Abstract
In recent years organisations have embraced the concept of work life balance (WLB) and appreciated it, as they are mindful of the need to provide work life balance policies to retain skilled employees, attract potential candidates and achieve competitive advantageous position in the market. Work life balance has found its prominent place in organisational and government policies due to its rising demand. The thesis explored the concept of work life balance from employees’ and employers perspective in United Arab Emirates banking sector to evaluate the interaction of work related antecedents like work time (WT), work demand (WD), job insecurity (JI), job autonomy (JA), organisational support (OS), supervisors and co-workers support (SS) and family related antecedents like family demand (FD), Family time (FT) and family support (FS) on work family conflict (WFC), Family work conflict(FWC), Work family facilitation (WFF) and Family work Facilitation (FWF) and finally on outcomes like work life balance, job satisfaction (JS), Life satisfaction (LS), turnover intention(TI) and health issues (HI).
A mixed method approach was used to collect data through semi structured interviews from bank managers (n=10) and along with questionnaire from employees (n=240) from local and foreign banks in UAE. Structural equation model based on quantitative data as hypothesized found work related antecedents like WT, WD, JI led to WFC and negatively affected WLB. While family antecedents like FT and FD caused family work conflict. Organisational, co-workers, supervisors and family support led to facilitation in both domains and positively influenced work life balance. Further, WLB positively effected JS and LS, while it was negatively linked to TI and HI. Thematic analysis of interview transcripts reinforced the employee’s imbalance problem and revealed majority of the private or foreign banks didn’t have written WLB policies and supervisors used their discretion to support employees informally, though bank managers were aware of the positive outcomes of providing a suitable WLB policies to their employees.