The Family and The Workplace

Eighty-six per cent of personnel / human resource directors see the needs of employees who are parents as at least fairly important and 88% said that they thought family-friendly policies will increase in importance over the next 5 years.
Eighty-six per cent of personnel / human resource directors see the needs of employees who are parents as at least fairly important and 88% said that they thought family-friendly policies will increase in importance over the next 5 years.

Reasons for this perception are dominated by a greater need for flexibility in the workplace (47%). Other reasons include staff retention (13%), meeting skills shortages (8%), government philosophy or legislation in this area (8%), wider recognition of family-friendly policies (8%) and simply that this is the way society is progressing (12%).

The majority (73%) do feel that employers have a moral responsibility to provide family-friendly policies and 74% said that there is a recognised business case for employers to introduce these initiatives.

Indeed, almost two-thirds (65%) feel that their organisation should do more to help working parents than is currently the case and four in five (81%) said that the government should offer assistance to employers in this area.

The same proportion of companies (5%) provide a workplace nursery for all staff and make contributions towards nursery costs and three per cent have after school clubs. Almost a quarter (23%) offer information services such as family issues help line to all staff.

Among those companies that offer child care services and assistance, just over half (52%) feel that these policies have helped in the recruitment of staff in general, rising to 59% when discussing female staff in particular.

Technical details

MORI contacted 119 Heads / Senior Directors of Personnel / Human resources from the Times top 500 companies between 16 April - 7 May 1998.

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