Report says family-friendly working boosts performance

Family-friendly working arrangements are associated with small, but significant, levels of improved performance in the private sector, says a recently published report.

An analysis of the 1998 Workplace Employer Relations Survey by academics at Cambridge University's Judge Institute of Management found that above average financial performance was associated with the workplace having job sharing and paternity leave. Improvements in the quality of performance were associated with term-time working, switching to part-time work and help with childcare.

Policies on childcare and working at home were found to improve employee commitment in private sector establishments, although not in public sector ones. But the employers most likely to offer flexible working arrangements were large, public sector ones.

Nine out of 10 organisations with experience of family-friendly policies said they were cost effective.

Policies which help employees balance work with family commitments were also more common in organisations with recognised unions. According to the research: "This finding contrasts with the view that the decline of the unions was necessary for flexible working arrangements to come in. In fact, it seems that unions in both the public and private sectors have been instrumental in developing family-friendly solutions to the work-family conflict."

The research, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said that a further challenge is to extend family-friendly policies to workplaces dominated by men, manufacturing industries and the non-union sector.

A summary of the report is available from www.jrf.org.uk