Work-Life Balance Among Administrators in a Malaysian Public University

Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is always a priority for everyone because it has a relation with a wide quality of life. The meaning of work-life balance is different for each thing (Lockwood, 2003). According to Lockwood (2003), the definition of work-life balance from the employee viewpoint is the dilemma of managing work obligations and personal/family responsibilities while through a work-family view, it refers to the degree to which an organization's community acknowledges and values its workers' family commitments and duties, which allows management which staff to work together to meet their personal and job needs.

According to Hasan and Teng (2017), the work-life balance or family-friendly job policies are one essential need, particularly in this era for any working person. To gain true happiness in life, individuals are now introduced to the concept of work-life balance apart from being satisfied or doing well at work. While Jayasingam et al. (2023) contended, these days, there has been an increasing number of individuals investing more time in work-related tasks. Moreover, with the accessibility of different advancements and developments, people are working longer and pushing harder toward efficiency (Wu, 2022). Unfortunately, they tend to spend less time on other activities in their lives.

New technology leads employees to work longer and be able to work at any place and at any time to show career commitment (Rodríguez-Modroño & López-Igual, 2021). The workload was the top contributor to job stress, burnout, and work-life balance (Kelly et al., 2020). In addition, the long working hours, work pressure, high-request jobs, and the use of sophisticated technology made it hard for employees to keep a balance between their activity and work commitments (Fong et al., 2023). Furthermore, work-life balance issues are caused by stressful life events. It does not include work-related activities, but it reflects the variety of important life and family-related incidents such as death, serious illness, divorce, and institutional detention (Keller et al., 2022).

Job Stress

Stress occurs when one understands the pressure on them or the requirements of a situation are greater than what they can handle (V. Chandra, 2021), and if these requirements are huge and continue for a long period without any interval, mental, physical, or behavioural problems may occur (Manchia et al., 2022). Stress is anything or a situation where the person faces intense pressure that usually happens in the workplace known as job pressures such as short notices and deadlines, unnecessary health problems, family pressures, and others (Sutherland & Cooper, 2022). When people are faced with situations where the requirements of the work are so huge that they have difficulty managing, it affects their mental being and disposition and will also contribute to physical and behavioural problems.

Perceived job threat-type stress applied more significantly and was a major indicator of work-life balance and work-life conflict scores than perceived work-type stress. Today's fact of working life is that workers are continually struggling to juggle their personal and job lives. It is always the effect of the intervention of one on the other that leads to positive or negative 'spillover' in their attempt to reconcile both (Y. Chandra, 2020).

Unhealthy work environments affect employee’s health both physically and mentally. Many organisations see stress as an indication of weakness and to avoid negative brunt, keep it hidden. Therefore, this study looks forward to examining the relationship between job stress and work-life balance. The following hypothesis is created.

H1: There is a significant relationship between job stress and work-life balance.

Supervisor Support

Supervisor support is one of the resources that employees may need to cope with difficulties that stem from work-family conflict and family-work conflict (Galardo & Trottier, 2022). Moreover, supervisors serve as members of the company and are responsible for monitoring and assessing the success of employees. Employees consider the positive or negative attitudes of their supervisor towards them as an indicator of the encouragement of the organisation (Pereira & Mohiya, 2021). This indicates that there will be an understanding of the level of support that the employee would expect from organisation in a wide variety of situations. Nie et al. (2023) stated that increased supervisor support also affects increases in job control, coworker support, collective efficacy, use of indirect coping mechanisms, and decreased job stress to employees.

According to Charoensukmongkol and Phungsoonthorn (2022), both colleagues and supervisors will help to minimize some of the organization's negative impacts. Co-workers have the right to temporarily relieve an employee from his or her work-related responsibilities to meet personal needs. The employee's pressure may decrease with the supervisor's support and the employee satisfaction may increase. Supervisors could control their employees whether they feel comfortable using work-life initiatives (Nabawanuka & Ekmekcioglu, 2022). Recent findings have shown that expectations of supervisory assistance have a stronger effect on workplace performance compared with coworker support (Penning de Vries et al., 2022) or the provision of work-life balance policies alone. Supervisors play a significant part in whether employees feel confident managing their roles in work and life (Talukder & Galang, 2021).

Supervisor support has a strong positive influence on the self-efficacy of employees (Chami-Malaeb, 2022). Supervisor support also positively impacts job involvement, and such influence is transmitted through job satisfaction (Côté et al., 2021). This study aims to examine the relationship between supervisor support and the work-life balance of this administration office at a public university. Therefore, the following hypothesis is developed.

H2: There is a significant relationship between supervisor support and work-life balance.

Work Attitude

Noah and Metiboba (2012) refer to attitudes as propensities, or instincts, to respond to an event favourably or unfavourably. The entity in the world around us may be just about anything. Employee happiness and behaviours are one of the main fields where workplace performance is assessed. Employee behaviours may provide useful insight into the efficacy of various management techniques. Job-related habits play a significant part in influencing the workplace job practices of managers (Noah & Metiboba, 2012). Many researchers agree that job attitude has a positive impact on performance (Purnama et al., 2020). Attitudes are evaluation claims that have three components. The cognitive aspect is the values a person retains. The affective component is the mental or thinking portion of a disposition and the behavioural element is the deliberate component (Topal et al., 2021).

Work attitudes include participation in the workplace, and responsibility to the supervisor for job-specific activities (Mustafa et al., 2021). A substantial body of work has found that job attitudes are related to several activities that are important to the company, including role success, patriotism, innovative performance, and competitiveness (Najib et al., 2020). Work-life balance affects the attitudes of employees toward their organizations and lives. Work-life balance is particularly important when organizations must manage highly technical professionals because their high commitment and loyalty are necessary for the organization's success (Oyewobi et al., 2022). How does the work attitude in this administrative office affect the work-life balance? This study further examines the relationship between work attitude and work-life balance. Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed.

H3: There is a significant relationship between work attitude and work-life balance.

Figure 1 shows the conceptual framework of the study. Job stress, supervisor support, and work attitude are the independent variables and work-life balance is the dependent variable.

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Profile of Respondents

In total, Female respondents are 59 (60.8%) while male respondents are 38 (39.2%) of the population. In addition to that, in terms of age distribution, the highest number of respondents belong to the age group of 31 - 35 years old with 32 (33%) respondents. As for the respondent’s educational background 36 (37.1%) of respondents have a degree, 29 (29.9%) of respondents have a diploma, 14 (14.4%) of respondents with SPM qualification, followed by 10 (10.3%) have a PhD qualification and 8 (8.2%) of the respondent have Master. Most of the respondents were married (83%). Other than that, the highest number of respondents were with a group of less than 3 with 62 (63.9%), followed by group no kids with 23 (23.7%), 4 – 6 with 11 (11.3%), and more than 6 with 1 (1.0%). Most of the respondents experienced 4 - 6 years of service which is 28 (28.9%) of respondents, followed by 23 (23.7%) of respondents in 7 – 10 years of service and 1 - 3 years of service which is 18 (18.6%) of respondents, 17 (17.5%) of respondents in 11 - 15 years of service and 11 (11.3%) of respondents is more than 15 years of service in the organisation. Besides, in this administration office, most respondents work for a female immediate supervisor with 73 (75.3%) and 24 (24.7%) respondents working for a male immediate supervisor. 84 (86.6%) of the respondents prefer to work from the office while 13 (13.4%) of the respondents prefer to work from home.

The result in Table 1 shows the findings that supervisor support is strongly correlated with work-life balance (r=0.513, p<0.000) indicating a significant positive relationship between supervisor support and work-life balance. These research findings demonstrate a significant correlation which indicates that supervisor support is significantly positively related to work-life balance (Nabawanuka & Ekmekcioglu, 2022; Talukder & Galang, 2021).

The relationship between work attitude and work-life balance is also seen to have a significant relationship. The relationship between work attitude and work-life balance is positively significant. The results show that (r=0.462, p<0.000) which indicates that there is a significant correlation between work attitude and work-life balance (Talukder & Galang, 2021).

The relationship between job stress and work-life balance is seen to have a significant relationship. The relationship between job stress and work-life balance is negatively significant. The results show that (r=-0.350, p<0.000) which indicates there is a significant correlation between job stress and work-life balance. The negative correlation signifies that as job stress increases, the work-life balance decreases and vice versa (Kelly et al., 2020).

Table 2 shows the result of a multiple regression analysis. The R square value shows the percentage contribution of the independent variables from the dependent variables. As measured in the table above, the R square value is 0.330, meaning that 33% of independent variables are job stress, supervisor support, and work attitude. Hence, the 67 percent variation that influences work-life balance is explained by the other factors that were studied in isolation.

H1: There is a significant relationship between supervisor support and work-life balance.

The above-mentioned hypothesis predicts a relationship between the variables, which indicates that supervisor support can affect the work-life balance of the employee. The previous study proved that support from supervisors creates a sense of reciprocity among employees, who then perform better, hence, support from supervisors is another crucial factor in the work-life balance (Nabawanuka & Ekmekcioglu, 2022; Talukder & Galang, 2021).

Based on the findings of this research, the p-value of supervisor support is 0.027 which implies that the relationship of this variable is significant with the work-life balance as it is below 0.05 (β = 0.264, t = 2.245, p = 0.027). Therefore, H1 is supported, implying a significant positive relationship between supervisor support and work-life balance, which means that as the value of supervisor support increases, the work-life balance will also increase.

H2: There is a significant relationship between job stress and work-life balance.

A relationship was found between job stress and work-life balance. The results are consistent with the previous studies showing the correlation between job stress and work-life balance. Work-life balance/work-family conflict affects job satisfaction, family satisfaction, life satisfaction, career satisfaction, and job stress (Al-Alawi et al., 2021).

Based on the findings of this research, the p-value of job stress is 0.029 which implies that the relationship of this variable is significant with the work-life balance as it is below 0.05 (β = -0.220, t = -2.215, p = 0.029). Therefore, H2 is supported, implying a significant negative relationship between job stress and work-life balance, which means that as the value of job stress increases, the work-life balance will decrease and vice versa.

H3: There is a significant relationship between work attitude and work-life balance.

Work attitude has a significant impact on work-life balance and the results are consistent with previous research findings. Previous research by Sari and Seniati (2020) found that employees' positive perceptions and attitudes toward work-life balance and job satisfaction are central to productivity for an institution. A study by Thamrin and Riyanto (2020) found that work-life balance has a positive significant impact on employee performance. Employees with a positive mood with just limited work and limited home pressures are more likely to experience satisfaction with their work. Having a healthy work-life balance makes it easier for employees to perform their tasks more efficiently (Thamrin & Riyanto, 2020).

Based on the findings of this research, the significance value of work attitude is 0.009 which is less than 0.05. The value 0.009 implies that the relationship of this variable is significant with the work-life balance (β = 0.278, t = 2.652, p = 0.009). It shows that work attitude has significantly affected work-life balance. Therefore, H3 is supported where work attitude has a positive relationship with work-life balance.