Work-Life Balance, Job Satisfaction, and The Moderating Role of Family-Supportive Supervisor Behaviors

"The work-life balance is a harsh reality for so many women, who are forced every day to make impossible choices. Do they take their kids to the doctor...and risk getting fired? Do they work weekends so they can afford to send their kids to better childcare...even though it means even less time with their families? Do they take another shift at work, so they can pay for piano lessons for their kids...even though it means they have to stop volunteering for the PTA? It just shouldn't be this difficult to raise healthy families". -  Michelle  Obama

"Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose"- Thomas Edison

Job Satisfaction, Work-Life Balance, and Job Performance

Work-life balance refers to the ability to balance one's professional obligations, family commitments, and other personal activities. It relates to an employee's perception of a healthy work-life balance  ,It describes how people perform or should fulfill their corporate and personal commitments in order to avoid conflict . People's professional, social, and family lives have been negatively impacted by changing work patterns and increased demand for household duties (Barling and Macewen, 1992). As a result, researchers proposed that an organization's human resource management adopt effective policies such as proper mentoring, support, flexible working hours, reducing workload, and many others that can lessen employees' work-life conflict .

What is the importance of work-life balance?

   Work-life integration Enhances mental health.

    Helps with physical health and productivity

A flexible work environment reduces employee stress, boosts job satisfaction, and encourages employees to practice healthy habits like exercising and eating nutritious foods. The following characteristics define a flexible work environment

Supervisory Attitudes Towards Families

Family-supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) are the emotional, instrumental, role-modeling, and innovative work-family management supporting behaviors offered by supervisors to sustain employee performance and happiness on and off the job. According to Clark et al. (2017), it is an employee's perception of their supervisor's positive attitude toward them. Formal or informal supervisory assistance is available (Achour et al., 2020). It is critical in developing flexible work arrangements.

Supervisory supportive behavior is crucial for meeting organizational objectives and achieving work-life balance. It has been shown to lessen work-family spillover (Garca-Cabrera et al., 2018) by increasing employee job satisfaction and autonomy and minimizing work pressure (Marescaux et al., 2020). FSSB-generated flexibility and independence help to reduce work-family conflict (Greenhaus et al., 2012) by giving employees more control over their jobs (Marescaux et al., 2020) and allowing them to balance work and family life (Heras et al., 2021). Employees who believe their managers care about their personal and professional lives are more likely to improve their performance and meet supervisory objectives (Rofcanin et al., 2018). In a university-based study, Achour et al. (2020) revealed how supervisory support positively moderates. 

References

Abdirahman, H. I. H., Najeemdeen, I. S., Abidemi, B. T., and Ahmad, R. (2020). The relationship between job satisfaction, work-life balance and organizational commitment on employee performance. Adv. Business Res. Int. J. 4, 42–52. doi: 10.24191/abrij.v4i1.10081

 Achour, Y., Ouammi, A., Zejli, D., and Sayadi, S. (2020). Supervisory model predictive control for optimal operation of a greenhouse indoor environment coping with food-energy-water nexus. IEEE Access 8, 211562–211575. doi: 10.1109/access.2020.3037222

 Aeknarajindawat, N., and Jermsittiparsert, K. (2020). Does organization justice influence the organization citizenship behavior, job satisfaction & organization outcomes? Syst. Rev. Pharm. 11, 489–496.

 Alias, E. S. B. (2021). Supervisor support as a moderator between flexible working arrangement and job performance–Malaysia evidence. Turk. J. Comput. Math. Educ. 12, 525–539.

 Allen, T. D., French, K. A., Dumani, S., and Shockley, K. M. (2020). A cross-national meta-analytic examination of predictors and outcomes associated with work–family conflict. J. Appl. Psychol. 105, 539–576. doi: 10.1037/apl0000442