“Current voluntary provisions are in place because of retention, not attraction. If you are flexible, you will retain people.” Human resources manager of an Edinburgh-based fund management company.

Interest among private sector employers in family-friendly working arrangements is most likely to be driven by concerns about retaining skilled staff and keeping up with competitors. But new legislation offering rights to unpaid parental leave and time off caring for dependants have also persuaded companies to adopt more flexible working practices, according to research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The study of companies in Scotland’s rapidly expanding financial services sector finds that firms are more likely to offer part-time employment and flexitime as ways of enabling employees to meet their family commitments than policies that are based on longer periods of leave. It also suggests that the arrangements agreed with individual employees are often left to the discretion of line managers, who can be inconsistent in their approach.

A research team from the Employment Research Institute at Napier University, Edinburgh, Glasgow Caledonian University and the University of Stirling carried out interviews with managers, staff representatives and trade unions in 17 companies before conducting in-depth case studies of family-friendly working practices in four firms, including employee surveys. They found that:

• There was a wider spread of family-friendly policy initiatives in companies where trade unions were recognised, including formal policies set out in staff handbooks.
• Although managers maintained there was little evidence of union influence on their arrangement, union officials insisted that promoting family-friendly working had been a priority for them. They complained of managerial resistance to new working arrangements and general apathy among their own members.
• The need to recruit and retain specialised staff had prompted smaller companies, without unions or staff associations, to introduce a variety of policies that were usually informal. The lack of formal policies was partly attributed to the absence of women among senior management in these companies.
• Managerial awareness of family-friendly employment policies in the four case-study companies was patchy. Lack of specific training and the degree of discretion granted to line managers could lead to inconsistencies in the way policies were applied. Managers’ willingness to be flexible was influenced by their perceptions of whether an employee was committed to the company and whether they performed well.
• The ability of managers to offer flexible working depended on whether the individual employee’s workload was time-tied and how easy it would be to find a substitute in their absence. Substitution was generally less easy for specialist and managerial staff.

Jeff Hyman, Professor of Human Resources Management at Glasgow Caledonian University and co-author of the report, said the research showed a need for the Government to monitor the effectiveness of its ‘voluntary’ approach to promoting family-friendly employment: “Our study shows that company policies are currently dictated by business interests rather than family concerns. It is also clear that family-friendly employment means different things to different people, even within the same company. This makes it difficult for employers and employees to reach voluntary agreement about the dimensions and terms of a formal policy. Informal practice is common, and can give rise to inconsistencies between the treatment and terms afforded to individual employees.”