Work-Family Balance: International Research on Employee Preferences

By Dr. Louise Thornthwaite

What policies and practices do working men and women consider would make a positive difference, in terms of helping them to find a better balance between these two spheres?

While there has been considerable political jockeying in regard to the desirable degree of state intervention to better enable employees to combine work and family, a perhaps more fundamental debate has emerged concerning the forms of intervention and benefits that employees want.

The largest and most comprehensive surveys on people's preferences for work-family measures have been those of the Families and Work Institute in the US, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, as well as the 1991 Gotenberg study in Sweden, the 1998 Work-Life Balance Study in the UK and earlier British Social Attitudes surveys, and the research of publicly funded, family policy institutes in Canada and Australia. The 'work and family' literature concentrates most heavily on the difficulties that working parents face in combining these two spheres. There is little survey data that specifically identifies the priorities of employees with other dependent care responsibilities.

While it is difficult to draw cross-national comparisons on the basis of available survey evidence in regard to employee preferences for work-family benefits, some patterns are clear. There is a strong preference among employees with dependent care responsibilities for shorter working hours, part-time work and flexible working time. Another priority is for access to affordable childcare that is available at hours that mirror the existing diversity of working time arrangements. In relation to parental leave benefits, there is a pervasive preference for leave entitlements that are paid, especially for working fathers, as well as provisions for shorter hours and flexible arrangements on return-to-work, employment security and supportive corporate cultures. In all three areas, the implicit preference of employees is that benefits be provided as an entitlement rather than a privilege. Male employees, in particular, but not exclusively, are reticent to use benefits that are provided purely at an employer's discretion, due to the fear of adverse career consequences.

Whatever the stated priorities are, however, they reflect only what employees can imagine and conceive as possible. Employees' desires are influenced by the objective characteristics of their situation, and their desires evolve in response to evolving circumstances. Employees' preferences for work-family benefits vary according to stages of the life cycle, household model, the ages of their children and a host of other factors. That there are such strong, consistent patterns in employees' preferences throughout the western world is, perhaps, more surprising than that there are differences. Overall, however, the literature suggests a need to cast the net wide, to encompass a cafeteria of inter-linked and mutually reinforcing benefits to help employees combine the work and family spheres.

(ACIRRT Working Paper 79: From the Working Time Today Conference, 16 August 2002. September 2002)