A study on quality of work life amongst employees working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ,

Management Science Letters 10 (2020) 1287–1294 Contents lists available at GrowingScience Management Science Letters homepage: www.GrowingScience.com/msl A study on quality of work life amongst employees working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Zafrul Allama* and Abdul Rahman Shaika a Assistant Professor, College of Business Administration, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia CHRONICLE ABSTRACT Article history: Received: October 26, 2019 Received in revised format: November 21 2019 Accepted: November 23, 2019 Available online: November 23, 2019 Keywords: QWL Autonomy Job satisfaction Commitment Relationships It is a well-known fact that quality of work life (QWL) is considered as a philosophy to make the people more effective at workplace by understanding their psychological well-being and involvement or attachment. The main objective of the current investigation was to understand the degree of the QWL amongst the employees working in the Saudi Arabia. The random sampling method was applied to select the data from employees working in the public and private sectors. The QWL scale and biographical information sheet were used to gather the information from the employees. Based on the research objective and design of the investigation, factorial analysis, Cronbach’s alpha value for reliability check and other statistical techniques were used to explore the facts of the data. The results show that six factors such as autonomy, inter-group relation, recognition, economic benefits, self-respect and supervisory relations were most important determinants of QWL; married and public sector employees found to have high mean score on QWL as compared with their counterparts and majority of employees in the company were having low level of quality of work life. Certain mechanism was discussed to enhance the QWL of the employees to make the organization more effective and viable. © 2020 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada 1. Introduction In the era of competitive environment, management and social scientists are giving more attention towards the QWL as a strategy or the philosophy to enhance the level of attachment, commitment, involvement, psychological well-being and retention of the employees. Now-a-days human resource is considered as a backbone of the organization, thereby it is required to treat these employees with full dignity and respect. The concept of “Quality of work life (QWL)” came into existence after Davis (1972) work, which has been carried out in USA. The literature available on quality of work life seems to be not too much old concept and described as the overall organizational inputs required to generate organizational effectiveness and better individual performance. QWL can be described as “overall quality of human experiences in the workplace”; can be explained that QWL is the degree of goodness in occupation and workplace conditions which might lead to holistic satisfaction of workforce; hence, the effectiveness of the organization would be established. However, QWL is varying between people to people and their understanding. Albeit, Walton (1975) conceptualized that “Quality of Work Life is the degree to which members of work organization perceive that they are able to satisfy important personal needs through their experiences in organization”. Another researcher, Lippitt (1977) stated that “Quality of Work Life (QWL) as the degree to which work provides an opportunity for an individual to satisfy a wide variety of personal need to survive with some security, to interact with others, to have a sense of personal usefulness, to be recognized for achievements and to have an opportunity to improve * Corresponding author. E-mail address: (Z. Allam) © 2020 by the authors; licensee Growing Science, Canada doi: 10.5267/j.msl.2019.11.029 1288 one’s skills and knowledge”. However, Harrison (1985) defined as “QWL is the degree to which the working organization contributes to material and psychological well-being of its members”. Moreover, Sirgy et al. (2001) viewed “QWL as employee satisfaction with a variety of needs by means of resources, activities, and outcomes stemming from participation in the workplace”. It is crystal clear from the above definitions that holistic understanding of the concept of QWL might enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization and will contribute in achieving the specific goal. 2. Review of Literature QWL has the mutual association with involvement and satisfaction (Elisaveta, 2006; Allam, 2007; Allam & Harish 2010; Al Kahtani & Allam, 2014; Nair & Subash, 2019) in terms of contents of the job and working environment of the workplace. However, researchers opined that improving the QWL is an indicator to increase the efforts through motivation to accomplish the mission of the organization (Allam, 2017a) and initiate engagement techniques amongst employees for better performance to have QWL (Allam, 2017b). Quality of work life is a principle or philosophy, which describes that human resource, is one of the pillars of the organization as they are law-abiding, responsible, proficient and trust worthy thereby, they should be honored with full respect and dignity. Numerous studies have been initiated to understand QWL with different variables among employees working in various sectors (Ganapathi, 2016; Allam, 2019a; Afsar, 2014; Ali & Zilli, 2013; Sachinidis & Bouris, 2008). Nair (2013) suggested that QWL not only includes job satisfaction, relationship with colleagues and pay but also represents a sense of well-being that can be seen in their lives. Elovainio et al. (2005) observed that perceiving wicked QWL most likely to decrease performance and motivation and intention to leave the organization during the initial stage in their career. Nanjundeswaraswamy and Swamy (2013) carried out a study among private technical institution employees and aimed to measure QWL with the help of facets such as autonomy of work; organization culture and climate; facilities; work environment; adequacy of resources; job satisfaction & security; compensation & rewards; training & development and relation & cooperation. They revealed in their study that correlation existed between QWL of non-teaching and teaching members. Training and development and work environment were observed less related with QWL among both categories of employees whereas, adequacy of resources and compensation and rewards were found reverse i.e. more associated with QWL among two categories of staff. Ganapathi (2016) conducted a study among employees working in the construction company. He found that QWL is being influenced by salary, work environment, job security and personal growth. Thereby, he recommended that deficiency needs to be addressed to make them satisfy at workplace to perform in a lucrative manner. Many investigators found that QWL and its various facets such as working condition, capacity at work, appropriate & fair salary (...truncated)