Influence of sense of coherence on work-life balance at the South African public service

Abstract

The inability of workers to achieve balance between work and family responsibilities has led to heightened incidence of illnesses associated with stress. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the role of Sense of Coherence (SOC) on the achievement of work life balance by focusing on individual managers at a municipality in the South African public service. These individual managers often struggle with work-life balance (WLB) challenges like HIV/AIDS, relational tension, single parenthood, child and elder care, alcohol and substance abuse, debt and financial issues, absence of job autonomy, function vagueness/role conflict and job stress. A sequential transformative mixed methods research design is adopted. Data were collected using self-report questionnaire administered to 364 individual managers; additional eleven members of top management were interviewed. Quantitative data gathered are analyzed using the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22 to test the reliability and validity of the instrument as well as the bivariate association between the variables. NVIVO is used in organizing qualitative data for ease of content analysis. The findings indicate that SOC should be considered when designing strategies to address employee work-life needs. Furthermore, it confirmed that the presence of strong SOC does not lead to achievement of WLB.