Family Futures

[

] 157

nsuring

ork

-F

amily

alance

and the United Kingdom have also imposed cuts that affected

families. The availability and affordability of quality public

services play a crucial role in enabling families to live the

life they want, make the choices they want, and ultimately

to find a good work-life balance. At the same time, however,

the private sector has its fingers on the pulse and employ-

ers are waking up to the reality of the demographic change.

They realize that to attract and retain qualified workers, they

must offer not only the right salary packages, but also meas-

ures to enable their employees to reconcile their work with

their family obligations.

With all these profound changes going on around us and in

our own homes, the twentieth anniversary of the International

Year of the Family is timely, as it will draw the much-needed

attention of policymakers and decision-makers, civil society

and the private sector to the most relevant issues families

are facing today. Through organizing exchanges and foster-

ing cooperation, 2014 will be an important year to take the

first steps towards understanding the challenges and working

out sustainable and innovative solutions. COFACE will place

the issue high on the EU agenda through our 2014 Year for

Reconciling Work and Family Life in Europe.

Now back to the iceberg: what are the structural changes

needed to enable families to better reconcile their work and

family life, and not only contribute to the better well-being

of individual family members, but also, as is proven, to

enhance productivity and contribute to a better functioning

society and economy?

Family policy, and thus reconciliation policies, can be

categorized in three distinct groups:

• time policies (working time, leave)

• resources (income, tax reduction, allowances)

• services (childcare, care of the elderly and disabled,

household services).

Currently, there is great discussion around the family-friendly

workplace. The number of working hours is a fundamental

factor in influencing the quality of life both inside and outside

work. The two keywords here are:

• flexibility – to manage both spheres of our lives (work

and private) according to the situation

• boundaries – setting the divide between the two spheres.

According to a recent study by the Families and Work

Institute, a large majority (87 per cent) of all employees report

that having the flexibility they need to manage work and

personal or family life would be ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important

if they were looking for a new job. Yet one in five employ-

ees disagree ‘somewhat’ or ‘strongly’ that they now have the

schedule flexibility they need to manage the demands of their

work and personal lives.

It is clear that, in general, people feel that work disturbs their

home life more than their family responsibilities affect work

performance; this is the case for respondents in all countries

of the latest Eurofound European Quality of Life Survey. New

Empowering families to achieve a work-life balance can benefit the family, society and the economy

Image: FFM Isadora Duncan

The German initiative ‘Erfolgsfaktor Familie’ (Success-factor family)

brings together 4,500 companies that are family friendly, and has

a searchable database of best practices of these initiatives on its

website