Work-Life Balance Development in the UK Retail Stores Proposal

Introduction

Work is the integral part of the human life today, and it has always been so throughout the history of the mankind. Some scholars, among whom Marxists dominate, even believe that work was the factor that influenced the transition that the human being experienced in its evolution from a simian to a human being as such. But, at the same time, the eternal desire to work and the necessity to do it in order to satisfy one’s personal needs and the needs of people that a certain person is responsible for, makes the conflict between the time people spend on work and the time they are allowed to have to spend on the families or on any other private purposes.

The ability to control the balance between these two sides of the human life, i. e. work and personal life, is vital especially in the modern society when the speed of life increases and people have less time for themselves.

What is demanded from the modern companies and other enterprises that employ people is that they should understand and encourage the team spirit of their workers through paying attention to preserving the work life balance in their organizational culture.

Since such an understanding is the basis of success of any modern enterprise, this paper aims at studying the state in which work life balance is preserved, if at all, in the UK retailers that include Tesco, Asda, Alsi, etc. through the prism of previous academic research on the topic and through the conduct of direct interviews and questionnaire analyses of data gathered from the certain number of sales assistants employed in the stores by the aforesaid retail companies. The comprehensive analyses of all the sources mentioned will provide the actual picture of work life balance in these companies today.

Literature Review

Background

Needless to say, the initial and basic part of any research is the review of the previous research works that have been conducted by scholars in the past. This step allows the researcher to have the clear focus of the topic, have a good command of the knowledge already retrieved on the topic and be aware of the so-called blank spots, i. e. the areas of the work life balance study that still demand research. In other words, the review of the relevant literature on the topic of work life balance will allow this research to have the originality and novelty which are lacked by some academic works in case if their authors have not been attentive enough to consider what has been done in the area and what still is to be done in it.

Thus, to start with, the basic notions of the work life balance have been studied by a number of scholars including Maslow (1943), Michael (1975), Walster, Walster & Bershcheid (1978), Stanfield and Routledge (1993), Montana and Charnov (2008), etc. These researchers retrieved a lot of experiment based data on the principles of the successful work-life balance in various enterprises and in the general theoretical framework.

For example, Maslow (1943), Michael (1975), Walster, Walster & Bershcheid (1978) did much work on finding out the most fitting theories of work life balance including the needs theory, motives theory, expectancy, theory, etc. At the same time, scholars like Bedeian, Burke, and Moffett (1998), Cockman, Evans and Reynolds (1999), etc. deal with the basic definitions of the work life balance study and outline main ways to do qualitative and quantitative research including the need to focus on either precise figures or facts and hidden reasons of certain phenomena.

Terms Definitions

However, the literature review would be incomplete without the more detailed analysis of the basic terms and notions that scholars have singled out as dominant for work life balance studies. These terms are rather numerous and include such ones as organization, work, employment, employee, work life balance, etc. but in this section of our work we are to focus on the latter two notions. Thus, the definitions of employee are rather numerous and dependant upon the context the word is used in. A number of scholars including Maylor and Blackmon (2005), Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill (2006) agree on the pure legal definition of the term which is clearly laid out in the LLL internet page:

EMPLOYEE – A person who is hired by another person or business for a wage or fixed payment in exchange for personal services and who does not provide the services as part of an independent business; Any individual employed by an employer (LLL, 2009).

Nevertheless, other and broader definitions of the term exist to suggest, for example, the difference between the terms employee, worker, and self-employed which are often used interchangeably or misused. To avoid these misunderstandings, scholars like Locke (2001), Kopelman, Prottas, Thompson, and Jahn (2006), etc. have agreed to define employee as any person “working under a contract of employment. A contract need not be in writing – it exists when you and your employer agree terms and conditions of employment. It can also be implied from your actions and those of the person you are working for” (Directgov, 2009).

The definition of the work life balance is more uniform as the majority of scholars agree on the following comprehensive definition formulated by the academic workers of Broadband Cornwall:

Work life balance (WLB) – Work life balance is about people having a measure of control over when, where and how they work. It is achieved when an individual’s right to a fulfilled life inside and outside paid work is accepted and respected as the norm, to the mutual benefit of the individual, business and society (Actnow, 2009).

Based on the definitions coined by the mentioned researchers it is possible to see that employee and work-life balance are the integrally connected notions as they refer to each other as a single whole to its part and vice versa. The basic theories of work life balance study are also based on this relation and on the attempts of scholars to explain the relationships that employees and employers have between each other and what effect the most updated work life balance practices have on work efficiency and productivity in various organizations.

Basic Theories

As far as the essence of the work life balance lies in the relatively equal amount of time that a person spends at work and outside it, the major theories coined by previous scholars concern the relations between the needs of people and the ways their employers find to satisfy those needs. For example, in 1943 the first theory of the kind was formulated by Maslow (1943), who singled out 5 levels of needs that people have including psychological, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization needs.

People try to satisfy them level by level in all spheres of life including work, and thus the ability of the employee to do it and the ability of the employer to assist in it is vital for the fruitful cooperation of both (Maslow, 1943). Another interesting theory of the factors that make people look for the most fitting work-life balance is the need theory by McCelland (1987) (Kopelman, Prottas, Thompson, and Jahn, 2006). Its essence is close to Maslow’s theory in the dominant role of needs in the life development, but McCelland attributed more importance to the acquired, or learnt, needs that include the needs of achievement, affiliation, and power.

The theory of a different direction is the expectancy theory formulated by Vroom in 1964 (Montana and Charnov, 2008). It is focused on the issue of choice and the expected outcome that an employee plans to get from choosing this or that option in a working process. In other words, the option of getting a reward for the successful performance at work provides for the increase in productivity as people start working better when they clearly see what this might give them (Montana and Charnov, 2008).

Equity theory is the closest to this one as it focuses on the importance of the positive atmosphere in the working team. In other words, the author of this theory, John Adams (1962), stresses that people work better in the environment of equality and fair treatment, especially from the side of higher officials. Such equity of all the employees creates the effective work life balance in a company or an enterprise (Walster, Walster & Bershcheid, 1978).

The theory that seems to combine the best features of all the aforesaid ones is the goal setting theory by Edwin Locke (1968), who argues that the higher and the more difficult the goal an employee set for him or herself is, the greater success it can bring and the greater progress it can mean for that employee (Locke, 2001). Thus, according to Locke (1968; 2001), the more difficult the goals are, the more they facilitate the performance of employees, while the simpler goals reduce the efficiency of work and worsen the work life balance in a company as employers demand employees to spend more time on work to fulfill the same amounts of it.

In an attempt to apply these theories to the specific object of study in our research work, we can say that all the theories mentioned can be applied to the work life balance study in retailer stores like Tesco, Asda, Alsi, etc. to a different extent. According to Maslow’s theory (1943), we can try to find out what needs the employees pursue working, for instance, for Tesco. The same can be said about the application of the theory by McCelland (1987), while the expectancy theory is a bit harder to apply as we currently do not posses the specific information on the rewards system in Tesco stores, etc (Montana and Charnov, 2008).

Equity theory is also applicable but only after the present research clears up the organizational culture of Tesco, Asda, and other British retail stores (Walster, Walster & Bershcheid, 1978). Goal setting is also an interesting theory concerning the work life balance for retail store employees, and the proposed research work aims at finding out the basic work life balance policies and practices used by the mentioned retailers in their Human Resources Management (Locke, 2001). Thus, the theories outlined help us formulate the specific research objectives and the questions that the work will answer.

Research Objectives

Accordingly, the objectives of the proposed research are driven by both the importance and novelty of the topic and the necessity to explain the motivation of employees and employers for organizing the work life balance in retail stores like Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Alsi, Iceland, Morrisons, Wilkinson. Moreover, the most important point about the novelty of the work is the attempt to consider the work life balance issues from the worker’s point of view as compared to the numerous studies considering the pure management point of view. Therefore, the aim of the research is to study the employee perspective of work life balance in the stores of Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Alsi, Iceland, Morrisons, Wilkinson. Accordingly, the objectives of the proposed research will be as follows:

1. To carry out the detailed review of literature on the specified topic in order to understand the possible scope of the research work and make the reasonable use of the data already retrieved by previous scholars;
2. To conduct the primary research on the specified sample of respondents (sales assistants in the largest UK retail stores) in order to analyze their answers to questions concerning the work life balance;
3. To find out the possible similarities and differences between the data of previous research and the data obtained during the very research through the interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups involving the workers of Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Alsi, Iceland, Morrisons, Wilkinson.

Research Question

Accordingly, the research question of the proposed study will be focused on the work life balance development in the specified UK retail stores. To avoid any ambiguities and the possible biases of the research, the question should be formulated as an alternative one thus allowing the research outcomes to answer it either positively or negatively. Therefore, the research question is:

• Is the work life balance development in stores of Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Alsi, Iceland, Morrisons, Wilkinson at the proper level of its development according to the workers’ points of view or not?

Research Strategy

Methodology

Based on the aforesaid information, the research proposed demands a clear strategy showing what steps will be taken, when and why they will be taken and what results are expected from all those steps. Research methodology, thus, is of vital importance as stressed by Adamantios and Schlegelmilch (2000), Bogdan and Taylor (2005), etc. Drawing from the need of an empirical research whose data are retrieved from both previous research works and our research through questionnaire analyses, interviews, etc. the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods seems to be the most fitting methodology for our work.

The main argument supporting the usage of the qualitative research method in this study is that, according to the interpretative paradigm of relations, social reality is a sum of subjective experiences of people who participate in it (Smith, 1998). In this case, it is necessary to use a qualitative method of research because only this method allows seeing the reasons and the underlying facts of a certain phenomenon (Smith, 1998).

As far as the study of Tesco, Asda, etc. work life balance will be carried out through interviews with individual workers, this methods proves to be the fitting one. Furthermore, the following strengths of the qualitative method will be enumerated so that to make the usage of this approach completely grounded:

• ability to interact directly with the subject of the research;

This advantage is enumerated here because the data obtained from people who are directly participating in the phenomenon one studies is much more reliable than the conclusions that one can make from figures obtained from statistical surveys carried out by some other researcher (Matveev, 2001).

• usage of various tools and instruments while conducting research without limiting on figures, percentage, etc.;
• due to the two above mentioned factors ability to get the full picture of the phenomenon under consideration (Matveev, 2001).

However, the quantitative method also has its advantages that will be of great use for the analysis and conclusion parts of our research work. The quantitative method, according to Smith (1998),is aimed at finding out the rate at which this or that phenomenon may occur the quantity of this or that phenomenon occurrences for a certain period of time (Matveev, 2001). Thus, based on the analysis of questionnaire answers results we would be able to see the frequency of certain answers and make conclusions about this or that phenomenon present in the work life balance development in retail stores by Tesco, Asda, Iceland, etc.

The very data collection procedures will be divided into the questionnaire work for which 200 sales assistants from the seven largest retail stores of UK (Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Alsi, Iceland, Morrisons, Wilkinson) will be sampled. The second data collection activity will be the work in a focus group of 200 more respondents from the same set of stores. The analysis of data will be carried out through the descriptive statistics method in order to see the frequency of answers given and draw conclusions from the percentage relations of those answers to each other. All these activities will be carried out within the limits of the specific timeframe presented below.

Work Plan

Basic Resources

The specific plan of the research work proposed comprises to major sections. The first one deals with the outline of the major resources that are planned for use during the work, while the second section specifies the timeframe of the activities planned to make the research clear and fast. Thus, the first section is about the primary and secondary sources that we are planning to use during the study of the employee perspective of the work life balance in the largest UK retail stores.

First of all, to organize the proper research it is necessary to know the basics of writing research papers and conducting studies using the combination of the qualitative and quantitative methods. To obtain the necessary data on it, the works by Adamantios and Schlegelmilch (2000), Bogdan and Taylor (2005), Blumburg (2008), Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, and Jackson (2008), Fisher (2009), etc. will be used. These sources allow clear understanding the basic principles of academic research works and writing, while the next part of sources provides the study with the main definitions and terms used while studying work life balance.

These sources include the works by Actnow (2009), Cockman, Evans, and Reynolds (1999), Directgov (2009), Duxbury and Higgins (2001), Kopelman, Prottas, Thompson, and Jahn (2006), etc. Finally, the sources on the basic theories of work life balance and working motivation will be used to back up the theoretical framework of the research (including Maslow, 1943; Kopelman, Prottas, Thompson, and Jahn, 2006; Montana and Charnov, 2008, etc.), and the specific data of the work life balance in Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda, Alsi, Iceland, Morrisons, Wilkinson will be gathered both from the questionnaires and from the official online and printed sources of the stores mentioned.

Milestone Dates

The following table presents the second part of the work plan dealing with the basic activities to be taken up and the time periods of the fulfillment. The whole research work is scheduled to be completed within the three months beginning from June, 2009 and ending in August, 2009. Therefore, there are activities that demand relatively little time, like for example putting the research results into tables and writing research conclusions, as well as those activities that will take much more time (from a week to half a month), so it is necessary to schedule them properly to have enough time for all of them:

Timeline

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