Family Friendly Benefits
Family Friendly Benefits
“Family friendly” has become a prominent concept in most capitalist societies. The term can be widely used to describe numerous occurrences but most often it is used to describe specific policies that are seen for facilitating a better work and family balance for employees. Family friendly can even be further extended to apply to individual workplaces or enterprises that offer a special abundance of family friendly practices, policies and employment benefits. Family friendly benefits can be broadly defined as benefits that are available to employees for the purpose of helping them balance work and family responsibilities. Family responsibilities mostly consist of caring for children, elderly or disabled family members.
With all those definitions one would think the notion of family friendly may appear to be clear cut but that is not always the case, the term can be somewhat blurred at the edges. For example, working at home is generally seen as a family friendly practice. More often then not employees that are given a company laptop spend more time working, regardless their location. The reasoning behind the act is good but teleworking connections from home does not make it easier for employees to meet their new intensified expectations and workloads. While companies appear to be family friendly in reality they have their employees working odd hours for unpaid work. If you 're super conscious about responding to every single demand that comes at you from your work environment and/or you are so fully engaged or immersed in what you believe in your heart to be incredibly meaningful work, then you 're not going to stop (Guerrero). This is terrible for people who would be classified as “workaholics”. Rather than actually implementing a family friendly benefit in this instance they are blurring the line between work and family time. On this same note, when attempting to come across as family friendly many companies have a difficult time
“Family friendly” has become a prominent concept in most capitalist societies. The term can be widely used to describe numerous occurrences but most often it is used to describe specific policies that are seen for facilitating a better work and family balance for employees. Family friendly can even be further extended to apply to individual workplaces or enterprises that offer a special abundance of family friendly practices, policies and employment benefits. Family friendly benefits can be broadly defined as benefits that are available to employees for the purpose of helping them balance work and family responsibilities. Family responsibilities mostly consist of caring for children, elderly or disabled family members.
With all those definitions one would think the notion of family friendly may appear to be clear cut but that is not always the case, the term can be somewhat blurred at the edges. For example, working at home is generally seen as a family friendly practice. More often then not employees that are given a company laptop spend more time working, regardless their location. The reasoning behind the act is good but teleworking connections from home does not make it easier for employees to meet their new intensified expectations and workloads. While companies appear to be family friendly in reality they have their employees working odd hours for unpaid work. If you 're super conscious about responding to every single demand that comes at you from your work environment and/or you are so fully engaged or immersed in what you believe in your heart to be incredibly meaningful work, then you 're not going to stop (Guerrero). This is terrible for people who would be classified as “workaholics”. Rather than actually implementing a family friendly benefit in this instance they are blurring the line between work and family time. On this same note, when attempting to come across as family friendly many companies have a difficult time
References: Ellen Weinreb. (2011) Progress, Work In. How Job Sharing May Be The Secret To Work-Life Balance. Forbes. Accessed 02 February 1, 2014 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2011/10/24/how-job-sharing-may-be-the-secret-to-work-life-balance/ Guerrero, Aaron. (2013) The Downsides of Working From Home. US News RSS. Accessed 02 February 2, 2014 from http://money.usnews.com/money/ careers/articles/2013/09/25/the-downsides-of-working-from-home Kurkland, N. B., & Bailey, D. E. (1999). The advantages and challenges of working here, there anywhere, and anytime. Organizational dynamics, 28(2), 53-68. Locsin, Aurelio. Advantages & Disadvantages of Part-Time Jobs. Work. Demand Media. Accessed 02 February 2, 2014 from http://work.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-parttime-jobs-15847.html Sutherland, Stephen. (2013) The Basics of Employee Benefits. Manchester Professionals Articles. Accessed 02 February 2, 2014 from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/80158-1