Managing Work-Family Conflicts in Organizations
American University in Bulgaria
Memorandum
Date: April 2, 2010.
Subject: Managing work-family conflicts in organizations.
To: Lucia Miree, Ph. D.
From:
Summary:
The main forces that contributed to blurring the line between the personal and private lives were the creation of global organizations, communication technology, decreasing number of families having a single breadwinner and longer working hours (Robbins and Judge, 2007, p.25). Work-family conflicts emerged firstly in 1980s, after a significantly growing number of women with dependent children entered the workforce. Now this problem is experienced not only by women with children, but also by male workers and women without children. Moreover, many Americans reconsidered their career priorities after the events of September 11. Now people put a “family-friendly” schedule as their top priority while choosing a job, as opposed to the job security being the most important characteristic before. So, it becomes more and more difficult for organizations that do not help the employees to balance their professional and private lives to attract and retain workers. As a result, such organizations experience higher turnover, decreased job satisfaction and performance and lowering motivation.
As a response to the priorities' change, there are several ways to make a workplace more “family-friendly”. Organizations use time-based, information-based, money-based, culture-change strategies as well as direct services (Robbins & Judge, 2007, p. 631). They are adapting their workplaces to satisfy the varied needs of a diverse workforce. Among other changes, organizations are now widely introducing such policies as flextime, job sharing, part-time work, telecommuting, eldercare resources, flexible benefits, discounts for child-care tuition, on-site child care, on-site health/beauty care, concierge services, takeout dinners, tying manager pay to employee...