Impact of Workplace Flexibility on Employment Engagement
Chapter One
Objectives of the Study
The main objective of this study was to examine flexible working arrangement on employment engagement in Lagos Island Maternity Hospital in Lagos State, Nigeria.
- To investigate the effect of shift working arrangements on employment engagement in Lagos Island Maternity Hospital.
- To assess the effects of part time working on employment engagement in Lagos Island Maternity Hospital.
- To establish the effects of temporary contracts on employment engagement in Lagos Island Maternity Hospital.
- To determine the effects of flexi time on employment engagement in Lagos Island Maternity Hospital.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Conceptual Review
Concept of workplace flexibility
Workplace flexibility is defined as an alternative to the standard working day. It usually comprehends to organizational initiatives which enhance employees’ flexibility on the time and place where work has to be accomplished, and also various policies exerting influence changes have encouraged the introduction of workplace flexibility (Klindzic, 2019). Flexible working hour agreements have been described as an effective means of balancing job and other employee responsibilities (Dex, 2012).
The area of health and social care has incorporated numerous new and advanced methods of diagnosis, treatment and implementation of health care operation which made the same very demanding area for employees working in it. In view of workplace flexibility in health care sector, there is growing element of research and investigation on flexible working arrangements. In this regard, literary sources in context of the present topic are divided among two different school of thoughts with respect to impact of workplace flexibility on employee engagement. One school of thought emphasized on the positive outcomes and the other discuss the negative or unfavorable impacts of workplace flexibility on employee engagement. These literary debate between these two is discussed in the below section of this chapter particularly in context of health care and nursing area.
There has been a significant indication of positive outcomes for the employee and the organization. Workplace flexibility can be defined as ‘the ability of employees to make changes on where, when and the total time they would spend or engage in work-related tasks (Maben, 2014). Such flexible work practices have become widespread within organizations and are often used as part of the human resource strategy to attract, motivate and retain key talent. Government also encourages many employers to offer flexible working conditions, like flexi-hours, flexible or remote work places and part-time working options to their employees. In consequence, flexible working options have been offered by employers as the work condition for their employee (Robson, 2011).
Workplace flexibility, like telework, flexible work hours, and flexible workplaces are often used to help employees in balancing their family and work life (Lim &Tao, 2000). The mere existence of flexible working policies in particular is associated with strong positive outcomes for employees who worked for middle to large size organizations. According to Thomas and Ganister (2010), lower levels of work-family conflict were positively associated with the existence of flexibility support and policies like work schedule flexibility and supportive supervisors. While there is substantial literature review on the relationship between flexible working arrangement and work-family conflict, more evidence has been presented to prove the relationship between flexible working variables can influence outcomes for the individual and the organization, such as stress and work-family conflict (Madsen, 2006).
Employers’ flexible work strategies and employee’s flexible work preferences can complement each other. Policy analysts stress the importance of understanding and addressing gaps in employer-employee flexible work perspectives (Cohen, 2011).Flexible working practices are being promoted by governments, employers and unions as an important element of efforts to recruit and retain skilled employees and to improve the deployment of available nursing skills (Duffield et al., 2015). It has been cited as a means to retain older nurses in the workforce, and to retain new graduates. Flexible working practices are a particularly important issue in nursing, which is characterised by a highly feminised workforce and widespread workforce shortages.
It is significant to mention here that not all types of flexible work practices are suitable in all work environments. Service sector work requirements and schedules may be different from non-service sector. But in this regard, the options available to employees including those of health care may includeemployer Implication and job pool, seasonal work opportunities, flexible working hours/shifts, self-rota (self-scheduling of duties), part-time work, job sharing of employees, purchased leave arrangements, phased retirement, annualised hours contracts, zero hours contracts, working from home, career breaks for employees etc.(Estyn-Behar et al., 2010).
According to Jordan-Evans(2015), despite evidence that employers who offer flexible work practices are more likely to attract and retain skilled and valuable staff, there is evidence that the adoption of flexible work practices into nursing can be patchy, often ad hoc and reliant on the goodwill of individual managers and supervisors. In addition, many nurses report that workload pressures mean that taking standard leave entitlements, let alone pursuing more flexible work options, can be difficult and stressful, leaving their colleagues short staffed, and that access to continuing education and professional development can be hampered. Research in the UK has identified that this has contributed to low uptake of organizational and statutory based family leave policies. In addition, some unions have cautioned that the adoption of flexible working practices has sometimes resulted in increased flexibility for employers, but reduced conditions and ability to control working hours for employees (Griffiths et al., 2014).
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Design
Research design spurn the procedures and method used in order to attain the desired information. Adams, Khan, Raeside and White (2017) argued that the research design provides a blueprint or a master plan of research since it fulfills the purpose and test the hypothesis. It guides the method of collecting and analyzing data. The research used descriptive research design. A descriptive research design study was considered based on the ability to describe the features of a specific individual, or of a group. There is control of variables in this design, the researcher has to report the events or data as it is collected (Kothari, 2018).
Population of the Study
Mugenda and Mugenda (2013) argued that a population is group of elements, people or phenomenal with some common characteristics. According to Kombo and Tromp, (2016) claimed that a target population is a population in which information are retrieved from. This population helps in determining whether sampled cases are eligible or ineligible for the study. According to the Quality Manual of Lagos Island Maternity Hospital there 210 employees across all departments. This forms the target population.
The target population will be top management, doctors, clinical officers, nurses and subordinate staff. Below is a target population.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS, DISCUSSION AND INTERPRETATION
Respondent Analysis and Discussion
The researcher tested the reliability of the answered questionnaire and found out the following results.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Summary
The responds rate was 99(95.2%) which was overwhelming high enough to be reliable to the study. Punch (2015) noted that the respondents should be over 80% to consider it as reliable. The age bracket of most of the respondent was between 26-45 years, this is the youth age where they are energetic. The gender was significantly equal in distribution though the male counterpart were still a head in representation over the ladies. The results also indicated high job turnover where the highest number of respondents were between the ages of 1 to 5 years followed by 6 to 10 years but as the age of a person increase the more, they move out of the employment. The highest group were the diploma followed by degree graduate in academic qualification. On job position clinical, subordinate staff, nurses, top management and doctors represented the order of representation of the responded. The highest term of employment come from permanent worker then temporary workers. Casual and temporary worker was the least in the order. Meaning that the hospital relied to great extend the permanent employees.
Conclusion
The study noted that work shift, part time and temporary contract affected significantly contributed positively to the employment engagement in an organization. It was noted that flexi time was not significant to employment engagement and positive contributed to engagement. The structure and management were the main reason why flexi time may be considered not to be effective in the general engagement. Hence there is room for more studies. It was noted that the highest of the four strategies was temporary contract followed by work shift and lastly part time.
The engagement of the organization as measure on the basis of increase in productivity on number of employees was significant. The study also found that customer satisfaction was affected slightly positively by customer care staff. Job flexibility was very important to job satisfaction. Employee turnover was to great extent important in engagement based on movement of in and out of job. The study identified that there were other many factors since 22.9% of employment engagement were predicted by flexi working strategy. Other factors were not assessed some include motivation, incentive, training, development among others.
Recommendation
The study recommended on the use of temporary contract more on organization as one strategy of flexi work. Temporary contracts are a source of cheap labor as well as source of temporary employees. In areas that are very important and essential other flexi work arrangement are preferred that temporary contracts working arrangement.
Also work shift and part time are advocated to be a positive contribution in employment strategies. Flexi time need proper scheduling, period of work or task assessment method to evaluate the amount of work done. Job flexibility was considered to be significant in increase of engagement as well as employ turnover.
Hospital despite using night shift and day shift they ought to develop programs that are enable flexi time with correct scheduling people can come according to the needed time. Flexi will enable development of individuals and avoid fatigues created through non-flexible schedule. The main reason why flexi working arrange does not work well is because there are poor scheduling processes and lack of cooperation between the organization in having the same organization vision and mission. Flexi programs need to examine for its viability and benefit to an organization mostly in hospital since nurses’ work both at night and day time.
Recommendation on further study
The study recommended that flexi time should be assessed on terms of its implementation to positive employment engagement. Also, other factors that affect employment engagement should also be assessed. It is important to maintain a health and satisfied workforce through the best employment strategy to ensure high production.
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