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EMPLOYED PARENTS' PERCEPTION OF FAMILY-SUPPORTIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT

S.B. Kokoric, G. Berc, M. Laklija

Abstract

In contemporary societies employed parents are often faced with difficulties while trying to balance their work and family obligations. Previous research showed that this negatively influences the quality of family life and results in family stress. Additionally, it causes lower level of job satisfaction and work effectiveness. Recognizing these issues, some work organizations implemented family-friendly policies in order to support employees and to help enhance their family-work balance. For the same reason they created family-supportive work environment that is often characterized by flexible working arrangements. The aim of this research is to examine employed parents' perception of the level of family-supportive work environment (which provides flexible work arrangements and opportunities for work adjustments to family obligations) according to personal and family features and job characteristics. Furthermore, the aim is to determine whether there is a correlation between the perceived level of family-supportive work environment and work-family conflict. 187 employed parents participated in this study. All of them have at least one child under 18. The survey was conducted in six Croatian towns and surrounding municipalities. The following measuring instruments have been used: General Data Questionnaire, modified scale Boundary Flexibility [1], modified Work-Family and Family-Work Conflict Scales [2], Descriptive Statistics, the ANOVA, and Pearson Correlation were used for the data analysis. The results have shown that there are significant differences in the perception of a family-supportive work environment in relation to family financial status, working time, and the position in the workplace. It has been confirmed that employees with the lowest family financial status, employees doing shift work, and lower-ranking employees have a significantly lower possibility for work adjustments to family obligations. They rated family-supportive work environment at a significantly lower level compared to higherranking employees working in single shift positions who rated financial situation in the family as extremely favorable. The results also showed a significant negative correlation between parents' perception of the family-supportive work environment and work-family conflict. In conclusion, this research highlights the benefits of implementing family-friendly policies in the work environment and the importance of expanding various programs of family-friendly policies for all categories of employees.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2019V/1.1/S01.003

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