An evaluation of the effect of work-life balance on employee productivity in the Financial Services Sector in Zimbabwe: A case of NMB Bank.

Abstract

The primary objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of work-life balance on employee productivity in the financial services sector in Zimbabwe. The research used NMB Bank as the case study. A quantitative, qualitative approaches and a case study research design were employed in this study. The population was made up of managerial employees and non-managerial employees. The sample size was 230 respondents comprising of 50 managerial employees and 108 non-managerial employees. Convenience and simple random sampling were used to come up with the sample size. The research used both quantitative data and qualitative data. Quantitative data was collected by questionnaires and qualitative data was collected using interviews. A total of 170 questionnaires were distributed and 165 were returned, translating to 97.06% response rate. Interviews yielded a 95.00% response rate. The data was analysed using Statistical Packages for Social Sciences version 22.0. The research found out that workers at NMB Bank have greater flexibility in working arrangements at their workplace. It was also revealed by the research that employees at NMB Bank have higher degree of control over how they do their work. Employees showed that they have been exposed to significant stress in the workplace. The bank employees have a lot of control over managing their time at work and personal pressures often interfering with their work life. The study revealed that requests to changing working patterns are not perceived positively by the employer. Organisational culture is prohibitive of pursuit of life issues. The bank has tight work schedules. The banks’ general business environment is prohibitive. The regression model showed that there is a strong positive and significant relationship between work-life balance and employee productivity. Work-life balance accounts for 81.8% variation in employee productivity at NMB. The resultant model established that the impact of WBS on EP was positive and significant. This led to the acceptance of H0 which states that work-life balance strategies employed at NMB Bank have a non-negative effect on the level of employee productivity. The recommendations of the research were that the bank can adopt time usage policies that allow for work-life balance such as telecommuting, job-sharing and part-time work. The management at NMB bank can also adopt other innovative work-life balance strategies such as less rigid lunch schedules, provision of laptops and equipment to make working offsite possible, encouraging social activities, team-building exercises and workplace volunteering. Future researches on the evaluation of the effect of work-life balance on employee productivity were recommended to use a larger sample to further improve representativeness and reduce sampling