Work-Life Balance Initiatives and Employees Retention: Experiences from Insurance Companies in India

Abstract

The paper is focused to assess the existing work-life balance initiatives taken by life and general insurance companies and to study the influence of work-life balance practices on employees retention. The survey has been carried out in life and general insurance companies in Kolkata, India with 16 statements of work-life balance (WLB) practices among 300 employees of managerial and supervisory cadre. Mean, Standard deviation, and Mann-Whitney U-Test have been performed in order to know the variation in WLB practices between life and general insurance companies and Ordinal Regression Analysis (PLUM) is applied to measure the impact of work-life initiatives on employees retention. The study found that the mean satisfaction/agreement score of life insurance employees is greater than general insurance employees for the eleven variables. The Mann Whitney U-test indicates that the response of life insurance employees varies from general insurance employees for nature of work, work overload, and training & development. The Pseudo R2 values (e.g. Nagelkerke = 50.8%; Cox and Snell= 42.8% and McFadden = 30.2%) show that 16variables of WLB initiatives explain a relatively higher proportion of the variation in employees retention. Further, the Wald test of significance traced five variables which are found to be statistically significant at 5% level. The outcome of OD is employee engagement perspectives arise based on the notion that work–life initiatives reduce stress, and increase personal and team resilience. This enables employees to cope with growing pressures from fast-paced environmental change in ways that are sustainable for their well-being and enhance the organisations performance.