Family friendly policies: Organizational justice perceptions of need-based allocations.

This chapter will explore the issue of work-family conflict and the proposed solution of family-friendly policies. Fairness issues are considered a major barrier to the success of familyfriendly policies. Fairness issues arise because family benefits are need-based allocations, while most organizations function with equityor equality-based reward systems. This issue is explored using justice theory and research. Recommendations for organizations which apply justice theory to family-friendly policies will be proposed. Family-friendly policies 3 Family-Friendly Policies: Organizational Justice Perceptions of Need-Based Allocations Any human resource policy has certain functions: creating or modifying procedures, distributing resources, and regulating behavior (Zimmerman, 1995). Family-friendly policies are no exception. Policies are adopted which create new procedures, distribute resources such as flextime and paid leave, and establish norms about how the organization feels about family needs. The organizational justice literature has much theory and research on how fairness is involved in processes, distribution, and norms. As such, the justice literature is particularly relevant to our understanding of how well family-friendly policies “work.” This chapter will explore a new issue in organizations: how to fairly adopt and implement policies which are, by nature, not given to everyone and not based on performance. First, the problem of work-family conflict is introduced, to present the rationale for the policies in the first place. Then, family-friendly policies are discussed in terms of their different manifestations and organizational and individual outcomes. Next, justice theory is briefly reviewed and applied to family-friendly policies. This chapter concludes with recommendations for family-friendly policies’ processes and allocations which consider the justice literature. Work-Family Conflict: The Presenting Problem “Workers with families are torn by competing forces because their family responsibilities are also demanding. Company culture frequently tells them to leave their family troubles at home. This is frequently impossible today because there is seldom anyone at home.” -James J. Renier, Chairman and CEO of Honeywell, Inc.1 The changing demographics of our workforce is by now a familiar topic to those interested in organizations. In 1992, 58% of U.S. women populated the workforce (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1993), and by 2000, almost 80% of women (between 25 and 54 years) will be paid U.S. employees (National Commission on Working Women, 1989). What this means is that Family-friendly policies 4 more couples are juggling both work and family responsibilities (Gupta & Jenkins, 1985). In scientific and popular journals, this balancing act is referred to as work-family conflict. One study reported that over 75% of the married women surveyed experienced conflict between work and family every day (Wortman, Biernat & Lang, 1991). While having multiple roles, such as employee and mother, has been associated with positive outcomes like higher selfesteem and life satisfaction (Barnett & Baruch, 1985; Barnett & Marshall, 1992; Roskies & Carrier, 1994), the lack of time and energy to perform both roles successfully is associated with detrimental outcomes. These outcomes include the individuals’ health and psychological state, as well as organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction, work tension, burnout, absenteeism, and turnover intentions (e.g., Adams, King, & King, 1996; Burke, 1989; Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1991; Goff, Mount, & Jamison, 1990; Grandey & Cropanzano, 1999; Kopelman, Greenhaus, & Connolly, 1983). For example, having to pick up a sick child at day care can result in absenteeism from work. Also, child care needs are a reason cited for distraction from work productivity (Mize & Freeman, 1989). Since economic demands may require both spouses to work, it is unlikely that this inter-role conflict will just go away. Thus, employees are looking to corporations to provide means of coping with these multiple demands. Family Friendly-Policies: The Proposed Solution One proposed method of coping with the prevalent issue of work-family conflict is the adoption of “family-friendly” policies. These are policies or programs designed to meet the family needs of employees, sponsored by the organization. Examples of these policies include paid and job-secure parental leave, flexible scheduling by the employee to work around family needs, and on-site child care centers. Most employees desire family-friendly policies in their organizations (Friedman, 1987). The extent of interest in this issue is apparent when one reads the popular press, with a column devoted to work and family issues in The Wall Street Journal, cover articles in Business Week (Hammonds, 1996) and Ms. (Carter & Peters, 1996), and lists of family-friendly corporations in magazines like Working Mother and Working Woman. There are also professional groups formed to address this issue, such as the Families and Work Institute Family-friendly policies 5 and The Alliance of Work/Life Professionals. The federal government has also begun to respond to this issue with mandates: In 1993, the Clinton administration passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which states that businesses with 50 or more employees must provide 12-week (unpaid) leave for those with child and elder care needs. Affordable and quality child care for all employees is another cause that this administration has taken on. These popular and governmental responses to the issue of balancing work and family roles speak to the changing nature of the roles’ relationship to one another. While in the past organizations have been hesitant to cross over to the family domain (Zedeck & Mosier, 1990), it is now more common to find organizations embracing a holistic view of their employees’ lives. The existence of the policies demonstrate the organization’s willingness to respond to non-work demands on employees’ time and energy. This willingness is not only for the sake of societal responsibility. Since work-family conflict is associated with a variety of detrimental outcomes for organizations (see above), the desire to decrease this conflict is economically sound. It is believed that the use of family-friendly policies will decrease work-family conflict, which will lead to healthier and happier workers (Auerbach, 1990; Christensen & Staines, 1990; Galinsky & Stein, 1990). Likewise, since child or elder care demands are suspected to distract employees from work tasks and physically require them to be with their families, it seems reasonable to expect that work performance, absenteeism and turnover will be affected by the policies as well. Thus, high expectations surround family-friendly policies when they are adopted. Unfortunately, many companies do not evaluate how changing their policies affects individual and organizational outcomes. Evaluating the outcomes within each organization is important; if the programs are not having the desired effect, the reason should be assessed. Some researchers have attempted to fill this gap, but few have performed controlled studies. In fact, the limited research that has assessed the effect of family-friendly policies on work-family conflict has not been overly positive (Goff et al., 1990; Solomon, 1994), although there is more support for the effect on organizational outcomes. This next section will introduce the general outcomes Family-friendly policies 6 attributed to the adoption of family-friendly policies, will describe specific types of familyfriendly policies, and will outline the limited research relevant to assessing their outcomes. Family-Friendly Policies and Their Outcomes “Business needs specific, targeted work-family programs because they will help alleviate immediate problems faced by our employees and their families...we are all more productive when we can give work and home their due time.” -James L. Renier, Chairman and CEO of Honeywell, Inc. 2 In general, simply offering family-friendly policies seem to have positive results for organizations. For instance, those who offer these non-mandated fringe benefits are often considered “progressive” companies and may appear on a list of “family-friendly” corporations in the magazines and newspapers (Hammonds, 1996; Leib, 1996; Starrett, 1987; Trost, 1987). This may be good public relations in terms of recruitment and retention. A controlled study by Honeycutt and Rosen (1997) demonstrated that offering family-friendly leave policies made an organization more attractive to prospective applicants. These policies also seem related to retention; offering a family-friendly program had a positive relationship with organizational commitment and a negative relation to turnover intentions (Grover & Crooker, 1995). To look more specifically at the outcomes of family-friendly benefits, we need to consider how various types may affect outcomes differently. Although the argument has been made that policies affect employees as a whole (Grover & Crooker, 1995), for the purposes of this section we shall categorize policies into two types: 1) segmentative policies, which provide the employee with the means to deal with family demands but continue to focus on work, and 2) integrative policies, which allow employees to restructure their work in order to more clearly focus on both work and family demands. In addition to a brief description of these categories of policies, the following section will present some of the research which has examined the relationship of policies with attraction to the organization, absenteeism, turnover, and performance. Family-friendly policies 7 Segmentative Policies. These types of policies are work-focused, in that they encourage the employee to cope with their family demands as efficiently as possible and focus on their work demands. They attempt to alleviate the workers’ concern a