What are the top policies that impact employees and employers?
A report from The Best Place for Working Parents and Southern Methodist University's Center on Research and Evaluation (CORE) shows there are many benefits and positive outcomes when employers implement family-friendly policies. ‘Making the Connection: How Small Business is Gaining a Competitive Edge through Family-Friendly Policies’ says family-friendly policies have been proven to benefit working parents and enhance businesses' bottom line.
The study focused on two key evaluation areas for family-friendly benefits for small businesses. First, it examined the implementation of the ‘Top 10 Best Place for Working Parents’ policies across a variety of business environments and analyzed the differences in their execution. Second, it assessed the impact of the ‘Top 10 Best Place for Working Parents' family-friendly policies on outcomes for both businesses and their employees.
The study's findings reveal a positive effect on both personal and professional employee outcomes within diverse industries, as well as measurable benefits for businesses. With a majority of small-sized businesses that participated in the study, the report points to positive associations between well-implemented family-friendly policies and employee outcomes.
A few of the key findings for businesses in the report link well-implemented, robust policies to positive outcomes:
- Offering healthcare coverage increases the likelihood of having high-performing employees by four times and creates a five times more supportive workplace.
- Providing maternity leave makes it 50.8 times more likely to have high performers and results in a workplace that is considered 1,327 times more supportive.
- Embracing workplace flexibility creates an environment that is 123.2 times more supportive.
- Offering remote work options not only increases employee motivation and employee health by more than double, but also leads to 2.2 times higher satisfaction in personal relationships.
- Providing child care assistance boosts employee motivation by 3.9 times, enhances family life satisfaction by 6.8 times, and grows personal relationship satisfaction by 6.7 times.
- Offering paid time off can significantly increase personal relationship satisfaction by 16.7 times.
"Since launching ‘The Best Place for Working Parents in 2020,’ we have seen increased implementation and innovation across all of the top 10 family-friendly practices, and especially
with small businesses," says Sadie Funk, national director of The Best Place for Working Parents. "Given that small businesses make up 99 percent of businesses, we aimed to highlight the diverse range of options for implementing family-friendly policies and underscore the positive impact that these benefits can have on small businesses. We know that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to family-friendly workplaces, but we're hopeful this report will help small businesses see the possibilities of implementing family-friendly policies to support their employee's needs and drive their business goals."
