Family-friendly workplace: An analysis of organizational effects in the transition economy

Several transition economies have witnessed a decreased state support for work-life balance, which called for a more active role and increased support offered by employers itself. Consequently, companies started implementing a wide array of family-friendly practices, however there was very little understanding about the main organisational effects of introducing family-friendly practices in the context of a transition economy. We propose and test a model of the relationship between family-friendly practices at the organisational level and their effects on the organisation. We offer a detailed investigation of the impact of eight groups of family-friendly practices on the perceived improvement in organisational outcomes. We analysed data over the span of five consecutive years, following companies in Slovenia that had systematically implemented family-friendly corporate practices. We analysed the perceived changes in 20 identified organisational outcomes. Using a linear regression model, we tested which practices would be most able to explain the perceived improvement. We found that the introduction of family-friendly practices had a positive perceived improvement in most (70 percent) of the identified areas, though none of them exhibited a significantly greater impact. Practices affecting workplace arrangements, information and communication and services for families were the groups of practices that had the greatest effect on the perceived positive effects for companies.