PATTERNS OF HEALTH-RELATED WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT AND INTERVENTION STRATEGIES AMONG COMMERCIAL BANK EMPLOYEES IN ENUGU STATE
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study was to investigate patterns of health-related work-family conflict and intervention strategies among commercial bank employees in Enugu State. The population for the study comprised 2021 commercial bank employees in Enugu state. Five hundred and fifty employees of the commercial banks that were drawn using the random sampling technique constituted sample for the study. Nine research questions were posed while six hypotheses were tested. Three instruments were used to generate data for the study. The first instrument was the Health-related Work-family Conflict Inventory questionnaire (HRWFCI) which had three sections. Section A tapped information on the demographic variable, spatial and temporal patterns of work-family conflict. Section B of the questionnaire consisted of adapted strain inventory with reliability index of .77. Section C of the questionnaire comprised the adapted Depression Inventory with reliability index of .68. The second instrument was the Key Informant Interview Schedule (KIIS) which was used in gathering qualitative data for the study. The third instrument was the Work- family Conflict Intervention Strategies Evaluation Questionnaire (WFCISEQ) formulated by the researcher, using the result of the study. It sought information on the intervention strategies needed for bankers to use in mitigating the health-related effects of their work-family conflict. The generated data were analysed using mrean scores, standard deviations, percentages, student t-test, One-Way Analysis of Variance, Scheffe test and Chi-square. The findings revealed that the bank employees reported; moderate levels of work-family strain and depression experience. Employees who worked in the Head offices demonstrated significantly, higher level of strain than their counterparts who worked in the branch offices t(475, 3.240, P<.05) while employees of info-tech and marketing sections showed significantly high level of work family strain experience than employees in operation and internal control sections F(-2.123, and P – value = .007) and F(-1.209 and P – value = .052) respectively. The study further showed that employees who worked in the branch offices experienced significantly higher level of work-family depression than their counterparts who worked in the head offices t(475, -3.028, P < .05) while employees of the operations section of the banks differed significantly from those in the marketing, internal control and info-tech sections in their levels of work-family depression experience f(-3.810 and p – value = .000). Employees who had worked for 5 years and above differed significantly from their counterparts who had worked for less than 5 years in their levels of work-family strain experience t(475, -2.884, P < .05). Thirty item intervention strategies comprising seven objectives and twenty three contents were deemed appropriate by experts. Following from these findings, it was recommended among others, that management should: adopt the Work-family Conflict Intervention Strategy that was formulated for bankers in the course of this study and emphasize the issue of prevention and early intervention levels of the strategy. It was also recommended that proper orientation be given to new employees using the Work-family Conflict Intervention Strategy.