What is a family-friendly workplace?
A family-friendly workplace creates a supportive environment for employees to thrive both at work and at home by embedding and promoting policies and practices related to familial leave, lactation accommodation, and flexible work arrangements.
Why are family-friendly workplaces important?
The extraordinary pressures many working families face, particularly women who continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid care work, struggle to manage the competing priorities of tending to others, homeschooling children, completing household tasks, and remaining in the workforce. Parents and caregivers are finding it difficult to balance their work and family commitments, and report that their personal well-being and family relationships suffer as a result. Achieving work-life balance satisfaction is problematic for both women and men, particularly when additional caring responsibilities clash with job obligations, work hours, and career advancement opportunities.
Competing work-life tensions not only present a significant challenge for employees and the families they care for, but they also have tangible impact on employers and the wider community. One of the ways we can help employees manage these dual commitments is by making workplaces more responsive to the needs of families, thereby alleviating the pressure on caregivers, promoting women’s economic participation, and giving men more opportunities to engage in family life.
Research shows that family-friendly policies and practices contribute to improved wellbeing outcomes for employees, their children and other loved ones they care for; greater workforce participation of those with caring responsibilities; reduced caregiver-related discrimination; enhanced workplace productivity and engagement; improved gender equality outcomes; and fostering a safe and inclusive workplace culture.
- Businesses who offer onsite childcare for employees experience a 7.4x higher retention rate and 8.9x more loyal employees.
- Employers offering remote work have 2.1x more motivated employees, who also experience 2x better health outcomes.
- Employees at designated family-friendly workplaces rate their workplace as 123.2x more supportive than their peers.
What can I do, as a leader, to build a family-friendly workplace?
By investing in the creation of a workplace that is inclusive and supportive of employees’ overall family caring obligations, employers can help their employees to better manage their work commitments alongside their family responsibilities while attracting and retaining high-talent employees.
Each business is unique and should develop its own approaches to implementing family-friendly strategies that are practical and sustainable to adequately support the needs of its employees’ dual commitments and the organization as a whole.
Family-friendly workplace best practices include offering flexible work schedules, allowing remote work options, providing generous parental leave and paid time off, offering resources for childcare and eldercare support, providing breastfeeding accommodations, providing access to employee assistance programs, and encouraging open communication.
Businesses can leverage materials from the former Family-Friendly Workplace Certification Program as a framework in reviewing and determining how their organization can adopt and enhance practices to effectively embed support for their employees.
The materials provided below is for general purposes only. Federal, State, and local mandates may have been updated since the last guidelines revision. Please consult an appropriate professional before implementing changes to your Human Resources policy.
