Family-friendly policies fall flat if workers pressured to stay on task 24-7
Corporate leaderships need to ensure policies such as flexible schedules and work-from-home are available in practice if they want to retain caring staff
Family-friendly work practices have received much more attention over the past decade from companiesas more women join the workforce, and dual-career couples and single parent households become common - not just in Hong Kong, but around the world.
In response, many organisations profess to be a destination of choice for women and cite flexible work schedules, opportunities to work from home, job share at all levels and other progressive programmes to back up this assertion.
Family-friendly policies can help people manage multiple work and personal responsibilities but the availability of initiatives alone does not address fundamental aspects of a company or parts of it, which can inhibit staff at all levels from successfully balancing career and family. To properly evaluate the success of these initiatives is to disentangle policy availability from take-up and the effects on talent attraction and retention.
Women ... face negative judgments regarding their lack of commitment to a team, the customer experience or their employer
Family-friendly policies, irrespective of whether they are progressive or not, do not account for an organisational culture that impedes women from using the options available. I have observed many cases where women who take advantage of such policy options, visibly demonstrating interest in family and personal life, face negative judgments regarding their lack of commitment to a team, the customer experience or their employer.
I have also spoken to women who are dissuaded from utilising such schemes for fear of a stigma associated with having carer responsibilities. This fear is not unfounded as evidenced by many careers that have derailed because people took advantage of family- friendly programmes.
The latest research at the University of New South Wales shows key attributes shaping take-up and positive outcomes of family-friendly work practices are the collective characteristics of a firm’s senior leadership team.
Specifically, the attributes and behaviour of the top team influence how line managers and employees frame problems, what goals they perceive are important and consequently the level of support or enthusiasm line managers allocate to various initiatives.