Abstract:
In the era of technology, information technology plays a crucial role and the growing demand for the industry has resulted the software development sector to be highly aggressive and competitive. Consequently, the employees working in software development firms experience blurred boundaries between work and personal life as the industry consists of high work pressure, tight deadlines, long and irregular working hours making it challenging for its employees achieve a successful work life balance. Moreover, past literature indicates that the employees of software development sector to be highly affected by work life conflict. A cross-sectional study was conducted with the research objective of investigating the presence of work life conflict among employees in Sri Lankan software development firms and the key sources causing work life conflict. The research follows a mixed approach and the quantitative data has been collected through a questionnaire survey from 370 employees whereas 14 in-depth interviews were conducted as qualitative data, in order to gain more insight into the issue of work life conflict among the employees. The research findings indicated that the employees may be demonstrating signs of work life conflict, high perceived work overload, low organizational commitment, work burnout, personal burnout, low job engagement and poor health. The number of actual working hours was revealed to be significantly higher than the standard working hours. As a solution, it is recommended to monitor the number of working hours of employees and examine the reasons behind long working hours in the industry. Furthermore, implementing work life balance programmes to address the issue of work life conflict will benefit both the employers and employees in Sri Lankan software development firms.
