Family-Friendly Employers

A family-friendly employer helps workers handle family needs and job responsibilities with programs and policies that reduce family-work conflicts. A growing number of employers have been making family-related efforts, including:

• Flex-time — where the employee is allowed some flexibility in their workday's start and end times.
• Choices among benefits, including dependent-care options
• Information on local resource and referral agencies for both child and elder care
• Materials, seminars, and ongoing discussions for employees on child-rearing

While all of these are useful, companies can do better. Being family-friendly means that the employer takes substantial and sustained investment in at least two of the programs and policies listed below. They should be offered to all full-time employees, and pro-rated to for all part-time employees who work at least 20 hours a week.

• Affordable, accessible, good quality day-care for young children; after-school care for older children; or elder care for aging relatives.
• The opportunity to work less than full-time; the opportunity to telecommute; the opportunity to job-share; without jeopardizing career advancement.
• Minimum of four months paid maternity leave after a child is born or adopted.
• Minimum of two weeks paid paternity leave after a child is born or adopted.

One serious drawback is the high cost of family-friendly programs and policies compared with the low cost of family-related efforts. Companies providing the former are almost all large. But the vast majority of employees work for smaller companies, which are not always able to handle the finanacilal burdens of establishing and administering family-friendly policies. To become family-friendly, smaller firms should consider banding together with several others to share planning, operations and costs.

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