The Work-Family Interface by Stephen A. Sweet

Author:Stephen A. Sweet [Sweet, Stephen A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Marriage & Family, Business & Economics, Labor
ISBN: 9781483323374
Google: jUr7CAAAQBAJ
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2013-03-12T04:05:37+00:00

Family Supportive Work Environments

Ellen Ernst Kossek

Growing numbers of employees need to access family-supportive work environments. My research reveals that family-supportive work environments are comprised of three factors: a job design that gives employees control over where and when they work, supportive managers, and a family-supportive organizational culture. My early studies showed that although managers are sometimes reluctant to value family-supportive policies such as flextime that gives employees higher control over work hours, employees view flextime as the most innovative of all human resource practices. I also found that employees who use employer-supported on-site childcare are more likely to return to work earlier after maternity leave and are less likely to leave their employer. Employees receiving childcare support also feel more positive about their abilities to perform their jobs well and care for their families.

Recently, with Leslie Hammer, I developed a training program that teaches retail managers how to be more family supportive. We identified four kinds of supportive behaviors: emotional support (showing care about employees’ family lives); structural support (providing flexibility to resolve work schedule conflicts); role modeling (modeling positive attention to family and work); and creativity (working with other managers to cross-train employees to increase storewide flexibility overall). Through our efforts to teach managers to be responsive to employees’ family needs, we observed that sometimes seemingly small supportive actions can make a tremendous difference in employees’ lives. For example, simply inquiring about how an employee’s family is doing can catalyze supportive behaviors.

Overall, my research studies have shown that family-supportive work environments can be created by giving employees access to flextime, helping them find quality childcare, and training managers. Family-supportive workplaces are occupational pathways to worker and family effectiveness and can potentially benefit employers in the long run.

Ellen Ernst Kossek is university distinguished professor at Michigan State University. She has written many referred articles on work and family and authored or edited 9 books, including CEO of Me: Creating a Life That Works in the Flexible Job Age (Pearson Education, 2008).

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