Abstract
Balancing work and family responsibilities is a challenge for many employees. Increasingly employers are recognising their role in this challenge by introducing family friendly workplace initiatives such as flexible hours, flexible leave and childcare programmes. This paper reports on stakeholder perceptions of family friendly workplace initiatives in six large New Zealand organisations. In this research, organisational stakeholders included CEOs, human resource managers, employees, and union officials. Interviews were undertaken with CEOs, human resource managers and union officials. A survey was administered to 809 employees. Responses from organisational stakeholders showed a degree of commonality of perception. For example, stakeholders agreed about the importance of both flexible working hours and flexible leave in enabling employees to balance work and family responsibilities. However, there were differing perceptions on some issues, such as the consultation process, the dissemination of information on family friendly initiatives and the rating of the organisation’s overall family friendliness.
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