Leadership-Related Factors Causing Heavy Workload: An Empirical Study among Sanitary Workers

Abstract

This quantitative-, empirical- and survey-based descriptive research has been undertaken in Tirunelveli city, Tamil Nadu, India, with the objective of analysing perception of sanitary workers towards leadership qualities of the housekeeping managers that cause heavy workload among them. To achieve the objective, the study has sampled 80 sanitary workers from selected leading private multi-speciality hospitals using both convenient and judgement sampling techniques and collected primary data using scheduled method with the help of structured questionnaire which was constructed based on personal observation and experience of the researcher in the field of hospital administration. The secondary data have been collected from books and journals. Percentage method which has been applied to analyse both demographic characteristics of the respondents and perception of the respondents towards qualities of the housekeeping managers has found that the factors, bias in workload allocation, not observing and enquiring about health condition, bias in work area allocation, taking revenge and purposefully assigning work, not allowing employees to rest in the course of work during tired, treating employees based on caste, community and religion, allocating work area without consent of the employees, preparing work schedule in bias, not introducing any advanced technology to replace manual work, not stopping or questioning other department employees when they assign work, behaving rudely and disrespectfully and not supplying adequate manpower have been strongly agreed by majority of the respondents. The factors, not listening to personal and health issues, not controlling seniors when they pass their work over shoulder of the juniors and not communicating properly about the tasks and how to perform it have been agreed by majority of the respondents. The study has given suitable suggestions to enrich leadership qualities and approach of the managers and thereby reduce heavy workload of the sanitary workers.