Ethical implications of corporate family-friendly workplace benefit programs

¶ … Ethical Strengths and Weaknesses of "Family-Friendly" Programs

The Ethical Strengths and Weaknesses

Of "Family-Friendly" Programs

Today's society is constantly changing and adapting to more and newer requirements. The business community is no exception. Organizations have implemented change as an ongoing process for reasons such as staying on top of the competition, hiring and retaining the best qualified employees or enlarging and consolidating their market share, all with the ultimate purpose of registering increased revenues. A major modification has occurred in the approach of the human resource, which now receives various incentives in the hope that these stimulations would motivate the employee to increase his performances and support the organization in reaching its overall goals. However the incentives were generally on the financial side, along the past years they have suffered significant mutations, resulting in benefits such as telecommuting, access to swimming pools and company kindergartens, dinner parties organized and paid by the organization and a wide variety of nature trips or other activities which include the family of the employee.

3. Literature Review

The literary information on the topic of family-friendly programs is quite scarce, generally because the concept is rather new, and also because not all organizations have implemented them. However, when browsing through the specialized works, one can form an opinion on the corporate development and implementation of family-friendly programs. The current paper covers data from books and specialized journals and magazines, as well as institutions websites which offer information on their own family-friendly programs.

The emergence of family-friendly programs is based on the mutations in working habits, generated in the post industrial era. Since most families are now run by two income makers, the parents have to meet and share the responsibilities at both work and home. The business community has responded to these new needs by creating a wide series of programs, organized under the generic term of family-friendly programs. "Family-friendly programs are many and varied, but can be divided into two general groupings: work hour arrangements so that parents have more time to be with children, and direct programs that support needed family services" (Flannery, 2000)

Family-friendly programs have been introduced for five primary reasons, materialized in the benefits they generate for both employee and employer. These basically refer to: increased operational productivity, reduced employee turnover, reduced absenteeism and procrastination, increased employee loyalty to the firm and, increased employee morale and on the job satisfaction (Flannery, 2000).

Relative to the programs, actual examples must be offered for a better understanding. The following lines will offer these examples, in the form of the family-friendly programs implemented by two institutions: The Agricultural Research Department and the Princeton University.

The Agricultural Research Service within the United States Department of Agriculture has developed and implemented a wide series of family-friendly programs, aimed to help employees best cope with their home and on the job responsibilities. These initiatives refer to the following:

flexible hours and leave schedules voluntary leave transfer programs telecommuting employee assistance learning opportunities, including life long transit subsidies child care centers credit unions (the Agricultural Research Service, 2005)

Another important organization which has strived to help their staff members better cope with their family duties is the Princeton University. Their wide palette of family-friendly programs includes:

personal assistance and work/life programs: backup care for family members; managing work, personal and family life issues new parents: healthcare coverage for pregnancy and childbirth; paid leaves for childbearing; healthcare coverage and related matters for a new child in the family; tenure clock extensions for new parents; workload relief for new parents child care: employee child care assistance program; university-affiliated childcare centers; emergency backup childcare; dependent care travel fund; unpaid parenting leaves children's education assistance partner placement: Special Assistant to the Dean of Faculty; New Jersey Higher Education Recruitment Consortium

Faculty housing: rental housing; mortgage plan; additional programs for tenured faculty (Official Website of the Princeton University, 2007) final important concept relative to family-friendly programs is the efficiency retrieved through their implementation. Several studies conducted along the years have retrieved the following results:

Rosen (1974) found that employees are attracted by the family-friendly programs, but since not all organizations offered them, those who did would offer the workers lower wages; therefore, no differences in work performance, job satisfaction, turnover and promotions should be visible.

Auerbach (1988) concluded that employees preferred the programs as it offered them flexibility and enough time to resolve their family matters; as such, when they came to work they did not have to worry about household chores and could devote their entire energy to the professional tasks; this then resulted in increased on the job satisfaction and reduced employee turnover.

Anderson's (2002) studies also indicated positive efficiencies materialized in increased employee satisfaction and reduced turnover.

Kossek and Nichol (1992) found that indeed the turnover was reduced through programs such as child care, as the employees valued these benefits, but no influences on performance were identified.

Gray (2002) concluded that the organizations which presented their employees with family friendly policies registered above average performances; she also found that employee performances were higher in fixed schedules, rather than flexi time.

4. Family-Friendly Programs

The family-friendly programs have been implemented within corporations to increase employees' on the job satisfaction and also to increase their loyalty to the organization. Offered initially as incentives, the family-friendly policies have become an integrant part of corporations' code of conduct, representing a must for the entity's ethics. Every company that desires to possess motivated staffs that improve their efforts to sustaining the company in reaching its overall goals must offer family-friendly programs.

This brings into discussion the matter of managing the family-friendly policies. Generally conducted by the Human Resource Department, with the approval of the top officials, the management refers to the identification of employees' familial needs, the development of strategies to come to the aid of the employees and the actual implementation of these strategies and policies. "Family-friendly management [...] involves both the use of family-friendly practices in a concerted and co-ordinated way and an underlying commitment on the part of the employer to helping employees obtain a balanced relationship between work and family obligations" (Wood, 1999).

However the trend has been present for decades now, the reader is able to find relatively little information on the programs and their effects upon corporations and individuals. A study conducted by the U.S. Federal Government in 1991 is a still relevant source, but it has yet to be retaken and adapted. "The 1991 Survey of Federal Government Employees, featuring over 55,000 public employees' responses to questions regarding their personal situations, participation in family-friendly programs, and satisfaction with their work-family balance and with their jobs, still provides one of the largest and most complete databases available to examine such questions" (Saltzstein and Ting, 2001). The results of the 1991 study are presented below:

Source: Saltzstein and Ting, 2001

All in all, the studies conducted in the past two decades have identified controversial results, some arguing the positive, others the negative efficiencies of the family-friendly programs. The basic reason for the diverse findings could refer to the following:

most studied have been conducted on a single organization the family-friendly policies are analyzed as a whole and therefore the efficiencies of a single program are neglected employees' answers are given in questioners and the workers have to rely on memory and personal perception most of the studies have no terms of comparison the studies generally measure satisfaction with the offered benefits, instead of job performance the studies only analyze the recipient of family-friendly programs, but should also question his team-mates, who interact with him and are able to measure the impact the studies are conducted over short periods of time the studies do not consider the "individual differences between employees, (the) social support in organizations, (the) job/organizational characteristics and uses of additional organizational level outcomes" (Kossek and Lambert, 2004)

The ethical implications of family-friendly programs are quite various, but a primary positive one is given by the promotion of gender equality. Most family-friendly programs have been aimed to support women develop their careers, while also being able to raise their children properly. "Several European governments have actively worked to increase women's equality in all areas of life, including employment. These governments have focused on initiatives such as changing societal attitudes toward cohabitation and childbirth outside of marriage; governmental provisions for maternity and child care leave for parents; direct monetary or tax credit support for child care facilities; taxation systems that favour, or at least don't penalize, married women who work; and legislated changes that promote equal opportunities" (Mainiero and Sullivan, 2006).

However in the past few decades the general tendency has been to improve and increase the number of family-friendly policies, an article in the U.S.A. Today in October 2003 announced the downsizing of the programs. "For the first time in years, companies are taking the axe to programs considered family friendly. Telecommuting, flexible schedules, job sharing and other programs long championed as critical for making companies responsive to family needs are being scaled back after years of steady gains" (Armour, 2003). The study was conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management and it interviewed 600 companies of various sizes. The results indicated that approximately one third of the questioned organizations had let go some of their employees specializing in work-life benefits, and consequently the development and implementation of family-friendly programs. There are three primary reasons forwarded for the reduction in family-friendly programs:

Labor market - the unemployment rate has been increasing, now totalling 9 million unemployed; in these circumstances, organizations no longer need major incentives to hire and retain staff members. "Benefits went past what the market could bear, and now they're coming back into line" (Armour, 2003, quoting Jim Bird, President of WorkLifeBalance.com)

Productivity needs - it has been observed that the family-friendly programs cannot be applied to all positions and, in some cases, telecommuting has resulted in decreased performances and reduce productivity

Cost savings - today's organizations have to pay large sums of money into the medical coverage of their staff members and they look for ways to reducing the already high corporate costs; a means of achieving this is that of renouncing the non-essential benefits, such as adoption assistance, scholarships and child care services

Even though the downsizing strategies have retrieved the desired result, this is only valid for the short-term. On the long run, the renouncing of family-friendly programs could do more damage than good. To better understand, since the unemployment rate is high, it means that people will have fewer pretensions when getting a job and companies will hire easily. Then, the unemployment rate will once again decrease and the demands of employees will increase. Companies which do not promote the proper incentives will find it difficult to retain their staff. "The cutbacks could backfire if productivity gains suffer and could lead to retention problems as the jobless rate drops" (Armour, 2003).

5. Conclusions and Recommendations

The emergence of the family-friendly programs coincided with multiple changes in the social and business fields. Since after the Industrial Revolution, most households had both mother and father working, baring the responsibilities of home and work became more difficult. Employers came to the aid of their staff members by creating special programs, such as child support, education or company's kindergartens. The primary aim of these programs was to ease the mind of employees, who would better concentrate on their professional tasks, increase their performances and also reduce the turnover. The studies conducted along the years however, with their controversial results, fail to offer a clear insight regarding the true efficiencies of family-friendly programs. The latest tendencies even reveal that companies are beginning to renounce them.

The most important recommendation for managers is to continue the development and implementation of the family-friendly programs. However there may be times when costs will be large, the ultimate benefit will be for the organization. By implementing this proper code of conduct, organizations will offer their employees equal opportunities, creating as such a dynamic and friendly environment, opened to creativity, innovation and hard work. Employees will be free to express themselves and will be able to work at maximum capacity as they will not have to worry about their children being alone at home, or any other unresolved familial matters.

Then, the second recommendation is that the corporate officials not only continue to enforce these policies, but they also diversify them to meet other needs as well. Take for instance the case of a single, childless employee. The daycare accessible to his colleagues will not do him any good, but in order for him not to feel disadvantaged, the management should offer other benefits, such as nights out.

A third recommendation, this time a legal one, is for the authorities to better supervise the corporate actions relative to family-friendly programs. Also, they should develop and enforce a strict legislation. It would however be unfair for the government to make the family-friendly programs compulsory for each entity, but since an organization has chosen to offer them they should do so by meeting high standards.