Reconciling work and family life is a priority for most employees in a company, but especially for those who have children. Nowadays, companies are becoming more and more flexible when it comes to creating working hours and conditions that allow for work-life balance. However, in Spain we are still far from other European countries in terms of work-life balance policies and 80% of employees still say that they have problems in reconciling work and family.
Reducing absenteeism, boosting productivity or retaining talent talent are some of the goals that employers set themselves with policies aimed at improving work-life balance. In addition to the implementation of these policies by companies, there is another element that makes it possible to improve work-family reconciliation: the implementation of certain social actions or benefits. This is the case, for example, of making it easier for employees' children to have access to childcare that suits their needs and preferences.
In this respect, solutions such as Childcare Ticket allows employees to have a bonus that they can use to pay for their children's childcare, which helps to improve the work-life balance while reducing their childcare costs.
Companies have the responsibility to make it easier for its employees to combine work and family. In addition, being a socially responsible company entails important benefits:
For a company to be able to to promote the work-life balance of your employees shall:
Modifying and adapting working hours is the first action we must take to facilitate work-life balance. The introduction of intensive working hours or teleworking are two effective tools that can help to solve this problem as they allow for a more effective allocation of time.
Another possibility is bringing the start time forward and reducing meal times, or implement a policy of flexible timetables taking into account school arrival and departure times in order to facilitate the parents' ability to take care of their families.
This requires a change in corporate culture, such as not scheduling meetings outside working hours and respecting the family life of all employees.
The telework is the order of the day, especially after the pandemic caused by COVID19 , and is increasingly used in our country. Give freedom, not only in terms of timetables but also in terms of location, is essential for the reconciliation of work and family life. We must therefore attach more importance to the results achieved by our employees than to rigid working hours.
A family-friendly company must offer a different kind of complementary solutions to those mentioned above when it comes to facilitating family care for their employees.
One option, for example, is to offer contracting facilities on nursery schools as well as providing support to employees to cover the costs involved. This support could be part of a flexible employee remuneration scheme, as in the case of Edenred Childcare Ticket, This also allows them to benefit from significant tax advantages.
There are some aspects of work-life balance policies which, although they should lead to improvements in employees' working conditions, end up having the opposite result. A detailed analysis of the professional barriers that prevent employees from successfully balancing work and family life allows them to be tackled more effectively.
Among the barriers most frequently experienced by employees when it comes to reconciling are the following:
When it is not clear how many hours employees are expected to work, or how they are expected to perform within the working hours, problems begin.
Traditionally, the culture of many organisations identifies long working hours as a sign of commitment, productivity and motivation for progress. But it has been more than proven that in practice, theonstancy does not equate to higher performance.. For this reason Productivity must be considered the number one priority, and far ahead of physical presence at the workplace or availability.
It is up to managers and leaders to motivating or discouraging employee efforts to achieve work-life balance. When employees perceive this support, they are more likely to accept the changes. If they perceive negative signals, they will assume that accepting the new flexible conditions may end up being detrimental to them and to the organisation as a whole.
It is essential that communication between superiors and subordinates is smooth and clear, It facilitates the implementation of work-life balance policies and, moreover, makes it easier to make them more flexible. This allows these policies to be more effective as they can be better adapted to the real needs of employees.
Another important barrier to reconciliation is the fear of professional consequences. Because even if the company has work-life balance policies in place, they will only be implemented if the employee feels free to use them without adverse repercussions for his or her career prospects.
According to recent studies, one in five workers in Europe are dissatisfied with the work-life balance possibilities available to them. However, our country is among the EU nations that guarantee a better work-life balance, with 8.8 points out of 10, which puts us ahead of other European countries such as France (7.7), Germany (8.1), Portugal (7.7) or Norway (8.2).
The number of hours a person works is one of the points to consider when it comes to achieving an effective work-life balance. Although the proportion of employees working 50 hours or more per week is not very high in OECD countries, standing at 131 PT3T, in our country these long working hours are even less representative, since they only affect 61 PT3T of the working population.
It is clear that the more hours spent working, the less time is available for rest and leisure. As the OECD notes, “the quantity and quality of leisure time are important for people's overall well-being and can generate additional physical and mental health benefits”. Fortunately, in Spain, there are on average 15.9 hours a day left for social life, sleep and self-care, 0.9 hours more than the EU average.
Maintaining a balance between the professional and personal spheres is not only a question of important for personal health and relationships, but it can also improve work efficiency and boosting work performance.
By improving the conciliation of work and family life is achieved:
Discover all the possibilities that Edenred offers companies to enable them to to implement an efficient work-life balance policy for its employees. Request information without obligation.
