An Empirical Study of Work-Life Balance among Female Nursing Staff in Government and Private Hospitals in West Godavari District, Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Work-life balance (WLB) has become an important factor that defines the welfare of employees and the success of organisations, especially in jobs that are emotionally and physically tiring like nursing. With long and irregular work shifts, a large patient load, and domestic attention to, female nursing staff, who represent a majority of the nursing labor force in India, have increased role conflict. The current research is an empirical investigation of work-life balance and its determinant among female nurses working in government and private hospital in West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh. With descriptive-cum-analytical research design, a sample of 200 female nursing staff (100 in government hospitals and 100 in private hospitals), was used to sample the primary data of the 200 employees using a structured questionnaire on a five-point Likert scale, in dimensions like work interference with family, family interference with work, time management, organizational support, and job satisfaction. The SPSS was used to give statistical analysis such as descriptive statistics, coefficient of correlation as put forward by Karl Pearson, chi-square test of correlation and multiple regression analysis. The results show that the work-life balance among the female nurses is fair, and the type of hospital and status of marriage are closely related to the level of work-life balance, whereby the government hospital nurses and unmarried nurses are more likely to be categorized under the higher work-life balance. The years of experience demonstrated a significant weak negative correlation with work-life balance and age did not exhibit statistically significant line correlation. Analysis using multiple regression established that organizational support, time management, and job satisfaction are significant and have positive predictive quality to overall work-life balance and that work interference with family and family interference with work are significant and have negative predictive qualities to overall work-life balance as well as explaining 61.5 per cent of work-life balance variance. The paper ends with valuable recommendations that hospital managers and policymakers can implement to support scheduling, childcare, and welfare programs to optimize the work-life balance, as well as retention of women in nursing careers.