The effects of family work conflict on employee productivity among night shift employees’ in a private health care facility.

Abstract

A person is made up of various roles, a wife or a husband, a parent, a child, a sibling, a support structure and an employee. These various roles can cause conflict among each other. The age-old conflict is between a persons’ family life and their work roles; this is especially true for Night Shift employees’. Family-Work Conflict occurs when an employee’s family life interferes with their duties at work. Night shift for employees is a problematic issue faced by both the company and the employees. Both the company and employees understand that an unproductive employee is detrimental to the patients’ health. The role conflict between family roles and work roles become an issue when employees’ do not get enough rest to perform their work duties efficiently and therefore affecting both patient and employee health. With any private health care facility, the priority is their patients, but the need to look after staff is quickly becoming a concern as this will, in turn, affect the patient. This study will look at how family work conflict can affect an employee’s role at work. Research shows employees with a supportive family will have reduced Family-work conflict compared to those employees with less supportive family. This research will also look at other methods employers could use to curb the effects of work-family conflict on employee productivity. A quantitative approach has been used. Questionnaires have been administered to night shift employees to ascertain the impact in which family life impacts their work roles, as well as to identify if employees have found ways of dealing with this. A population of 75 permanent employees were used, a sample of 52 was selected through stratified sampling and a response rate of 80% was achieved. Results show that night shift employees do experience family-work conflict, but each demographic experience’s it to a certain degree. Females, parents with children between the ages of 11 and 17, and parents with 1 child, experiences family-work conflict more than other demographics. The need for rest and sleep while on shift was evident from all demographics. Recommendations from the research indicates that the organization can support employee through providing time for them to rest, marketing of wellness programs and providing day-care for children.