It is becoming increasingly common to find that persons active within the labour market also have care responsibilities. A quick look at demographics also indicates that our population is aging rapidly and, thus, besides having to care for young children, adults will soon be increasingly responsible for their elderly relatives. The present socio-economic realities are however such that require most people to remain in employment in order to ensure an adequate standard of living for themselves and those for whom they are responsible. Besides, the drive towards a "knowledge-based economy" implies taking measures to ensure that precious skills are sought and retained.
Workers can, however, often be faced with conflicts between their work and family responsibilities. Smart employers should therefore take measures to ensure the well-being of their employees in order to safeguard the overall performance of their organisation. This can be achieved by implementing adequate work-life strategies.
Work-life balance was previously perceived as a "fluffy" concept and although there was an intuitive sense that it was the right thing for employers to do research supporting claims that such measures were beneficial to business was lacking. This is, however, not the case today because there is now widespread evidence proving the extent of such benefits, which include the retention of skilled staff, reduced costs of recruitment and training, recruitment from a wider pool of experience, an increase in the number of mothers returning after maternity leave, a reduction in sickness and absence, better time keeping, shared workloads, improved staff morale, improved productivity, a reduction in stress levels, a greater degree of loyalty and commitment and, last but not least, a reputation as a good employer. For instance, in the United Kingdom, research carried out by British Telecom this year illustrates how teleworking and flexible working options helped the organisation provide better customer service and improved productivity. Moreover, in 2003, the same organisation saved £3 million in recruitment costs.
A study carried out by the DTI in 2003 revealed that 49 per cent of the employers surveyed registered a positive increase in productivity after implementing measures to achieve work-life balance. Overhead costs can also be drastically reduced by increasing the number of home workers, besides the cost of fuel for those organisations that provide such benefits. Costs for training of new staff can be avoided by retaining old workers. Thus, for instance, policies giving the opportunity to mothers to return to work after maternity leave would allow such savings while also retaining the knowledge that such workers would have acquired throughout their previous working years. Sickness absence can also be drastically reduced by the introduction of flexible working patterns. Flexible working can also allow a business to extend its overall working hours, thus improving its customer service as well as its overall turnover.
In this regard, in fact, many employers who have developed family-friendly policies say that the benefits to their businesses far outweigh the administrative costs. Sustainable work-life strategies ultimately help achieve customer demands and corporate goals while enhancing the quality of life for individuals.
Work-life strategies are, however, not uniform and need to be adapted to the needs of the organisation and of the persons working within it. Measures intended to promote work-life balance include working part-time or on reduced hours, teleworking, compressed hours or annualised hours, job sharing, term-time working, flexitime, shift working, shift swapping, time-off in lieu and self-rostering.
A company wishing to implement family-friendly measures would have to carry out adequate research and assessment in order to determine what could work best for that particular organisation. Once implemented, measures need to be monitored and re-assessed for their efficacy and appropriateness.