Quality of work life amongst the employees in Automotive Industry

 

Dr. B. Janakiraman

Professor, Department of Management Studies, Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology, P.B.No:6429, Gollahalli, GovindapuraYelahanka, Bangalore-560 064

 

ABSTRACT:

The study strives to examine the concept “Quality of Work-Life” and the part it plays in augmenting the productivity and performance of an organization. It also provides some direction for a wide range of initiatives to be undertaken in order to enhance the Quality of Work-Life (QWL) in automotive industry. The study also focuses on the importance of having effective QWL practices and their impact on employee performance and the overall organizational effectiveness. This study examined the factors responsible for QWL amongst the employees of automotive industry and identified factors like challenging work, achievement motivation Performance linked promotion and implementation of ‘flexi-time’ results in enhanced QWL.

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

In the late 1960’s the term quality of work life was introduced. Everywhere and every place quality of work life is gaining importance more and more. The focus of quality of work life primarily was on effect of employment on wellbeing of employees and their health. But now the focus of quality of work life has changed. There are many factors which affect quality of work life some of them are level of stress, job environment, job nature, career prospects etc. The most important factor which make employees happy are monetary benefits. When organization provides good environment to work and with all financial and non-financial benefits the employees feel satisfied and this helps in retaining the employees for longer period and it also help organization to achieve their goals. In the end it can be said that organizational goal can be achieved when the employees are happy and are satisfied. As happy employees participate more to achieve organizational goal.

 

Success of an organization depends on how it retains recruits and motivates the workforce. Now a day’s an organization requires more flexibility in its operation to improve their work force to enjoy their commitments. So every organization need to adopt and improve its strategy to satisfy both employees and organizational need. The study focuses up on the significance of efficient quality of work life practices within an organization thereby there is an impact on employee performance as well as of the organization.

 

REVIEW OF LITERATURE:

In the present machine driven life, workmen return with high stress. Human being are not machines. They have their own priorities. Employers should plan a job which satisfies their needs. Quality of Work Life (QWL) uses worker’s potential to maximum extent and ensures participation of workers to improve quality of work and efficiency. In this literature for the study purpose, Balaram Bora has used only secondary data which is sourced from different journals and books. This literature summarizes different essential components for QWL that industries observed and the contributions of different researchers. In this literature it is observed that Researchers views differed on the main components of quality of working life.

In this literature Geetha and Dr R. S Mani points out the importance of QWL to the organization to attract and to retain   employees. They say if the organization provides better QWL it increases the quality and satisfaction of the employees. High Quality of work gives better performance and effectiveness. They stated that the QWL is the individual employee’s choice to plan his job functions in order to meet his needs and interest. It increases the quality of work and improves personal life.

 

Mirvis and Lawler, has advised that kinds of working life is linked to satisfaction with hours of working, conditions of working, safe workplace. Impartial wages and equivalent work openings.

 

RadhaYadav and Ashu Khanna: gave importance to the measurements i.e. elements of quality of work life. Employees commitment and productivity depends on the measurements i.e. the facets of quality of work life i.e. job satisfaction, reward and recognition, safety and health policy, welfare facilities and environment. They suggested that if organization provides better Quality of work life it develops the healthy working environment and satisfied employees as high quality of work life can give result progress in organizational performance, effectiveness and innovation etc. Subsequently contributes better life for those people to whom the organization serve, deal and interact.

 

Mohammad Baitul: in his research attempted to find out dynamics that have significant effect on quality of work life of individual in an organization. Mohammad Baitul found that dynamics i.e. aspects  like pressure of work, family life, transportation, salary and benefits, working environment, HR Policy, environment of work, career growth and conditions of working had major impact on quality of work life. This study determined that a proper compensation policy, career growth, organizational culture will lead to satisfied employee and increases organization productivity.

 

Balaram and Jamal: listed distinctive pointers of “quality of working life,” which includes job satisfaction, job involvement, role-conflict, role-overload, work stress, organizational devotion and turn-over plans. Balaram and Jamal also found out practices of job content, must be inspected as measure of the notion of “quality of working life.”

 

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

The study has the following objectives:

·        To investigate the level of satisfaction of employees in automotive industry with respect to current practices of quality of work life.

·        To determine the factors affecting quality of work life.

·        To suggest method for improvising quality of work life practices for employees.

 

Factors that influence the quality of work life are:

Job-career satisfaction:

Job-career satisfaction is reflected by questions asking how satisfied people feel about their work. It has been proposed that positive job satisfaction factor is influenced by various issues including clarity of goals and role ambiguity, appraisal, recognition and reward, personal development career benefits and enhancement and training needs.

 

Working condition:

Working condition encompasses wide range of topics and issues from working time (i.e. hours of work, rest periods and work schedules) to remuneration, physical conditions and mental demands which occurs in workplace. It is one’s work environment which is influenced by the factors such as health and safety, welfare measures etc. It assesses the extent, to which the employee is satisfied with the fundamental resources, working conditions and security necessary to do their job effectively.

 

Control at Work:

It is one’s ability to control the work environment in specific to influence matters that are related to personal goals. It includes control over work tasks, control over work speed and physical movement and freedom from supervision. This addresses how much employees feel they can control their work through the freedom to express their opinions and being involved in decisions at work. It is identified as a central concept in understanding of relationship between stressful experiences, health control at work, behaviour, is affected by the problems of communication at work, decision control and decision making.

 

Stress at work:

Stress at work occurs when employees are not able cope up with the work demands and pressures that are not matching their knowledge and abilities. Often employees feel that they have little support from supervisors and colleagues. Work stress can damage employee’s health and performance. Stress at work can be caused by poor management, unsatisfactory working conditions. It reflects the extent to which an individual perceives they have excessive pressures, and feel stressed at work.

 

Home-Work Interface:

It is the interface of work and private life. The aspects of personal life which can interface the work include family, health and leisure. This factor explores the interrelationship between home and work life domains. This factor measures the extent to which an employer is perceived to support the family and home life employees.

 

Social Integration:

Social integration means one’s involvement in various social ties or relationships, social roles and social activities. It is the shared way of understanding each other.

 

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

Research methodology is the scientific way to resolve the set backs, it is essentially used to improve market potential. Research methodology encompasses studying possible methods one after the other to arrive at the best possible solution considering the resource, at the transfer research considering the resource, the study is descriptive and quantitative type of study, the information was gathered from various sources like textbook, magazines, journals, internet website. 100 employees from an automotive industry in Bangalore were taken as sampling unit.

 

A questionnaire was prepared covering the identified elements of Quality of Work life by the author. All the factors that influence quality of work life included in the questionnaire of the present study were subjected for factor analysis to find out the factors influencing the quality of work life.

 

TABLE NO.1.0 shows the reliability statistics and proves the data could support 88.8 percentages reliable to do this analysis. The developed questionnaire has undergone Cronbach Alpha testing for testing its reliability and the value is given below:

 

TABLE NO.1.0 Reliability Statistics:

 

 

Exploratory factorial analysis was the method chosen. Since the task was to identify those factors that connect the responses of the data, i.e. to determine a set of items that hang together, exploratory factorial analysis is chosen as the method.

 

Factor Model:

The factor model chosen for the test was Principal Component Analysis. The reason behind choosing this is, it is more robust and analyses both common and unique variance.

 

The analysis shows KMO to be 0.834 and Bartlett to be 0.000. So, exploratory factorial analysis is the appropriate method to be implemented here. The factor model chosen for the test was Principal Component Analysis. The reason behind choosing this is, it is more robust and analyses both common unique variance. Usage of this method is more appropriate when there is a need to extract minimum number of factors accounting for maximum variability as in this study. The factors having Eigen values equals to greater than 1 were extracted. The details of the Eigen values of the factors extracted in the cumulative variance of extracted sums of squared loadings are presented in the following table.

 

Table No.1.1 Type

 

 

Table No.1.2: Total Variance Explained

Components	Initial Eigenvalues			Extraction Sum of Squared Loadings			Rotation Sum of Squared Loadings
	Total	% of variance	Cumulative %	Total	% of variance	Cumulative%	Total	% of variance	Cumulative%
Treating with respect	8.175	34.061	34.061	8.175	55.061	55.061	6.252	47.050	47.050
R Reward and recognition	2.242	9.343	43.404	2.242	9.343	64.404	3.065	12.773	59.823
Encouragement to develop new skills	1.671	6.962	50.366	1.671	6.962	70.366	2.770	11.544	70.366
Training	1.529	6.372	56.739
Shared authority and responsibility	1.152	4.801	61.540
Performance feed back by supervisors	1.072	4.466	66.006
Safety and Security on the job	.946	3.940	69.946
Safety and health policy	.805	3.352	73.298
9 Rest periods	.796	3.316	76.615
10 Leave Policy	.736	3.065	79.680
Welfare measures	.589	2.455	82.135
12 Level of responsibility of work	.563	2.348	84.482
Voicing opinions	.504	2.099	86.581
Involvement in decision making	.471	1.961	88.542
Pressure to work long hours	.452	1.881	90.423
Stress level	.423	1.763	92.186
Task deadlines	.373	1.553	93.739
Workload	.289	1.203	94.942
Energy level after work	.280	1.168	96.110
System of working hours	.259	1.080	97.189
Work life balance	.235	.977	98.167
Workers relationship	.169	.703	98.870
Encouragement for team work	.148	.616	99.486
Sense of belonging	.123	.514	100.000

 

 

 

Varimax Rotation developed by Kaiser was chosen as the rotation method because this method is known to simply the factor structure and therefore make its interpretation easier and reliable.

 

Table No.1.3 Rotated Component Matrix:

Rotated Component Matrixa
	Component
	1	2	3
Treating with respect	.526
R       Reward and recognition	.844
Encouragement to develop new skills	.796
Training	.701
Shared authority and responsibility	.728
Performance feed back by supervisors	.834
Safety and Security on the job	.551
Safety and health policy			.577
9 Rest periods	.553
10 Leave Policy	.600
Welfare measures			.564
12 Level of responsibility of work			.517
Voicing opinions	.769
Involvement in decision making	.666
Pressure to work long hours		.862
Stress level		.800
Task deadlines		.807
Workload			.565
Energy level after work		.595
System of working hours		.594
Work life balance			.568
Workers relationship			.501
Encouragement for team work			.763
Sense of belonging			.728

 

Respect and recognition for individual:

A total of 11 were clubbed together to form Factor 1. Significant items under this factor include reward and recognition, treating with respect in workplace, encouragement to develop new skills, training, shared authority and responsibility, performance feedback by superiors, security and safety of job, rest periods, leave policy, voicing opinions, involvement in decision making are highly correlated with quality of work-life which can be clubbed together to form the Factor 1 which is called as respect and recognition for individual factor.

 

Work Stress:

The factors like pressure to work long hours, stress level, task deadlines system of working hours, work-life balance and energy level after work are highly correlated with quality of work-life practices which can grouped into a Factor called work stress factor.

 

Organisational Culture:

Components like safety and health policy, welfare measures provided by the organisation, level of responsibility of work, workload, work life balance, relationship with the workers, encouragement for team work, and sense of belonging are highly correlated with the quality of work-life initiatives which can be grouped and named as organizational culture factors.

 

FINDINGS:

The following are the findings of the study:

·        Comprehensibility criterion with Principal Component Analysis extracted factors that accounted for 70.366% of variance and that was at the acceptance level.

·        It was found from the factor analysis, the grouped factors like respect and recognition for individual, work stress, and organisational culture factors highly influences the working environment in an organisation wherein the employees can experience high level of the quality of work life.

 

SUGGESTIONS:

The study suggests the following:

·        The realisation of quality of work life in an organisation is quite challenging and interesting which help to reduce their stress in the working environment.

·        The immediate supervisor should identify their skills and abilities in which they excel and accordingly assign the work.

·        Performance and potential should be the criteria for promotion and rating.

·        Feasibility of implementing flexible working hours is to be explored as it helps employees to be more productive.

 

CONCLUSION:

Any organization which provides its employees with a friendly work environment, good welfare measures, and better employee-employer relationship will always help its employees to lead a better life both personally as well as professionally. Once the employees experience quality work life they will always contribute positively for accomplishing the  organisational objectives. Quality of work life gives assurance that it retains existing experienced talents besides attracting young and new talents.

 

REFERENCES:

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2      Balaram Bora-Quality of work life-A literature review-(2015).”International Journal in Management and Social Science-Vol.03 Issue-03,

3      Benarjee D. B. R. N. K and Roj a Rani E., (2004), New Perspectives of Quality of Work Life, The Indian Journal of Commerce, Vol. 57, Issue 1, January-March, pp. 73-81.

4      D. Manjula and Dr. M. Selvakumar Marimuth (2014), "Analysis of Quality of Work Life of Employees in Private Sector Commercial Banks — Application of Discriminant Analysis, Abhinav National Monthly Refereed Journal of Research in Commerce and Management, Vol. 3, Issue 9.

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7      Gani, A. and Ahmed, R. (1995), "Correlates of Quality of Work Life: An analytical Study", Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 31, Issue 1, pp.1-

8      Hogue, M. Ekramul and Rahman, Alinoor, (1999), Quality of Working Life and Job Behaviour of Workers in Bangladesh: A Comparative Study of Private and Public Sectors, Indian Journal of Industrial Research, Vol. 35, Issue 2, pp. 175¬184.

9      Indumathy, R. and Kamalraj, S (2012), A Study on Quality of Work Life among Workers With Special Reference to Textile Industry in Tirupur District —A Textile Hub, ZENITH International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Vol. 2, Issue 4, April.

10    Johnson, S. K., (1999), "A Longitudinal Study of Quality of Work Life and Business Perfounance", South Dakota Business Review, Vol. 20.

11    Kalra, S. K. and Ghosh, S. (1984), "Quality of Work Life: A Study of Associated Factors", The Indian Journal of Social Work, Vol. 25, Issue 3, pp.341-349.

12    Maimunah Ismail and Guna Seelan Rethinam, (2008), Constructs of Quality of Work Life: A Perspective of Information and Technology Professionals, European Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 7, Issue 1, pp. 58-70.

13    Mirvis P H and Lawler E-Accounting for quality of work life-Occupational Behaviour.”

14    Mohammad Baitul-Global Journal of Management and Business Research-An Analysis on Employees of Private Limited Companies (2012)”- Volume 12 Issue 18 Version 1.0

15    R. Geetha and Dr R. S. Mani –(2016) International Journal of Applied Engineering ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 16 Research India Publications.”

16    Radha Yadav, Ashu Khanna-Literature review on Quality of Work Life and their Dimensions(2014), - IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS)Volume 19, Issue 9, Ver. V PP 71-80

 

 

 

 

Accepted on 24.12.2017            ©A&V Publications All right reserved