Current Organizational Problem

Work-Life Balance Does Leisure Time Affect Work Performance? Employees are the most valuable asset that any organization has in their possession. Many times it is difficult for employees to balance their obligations of work, yet still maintain a fulfilling life outside of the workplace. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia recognizes the importance of maintaining a healthy work and home life balance. This research measures the ability to detach from work to get quality leisure time and its impact on employees.

The results found that at this organization workers did not have the ability to recover during leisure time. Suggestions were made for improving the situation at the healthcare facility. Does Leisure Time Affect Work Performance? Introduction Employees are the most valuable asset that any organization has in their possession. Many times it is difficult for employees to balance their obligations of work, yet still maintain a fulfilling life outside of the workplace. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia recognizes the importance of maintaining a healthy work and home life balance.

Healthcare is a high stress environment and employees are susceptible to high levels of burnout. Employees that can successfully balance their work and home life are more productive and efficient on the job. Patients receive better quality of care when workers are not burnout and tired while a work. This research will explore the work-life balance program at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Many of these concepts can be applied to other organizations who wish to improve employee productivity and reduce job related stress in their workforce.

In the past, employers paid no attention to work stress in their employees. What the employees did on their free time was their own business, as long as they showed up for work and did their job. However, recently companies have begun to realize that one cannot truly separate their work from the home environment. There is much written about how to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

This has led to a rise in companies that coach other companies about how to help their employees maintain a healthy work and life balance. However, despite their popularity, there is little research on maintaining the work-life balance in terms of academic studies. This study will explore research that is available on this topic and will conduct an action research study to explore the topic further.

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was chosen as the target organization because it is a high stress environment, making the ability to maintain a work and life balance important to the quality of care that patients receive. Hospital workers that are fresh and relatively stress free will provide a more positive environment for the development of patient relationships than those that are stressed and tired. Hospital workers that are refreshed will also be less likely to make potentially harmful and costly mistakes.

Maintaining a work- life balance is an issue of quality in the hospital setting. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has begun a program that directly addresses the issue of employees maintaining a healthy work and life balance. Action research is relevant to the topic because finding a way to help employees improve their work life balance will have a positive affect on patient outcomes in the hospital. When the nurse enters the floor, the children pick up on nonverbal cues, sometimes more so than the spoken word.

The following will explore existing research on the topic of maintaining a work and life balance that allows staff to perform at their best when dealing with this special and fragile population. A Culture of Workaholics Part of the concern for the inability to maintain a work and life balance is that Americans have become a culture of workaholics. If someone asks an American how they define themselves, more often not they will name their occupation as opposed to any other attribute of themselves.

Americans consider hard work and determination to be a positive attribute. Corporations will accept nothing less than complete dedication from their employees. However, studies are beginning to emerge that indicate that this may not be the best way to motivate employees in to create the best possible workforce. In the past, little to no attention was paid to the work-life balance. Now this topic is beginning to draw some attention and is currently a great debate in the mass media.

Downturns in the economy and the global economy have created a situation where companies must utilize every resource available them to maintain a competitive advantage. This means that employees must often work longer and harder than they did in the past. Companies expect more and employees must be willing to give it or they risk losing their job. Advances in communication make the problem even worse. It is easy for employee to take there work home with them.

The boss can text employees after hours or call them, even during family time or leisure time. This creates a situation where employee may feel that they never leave work. This research will explore academic studies on the topic and the importance of maintaining a work-life balance. The following literature review will explore the most recent information on maintaining a work- life balance. The first resource that we will explore examines how mood relates to how the employee sees work events.

The study also explores how they feel in relation to job performance. Rothbard and Wilk (2007) explored how mood at the beginning of the workday affected subsequent events. They found that the employees mood at thebeginning of the day has an impact on how they perceive the moods of others, including customers and fellow workers. Those that were in a good mood performed higher quality work than those who began their day in a negative mood.

The study found that negative mood at the beginning of the day had a direct effect on productivity. Mood was a mediator of the events of the rest of the day. In a study by Sonnetag (2012), the ability to psychologically detach from work during leisure time was explored. The study is important for Children's Hospital workers as they often experience extreme compassion for theie patients. If something at work was particularly disturbing, they may not be able to disengage from work.

Working in a hospital can be traumatic and sometimes it may be difficult to let go. The ability to disconnect from work and not think about job-related issues when they are way from the job had an affect on the amount of satisfaction that they feel with their lives. The study found that those that can detach from work experience fewer psychological strain symptoms, while they are still completely engaged at work. The ability to detach from work has a direct correlation to their mood.

The study also found a direct correlation between the ability to detach from work during off-hours and job performance. The study also found that negative work environments decrease the ability to detach from work during off-hours. A positive work environment makes it easier for employees to forget about work and enjoy their leisure time activities, which in turn, has a positive affect on reducing job-related stress and on increasing productivity. Berg & Grant (2010) explore the issue of unanswered "callings" in life during and out of work hours.

These authors refer to the phenomenon that many people feel they are working in a job that is unrelated to their true purpose in life. As result, many of them pursue what they feel as their real calling in life outside of work hours. The authors found that when a worker feels their workplaces their true calling, it has a positive effect on mood and productivity.

When they feel they must pursue their true callings outside of work, it can lead to regret and negative feelings at work, which in turn had an impact on productivity at work. Grant, Little & Phillips, (n.d.) explored the affect of personal involvement in the chosen field or workplace. Those that felt personally involved in the work they do often took their work home and were less likely to be able to detach from it.

However, when the employee had a personal involvement in their work, it had a positive affect on job satisfaction and productivity. Demorouti, Taris, & Bakker (2007) found that problems at home have a spillover effect on concentration at work and that this lack of concentration had a negative impact on work productivity and performance. When workers cannot recover at home it has a negative affect at work. In addition, the authors found that when work begins to spiral downward, it has a negative affect on the home domain as well.

This research supported the need for workplaces to provide and facilitate recovery for employees in their off hours. The work of Binnewies, Sonnentag, & Mojza (2009) supported findings of many of the other studies found during this review of literature on the work-life balance. They found that when one recovered and felt positive about their work during leisure time, they experienced increased task performance over a six-month time span. Positive work reflections predicted an increase in positive work behavior and organizational citizenship.

These results were unrelated to actual work performance, but were based entirely on the feelings of the employee and what they thought about work during their off hours. Fullick, Grindey & Morris et al. (2009) found that in employees that are involved in shift-work, gender and the amount of hours worked were found to be predictors of the amount of energy left to enjoy leisure-time activities. Males spent more energy than females during their leisure time.

The more energy the worker spent outside of work, the better able they were to disengage from work. Those who spent more energy also tended to have fewer sleep problems. Those that had fewer sleep problems and spent more energy also had fewer domestic-related problems. The same findings did not hold true for female shift workers. Sleep destruction was found to be a major problem for shift workers.

The literature agrees that quality Leisure-time in the ability to balance work and other areas of life are important predictors of work performance, attitude, and productivity. The ability to disengage from work was found to be an important factor in avoiding burnout. This research is based on the findings of the literature review regarding the importance of quality leisure-time in their ability to provide better patient care while at work.

The purpose of this study will be to provide a view of how workers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia spend their leisure time and the quality of their leisure time experiences. Methodology Theoretical Basis Sufficient evidence was found in the literature review to support the need to assess the quality of employees work and life balance in relation to their productivity while at work.

The results of this study will help to improve programs designed to provide employees opportunities to better balance work and home life with the ultimate goal of making them more productive health care workers while at work. This study will make an important contribution to the body of work as a whole as it will demonstrate that methods used in the literature review can be applied to an organization to help achieve the desired improvements. This study will answer several research questions.

The first is, "what is the state of the quality of leisure-time among staff members at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia?" The second is, "What can be done to improve the quality of leisure-time at the hospital?" Sample Population This study will utilize a sample of 200 employees in various positions at the hospital. To be eligible for the study workers must have been with the hospital at least one year. Workers will be various age groups, professional backgrounds, and both male and female. Workers will indicate their demographics on the questionnaire.

Demographic information will be provided in the final study results,. This study will use a random sampling technique and the researcher will have little control over the final demographic profile of the study participants, with the exception of limiting the study to those that have been with the hospital one year or longer. Procedures This research will involve a survey questionnaire that has been developed by the research.

Questionnaires will be distributed at the front desk and employees will be able to take one of the surveys and return it to the receptionist. When someone returns a survey, the receptionist will ask them how long they have been with the company. Only those that have been with the company over one year will receive a survey questionnaire. The survey will be available for one month. The receptionist will collect the surveys and put them in an envelope.

The researcher will return to collect the surveys on the designated date. To encourage participation in the study, when a survey is returned, the participant will receive a coupon good for one free meal at the hospital cafeteria. This incentive has been pre-approved by executive management. The study was found to be valuable to the organization, therefore executive management felt that they should support the efforts. Data Analysis Data analysis will entail descriptive statistics.

The results of the study will be analyzed using frequency distribution and presented using tables and graphs. Various demographic groups will be cross tabulated to determine that there is any correlation or bias that is the result of the sample population. This method will also allow the researcher to determine if any particular group or demographic is responsible for the results obtained on the survey. Data will be analyzed statistically using quantitative research methods and the results will be reported accordingly.

Results All 200 surveys were answered and returned by the designated time frame. It is suspected that the lunch coupons were responsible for the successful response rate of the survey. Nearly 73% of the survey respondents were female, largely consisting of the nursing staff. This skewed response rate is largely due to the overall employee ratio of women to men in the hospital. Although the hospital has a nondiscriminatory policy, they tend to get higher ratios of female as opposed to male job applicants.

The ratio of male to female applicants in this study is significant because it differs from results obtained my studies in the literature review. Studies in the literature review found that men had significantly easier times disengaging from work than females. The results obtained by the study may be a result of gender bias in the sample population.

Another study that focuses on an all male population of hospital staff and that compares it to a female only population of hospital staff would have to be conducted to determine the effect of gender bias on the study results.

How would you rate the quality of your leisure time? How often do you think about work, when you are not at work? Do you ever miss out on quality time with your family due to work obligations? The results of the study demonstrate a pattern in key questions that indicates inadequate use of leisure time. Staff indicates that they often loose quality time with their family due the work obligations. They work long hours and indicated that they were not happy with the amount of time spent at work.

They often think about work when they are not working, which means they do not have the ability to detach themselves from work. Work stress follows them home and does not allow them time to recuperate between shifts. Rsearch has demonstrated that this inability to recuperate between shifts results in long-term stress and lost productivity at work. It leads to burnout and job dissatisfaction. Surprisingly, results were split as to whether workers felt able to balance their work and home life.

However, the interpretation of this question may not a been clear. This question was referring to a feeling of balance and lack of stress. However, in light of consistency and other responses to the questionnaire, it appears that the employees interpreted this question to mean that they could handle the workload of both work-life and home life. Other questions indicated that work got in the way of leisure time. When work stress eads to the inability to relax, this is not achieving work-life balance.

The implications of the study will be discussed further in the Conclusions section of the study. Conclusions The results of this study indicate serious problems within the hospital. Workers are being overtaxed at work and are now unable to thoroughly recuperate in their off-hours. Literature indicated that this type of situation leads to long-term stress, health problems, absenteeism, high turnover rates, and poor job satisfaction. It is the goal of this health care agency to improve these working conditions.

Staff that is overstressed and unable to balance work and life will lead to poor patient relations, mistakes, and an overall lack of quality in the work that they perform. Staff indicated that flexible work shifts, as well as time-off for family engagements would help them to feel less stressed. Due to the need to maintain staffing levels, flextime is not always possible. However, it is possible to work out the possibility for trading shifts with another staff member to allow for family time.

The details of such a program would have to be worked out and supervisors should always have the final say in terms of time off, but employees indicated that this type of arrangement would solve many of their problems. It is recognized that the nursing profession is a high stress environment. It is not uncommon for nurses not to be able to detach from the work environment once they get home. Nurses, by their very nature are caring and compassionate.

During the course of their work day they see many tragedies and have a strong desire to help their patients. However, when the nurse.