November 2003 - Ref N43
Line managers and family-friendly employment
Employers are encouraged to become more 'family-friendly' and to
support their employees in developing a better 'work-life balance'.
Research by Sue Yeandle (Sheffield Hallam University) and colleagues
at other universities focuses on the role of the line manager. It
considers the issues that arise in everyday situations, as employees
and managers try to implement family-friendly employment. The
researchers found that:
- Although some 'progressive' line managers demonstrated detailed and
up-to-date understanding of family-friendly policies, many others
could be categorised as 'vague', 'ignorant, or 'resistant' about
employment policies for enhancing work-life balance. Managers commonly
confessed to 'muddling through' and 'relying on common sense' in
responding to their employees' needs and requests for flexible working
arrangements.
- Many line managers felt they were expected both to operate modern
human resources policies and to achieve demanding business targets.
None felt they had received adequate training to help them resolve
these tensions.
- Although most line managers displayed positive attitudes to
employees with parental/caring responsibilities, there was
considerable variability in their interpretation of the
family-friendly/flexible policies available to them. A few were
operating with gender stereotypes about how employees ought to deal
with parental/caring responsibilities.
- Managers' behaviour in implementing family-friendly employment
policies was affected by organisational factors such as size,
structure and operational arrangements and by the recruitment, labour
supply, and skills context in which they operated.
- Different managers emphasised the importance of discretion,
organisational values, knowledge of their staff, empathy, fairness and
consistency. In specific cases, many had grappled with both defining
and clarifying the situation, and with making judgements about
employee reliability, commitment and effectiveness.
- Some line managers based requests for flexibility on employees'
previous record of 'commitment', defined by long hours' working and
acceptance of short-notice changes to working time. This could work
against employees whose domestic responsibilities already caused them
to limit their working time and patterns.
- Most managers were conscious of - and some were troubled by - the
discretion they could exercise. Their responsiveness to employees'
circumstances drew on personal values, operational constraints,
notions of equity, policy precedents, and how confident they felt
about bending 'official' rules.
Background
Over the past decade, in a context of widespread debate about
family-friendly employment and the achievement of work-life balance,
many organisations have taken action to develop policies which offer
their employees more flexibility at work. These policies typically
also offer some support to employees at times of stress or pressure in
combining employment with parental or caring responsibilities.
Previous research has shown that merely having such policies in
place does not resolve all the issues with which employees, managers
and organisations have to deal. All the evidence has been that
individual line managers exert just as much - if not more - influence
over the way individual employees are enabled to negotiate work-life
balance than do senior managers, human resources departments, or
legislation.
The study
This new study re-analysed over a hundred line manager interviews
in over thirty workplaces. The relationship between managers' personal
attributes, attitudes and experiences was found to be linked to the
organisational and policy context in which the managers were
operating. Most of the organisations included in the study had
adopted, either formally or informally, some family-friendly working
arrangements. The organisations, from both public and private sectors,
included health and local authorities, companies providing financial
services, supermarkets, and small and medium-sized enterprises,
including some in the manufacturing and high technology sectors.
Managers' understanding of family-friendly policies
Although some 'progressive' line managers demonstrated detailed and
up-to-date understanding of family-friendly policies, many others
could be categorised as 'vague', 'ignorant, or 'resistant' about
employment policies for enhancing work-life balance. It was
particularly striking that these categories did not match readily
managers' other characteristics. Most of the categories contained both
male and female managers, managers with and without direct personal
experience of caring or parental responsibility, and a spread of ages
and length of managerial experience.
Many line managers confessed that when issues linked to family
responsibilities arose in their management of a staff group, they
resorted to 'muddling through' and 'relying on common sense' in how
they responded to their employees' needs and requests for flexible
working arrangements.
The need for training on implementing family-friendly employment
policies
Many line managers felt they were expected both to deliver on a
progressive human resources agenda (which valued diversity, responded
positively to staff combining work and family/caring responsibilities
and encouraged staff in their personal and career development) and to
achieve demanding business targets. None felt they had received
adequate training to help them resolve these tensions, and only a
small minority of those interviewed could be described as both
committed to and really knowledgeable about what their organisation's
policy was in the context of a family-friendly organisation.
Where training and communications strategies in this sphere were
more developed, as in one of the supermarkets, managers showed both
enhanced policy awareness and greater commitment to policy
implementation. However, in most workplaces, the line managers
reported that they had received no training or guidance beyond having
access to a human resources adviser or to a managers' guide or manual.
Managerial attitudes to employees with parental/care
responsibilities
Most of the line managers were positive about supporting employees
with parental/caring responsibilities, yet there was considerable
variability in their interpretation of their organisation's
family-friendly/flexible policies. Most managers emphasised that in
cases of genuine distress, difficulty or stress, they tried to be
humane, sympathetic and resourceful.
The study did not find widespread resentment about either the
organisation's family-friendly stance, or the fact that some employees
were trying to balance both work and family responsibilities. However,
a few managers did reveal strong expectations based on gender about
how employees ought to deal with parental/caring responsibilities, and
indicated stereotypical attitudes about the type of employee who was
likely to request flexibility or support at work.
Interpreting and implementing the policies
It was evident that line managers' behaviour in implementing
family-friendly employment policies was affected by several
organisational factors. These included the size of their organisation
or working group, the way production or service delivery tasks were
structured, and the details of operational arrangements. Thus opening
or operating hours, and the extent to which organisational performance
was led by customer or client demand, especially with regard to hours
of work, were important influences. Other important points mentioned
by managers included the ease or difficulty with which they could
recruit replacement staff, general issues of labour supply, and the
skills context in which the business was operating.
Among the issues to which the line managers drew attention were the
following:
- Discretion Many managers saw discretion as a key component of
their role, allowing them to make judgements and take decisions on the
basis of their experience and managerial skills. Some managers were
conscious that, in exercising their discretion, unfairness could
sometimes result.
- Organisational values/key principles Managers in some
organisations were aware that their directors or senior managers now
viewed adopting 'work-life' or 'family-friendly' approaches as key
components of organisational success. These managers were more likely
than others to feel they would be supported and encouraged in
implementing flexible employment policies.
- Personal knowledge of their staff Line managers commonly
emphasised their view that the key to managing people was to know them
well. It was not widely recognised that this approach could be
difficult for employees who found it hard to disclose personal
information or who were encountering family pressures relating to
mental health, relationship breakdown, or managing their children's or
dependants' behaviour.
- A capacity for empathy/understanding Some managers suggested that
this was not so much a managerial skill as a personality trait. While
certain managers prided themselves on having this attribute, which
they claimed helped them to operate flexibly, others openly admitted
to lacking this capacity, and to discouraging employees from bringing
them what they saw as 'problems from home'.
- Fairness and consistency Many line managers saw achieving this as
an important goal in their management of work-life and family-friendly
issues. However, some also recognised that it was rare for employees
to share identical work-life issues, so that relying on precedents, or
comparing cases, was not a sure way for a manager to be both fair and
consistent.
Managers were often able to cite specific cases where they had
struggled to define and clarify both the situation with which they
were dealing and the policy to be applied. Many recounted evaluating
how reliable, committed and effective the employee in question was, as
part of the process through which they decided upon their response.
Some managers appeared to use an employee's willingness to work
long hours, or to deliver work beyond what was normally required, as
an indicator of commitment, without realising that this approach could
lead them to evaluate employees with caring or parental
responsibilities less positively than those who did not have such
concerns.
Most managers were conscious of - and some were troubled by - the
discretion they could exercise. Their responses drew on personal
values, operational constraints, notions of equity, policy precedents,
and how confident they felt about bending 'official' rules.
Policy implications
The researchers have established several policy implications
affecting main players:
For line managers
- Experienced line managers have a wealth of detailed knowledge of
employees' needs for support in combining their domestic and
employment roles. This could be used in the development of guidance
and codes of practice about employees and their circumstances, such
that individual needs can be taken into account without intrusion into
employees' privacy.
- A culture change has yet to be seen in some workplaces in order
for employees to request, and for line managers to consider it
acceptable to respond to, employees' family responsibilities.
- Line managers are often a weak link in organisational
communication strategies relating to policy on work-life balance.
Where work-life issues are raised as part of a routine and regular
role for managers they play an important part in achieving effective
communication.
- Managers could pool experience of how they have dealt with
difficult cases involving employees who are parents and carers. This
could be fed into organisational 'banks' of good practice, using
suitably 'anonymised' examples. Organisations with sufficient numbers
of line managers might usefully consider initiating ways which could
enable them to share experience and practice.
- Managers could keep records of the way they respond to employee
requests for family-friendly employment or flexibility at work. These
could be fed into human resources departments for proper assessment of
the costs and benefits of the policies.
For human resources departments and employers
- The researchers suggest that human resources departments could
prioritise the development of imaginative training for line managers
in the implementation of family-friendly employment. They consider it
unhelpful that virtually all managers are implementing new and
innovative policies and legislation without access to training and
appropriate support.
- Human resources departments could assess and evaluate the data
provided by managers about the take-up of family-friendly employment,
and report regularly to senior management and trade unions/ staff
representatives on their findings.
- When organisations are restructuring, down-sizing or otherwise
redeploying staff, specific attention could be paid to how the
work-life balance of staff will be affected. The researchers consider
it important that care be taken to ensure that managers given new
responsibilities at these times have appropriate opportunities to
develop relevant skills as well as training.
For trade unions
- Trade union involvement featured very little in the managerial
interviews. There is a constructive role for unions to play in sharing
good practice across different organisations, bringing ideas from one
organisation into another, supporting good communications on these
matters, and including the effective implementation of family-friendly
employment in their bargaining strategies. Good dialogue with human
resources departments on effective ways of implementing
family-friendly employment could be a routine goal in collective
bargaining.
For government and policy-makers
- Policy guidance and new legislative developments could take
account of the different organisational settings and of the different
labour markets in which family-friendly employment will be
implemented.
- Government - not least in its role as an employer - can take a
lead by linking the gender equality and family-friendly agendas, and
by promoting more take-up of these options by men. This could benefit
organisations which are currently strongly female-dominated.
- Government guidance could include good practice examples drawn
from a wide range of different employment sectors and organisations.
Specialist advice and guidance may be needed for small and medium
enterprises, highlighting effective examples of how small firms can
successfully be family-friendly.
About the project
This report brings together research data from four previous
research projects supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation through
its Work and Family Life Programme. Those projects were conducted
between 2000 and 2002 at Cambridge, City, Keele, Napier and Sheffield
Hallam Universities. For this new study, the research teams pooled the
interview data they had collected from line managers, yielding data
from over one hundred managers in a variety of organisations in
Scotland, Kent, the Midlands, East Anglia and Yorkshire.
The pooled interview material was analysed by Sue Yeandle during
2003, in close consultation with Judith Phillips, Fiona Scheibl,
Andrea Wigfield and Sarah Wise, the other authors of the report. With
this (non-random) sample of line managers in twenty organisational
settings, the new analysis focused on answering the following research
questions:
- How far do line managers' personal characteristics structure
their attitudes and behaviour in implementing policies?
- What is the impact of factors such as staffing levels, staff
turnover, and the type of work being managed?
- How aware are managers of the policies in place, and how does
this affect the line manager's role?
How to get further
information
The full report, Line managers and
family-friendly employment: Roles and perspectives by Sue Yeandle,
Judith Phillips, Fiona Scheibl Andrea Wigfield and Sarah Wise, is
published for the Foundation by the Policy Press as part of the Family
and Work Series (ISBN 1 86134 556 9, price £13.95)
Click on the 'order report' icon in
the left margin to order online. |
