Philippine Christian University Dasmariñas Campus Graduate School of Business and Management A New Perspective on Work-Life Balance among the Employees of DPWH Cavite 1st District Engineering Office, Trece Martires City, Cavite Researcher : VAL ALLEN B. MENDOZA Degree : MASTER IN MANAGEMENT MAJOR IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Adviser : DR. MEYNARD JOWELL BITAS Date : JULY 24, 2021 A. BACKGROUND a. Brief Background Work-life balance is an important matter to consider for employees to determine whether or not they will stay longer in a company or move into a better one. The implication of understanding work-life balance in the current society is that it highlights problems that may help organizations and institutions create policies that will not only protect its employees but also to improve their productivity. A good work-life balance also has several helpful effects, including lessening stress and burnout, and encouraging overall well-being. Moreover, work-life balance is less about properly distributing the hours in your day between work and personal life and more having the flexibility to get things done in your professional life while still having time and energy to truly enjoy your personal life. The study will focus on the government institution in Cavite, Philippine Christian University Dasmariñas Campus Graduate School of Business and Management specifically the Department of Public Works and Highways Cavite 1st District Engineering Office, Trece Martires City, Cavite. The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) is one of the three departments of the government undertaking major infrastructure projects. The DPWH is mandated to undertake the planning of infrastructure, such as national roads and bridges, flood control, water resources projects and other public works, and the design, construction, and maintenance of national roads and bridges, and major flood control systems. b. The Gap According to Lenhard H. (2007), There are certain factors that affect work-life balance, these are; demographics, social change, technological advancement, and global competition. It is significant that these factors are understood and given appropriate attention to avoid work-life conflict. Conflicts arising from unbalanced work-life has a damaging effect on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, productivity turnover, and absenteeism and at more serious end, work-life conflict is associated with employee burnout, mental health issues, substance abuse, and diminished family functioning. Therefore, work-life balance is an essential issue that should be addressed by the employers and government institutions in Cavite, specifically in the DPWH Cavite 1st District Engineering Office, Trece Martires City, Cavite. The study will identify the factors that impact the employees’ work-life balance, know the relationship Philippine Christian University Dasmariñas Campus Graduate School of Business and Management between employees’ job and its impact on their personal life and know the relationship between the supervisors’ support and employees’ job performance. By clearly defining the difference between the balance of work and life, the researcher will able to understand completely what causes work-life conflict and how work-life balance plays a role in reducing stress in the workplace. B. RELATED LITERATURE Sustaining work-life balance has been the focus of industries’ human resource practitioners within the challenging nature of work and the worker’s personal activities in the age of information and technology. The fast-paced life, the instant accessibility of almost anything does not put the individual in a careless state; instead, it pushes the person to do more with the apparently more time in his/her hands. The individual involves himself/herself with more activities in and out of the office than usual as this appears to be supported by the adoption of flexibility measures in the workplace. The availability of technology anywhere which aids in the connectivity of people anytime further defines the boundaries between work and personal life (Aleton 2016). Work-life balance is the stability characterized by the balancing of an individual’s life complexity and dynamism with environmental and personal resources such as family, community, employer, profession, geography, information, economics, personality or values (Crooker et al, 2002, 389). The linkage of work and personal aspect of lives have always been emphasized. There are two explanations regarding the interconnectedness of work and life of work and life in the organizational setting: (1) the compensation effect Philippine Christian University Dasmariñas Campus Graduate School of Business and Management implies that employees tend to compensate for low work or personal life satisfaction by seeking contentment in the other domain, and (2) the spillover view that indicates that job satisfaction spills over into one’s work life and vice versa (Gibson, et al., 2006). Work-life balance is different for every individual in different stages of life. An individual who is fresh out from college and single would have a different notion of work-life balance compared with an individual who may be single but have certain obligations to his/her family and again different for a married individual with kids, more so for single parents (Johnson 2005). Traditionally, temporal terms of employment have been determined unilaterally by the employer according to their operational needs. In sectors with strong union representations, employees may have been able to negotiate terms for working time, but its formal provision was in the hands of the employers. And this remains so, despite the right to request flexible working introduced in 2005. There has been no formal expectation on employers to accommodate to the out-of-work need of employees. Any conflicts between home and work were expected to be resolved in the private domains of the employee with minimal interference to work. Management attitudes toward work-life conflicts can be surprisingly resistant to change (Aleton 2016). C. METHODS The study will undertake a qualitative research approach and will use survey and interviews in gathering the data. A set of survey questionnaires will be used along with random sampling to investigate the main cause of work-life Philippine Christian University Dasmariñas Campus Graduate School of Business and Management conflicts. The study will be conducted in DPWH Cavite 1st District Engineering Office, Trece Martires City, Cavite and the respondents of the study are the employees of the aforementioned office. They will be selected randomly and permission shall be pursued before the survey will be conducted. The study will use two sets of survey questionnaires for data gathering. The first set should be answered by the employees of DPWH Cavite 1st District Engineering Office, Trece Martires City, Cavite to asses the individual profiles of the respondents, the second questionnaire, which will be accomplished by the same respondents, evaluated the employees’ level of productivity in terms of work-life balance. The researcher will distribute the questionnaires to random DPWH employees for them to evaluate the level of productivity n work-life balance in their job as employees of DPWH.
