The Relationship of Work Life Balance and the Quality of Life among Employees Studying Part Time

In this modern day, higher levels of qualifications are increasing in order to gain knowledge and competency and at the same time to gain salary and promotion within existing employment. Even though there are many benefits of studying part-time while working, there are also challenges behind it. In general, employees who study part time are probably to have jobs and families and may consequently experience challenges juggling many different life priorities. Hence, this study aims to identify the relationship of work life balance and the quality of life among employees studying part time. This is a correlational research utilizing quantitative method. 60 respondents from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), Open University Malaysia (OUM) dan Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) were recruited as respondents and purposive sampling technique is used. The data collected has been look over using Spearman Rank-Order Correlation Test. The results of this study showed that there is a significant correlation between work-family conflict and the quality of life among employees studying part time and between family-work enrichment and the quality of life among employees studying part time. Other than that, this study is important to employers as findings in this research expects to help organizations and universities to create a strategy to support work-life balance among the employees studying part time.


Introduction
According to the United States Department of Education, more than 78% of their undergraduate students are working with an average of 30 hour-per-week jobs and quarter of their full-time students are also working full time (Dumbauld, 2019). In addition, most of their students are working because their study is related to their job. In addition, according to an HSBC survey in 2014, 66% of Malaysian students are working while studying ("Nine out of 10 Malaysian Students Work While Studying: HSBC Survey," 2018). From these findings, it showed that most students are working while studying is happening not only in Malaysia but also globally. The reason for this trend is probably because of the need to increase knowledge and competency while working.
Plus, in this era, demand for higher levels of qualifications are increasing due to the need to gain knowledge and competency and at the same time to gain salary and promotion within existing employment. Afterschool.my reported that the Malaysian government plans to enhance higher education by providing more distance learning programs, upgrade choices for continuous learning, letting more students at the undergraduate level to take on part-time studies (7 Public Universities Offer Courses for Working Adults, 2016). In addition, many organizations are supporting their employees to pursue studies.
Even though there are many benefits to studying part-time while working, there are also challenges behind it. Mainly, employees who study part time are more presumably to have jobs and families and for that reason, the may face challenges to balance many different life priorities (Adolphus, 2019). A research by Martinez et al. (2013) stated that the full-time doctoral students are striving to obtain a school-work-life balance by balancing their times, necessities and responsibilities, seeking well-being, and the need for family and institutional support. The finding shows that single doctoral students with no children and family faced more challenges in order to obtain study-worklife balance compared to their peers with family. This is probably because single students do not receive the kind of support deriving from a partner or a family. It shows that the family-work enrichment domain does influence the school-work life balance of the single doctoral students.
Thus, studying part-time while working can affect the quality of life of the worker and simultaneously as a student. Past research by Greenhaus et al. (2003) stated that compared to employees who engage in balancing both work and non-work responsibilities, employees who focus more on non-work responsibility will have a greater quality of life. Furthermore, a balanced person will have a greater quality of life than those who specialised more on work responsibility than nonwork responsibility. Thus, work-life balance is a very crucial issue nowadays among the employees especially who have extra responsibilities other than work responsibility. Hence, this study looked to the correlation between work-life balance and the quality of life among employees studying parttime. Hence, the Spillover Theory (Staines, 1980) is used in this research to explain the work-life linkage and the different aspects of the relationship between work/family enrichment and work/family conflict and quality of life and vice versa.
The specific objectives of this research is; 1. to identify the relationship between work-family conflict and the quality of life of employees studying part time; 2. to identify the relationship between family-work conflict and the quality of life of employees studying part time; 3. to identify the relationship between work-family enrichment and the quality of life of employees studying part time and; 4. to identify the relationship between family-work enrichment and the quality of life of employees studying part time.
Figure 1 might need to be acknowledged through this sentence.

Figure 1
The Conceptual Framework

Problem Statement
Based on past studies, Greenhaus et al., (2003); Ramos, Francis, & Philipp, (2015); Rife and Hall (2015) have shown interest in conducting studies about work-life balance. Most organizations yet realize the significance of work-life balance despite the fact that a person who is constantly tied to their works (the opposite of work-life balance) will face stress and burnout (Meenakshi et al., 2013). According to Rife and Hall (2015), work-life balance can be achieved by fulfilling employee's feelings and needs in both work and life elements. If the person has a finer work-life balance, it will make a person feel better and behave in favourable ways. There are two elements in work-life balance which are work-family enrichment and work-family conflict.
Most past research has shown that work-life balance is being studied with the quality of life (Greenhaus et al., 2003;Ramos, Francis, & Philipp, 2015). World Health Organization defined Quality of Life (QoL), as the overall quality of a person's daily experiences in terms of happiness and contentment, health and well-being. Thus, past research found out that employees who focus more time, involvement, satisfaction on family than job will have a finer quality of life than balanced persons who, in turn, will have a finer quality of life than those who focus more time, involvement, satisfaction on work than family (Greenhaus et al., 2003). But, there are less number of research that focuses on both direction of job and family and the quality of life.
There are five non-work (life) responsibilities in the life balance as stated by Frone (2003), which are the responsibility in family, religious, society, enjoyment and student. However, many past studies of work-life balance generally focuses on family (Abendroth & den Dulk, 2011), some on society (Hassan, Hasnan, & Sabil, 2014;Voydanoff, 2014), enjoyment (Buettner et al., 2011 or the overall non-work responsibility known as the life domain (Rife & Hall, 2015;Syed, 2015).
Thus, this study looked at the student roles of the employees because it was less emphasized in previous studies. Plus, this study will emphasize on all of the relationships between work-family conflict and quality of life, family-work conflict and quality of life, work-family enrichment and quality of life and family-work enrichment and quality of life. Hence, with little empirical knowledge about this relationship, the need for further study in this field is important and significant.

Literature Review
Work Life Balance Greenhaus et al. (2003) defined work-life balance or work-family balance as the degree to which a person is fairly take part in and contented with his/her work and non-work elements. The balance of time, satisfaction and involvement the three elements of work-family balance. As cited in Frone (2003), lack of clash or interference between work and non-work roles and facilitation between work and non-work roles is another meaning of work-life balance is (Kirchmeyer, 1992;Frone, Yardley, & Markel, 1997;Grzywacz & Marks, 2000). Furthermore, Frone (2003) stated that workfamily balance refer to the balance between work roles (employer, employees and job) and non-work roles such as family, religion, community, leisure and student. For this study, the term work-life balance is referring to work-family enrichment and work-family conflict. In addition, Greenhaus and Powell (2006) stated that work-family enrichment as the degree to which participations in one role will increase the quality of life in the other role (as cited in Carlson et al. (2006). It is believed that work roles will improve family roles and vice versa. Meanwhile, work-family conflict and family-work conflict is "a form of inter-responsibility conflict, in which the demands of work and family responsibility are incompatible in some respect, so that participation in one responsibility is more difficult because of participation in the other responsibility" (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). Thus, as work-life balance will affect the quality of life among employees studying part time, hence work-life balance is the independent variable. Greenhaus and Beutell (1985) defined work-family conflict and family-work conflict as "a form of inter-responsibility conflict, in which the demands of work and family responsibility are incompatible in some respect, so that participation in one responsibility is more difficult because of participation in the other responsibility" (Carlson et al., 2006).

Work-Family Conflict and The Quality of Life
Taşdelen-Karçkay and Bakalım (2017) using the Work-Life Balance Scale to study the mediating effect of work-life balance between work-family conflict, family-work conflict and life satisfaction. Thus, the finding shows that the effect of work-family conflict and family-work conflict on life satisfaction is mediated by work-life balance. Other than that, Lourel et al. (2009) did a reserach to 283 French employees to study the link between positive and negative work-to-home interference, home-to-work interference on perceived stress, and job satisfaction. As a result, it showed that the relationship between negative or positive work-home/home-work interference and job satisfaction is partially mediated by perceived stress.

Family-Work Conflict and The Quality of Life
Meanwhile, for family-work conflict, De Clercq et al. (2017) conducted a research in organization in Pakistan on the interactive outcome of employees' family-work conflict and Islamic work ethic on the employees' helping behavior. The result shows that even though they are employees who suffer from resource reduction at work because of bounded by family roles, however they can still relish productive helping behaviours and support relevant work ethics. Furthermore Farradinna et al.
(2019) examined whether positive spillover can lessen work-family or family-work conflict of 429 female lecturers in universities in Riau and at the same time to improve their psychological wellbeing. The result shows that lecturers have less psychological well-being and greater family-work positive spillover. Family-work positive spillover and family-work conflict at the same time influenced psychological well-being is analyzed by Multiple regression analysis. Meaning to say, the respondents considered completing their home tasks over others. Because of that, it lessen their psychological well-being at the workplace. Greenhaus and Powell, (2006) defined work-family enrichment as the degree to which participation in one responsibility will increase the quality of life in the other responsibility (as cited in Carlson et al. 2006). It is believed that work responsibility will improve family responsibility and vice versa.

Work-Family Enrichment and the Quality of Life
As cited in Nair and Milath.M (2020), Greenhaus and Powell (2006) stated that work-family enrichment take place when there are positive resource gains in work and family. More specifically, work-family enrichment emphasizes that it is a progressive phenomenon of achieving gains in one domain and implementing it in another domain. Thus, family to work enrichment happen when resource gains in family role produce positive outcomes in work. Nair and Milath.M (2020) investigates family-to-work enrichment and its influence on innovative work behavior of employees in Kerala, India. The result shows that involvement in the family role helps the person to utilize his work time in a concentrated manner and then support him in his innovative work behavior. Furthermore, Tang et al. (2017) conducted a study about the result of a good marriage on worksite creativity through family-work enrichment. Hence, the result found out that there is an indirect positive correlation between employees' marital satisfaction and worksite creativity through familywork enrichment.

Family-Work Enrichment and the Quality of Life
According to Kalliath et al. (2019), social workers' job well-being and job satisfaction can be negatively affected because they are frequently experienced stress from competing in work and family demands. However, their job well-being and job satisfaction can too be positively influence when they are experiencing enrichment from both domain roles, Thus, their findings show that social workers who have higher levels of family support, who faced work-family enrichment also faced job well-being and followed by job satisfaction. Consistent with this finding, Hunter et al. (2010), determine how workers might benefit from team resources in both work and life domains by workfamily enrichment. The study found that individuals more likely to experience both work-family and family-work enrichment are the one who with team resources. Other than that, the relationship between team resources and satisfaction with the originating domain is mediated by enrichment. Furthermore, Rashid et al. (2011) carried out a study on nurses in public hospitals in Malaysia on the interrelationship of their self-esteem, work/family enrichment and life satisfaction. The findings show that self-esteem is directly determined and has a important effect on life satisfaction. The study also supports a positive relationship between self-esteem and work/family enrichment.

Spillover Theory
Kumar and Janakiram (2017) states that the Spillover Theory (Staines, 1980) posed to be the most popular theory between work and life domain. In general, Spillover Theory states that participation in one domain affect participation in the other domain. In reality of working life today, Bell et al. (2012) stated that employees are juggling to manage their work and life which often lead to spillover. According to Xu (2009), there are two types of spillover which is positive spillover and negative spillover. Satisfaction and achievement in work/life can affect the same emotions in life/work can be refer as positive spillover. Meanwhile, negative spillover refers to the problems and despair in work/life can affect the same emotion in life/work. To support, as cited in Bell et al. (2012), spillover can have positive or negative effects. Both positive and negative spillover can happen in both ways which is work to life and life to work (Balmforth & Gardner, 2006;Hanson et al., 2006;Hill et al., 2001). According to Greenhaus and Powell (2006), there are effective work-life spillover and instrumental work-life spillover. Affective work-life spillover is the transfer of moods and attitudes in one domain to another domain, meanwhile, the instrumental work-life spillover is the transfer of skills in one domain to another domain (Radó et al., 2016). Thus, this theory is being applied because of the term of work-life balance being used is the work/family enrichment and work/family conflict. Based on the theory, it is in line with both the conflict and enrichment of family to work and work to family. If the enrichment between work-family and vice versa happen, it means that there is positive spillover because the satisfaction and achievement from work affect the same emotions in life and vice versa.. However, if there are work-family conflict and family-work conflict, it shows that there is negative spillover because the problems and despair in work affect the same emotion in life and vice versa.

Quality of Life
Quality of life is the same as a good life. A good life means a person is having a high life quality (Ventegodt et al., 2003). For the objective of this research, the term quality of life is referring to the Integrative Quality of Life Theory. This is because The Integrative Quality of Life Theory explained in detail that Quality of Life is equal as a good life. Ventegodt et al. (2003) belief a good life can be perceived from the subjective quality of life and objective quality of life. The IQOL theory is an overall theory of quality of life that discusses eight factual theories in three spectrums which are subjective, objective and existential. First, the subjective quality of life shows how great the life of a person has. There are four elements of subjective quality of life which are wellbeing, satisfaction with life, happiness and life meaning. The second spectrum of IQOL theory is the objective quality of life. The objective quality of life means how the outside world can perceive a person's life. There are also four elements of objective quality of life which are objective factors, fulfilment of needs, the realization of life potentials and biological order. In other words, the culture in which the person lives will influence this spectrum. Meanwhile, the existential quality of life is placed in the middle between the objective and subjective quality of life because it unites both of the spectrums. If both the objective and subjective quality of life are met, it means the person has achieved the existential quality of life and is living his or her life with highest quality. Thus, as quality of life among employees studying part time is dependent on their work-life balance, hence quality of life is the dependent variable.
In short, the term work-life balance in this research refer to the conflict and enrichment of familywork/work-family and vice versa. Thus, based on the past studies as mentioned above, work-family/family-work enrichment and conflict are seen as variables that can influence the quality of life among employees studying part-time. As in line with the spillover theory, it is stated that participation in one domain will affect the participation in the other domain. For instance, satisfaction and achievement or problem and despair in one sphere will influence the same emotions in the other sphere. Hence, if satisfaction and achievement in one sphere influence the satisfaction and achievement in other sphere, it means that the employee is having a good quality of life and vice versa.

Methodology
This research is a correlational study which is carried out to know the correlation between worklife balance and the quality of life among employees studying part-time. The chosen research method is a quantitative research design. Hence, this study requires a survey to collect the data. The survey used is through the distribution of an online questionnaire. The group of people who are suitable for this research is those who are working full time and part time studying for undergraduate and postgraduate studies.

Population, Sample and Sampling Procedure
Thus, the population of this study is the undergraduate and postgraduate students of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), and Open University Malaysia (OUM). In addition, the sample for this study is 60 respondents. The respondents were approached using purposive sampling technique. Purposive sampling is a nonprobability sample that is chosen based on the attribute of a population and the aim of the study. Hence, the researcher has identified which universities in Malaysia that offer part-time study for working adults. After that, the researcher submitted a permission and consent letter to conduct research to the respective universities. Then, after being permitted, the questionnaires were distributed to the employees working full time and part time studying in undergraduate and postgraduate studies.

Questionnaire
The questionnaire used in this study was found on the adoption of various questionnaires used by previous relevant researchers who studies are fitting upon the needs of this research study (Carlson et al., 2006;Ventegodt et al., 2003). However, the questionnaires adopted are also refined to ensure suitability in accordance with the cultural context in Malaysia. The questionnaires are split into 2 sections which are Section A: Demographic Profiling and Section B: Work-Life Balance and Quality of Life. There are eight questions in Section A which are gender, age, race, level of current education, year of studies, marital status, and numbers of children and average hours of working per day. In Section B, the section is divided into two parts. The first section is the questions related to workfamily conflict, family-work conflict, work-family enrichment and family-work enrichment meanwhile the second part is the questions associated with the quality of life. The questionnaires are adapted from Work-life balance scale by Carlson et al. (2006 and Quality of Life scale by Ventegodt et al. (2003). There are 36 items under the work-life balance scale and 8 items under Quality of Life scale. The questionnaire uses Likert Scale and multi-response answers. There are seven scales which are scale 1 -strongly disagree; 2 -disagree; 3 -partly disagree; 4 -neutral; 5 -partly agree; 6 -agree, and 7 -strongly agree.

Reliability Testing
All the data collected in this study had been keyed into IBM SPSS Statistics Version 22 to find out Cronbach's Alpha value so as to achieve the internal consistency of the instruments. As stated by Devellis (2011), the Cronbach's Alpha value is considered good with a minimum of 0.7. Table 3 below shows the reliability index of the variables.

Descriptive Analysis
According to the descriptive analysis, females formed the majority of the respondents with 60% (n = 36). Other than that, the ages between 20 -29 years old were the majority of the respondents with 66.7% (n = 40). Furthermore, 66.7% of the respondents are Malay (n = 40), thus Malay formed the majority of the respondents. In addition, Degree students are the majority of the respondents with the percentage of 61.7% (n = 37). 45% of Year 2 students (n = 27) formed the majority of the respondents. Plus, single students formed the majority of the respondents with the percentage of 60% (n = 36). 70% (n = 42) of the respondents have no children). Lastly, eight hours of working per day formed the majority of working hours per day with the percentage of 66.7% (n = 40).  Table 3 showed that there is a significant and negative relationship between work-family conflict and the quality of life among employees studying part time which was (ρ = -0.335, N = 60, p = 0.009 < 0.05). Thus, the greater the conflict between work and family, the lesser the quality of life among employees studying part-time. This result indicates that the problem at the workplace has affected the non-work role of the employee. For instance, the employees' time, participation and pressures from work control them from their family roles more than they would like. Thus, it has affected the quality of life among employees studying part-time. Furthermore, based on the average of working hours per day, it shows that 26.6% of respondents are working more than 8 hours per day. This indicates why the work-family conflict has a significant correlation with quality of life among the respondents because most of their time is being engaged with their work responsibilities. This finding is consistent with Md-Sidin et al. (2010) who found that individual perception of work-family conflict is negatively related to the person's thought of quality of life.

Ha2: There is a Significant Correlation Between Family-Work Conflict and the Quality Of Life Among Employees Studying Part Time.
There is no significant relationship between family-work conflict and the quality of life among employees studying part time which was (ρ = -0.229, N = 60, p = 0.078 > 0.05). This result shows that family conflict will not affect the work role of the employees. Thus, it does not affect the quality of life among employees studying part-time. This finding is supported by De Clercq et al. (2017) which stated that even though employees who suffer from resource reduction at work because of family responsibilitiess, they can still relish productive helping behaviours and support relevant work ethics. However, the finding is not similar with Farradinna et al. (2019) which shows that family-work conflict at the same time affect psychological well-being of the individual. Hence, it can be concluded that past study such as De Clercq et al. (2017) is similar and some is not similar with this finding such as Farradinna et al. (2019), this is because it might depend on the occupation of the employees who are studying part time. Other than that, female employees formed 60% of the respondents, thus it might affect the result.

Ha3: There is a Significant Correlation Between Work-Family Enrichment and the Quality of Life Among Employees Studying Part Time.
There is no significant relationship between work-family enrichment and the quality of life among employees studying part time which was (ρ = 0.223, N = 60, p = 0.087 > 0.05). Employees' participation in work does not positively influence them to be a better family member. This is probably because work activities does not fulfill the quality of life which is life satisfaction, well-being, meaning in life, happiness, objective factors, fulfilment of needs, the realization of life potentials and biological order. Nevertheless, this finding is inconsistent with Kalliath et al. (2019), whereby they found that social workers who encounter work-family enrichment also encounter job well-being and job satisfaction. Furthermore, there is no significant relationship between work-family enrichment and the quality of life among employees studying part time because some of the past studies such as Rashid et al., (2011) study on work-family enrichment stated that the relationship between selfesteem and life satisfaction is mediated by work-family enrichment.

Ha4: There is a Significant Correlation Between Family-Work Enrichment and the Quality of Life Among Employees Studying Part Time.
There is a significant relationship between family-work enrichment and the quality of life among employees studying part time which was (ρ = 0.305, N = 60, p = 0.018 < 0.05). Thus, the higher the enrichment between family to work, the higher the quality of life among employees studying parttime because involvement in the family has helped them to gain knowledge and skills, be happy and cheerful and has made them a better worker thus it relates with the subjective quality of life which is well-being, life satisfaction, happiness and meaning in life. Furthermore, this finding is similar with the past study by Greenhaus et al. (2003), in which the result showed that that employee who focuses more time, involvement and satisfaction on family responsibility than work will have a greater quality of life than the employee who is a balance in both elements. However, employees who are balanced in both elements have a greater life quality as compared to those who focus more time, involvement and satisfaction on work responsibility than family responsibility.

Summarize Findings
The finding revealed that there is a negative significant correlation between work-family conflict and the quality of life and between family-work enrichment and the quality of life among employees studying part-time. However, there is no significant correlation between family-work conflict and the quality of life among employees studying part-time and between work-family enrichment and the quality of life among employees studying part-time. Thus, work to family conflict must be less and family to work enrichment must be increased in order to make sure the quality of life among employees studying part time. Hence, according to Spillover Theory (Staines, 1980) spillover can have two effects which is positive spillover and negative spillover. In this case, work to family conflict is the negative spillover and the family to work enrichment is the positive spillover.

Implication
According to the findings, there is a significant relationship between work to family conflict and the quality of life among employees studying part and between family to work enrichment and the quality of life among employees studying part time, hence work to family conflict among the employees studying part time must be reduced and their family to work enrichment must be improved. Besides, the researcher uses the Spillover Theory (Staines, 1980) to support this study. Based on this theory, participation in one sphere affect participation in the other sphere. In the reality of working life today, people are juggling to manage their work and life which often lead to spillover which can be positive spillover or negative spillover. In this study employees studying part time are juggling between their work and study life. Thus, the work to family conflict and the work to family enrichment that they faced is the positive spillover and negative spillover for them as the emotions in work affect the same emotion in life and vice versa. Other than that, the findings of this study are also important to human resource practitioners and managers who can prepare a more flexible working schedule and a better working environment in order to reduce work to family conflict especially towards employees who are studying part time. Last but not least, universities who have full time workers as their students must be prepared with some interventions. For example, if the students are working full time on the weekdays, the classes can be made online or held on weekends. This can help the employees manage their time very well and can reduce their work to family conflict and improve their family to work enrichment in order to achieve their quality of life.

Future Research
The future researchers should consider a few recommendations before carrying out study related to this research. In this study, the part-time students in Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Open University Malaysia, Universiti Utara Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Mara were the respondents involved. Thus, in future research, it is advisable to gather more respondents from various universities. It is good to involve both public and private universities because the researcher can analyse the different opinions of the respondents. Furthermore, the future researchers should know the limitation of study that use the purposive sampling technique which cannot generalized the findings.
Other than that, the scope of Integrative Quality of Life Theory. In this study, the quality of life is analysed as a whole element. Ventegodt et al. (2003); Forouhari et al (2019) stated that the IQOL theory is an overall theory of quality of life that discusses eight factual theories in three spectrums which are subjective, objective and existential. Therefore, future researchers are advised to study each of this spectrum with work-life balance elements. Third, this study is carried out in Malaysia context and setting. Hence, it is proposed that future studies can address the same research problem which is work-life balance and quality of life but with different setting, context, location and/or culture.

Conclusion
This study disclose that work to family conflict must be reduced and family to work enrichment must be improved so as the employees to achieve their quality of life while studying part time. There is a significant relationship between work to family conflict and the quality of life and between family to work enrichment and the quality of life. Work to family conflict will lead to negative spillover and family to work enrichment will lead to positive spillover among employees studying part time. Thus, it is expected that the organizations must be more tolerant towards employees studying part time by providing a more flexible working schedule and a better working environment and universities can make online classes or weekend classes to ease their students who are working full time. Last but not least, it is expected that this study will give a broad view to the readers on the relationship of work life balance and the quality of life among employees studying part time.