Impact of Flexible Work Arrangements on Job Satisfaction Among the Female Teachers in the Higher Education Sector

Mayeesha Fairuz Rahman

doi:10.7176/ejbm/11-18-11

Abstract

A remarkable growth of female participation has been observed in the job market of Bangladesh over the past few years. The number of female employees and their contribution is likely to increase further with the pace of the country’s development in terms of the literacy rate and employment scope. Among the several thriving sectors of the country, the significance of the education sector especially in the tertiary level is highlighted by the noble contribution they make to the economy. Due the rapid increase in the number of private universities over the past few years in the country, quite a large number of women have chosen to embark on this field with the hopes of establishing themselves as academicians. However, one of the existing impediments which obstructs several women to reach their zenith professionally is rigid company policies specifically lack of flexibility. The importance of Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA) has recently gained the attention of academicians as well as practitioners to improve employee performance. Since participation of women in a noble sector like education is highly desired; hence, the present study aims to investigate the relationship between Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA), Employee Job satisfaction and Work-life Balance of the female teachers in the higher education sector of the country. Based on the analysis of diverse literature from the secondary data, hypotheses were developed and in order to test those, primary data had been collected, responses from 203 female teachers were analyzed through SPSS. The findings have confirmed that FWA have positive and significant impact both on Employee Job Satisfaction and Work-life Balance as well as Work-life Balance has a positive impact on Job Satisfaction. However, one of the elements of FWA, namely, Compressed Workweek, is found to have values lower than the significance level after performing regression analysis. Keywords: Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA), Work-life Balance, Job Satisfaction, Female employees and Education Sector DOI : 10.7176/EJBM/11-18-11 Publication date :June 30 th 2019

Highlights

Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA) and family policy practices to improve work-life balance have become imperative in the context of human resource management since the 1970s (Paull, Omari and Sharafizad, 2009)
The questionnaire comprised of three segments sections with the first focusing on the background information of the respondents, whereas the second part focused on the main components of FWA, work-life balance and their job satisfaction
It can be stated that, if organizations strongly incorporates FWA the employees would be able to maintain a balance between work and life which will be beneficial for the female employees and would lead to higher job satisfaction

Summary

Introduction

Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA) and family policy practices to improve work-life balance have become imperative in the context of human resource management since the 1970s (Paull, Omari and Sharafizad, 2009). Integrating flexible work arrangements do aid in boosting employee objectives, these will in turn help the organizations to attain their long term goals more effectively and efficiently. In order to cope up with the dynamic business world and employee needs, firms are continually seeking for ways to develop a culture that facilitates the employees to manage work-life balance which will lead to higher job satisfaction and maximized employee productivity. It is generally perceived that Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA) can satisfy all the employees, when women are concerned, it is presumed that these factors will substantially aid the several working women to strike a balance between their personal and professional lives. According to Byron (2005), women are likely to benefit the most from FWA; as a result, this phenomenon merits closer attention within this literature

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