Impact of flexible scheduling on employee performance regarding stress and work-family conflict

Abstract
Stress, work-family conflicts and flexible scheduling are three of the most important elements in organizational studies. The focus of current study is to understand the effect of Stress, work-family conflicts and flexible scheduling on employee’s performance and also to understand whether flexible scheduling helps in reducing stress and work-family conflicts or not. A survey has also been conducted to strengthen the idea comprising of a sample of 70 employees from different organizations. 53 of them responded and the respond rate was 75%. Descriptive statistics is used to analyze the data. Results show that stress and work family conflict negatively affect the employee performance and flexible scheduling has a positive effect on employee performance. Primary study as well as literature review showed that flexible scheduling also helps in reducing stress and work-family conflicts. However, results are strongly based on the literature review i.e. secondary data.

Introduction
Work family balance is one of the most emerging concepts in the field of business and in the corporate world. Organizations are trying to reduce this conflict for the betterment of organization as well as for the employees. Western researchers have done a considerable work on this concept of work-family balance (Berg et al., 2003; Frone, 2003; Rossi, 2001; Marcinkus et al., 2007; Young, 1999). Actually work-family balance is used to reduce the work-family conflict. Normally work-family conflicts come into action when an employee cannot make a balance between his/her work and family.

Flexible scheduling which is an alternative work schedule as compared to regular work arrangement i.e. from 8:00am to 4:00pm; which have been in use for number of years. It is an alternative work arrangement which gives employees some relaxation so that they could complete the given assignment according to their own work schedule. Many organizations have adopted this arrangement to their work place. It is because of the fact that many of them believes that flexible work arrangement helps their employees to overcome the problem of conflict between their work and their family (Almer, et al., 2003; Cohen & Single, 2001, Hill, et al., 2001, Meyer, 1997). Most of the organizations adopted flexible scheduling practices and they have become more family-friendly because of the fact that the flexible work arrangements are common components of many family-responsive human resource policies (Glass & Estes, 1997; Glass & Finley, 2002; Grover & Crooker, 1995), and because of this kind of scheduling these organizations became more popular (Sara A. Rogier, et al. 2004).

Stress
Stress is also a very important factor in effecting the performance of the employees. Most of the previous researches show that stress has significant effect on the performance of the employee. It has negative effect on the employee performance like the work-family conflict. Previous researches show that flexible scheduling also help employees in reducing their stress. A Survey of “Members of World at Work and AWLP October”,( 2005) indicates that 58% of the respondents are of the opinion that flexible scheduling helps them to reduce their stress, only 11% gave a negative response and other 31% remained neutral.

US Survey
This study has another aspect of importance in the sense that every employer wants to increase the performance of his employees. As Flexible scheduling reduces burnout; A US Company found in its survey that flexible scheduling reduces the burnout of employees from 39% to 28% (Northwestern National Life Insurance Company, 1992).

Literature Review:
Human resource is the backbone of every organization. Researchers are trying their best to increase the performance of this main resource which are actually the employees of the organization. Many researches took place in this regard to know how to improve the performance of the employees and how to make the organization an employee friendly organization. Cahen & Single, (2001) argue that there is a lot of pressure on the organizations to become more family friendly. The basic thing behind this argument is that because of a family friendly organization people can make a balance between their family and work (Sara A. Rogier, et al., 2004).

In these days most of the organizations are working on this phenomenon of work-family conflict to retain their employees and also to improve their performance. Most of the previous researches have taken place to see the impact of flexible scheduling on organizational performance (Baltes, et al., 1999).

Stress is also damaging the performance of the employee. Many researches show that by reducing stress we can increase the performance of the organization. Increase in productivity depends on the phenomenon that when employee is free to work according to his/her own will without any stress then his/her performance and organization productivity will be increased (Baltes, et al., 1999; Pierce & Newstrom, 1980). It means lesser the stress greater the performance. A free mind without any stress and difficulty can do a job in a better way as compared to a stressed mind.

Researchers have also found out that organizational commitment becomes positive when there is a flexible time schedule is being adopted by the organization (Grover & Crooker, 1995; Scandura & Lankau. 1997). Those organizations which adopt a flexible work arrangement achieve very good reputation in the market and people are attracted towards such organizations. A research conducted by (Glass and Finley, 2002) indicates that flexible work schedule has positive effects on organizational commitment, retention and job satisfaction. Rau & Hyland, (2002) found in their research that organizations which are offering flexible scheduling are more attractive to the people as compared to other organizations which are not offering any kind of flexible scheduling to their employees. This shows that organizations which are providing flexible scheduling to their employees attract employees of other organizations from the market.

Flexible scheduling plays a vital role in decreasing the work family conflict and stress both of which are affecting the employee’s performance. Galinksy, et al., (1996) has found out in their research that the adoption of flexible scheduling at the work place will reduce the stress and ultimately will result in form of better performance. Almer & Kaplan, (2002) also suggests that flexible scheduling helps to overcome stress and burnout. All these studies show that stress and work-family conflict have significant effects on the employee’s performance and by reducing these two factors we can improve the performance of the employees.
A study took place by Meyer, (1997) also came to the decision that flexible scheduling at work place helps in reducing work-family conflict. Another study which was done by Hill (2001) also came to the decision that flexible scheduling helps to improve the work-family balance, which ultimately results in reducing the work-family conflict. From all above previous researches it is clear that work-family conflicts and stress are very significant in reducing the performance of employee. They negatively affect the performance of the employees. To reduce this negative effect of stress and work-family conflict many researchers suggested the flexible work arrangement which ultimately improves the performance of the employees.

Due to stress and work-family conflicts people feel it difficult to make a balance between the job and their social life. There are also so many other independent factors due to which we can reduce the stress and work-family conflicts. Social support for the women is very essential at the beginning of the business (Marcinkus et al., 2007; Frone et al., 1997). Social support helps to maintain balance between work and family affairs and diminishes stress (Cohen and Syme, 1985; Deelstra et al., 2003). In such countries where people feel bad for a women to have a job, social support is very much important for a women to continue her job. Moreover, in those organizations where there is a flexible schedule women can work more easily as compared to other organizations. Basically Work-family balance helps to reduce the work-family conflict (Frone, 2003; Rossi, 2001; Grzywacz and Marks, 2000). We have already discussed that flexible scheduling improves the work-family balance and this phenomenon ultimately results in the reduction of work-family conflicts. Many of the researchers believe that the said phenomenon increases the employee’s performance.

A Survey of Members of World at Work and AWLP, (October, 2005) on flexible work schedule indicates that 73% of the respondents agreed that flexible work schedule improves the quality of life for the employees as well as for their families. Only 6% disagree and 21% remained neutral. This indicates that when there is a good balance between the work and the family of an employee he and his family both will be satisfied. Hence there will be no conflicts.
In the same survey mentioned above (A Survey of Members of World at Work and AWLP October, 2005), results shows that 73% of the respondents agreed that flexible scheduling improves work-family balance. Only 7% of the respondent disagreed to this fact and 21% remained neutral.

Conclusion
Stress and work-family conflicts affect the employee performance in a negative way. Increase in stress and work-family conflicts reduce the employee performance while the flexible scheduling improves the employee performance and reduce the stress and family conflicts. Through all the above discussion it is clear that there is a strong relationship between stress, work-family conflicts, flexible scheduling and employee performance. We can conclude that by applying flexible work schedule we can reduce stress and work-family conflicts and increase the employee performance.

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