Influence of employee breaks on employee motivation in Rongo university, Kenya

Abstract

The Work-life balance practices can be categorized as those touching on family priorities that includes lactation breaks, role overload and work family interference; those touching on employee assistance programs includes, dependent care, counselling programs and flexible work arrangements have under it part-timing, flextime, job sharing, flexible career paths and employee breaks and leaves includes lactation breaks, leave programs, lunch breaks. The general objective of this research was to establish the influence of work life balance practices on employee motivation in public universities with a specific objective to establish the influence of employee breaks on employee motivation in Rongo University. The philosophical foundation of this study was based on the positivism paradigm that views that only factual knowledge gained through observation, testing and measuring is dependable. The findings of the research are observable and quantifiable leading to statistical analysis. In this case therefore, the researcher was independent and concentrated only on the collected facts. Therefore, the researcher adopted the positivist approach because it is commonly used in conducting research in social sciences. Based on the findings, the study showed that employee breaks are fundamental to employee motivation and are very important factors to the organizational workforce. This has been supported by the social exchange and compensation theories of the study. It concluded that leave programs, lunch breaks as well as lactation breaks have positive influence on motivation of the workers within the institution.