’s turnover rate was found in the Anglo society, whereas in the Nordic society, the negative relationship is found between programs that provide flexibility in amount of hours worked and employee’s turnover rate. A study carried oft by Zeytinoğlu et al. on the subject (2011) found that compared to those in full-time employment, nurses in part-time employment do not intend to leave the profession. Atkinson and Hall’s (2011) research which studied on nurses shows that flexible working practices have a range of positive outcomes including enhanced patient care reduced nurse turnover, reduced use of temporary staff hours and lower sickness absence (Atkinson and Hall, 2011). As seen, researches show that flexible working practice often reduces the turnover and absenteeism rate. However, the average of the flexible working attitudes of employees was higher than the average of the intention to leave the work according to the analysis result. In other words, employees with positive attitudes toward flexible work also have intention to leave the workforce. One of the reasons may be that even flexible working is preferred avoiding unemployment. This result is not surprising when the unemployment rates in Turkey are considered. Even if individuals are not happy to flexible working arrangements, they try to get this type of job in order to earn a living for their own and families. According to OECD's labor report, flexible working is selected by unmarried and child-bearing women in order to earn income and it is selected by married and child-bearing women to take best care of children (OECD, 2004). As seen in the Table 1 of survey’s demographic variables, a large majority of the respondents are women. It can be said that women prefer to work for organizations which apply flexible working arrangements because of child care and housework. Also, statistics indicate that generally women who want to earn extra income in the rest of time which is spent for their family responsibilities, students who want to meet their school expenses, single-parent families, dual-earner couples, as well as those who have geriatric care responsibilities try to find flexible time-based jobs (Özer, 2006; Higgins, Duxbury and Johnson, 2000; Bond, Thompson, Galinsky and Prottas 2002).

On the other hand, this study has some limitations because of some reasons. The research is conducted only in the call-center of a firm which has flexible working arrangements in Turkey. The other sectors where call centers are used with different arrangements are out of scope. Therefore, it is not possible to generalize the result obtained. It should be remembered that various flexible work arrangements like flexible hours, tele working, part time working etc. are not suitable for every business or employee. Flexibility during working hours is undoubtedly not a definite prescription for creating happy employees at work but it is thought that flexible working arrangements which lead work-life balance positively and supported by managers and colleagues will contribute to staying in employee’ organization. The greatest benefit in terms of business and employee in this regard is ensured with alteration and revision the way of work, its principles and hours according to employees’ request, consent and suggestion and taking support of all employees. Researches can contribute to the issue by identifying a larger sample group that covers different sectors in future work. Thus, it can be ensured that the work is generalizable to some extent.

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