Managing Stress through Work-Life Balance: A Study on Jinan Lebanon University Staff

This study focuses on the stress problems related to role conflict and ambiguity. It will emphasize the creation of a work-life balance strategy as a solution to decrease this stress. The work-life balance is a desirable concept for education institutes because relaxed employees are more motivated and productive. This study will aim to study the impact of stress on Al Jinan staff’ through a questionnaire with 120 employees. This study embraces four independent variables related to stress factors and work-life balance as the dependent variable. This study has verified the positive impact of the working environment and suggested adequate recommendations.


Introduction
The increasing living costs, the rise in consumption related expenses, the tremendous invasion of a woman in the labor market, and the appearance of single-parent family structure are considered as factors for employees to search for an adequate combination between their private life and work (Khallash & Kruse, 2012). Employees are becoming the subject of different constraints such as work-life reconciliation and social rhythms adaption. In other words, they are facing the obligation between meeting organizational requirements and satisfying their family needs at the same time. These obligations are increasing the level of stress (Omar, Mohd, & Ariffin, 2015). Considering the above, modern organizations need to find adequate solutions for this contradictory situation. Researches have distinguished two types of stress, the distress and the eustress (Oxford University Press, 2018). Eustress 1 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/rem Research in Economics and Management Vol. 5, No. 4, 2020 can be referred to as to the positive side of stress that takes the form of pressure that pushes the employee to increase their productivity and increase performance. Hence, the stress in all its forms intensify their attention to details and pushes them out of their comfort zone and ordinary performance (Schmidt, Roesler, Kusserow, & Rau, 2014).

Background of the Study
Identifying the type of stress experienced by employees is an essential factor for effective stress management. It allows the channeling of stress into good use. Likewise, the creation of work-life balance is a crucial factor to increase satisfaction, productivity, and to reduce absenteeism and turnover.
When stress is experienced as a challenge that can be defeated, it can become a powerful stimulant (Bell, Rajendran, & Theiler, 2012). However, when stress has negative impacts leading to burnout, this stress becomes destructive. Stress can be negative when employees are affected by numerous stressors counting the role ambiguity, role conflict, excessive workload (Edwards et al., 2018).

Research Significance
Stress is a perfectly natural process that maintains the physiological balance of individuals under any circumstances. By definition, stress is positive, it allows a quick return to a state of safety and comfort, maintaining the body vital abilities. For some individuals, stress is critical to overcoming life challenges because small doses of stress often act as a source of motivation (Johari, Yean Tan, & Tjik Zulkarnain, 2018). From a practical perspective, fostering a satisfying balance between work-related responsibilities and the private life requirements is a vital strategy for modern organizations in general and education institutes in specific to regulate stress. The Canadian sociologist Tremblay has studied the stress factors and the challenges of balancing between an individual's private life and work demands. Therefore, both variables are considered as contributing elements in the scientific world (Powell, 2017). From a theoretical perspective, finding the right balance between work and life can increase the level of employees' engagement and reduces the associated cost to increased stress (Fleck, Cox, & Robison, 2015). Consequently, it is unavoidable to evaluate the impact of stress and its impact on work-life balance.

Purpose of the Study
This study focuses on the stress problems related to role conflict and ambiguity in the workplace created in the workplace. It will emphasize the creation of a work-life balance strategy as a solution to decrease this stress (Pradhan, Jena, & Kumari, 2016). Companies helping to balance employees' work and private life, will enable their workforce to carry out adequate tasks and allows to develop skills.
Universities and education institutes concerned with the well-being of their academic staff should be interested in studying the level of stress and its impact on the work-life balance given the benefits that can result (Darcy, McCarthy, Hill, & Grady, 2012). Collecting satisfactory information to better understand stress factors and their impacts on employees' work-life balance is the major motivational reason for choosing this topic which is also considered as a contributor that studies the stress impact whether positive or negative in universities. 2

Literature Review
Stress as a phenomenon has a direct impact on the workforce. Increased stress is associated with increased absenteeism, turnover, and decrease productivity. For these reasons, maintaining a work-life balance is considered a critical motivational factor. Indeed, sustaining a balanced life and work for employees will increase the workforce creativity and their level of engagement in work (Caesar & Fei, 2018). An essential part of solving stress at work is to improve the workload and working time. An enhanced strategy that manages working hours helps to manage tensions and stress. A good working environment where employees feel in control of the workload, have the flexibility to organize their own work time, have a work environment that promotes work-life balance will eventually reduce stress (Deery & Jago, 2015). Henceforth, an institution wishing to promote this strategy must ensure that an adequate framework is well implemented. The workload itself is an important facet in balancing work and private life. the impact of the workload can be measured by the professional requirements imposed on employees and the variety of the tangible aspects of tasks such as the number of tasks and the clarity of responsibilities that employees should perform as a part of their job description to meet high-quality standards promptly (Edwards et al., 2018).

Stress Definition
Stress occurs when there is an inequity between the employees' perception of restrictions imposed by the working environment and their resources to cope with it (Siegrist, 2015). Furthermore, stress can be defined as a feeling of permanent instability that can lead to a decrease in the ability to consider work as a factor of fulfillment (Oxford University Press, 2018). A determined level of stress is acceptable called eustress. The latter usually give employees a boost of energy and motivation to meet their daily challenges at work and their home. It can help them to overcome complications, achieve planned goals in terms of reaching deadlines, and meeting efficient production goals. Though, when stress occurs with an uncontrollable strength on both physical and mental levels, then it is called the negative stress.
Hence, it is a good point to differentiate between the distress as negative stress and the eustress as positive stress (Astur et al., 2016). Major stressors are shown below (Hobfoll, Halbesleben, Neveu, & Westman, 2018).

Excessive Workload
Excessive workload or work overload can be defined as higher than the normal load that can be either temporary or permanent. The excessive workload incorporates two types of risks, on the individual level, it can affect the well-being of the employee (Suresh, Matthews, & Coyne, 2013). On a collective level, it can affect the quality of the service and the performance of the organization. The actual workload that is founded on traditional quantitative indicators is the major indicators anticipating the overload and ultimately the risk of frustration and burnout (Johari et al., 2018). As a final point, the workload itself is a complex reality with a mechanism that should be analyzed. For instance, even by reducing the number of assigned tasks, an employee might still feel overload. A qualitative analysis of excessive workload should bel involved. This feeling of overload can be generated by numerous factors 4 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/rem Research in Economics and Management Vol. 5, No. 4, 2020 namely the role ambiguity, the lack of managerial support, these qualitative factors are more harmful than the feeling of quantitative overload (Aziz et al., 2011).

Role Ambiguity
The role ambiguity is well-defined as the lack of clarity in job tasks, responsibilities required to be performed according to a job description. Role ambiguity increases due to insufficient understanding of these tasks and the lack of understanding of expected results (Yung-Tai Tang & Chen-Hua Chang, 2010). It is related to the lack of information in the job description, its objectives, and the resources authorized for the implementation. In other words, it is strictly related to the employees' uncertainty about task accomplishment in the job breakdown (Taylor & Kluemper, 2012). Furthermore, researchers have reasoned that the degree of role ambiguity experienced by employees is essentially established by their direct supervisor. An additional definition of role ambiguity is embraced in the discrepancy between the availability of information and those required for the employee to perform his/her job (Taylor & Kluemper, 2012).

Role Conflict
Role conflict arises when an employee is instructed to achieve contradictory tasks or assigned to do a task listed in another employee job description (Bradley, Postlethwaite, Klotz, Hamdani, & Brown, 2012). Role conflict is a dilemma for work-life balance, for example, conflict occurs for a working mother when she is forced to making a career by working overtime at the expenses of her parenting duties, or choosing her role as a parent at the expenses on her career (Derks, Bakker, Peters, & van Wingerden, 2015). Therefore, this conflict is evaluated as the perception of the presence of two or more sets of pressures and expectations related to work. In brief, the conflict is based on the assumption that increases responsibilities for one worker would likely increase stress and pressure (Bradley et al., 2012).

Working Environment
Managing the workplace environment incorporates all the services, equipment, technologies, and procedures that permit employees to work in teams, collaborate, and innovate. Hence, an enjoyable and healthy working environment is conducive to the well-being and productivity of employees. The work environment refers to a set of elements that can influence the daily routine of an employee. It can denote the conditions of safety and hygiene factors on the work premises. These conditions must be grasped and understood by the employer to provide workers with a quality of work environment (Raziq & Maulabakhsh, 2015). With this intention, a healthy work environment has a direct impact on the employees' well-being at the workplace. Also, employees' expectations regarding the work environment focus on two types of factors. The first factor is related to the mission, its content incorporating tasks assigned to the position, the workload, and their level of autonomy at work (Subramaniam, Overton, & Maniam, 2015). The second factor is represented by human relations including the team spirit, recognition of the work done, and participation in decision-making. It also 5 Published by SCHOLINK INC. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/rem Research in Economics and Management Vol. 5, No. 4, 2020 includes the possibilities of evolution taking, for instance, internal training and remunerations (Carré, 2015).

Work-life Balance Defined
Balancing work and life is a strategy that fulfills employees' commitment and responsibilities without being punished in terms of remuneration, job, ongoing teaching, and training (Darcy et al., 2012). From a general point of view, employees wishing to find a better balance between their private and professional life should have the advantage of clearly defining their priorities, managing their time according to these priorities and thinking carefully about how they are planning to use their time (Kassim et al., 2013). Therefore, work-life balance can be defined as the conciliation between the two spheres allowing them to organize and align their daily practices under a common goal. The work-life balance is a desirable concept for companies. The term balanced is essential because relaxed employees are more motivated and productive. This balance is the responsibility of both the employer and the employee (Waumsley, Houston, & Marks, 2010).

Summary of the Literature Review
According to recent studies, stress is considered as a critical factor that affects the well-being of employees. It was also verified that the work-life balance is associated with the implementation of flexible solutions that promotes good working conditions and adequate workloads and working time to improve the quality of time at work (Melo, Ge, Craig, Brewer, & Thronicker, 2018). However, a study conducted by Schmidt in 2014, verified that the relationship between role ambiguity and organizational involvement is influenced by stress, it has verified that employees suffering from high levels of stress report low levels of involvement. Individuals have a great sensitivity to stressors counting the social climate of the company or personal conflict. They become more vulnerable to psychological threats.
Additional studies have shown that organizational factors such as the workload, the working environment can determine the efficiency of work-life balance. These factors should be supported by the line manager who can help employees to better balance private life and professional life. As a conclusion, universities have the responsibility to regulate stress and a role to play in work-life balance by safeguarding flexible work schedules, full-time contracts, additional leaves, holidays, family benefits such as children daycare (Caesar & Fei, 2018). Not to mention that the workload itself is a crucial facet in balancing work and private life.

Research Method
This study will aim to study the impact of stress on the Jinan staff's work-life balance which will make it quantitative. Therefore, to gather the opinion of a large sample, the researcher opted for a questionnaire as a survey tool. This data collection technique is the best suited for the chosen research (Alversia, 2011). To be more precise, the topic of stress and work-life balance can be classified as a descriptive topic used to ask questions and clarify the reasons behind the stated problem (Harwell, 2011). This paper is describing the behavior of academic staff at Jinan University and evaluating their 6 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/rem Research in Economics and Management Vol. 5, No. 4, 2020 opinions toward the stress level affecting them and their private life. henceforth, to collect information that assesses the level of stress from employees' point of view and creates work-life balance as a strategy will be used as a precursor to a quantitative research model, the questionnaire will provide valuable insights into variables that need quantitative testing (Saunders & Tosey, 2012). This paper will follow the positivism as a philosophy that relies on observable facts and resources to produce dependable data. This approach considers that reality exists in itself, has its essence, and based on ontological hypotheses. In our case, the philosophy will test and verify the hypotheses. The empirical part will follow a pre-tested structured questionnaire that embraces closed statements and items related to stress factors as independent variables and work-life balance as the dependent variable. The questionnaire will be distributed on the Jinan staff in Tripoli and Saida campus, therefore following a stratified random sampling because the sample is well-defined geographically and can be divided into clear, distinct groups called stratum. This sampling technique is useful to obtain satisfactory accurate data that can be generalized to the entire population (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2012).

Measurement Method Used
The questionnaire is based on the Likert scale to measure the variables (Jamieson, 2015).

Questionnaire Distribution
Precisely, 200 questionnaires were distributed at Jinan University. These questionnaires were divided in terms of distribution, 100 copies were distributed by the human resources manager at the university.
An additional 100 copies of the questionnaire were distributed by the researcher at both campuses. 150 questionnaires were collected back and returned for a response percentage of 75%. Even though the researcher guaranteed that the questionnaire is confidential. After reviewing the collected questionnaires 30 of them contained missing information therefore the researcher had to discard them keeping 120 copies to be entered and analyzed by SPSS with a rate of 80%.  Type of Contract: the data collected from 120 university staff showed that 15% were contractual per hour, 68.3% were full-timer, and 16.7% were a yearly contract  Own More Than One Job: 40.8% of the studied population have stated that they own more than one job, while 59.2% have stated that they are dedicated to one job only.
 Work Position: the above data showed that 15.8% are working as instructor/lecturer at Al Jinan university, 5.8% works as an assistant professor, 15% are working as an associate professor, 21.7% as a professor, and 41.7% are employees.

Findings And Interpretations
This section of the paper is dedicated to the findings and interpretations of the quantitative study through a questionnaire. This section will analyze data of 120 participants and it will be divided into three parts. The first part will show the reliability and the factor analysis of each section, the second part will present the descriptive statistics briefly while the last section will be dedicated for the hypotheses verification to test a significant relationship between the variables associated with each hypothesis. Cronbach's alpha as a reliability coefficient measures the internal consistency of a questionnaire. In practice, this coefficient is used to reduce the number of items to an iterative and persistent set of items.

Reliability Analysis
Cronbach alpha should vary between 0 and 1. When it is closer to 1, the reliability is strong with the higher internal consistency of the scale. Cronbach's alpha in this study varies between 0.7 and 0.9 which means that the measurement scale can be considered reliable. Cronbach's alpha is ranging between 0.717 and 0.806 which is superior to 0.6 which denotes that the conducted questions of the  Vol. 5, No. 4, 2020 sections are acceptable and reliable varying between 0.7 ≤ α < 0.9 in an acceptable range. The factor analysis is a subject of an explanatory approach that structure data identifying the dimensions of a construct. The KMO is used to calculate the sampling suitability and sufficiency. In this study, the KMO percentage is ranging between 0.6 and 0.8 which is higher than 0.5 or (50%) by far. Also, the P-value is equal to Sig = 0.000 higher than α = 0.05 which verifies that the items are significant and valid to proceed with the study. N 120 120 120 120 120 The above table shows a negative correlation between excessive workload, role ambiguity, and role conflict as independent variables and the work-life balance as the dependent variable, while only the working environment has a positive correlation with work-life balance. A clear indication of this matrix is that there is no problem in the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variable, the correlation between them doesn't exceed 0.7 which gives the possibility of using the multiple regression analysis to test the hypotheses. Working Environment 120 1.00 5.00 3.0983 .93808

Linear Regression
The linear regression analysis is a statistical method for modeling relationships between the dependent and the independent variables. It is used to make predictions, whereby the relationships between the data will be taken into consideration as the basis to generate a prediction model. Results in the below

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Published by SCHOLINK INC. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/rem Research in Economics and Management Vol. 5, No. 4, 2020 tables show the linear regression between work-life balance as the independent variable and excessive workload, role ambiguity, role conflict, and working environment as dependent variables. The table of the model summary shows the value of R, R square. It will focus on the R-value that is ranging from -1 to 1. The absolute value of R indicates the strength with higher absolute values verifying the existence of stronger relationships. The above table can determine that the excessive workload accounts for 74% from the total variation, the role ambiguity accounts for 79%, role conflict accounts for 70% and the working environment accounts for 77%.  Vol. 5, No. 4, 2020  Working Environment: F = 19.052, P = 0.000 < alpha = 0.05.

Interpretations
To sum up, employees are feeling overloaded and stressed by their current lifestyles. This stress is a subjective concept since the same internal and external work factors can affect each individual differently (Bell et al., 2012). Likewise, the stress in a situation that involves a stressor and a person and depends on the situation and its apprehension. However, permanent stress is a phenomenon that should be considered by education institutes (Deery & Jago, 2015). This paper has verified that stress factors namely excessive workload, role ambiguity, and role conflict, have a significant negative impact on work-life balance. In an attempt to explain these relationships, we will resume the study of (Nam, 2013) (Shagvaliyeva & Yazdanifard, 2014) (Razak, Yusof, Azidin, Latif, & Ismail, 2014) (Khallash & Kruse, 2012). According to these researchers, an employee in a situation of role ambiguity is more dependent on the information and the feedback given by his supervisor. Hence, researches have verified that role ambiguity, excessive workload, and role ambiguity increase stress at the workplace.
The identification of these factors should help employees to promote their well-being and work-life balance through the identification of employees' expectations and the recognition of achievements (Karkoulian, Srour, & Sinan, 2016). This study emphasizes that universities concerned with the well-being of employees are considering the question of work-life balance given the economic benefits that can result. Personal balance reflects the satisfaction and involvement of employees in their work and flourish their family and emotional life. As a final point, major stressors points that are affecting the efficiency of work-life balance can be summarized in the below table (Boxall & Macky, 2014), (Karkoulian et al., 2016).
The result of this study goes along the study of Omar, Mohd, and Ariffin in (2015), Derks et al. (2015) confirming a negative relationship between stress factors and work life balance. However, it contradicts the work of Astur et al. (2016) stating that some type of stress can have a positive influence on the work life balance. Astur has verified that an acceptable level of stress is required to move employees out of their confort zone and motivate them to increase their productivity.
A quality of working life approach, initiated by a participatory and collaborative project, evaluated by monitoring indicators for action plans, led by a well-being manager, aims to develop the attractiveness of the company, improving creativity, commitment, professional motivation and employee loyalty, as well as reducing the negative impact of stress at work. 15 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/rem Research in Economics and Management Vol. 5, No. 4, 2020

Conclusion and Recommendations
In recent years, stress at the workplace is rising due to excessive workload, and role conflict. Therefore, organizations should take action to reduce stress by changing their human resources strategies. Stress problems are related to a break-in balance between private and professional life, role conflicts, and role ambiguity (Sturges, 2012). Hence, developing a work-life balance will increase the feeling of pleasure at work and will help employees to develop additional skills. In conclusion, employees working in an organization with work-life balance culture report lower levels of overload, conflicts, and work to family interference (Lockwood, 2003). Within their organizational responsibilities, university managers should recognize the signs of cumulative stress and distress. They should be able to provide adequate support to reduce the level of stress. Factors to reduce distress should include social support at work and in private life against stressful circumstances. An employee benefiting from well designed and varied tasks, who have the opportunity for advanced training and has a career prospect can perform very demanding duties without being affected by stress. Providing the university staff with clear job descriptions, job breakdown is essential to clarify the role ambiguity and role conflict at the workplace.
Task design is a crucial factor taking into account the physical and mental abilities of the employee.
Generally, the following guidelines are recommended to reduce distress at the workplace:  The job must be reasonably demanding and the duties of the employee must be minimally diversified.
 The employee must be able to learn on the job and have the opportunity to progress his/her career with future perspectives.
 The employee must receive social support and recognition at work.
 Organizations should help their workforce to cope with work-life balance  Organizations should provide flexible measures to reduce overload by setting clear guidelines and managerial support.
 Adapt the workload according to available elements to perform tasks.
Cumulative stress results from the accumulation of several stressors such as heavy workload, lack of communication, frustration, role ambiguity, and interpersonal conflict (Siegrist, 2015). The researcher recommends studying the impact of these variables on the work-life balance by evaluating their concrete consequences. Also, the researcher can ask the following interrogation for the human resource managers of a university: do employees have their job descriptions? When was the last time that these job descriptions were updated? When was the last performance appraisal conducted? 16