Conflict between work and non–work roles of employees in the mining industry : prevalence and differences between demographic groups
Abstract
The mining industry is acknowledge to be a very stressful and demanding profession, driven by performance and intense working environments, hazardous working conditions and socially undesirable working hours. These factors could impact on the interaction between work and non work roles of employees. The objectives of this research were to investigate the prevalence of the different work-non work conflict scales and to determine the demographic differences of work-non work conflict in a sample of mining employees.
A random sample of 245 mining employees was taken from a platinum mine in the Rustenburg area. A newly developed Work-non work Interference Scale of Koekemoer (2009), measuring the interference between work and other non work roles, was used as measuring instrument. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach alpha coefficients, Paired-sample t-tests, Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVAS) were used to analyse the data. Work-non work conflict was more prevalent than non work-work conflict. The results also indicated that work-family conflict is more prevalent than work-domestic conflict and work-religion conflict. However, work-domestic conflict was more prevalent than work-religion conflict. Statistically significant differences exist between demographic groups based on marital status and language regarding work-non work conflict. The results obtained indicated that African-speaking participants experienced higher levels of private-work conflict compared to Afrikaans and English-speaking participants. The results also revealed that participants who are not married experienced higher levels of private-work conflict than those who are married. Some recommendations made in this study included that the mining industry should focus on providing support in terms of available resources and effectively managed work-non work role conflicts. Recommendations for future research include larger sample sizes, administration of questionnaires to various occupational groups, investigation of positive interaction between work and other life roles as well as longitudinal and research designs.