Family-friendly policies match 'business success’

Firms that take a family-friendly approach to working hours and other employment practices are more likely than others to rate themselves ‘above-average’ on financial performance and the productivity of their workforce.

They are also more likely to report that the sales value and quality of their work have improved during the past year.

These findings, from one of two studies on work-life balance launched by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, strongly challenge the belief that longer hours, more intensive working and cutting back wage costs hold the key to business success.

Researchers from the Judge Institute of Management at Cambridge University found that policies that helped employees to balance work and family responsibilities were associated with small, but significant levels of improved performance in the private sector.

The analysis showed that employers offering paternity leave provision and job-share arrangements were more likely than others to state that their firm’s financial performance was above average.

Also enabling flexible working hours for parents, offering help with child care and enabling staff to work part-time were linked to employers reporting that their firm’s product or service quality had improved in the past year, and were associated with lower staff turnover.

Nine out of ten establishments with some experience of flexible working arrangements considered them cost-effective.

However, not all the findings concerning family-friendly arrangements were positive.

Certain types of policy were associated with reductions in some of the performance measures in the survey. Flexitime was linked to perceptions of reduced financial performance, while emergency leave provision, prior to the introduction of statutory time-off for dependents leave, was associated with increased labour turnover.

The researchers also found that the associations between family-friendly policies and improvements in employee commitment seen in the private sector did not apply to public sector staff.

The report concluded that flexible working, as well as greater involvement of employees in the business, could result if employees were given a legal right to ask for the arrangements they preferred, by making a business case to their employer.

In November 2001, a report from the Department of Trade and Industry’s 'Work and Parents Taskforce' recommended a duty on employers to consider requests for flexible working from employees with children under six-years of age.

(SP)