Extracurricular activities are a major part of the education system. These also represent one form of education, which is taught usually outside the classrooms and by using methods than textbooks. These activities help the students in achieving various qualities, such as, leadership, teamwork, discipline, obedience, decency, coordination and time management that are beneficial for personality development and skill enhancement required for future career prospects (Southwell-Sander 2016). Extracurricular activities also strengthen the relationship between the students and contribute in making the students responsible citizen of the nation by improving their social skills (Knifsend and Juvonen 2017). The horizon of extracurricular activities is not only limited to the educational institutes, rather they are spreading in the corporate organizations also due to their usefulness. Various multinational corporate companies have introduced different types of extracurricular activities to give the employees recreational space, which in turn increase their job satisfaction and improve their productivity through employee engagement (Mann and Harter 2016). Social skills are usually developed during school time and they help in the professional life also by contributing in personality development as well as productivity. In this paper, a comprehensive and extensive literature review will be done to make the foundation for a project on the impact of extracurricular activities on the employee productivity in Australia.
The objective for the study is to explore the relationship between the extracurricular activities and employee productivity in the Australian market. Various literature on the extracurricular activities and their different impacts written by other scholars will be explored extensively to fulfill the objective of this study.
This project will have an immense scope in both the academic as well as business world. The knowledge gained through this project will make significant additions to the existing literature world regarding extracurricular activities and their impacts, which will help the future researchers while conducting further research on related topics. On the other hand, the recommendations put forward by the paper will be beneficial for the Australian corporate world in helping them understand the need of the employees in terms of developing social skills and its benefit to the company. Skill building always has positive impact on the employees of any organization and consequently on the performance of the company. With this project outcome, the companies will make arrangements for extracurricular activities for the employees to develop their skills, which would reflect on their productivity.
Extracurricular activities and its different aspects
As stated by Chan (2016), extracurricular activities represent those activities or events that take place outside the boundary of normal educational curriculum of the schools, colleges and universities. These are usually voluntary activities and often performed in groups or teams. These are not based on textbooks, rather based on arts, culture and sports. The faculties of the educational institutes encourage all the students to take part in the extracurricular activities for their skill and personality development. According to Metsäpelto and Pulkkinen (2014), there are many benefits of participating in extracurricular activities. On one hand, these help the participants in developing special interests in various subjects, such as, sports, painting, music, dancing etc. and the students can develop hobbies out of their interests. On the other hand, these activities help in growth of creativity, imagination power, brain development and other personality aspects, such as, discipline, punctuality, time management, teamwork, communication and relationships. Eccles et al. (2003) showed in their study that extracurricular activities reduced the rate of school dropouts and rate of criminal activities by adolescents, and increased the percentage of students retained for higher studies. Thus, the rate of antisocial activities decreases in the society if more and more students keep themselves engaged in extracurricular activities (Mahoney 2000). In a study by Pence and Dymond (2015), it is shown that school clubs are the best place for extracurricular activities and to foster learning among the students. The study showed that, the children with disabilities tend to have more friends when they get involved in the school clubs and extracurricular activities, while the ones, who did not get involved, have fewer friends.
Cherng, Turneyn and Kao (2014) conducted a study on the immigrant and ethnic or racial minority adolescents and found that although the first and second generations of the minority tend to have fewer friends, the extracurricular activities helped those adolescents to socialize and improved their social and personal lives.
Another longitudinal study conducted by Fredricks (2012) explored the relationship between the participation in extracurricular activities and impact on the academic performance due to over-scheduling of the activities. The study examined the effect of overscheduled extracurricular activities on the functioning of the youth in the American high schools. It was found that with higher studies, the participation rate in the extracurricular activities declined although, extracurricular activities combined with many other factors, such as, demographic, prior achievements, types of available activities and time of involvement contributed positively in enhancing math skills and achievement along with positive expectations in the higher studies.. Quantitative method was used for empirical investigation by the author.
Diversity in the school clubs for extracurricular activities play a significant role in shaping the future of the students. It makes the students more socially responsible, culturally competent and knowledgeable, and often helps them to acquire leadership and human resource management traits, which benefits them in their professional life.
Factors of employee productivity
Employee productivity is dependent on many internal as well as external factors. While technology and equipments, remunerations and benefits, rewards and recognitions, perks, career growth opportunities, training and development, nature of working environment, health and safety, recreational scopes and policies and attitude of the management are the most important factors determining employee productivity, the attitude of the employees is also important in influencing their productivity (Southwell-Sander 2016). As stated by Andrew and Sofian (2012), employee productivity is greatly influenced by job satisfaction. If the employees are motivated and satisfied with their jobs, they would put in more effort to increase their productivity and improve their performance. According to the authors, employee engagement is a crucial task for the organizations, as that influences the work outcomes. The organizations conduct researches to find out the factors that would increase the employee retention and engagement. It is found that support from the co-employees is an important individual factor that affects the employee engagement with the organization and productivity.
According to a study by Hee et al. (2018), innovation is highly important in the modern organizational world to make it dynamic. The authors explained that job satisfaction helps in achieving higher productivity and hence, it is essential to identify the areas influencing the job satisfaction of the employees. They pointed out few common factors, such as, job stress, communication gap and less pay, affect the job satisfaction of the employees, which in turn affects their productivity, as they do not feel motivated to work. This leads to absenteeism and high turnover rate of the workers.
Another study conducted by Ailabouni, Gidado and Painting (2007) focused on the factors of employee productivity in the construction industry of UAE. According to the authors, in the construction industry, precise estimation of time and cost of the project depend on the productivity of the employees. They found that general working environment, group dynamics, interpersonal relationships, organizational working policies, and personal competence of the employees were some of the important factors that have effect on the productivity of the employees. However, the nature of work is also a determining factor of the employees. For example, excavation, reinforcement, Formwork, Concrete work, Block work, plaster and tiling and many other construction works also affect the employee productivity.
Gandy et al. (2014) conducted a cross sectional study to find out the impact of health on the employee productivity. It was found from the study that well being and better health of the employees contribute significantly in improving their work performances. Changes in the health due to any chronic disease or any other factor affect the work performance of the employees in any organization and that in turn affects the employee as well as organizational productivity.
Sageer, Rafat and Agarwal (2012) focused on the impact of employee satisfaction on their work performance. Employee satisfaction refers to the condition of the contentment of the employees at the workplace. This contentment comes from various factors, and scope of recreation and refreshment is one of them. Employees need a positive and happy environment to work happily and if they are not given the scope for relaxation, even if the benefits and pay are high, they would not be satisfied and that would decline their productivity.
Thus, it can be inferred from the above discussion that job satisfaction is one of the major influential factors of employee productivity. At the same time, job satisfaction is derived from many significant motivational factors. When the workers become happy about their work and workplace, then only maximum productivity can be achieved.
Impact of extracurricular activities on employability
The scope of extracurricular activities is not limited to the educational institutes only. The corporate organizations are introducing various extracurricular activities for their employees to bring a work-life balance and a relaxed work environment. Happy employees deliver good work and hence, the organizations are emphasizing on arranging extracurricular activities to break the monotony of the work and improve the inter-personal relationships (Mann and Harter 2016). Several types of extracurricular activities, such as, sports, fund raining, mentoring programmes, committee formations, leadership awards, charity work, community projects, annual celebrations, volunteering, etc. are organized for the employees that also help to bring motivations among them.
Pinto and Ramalheira (2017) conducted a study on the impact of the extracurricular activities and academic performance on the perceived employability of the business graduate students. The authors involved 349 Portuguese working individuals to rate eight fictitious resumes of business graduates. The resumes contained fictitious records of varying level of academic performances along with participation level in extracurricular activities. The outcome of the study showed that the resumes that had higher academic record with high level of participation in the extracurricular activities gained a higher preference for perceived employability. On the other hand, the resumes that had high participation records in extracurricular activities but modest academic performance earned lower employability. However, it was also found that the inferences were not affected by the gender of the applicants or characteristics of the respondents. Thus, it is an important finding that academic performance is always significant for gaining employability, but that combined with high level of participation in the extracurricular activities in schools and colleges makes a significant contribution for the applicants in achieving distinctiveness while searching for jobs. The importance of extracurricular activities lies in the fact that it helps in developing the personalities of the participants, which helps in improving their overall performance and that gets reflected in their nature and productivity in their professional lives.
Another study conducted by Milner, Cousins and McGowan (2016) showed that majority undergraduate students consider extracurricular activities as highly significant aspect along with other employability aspects. The authors conducted a survey on 852 students and focus groups with 95 students and the outcome of the study showed that the students favored the participation in the extracurricular activities as that enhances various skills required for employability. However, the students also reported that they found it difficult to find time and opportunity for participating in extracurricular activities after their academic schedule and paid employment schedule. It was concluded that students consider the extracurricular activities as highly valuable and the universities should also provide more opportunities to the students to participate in those activities. The study also concluded that extracurricular activities are greatly capable in developing the employability as well as productivity of the students by enhancing their skills, and hence, should be given more importance by the universities.
Clark et al. (2015) conducted a study on the views of the alumni of a university on the importance of the extracurricular activities and its short and long term impact on the employability of the students. As per the data collected, it was found that different extracurricular activities help in developing different qualities and skills, which are suitable to increase their employability. Those are beneficial for career growth in later career jobs also. The alumni, who are now working professionals, provided useful insights about the benefits of participating in extracurricular activities in their own lives and how they perceive that as recruiters for their companies.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above literature review that, extracurricular activities are extremely helpful in developing the skills and some important qualities among the participants, which are beneficial for their employability as well as career growth. The productivity of the employees of an organization greatly depends on many factors and personal skills are one of them. During the academic years, participation in the extracurricular activities help the students to build skills like support and coordination, empathy, time management, team work, punctuality, discipline and many more, which becomes an advantage in their professional lives. At the same time, the organizations also arrange various activities outside their work schedule to keep them engaged, relaxed and motivated. Although, various researches have been conducted on the benefits of extracurricular activities, the direct impact on the employee productivity was not explored. This research study has aimed to explore and evaluate the effect of participation in the extracurricular activities on the employee productivity.
References
Ailabouni, N., Gidado, K. and Painting, N., 2007. Factors affecting employee productivity in the UAE construction industry. In Proceeding Conference for Postgraduate Researchers of the Built and Natural Environment (PRoBE) (pp. 33-46).
Andrew, O.C. and Sofian, S., 2012. Individual factors and work outcomes of employee engagement. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 40, pp.498-508.
Chan, Y.K., 2016. Investigating the relationship among extracurricular activities, learning approach and academic outcomes: A case study. Active Learning in Higher Education, 17(3), pp.223-233.
Cherng, H., Turney, K. and Kao, G., 2014. Less socially engaged? Participation in friendship and extracurricular activities among racial/ethnic minority and immigrant adolescents. Teachers College Record, 116(3), pp.1-28.
Clark, G., Marsden, R., Whyatt, J.D., Thompson, L. and Walker, M., 2015. ‘It’s everything else you do…’: Alumni views on extracurricular activities and employability. Active Learning in Higher Education, 16(2), pp.133-147.
Eccles, J.S., Barber, B.L., Stone, M. and Hunt, J., 2003. Extracurricular activities and adolescent development. Journal of social issues, 59(4), pp.865-889.
Fredricks, J., 2012. Extracurricular Participation and Academic Outcomes: Testing the Over-Scheduling Hypothesis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 41(3), pp.295-306.
Gandy, W.M., Coberley, C., Pope, J.E., Wells, A. and Rula, E.Y., 2014. Comparing the contributions of well-being and disease status to employee productivity. Journal of occupational and environmental medicine, 56(3), pp.252-257.
Hee, O.C., Yan, L.H., Rizal, A.M., Kowang, T.O. and Fei, G.C., 2018. Factors Influencing Employee Job Satisfaction: A Conceptual Analysis.
Knifsend, C.A. and Juvonen, J., 2017. Extracurricular activities in multiethnic middle schools: Ideal context for positive intergroup attitudes?. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 27(2), pp.407-422.
Mahoney, J., 2000. School Extracurricular Activity Participation as a Moderator in the Development of Antisocial Patterns. Child Development, 71(2), pp.502-516.
Mann, A. and Harter, J., 2016. The worldwide employee engagement crisis. Gallup Business Journal, 7.
Metsäpelto, R.L. and Pulkkinen, L., 2014. The benefits of extracurricular activities for socioemotional behavior and school achievement in middle childhood: An overview of the research. Journal for Educational Research Online/Journal für Bildungsforschung Online, 6(3), pp.10-33.
Milner, S., Cousins, W. and McGowan, I., 2016. Does All Work and No Play Make a Dull Graduate? Perceptions of Extra-curricular Activities and Employability. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 4(1), pp.13-18.
Pence, A.R. and Dymond, S.K., 2015. Extracurricular school clubs: A time for fun and learning. Teaching Exceptional Children, 47(5), pp.281-288.
Pinto, L. and Ramalheira, D., 2017. Perceived employability of business graduates: The effect of academic performance and extracurricular activities. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 99, pp.165-178.
Sageer, A., Rafat, S. and Agarwal, P., 2012. Identification of variables affecting employee satisfaction and their impact on the organization. IOSR Journal of business and management, 5(1), pp.32-39.
Southwell-Sander, J., 2016. Why Extracurricular Activities are Important to Your Employability (And How to Show it Off to Employers). [online] Fdmgroup.com. Available at: https://www.fdmgroup.com/extracurricular-activities-important-employment-show-off/ [Accessed 25 Aug. 2018].
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