ABSTRACT:
The most
valuable asset of an organization is human resources which plays an important
role in the organizations success. Various strategies have been adopted to
retain the human resources but still it is a stumbling block. In several
studies it has been identified that Quality of Work Life (QWL) is gaining the
momentum as it is considered as one of the remedy for all kinds of
organizational ailment. The paper attempts to know the relationship among the
identified variables in QWL, IR & Employee Performance. The study is based
on a sample survey of 70 employees at BHEL, Hyderabad. A questionnaire comprising
of 10 variables with the help of Likert scale was used. A positive relation was
observed among the identified variables of Quality of Work Life, Industrial
Relations & Employee Performance. Globalization has changed the preferences
of the organizations as well as the employees from Union-management to Employee
Relations. Every organization should enhance the efforts towards employee
health and safety (EHS) measures and provide healthy and competitive work
environment.
Key words:
Quality of Work Life (QWL), Employee Performance, stumbling block, EHS measures
1.
INTRODUCTION
Human Resources
Management comprises a set of policies intended to maximize organizational
integration and flexibilitythrough commitment of employees and resultant
quality of the work they perform (Guest, 1987).The objective of HRM is to
recruit, utilize and retain an able and motivated workforce by maintaining
desirable working relationships among all the members of the organization. To
achieve this objective, organizations should provide better Quality of Work
Life (QWL).
Quality of Work
Life has been understood as the quality of relationship between employees and
the total working conditions in the organization, which promote individual
learning and development as well as provide individuals with influence and
control over what they do and how they do it.QWL was first introduced in 1972
during an International Labor relations Conference, but its origins can be
tracedto the legislations enacted in the early 20th century, followed by the
unionization movement in the 1930s and 1940s to protect employees from
job-injury and to eliminate hazardous working conditions. Further, managerial
emphasis on QWL has been influenced bythe development of several theories by
psychologists proposing a positive relationship between morale and productivity
during the 1950s and 1960s. This lead to the expansion of QWL beyond its original
conceptualization focused on providing safe working conditions to features of
the workplace that can affect employee productivity and satisfaction, such as
reward systems, work flows, management style and physical work environment.
The
aim of HRM is to integrate human resources with strategy and thereby increase
profitability through better QWL.The function of Industrial Relations is to
deal with the collective aspects of employment relationshipwhereas HRM manages
the individual aspects of the employee relationship. Therefore both HR and IR are necessary to
achieve QWL.
2. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
a. Tofind
therelationship amongidentified variables of Quality of Work Life (QWL),
Industrial Relations (IR) and Employee performance.
b. To
understand the effect of identified variables in Quality of Work Life (QWL) and
Industrial Relations (IR) on Employee performance.
3. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
According to Taylor
(1979), the essential components of QWLcan be classified into extrinsic job
factors and intrinsic job factors; the former refer to wages, working hours and
working conditions, while the latter refers to the nature of work itself.Taylor
suggested that QWL concepts vary fromorganizationto organization.
Robbins
(1989) defined QWL as a process by which an organization
responds to employee needs by developing mechanisms to allow them to share
fully in making the decisions that design their lives at work.
According to Clegg
(1979), IR is the study of governing employment. In a wider sense,IR is
“the relation between an employee and an employer in the course of running an
industry and may project itself to spheres which may transgress to the areas of
quality of control, marketing, price fixation and disposition of profits among
others” (C. K. Jhori, 1969).
This paper focuses on
collective aspects of quality of work life and industrial relations. The
dimensions used to measure QWL are: employee health and safety (EHS) measures,
recognition, fringe benefits, and infrastructure facilities. The variables used
for IR are: recognition of union, collective bargaining and employee relations.
Employee performance factors are job security, career growth and compensation.
4.
RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY
The
study is empirical in nature and has been conducted in BHEL, Hyderabad. It used
a well-structured questionnaire to collect primary data from 70 randomly
sampled respondents.The survey usedLikert type scales. To complement the
primary data, secondary data was collected from research studies, books,
various published journals, websites and online articles. The data analysisused
techniques of correlation and multiple regressions with the help of SPSS.
5. DATA ANALYSIS
The data analysis proceeded in two
parts: firstly, to identify the relationship between the factors of QWL, IR and
employee performance factors. This part usedcorrelation techniques. Secondly, to
identify the variables of QWL and IRthose have more impact onemployee performance.
This partused regression analysis.
|
Table: 1 -
Scale-wise Descriptive Statistics
|
|
Variables
|
N
|
Range
|
Minimum
|
Maximum
|
Mean
|
Std. Deviation
|
Variance
|
|
Recognition
|
70
|
3
|
2
|
5
|
3.74
|
.863
|
.745
|
|
EHS measures
|
70
|
3
|
2
|
5
|
4.04
|
.751
|
.563
|
|
Fringe benefits
|
70
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
1.79
|
.413
|
.171
|
|
Infrastructure Facilities
|
70
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
1.89
|
.320
|
.103
|
|
Recognition of unions
|
70
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
1.74
|
.440
|
.194
|
|
Collective Bargaining
|
70
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
1.73
|
.448
|
.201
|
|
Employee Relationship
|
70
|
3
|
2
|
5
|
4.00
|
.851
|
.725
|
|
Job Security
|
70
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
1.94
|
.234
|
.055
|
|
Career Growth
|
70
|
4
|
1
|
5
|
3.37
|
.995
|
.990
|
|
Compensation
|
70
|
2
|
3
|
5
|
4.00
|
.538
|
.290
|
|
Valid N (listwise)
|
70
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Table
1shows the mean, standard deviation and variances of 10 variables
independently. Out of these variables it has been observed that Recognition,
employee relationship and career growthexhibitedhighervariance and thus reflect
the potential to be related to employee performance.
|
Table:2 –CorrelationsMatrix
|
|
|
Recognition
|
EHS
measures
|
Fringe
benefits
|
Infrastructure
Facilities
|
Recognition
of unions
|
Collective
Bargaining
|
Employee
Relationship
|
Job
Security
|
Career
Growth
|
Compensation
|
|
Recognition
|
|
1
|
.845**
|
.615**
|
.521**
|
.663**
|
.529**
|
.848**
|
.501**
|
.872**
|
.749**
|
|
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
EHS
measures
|
|
.845**
|
1
|
.731**
|
.683**
|
.692**
|
.596**
|
.930**
|
.592**
|
.871**
|
.825**
|
|
|
.000
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
Fringe
benefits
|
|
.615**
|
.731**
|
1
|
.688**
|
.888**
|
.777**
|
.824**
|
.471**
|
.690**
|
.651**
|
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
Infrastructure
Facilities
|
|
.521**
|
.683**
|
.688**
|
1
|
.611**
|
.488**
|
.691**
|
.685**
|
.680**
|
.672**
|
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
Recognition
of unions
|
|
.663**
|
.692**
|
.888**
|
.611**
|
1
|
.743**
|
.773**
|
.418**
|
.684**
|
.611**
|
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
Collective
Bargaining
|
|
.529**
|
.596**
|
.777**
|
.488**
|
.743**
|
1
|
.684**
|
.265*
|
.620**
|
.541**
|
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
.000
|
.027
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
Employee
Relationship
|
|
.848**
|
.930**
|
.824**
|
.691**
|
.773**
|
.684**
|
1
|
.583**
|
.872**
|
.791**
|
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
Job
Security
|
|
.501**
|
.592**
|
.471**
|
.685**
|
.418**
|
.265*
|
.583**
|
1
|
.591**
|
.461**
|
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.027
|
.000
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
Career
Growth
|
|
.872**
|
.871**
|
.690**
|
.680**
|
.684**
|
.620**
|
.872**
|
.591**
|
1
|
.866**
|
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
.000
|
|
Compensation
|
|
.749**
|
.825**
|
.651**
|
.672**
|
.611**
|
.541**
|
.791**
|
.461**
|
.866**
|
1
|
|
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
.000
|
|
|
**.
Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
*.
Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
a.
Listwise N=70
|
As shown in Table 2, the variable
of EHS measure under QWL factor is positively correlated with other variables
listed in the table and is significant at 0.01 levels. Employee relationship
under Industrial relations factorshowed strong correlation with all other
variables. Career growth shows significant correlation with the majority of
variables. Rest of the variables like recognition, fringe benefits,
infrastructure facilities, and recognition of unions, collective bargaining,
job security and compensation projects moderate or weak correlation at this
significancelevel (0.05).According to Field (2005), correlation coefficient is
higher than 0.8 reflect the presence of multicollinearity. As presented in
Table 2, Multicollinearity existsbetween the QWL factors and IR factors.
Table: 3- Regression summaries
|
Model
|
Dependent
variable
|
Independent
variables
|
R
|
R2
|
Adjusted
R2
|
|
I
|
Job security
|
Infrastructure
Facilities, Recognition of unions, Fringe benefits, EHS measures
|
.715a
|
.512
|
.481
|
|
II
|
Career growth
|
Infrastructure
Facilities, Recognition of unions, Fringe benefits, EHS measures
|
.715a
|
.512
|
.481
|
|
III
|
Compensation
|
Infrastructure
Facilities, Recognition of unions, Fringe benefits, EHS measures
|
.847a
|
.717
|
.699
|
|
IV
|
Job security
|
Employee
Relationship, Collective Bargaining, Recognition of unions
|
.612a
|
.374
|
.346
|
V
|
Career growth
|
Employee
Relationship, Collective Bargaining, Recognition of unions
|
.873a
|
.762
|
.751
|
|
IV
|
Compensation
|
Employee
Relationship, Collective Bargaining, Recognition of unions
|
.791a
|
.625
|
.608
|
As shown in Table 3, the dependent
variables in this study are: job security, career growth and compensation. This
study used two sets of independent variables; first set included QWL factors,
i.e., infrastructure facilities, recognition, and fringe benefits, while the
second set comprised of IR factors, i.e., employee relationship, collective
bargaining and recognition of unions. The results show that both QWL and IR
factors have an effect on dependent variables. However, QWL factors have a
higher effect on compensation (adjusted R2 of .699) and IR factors
have a higher effect on career growth (adjusted R2 of .751). Together,
they show the importance of both QWL and IR to enhance job security, career
growth and compensation and thus achieve employee performance
6.
CONCLUSION
In thisstudy, we examined the impact
of quality of work life and industrial relations on employee performance.
Quality of work life has more impact on employee performance than Industrial Relations;as
already Industrial Relations have given more importance at BHEL.Their policy
was to provide benefits through negotiations. A positive correlation was
observed between EHS measures and other variables. Further in our study we
applied regression analysis to identify the influencing factors of Industrial
relations on employee performance. It was observed that employee relations play
an important role rather than the other factors. With this we contend that HR
professionals should focus on EHS measures to improve the employee performance.
REFERENCES
1.
James L.Bowdtich
and Anthony F.buono (1982), “Quality of
Work Life Assessment , A survey based approach”
Auburn publishing company in Boston, Massachusetts.
2. ArunMonappa,
RanjeetNambudiri, PatturajaSelvaraj, Industrial Relations and Labor laws, 2e,
Tata McGraw Hill.
3. Abhishek
K Totawar and RanjeetNambudiri (April - May2014),” Can fairness explain
satisfaction? Mediation of Quality of Work Life (QWL) in the influence of
Organizational Justice on Job Satisfaction”, South Asian Journal of Management,
Vol 21, Issue No.2, pp.101-122.
4. S.Jerome
(September 2013), “A Study on Quality of Work Life of Employees at JeppiaarCement
Private Ltd: Perambalur”, International
Journal of Advance Research in Computer Science and Management Studies, Volume
1, Issue 4, pp.49-56.
5. Dr.
S C Das, “Factors Affecting Quality of Work Life: Empirical Evidence from
Indian Sugar mills”, www.ilera-europe2013.eu/
6. Harry
C Katz, Thomas A Kochan, Mark R Weber (1985), “ Assessing
the effects of Industrial Relations Systems And Efforts to Improve the Quality
of Working Life on Organizational Effectiveness”, Academy Of Management
Journal, Vol28, No3, pp. 509-526.
Authors’ContactDetails:
1. Ms.
P. VINATHY, Assistant Professor, Department of Management Studies, LordsInstitute
of Engineering and Technology
2. Mr.
V. SUDHEER, Assistant Professor, Department of Management Studies, LordsInstitute
of Engineering and Technology
