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Workforce: Home-work balance key to happy workers

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Birmingham, England - (UK)

The quality of work improves and people become more productive when firms introduce family-friendly policies, a new report has suggested.

Companies which help their staffs juggle home and work lives were rewarded with 'significant' levels of improved performance, researchers found.

Measures such as extra parental leave, help with child care, flexible working, job share and allowing employees to work from home led to improvements in productivity and service quality.

Staff turnover was also cut, according to the report, by leading research group the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The report 'strongly challenged' the belief that longer hours, more intensive working and wage cuts held the key to business success.

'Our findings run counter to claims that businesses are better off taking the 'low road' to profitability, cracking down on wage costs and embracing a long-hours culture,' said the report's coauthor, Shirley Dex.

'Family friendly policies may not be the main reason why employers report that their sales and productivity have improved. 'But if flexible arrangements are popular and help employees to manage their work-life balance, then the mostly positive effects revealed in this study are good reason for businesses to forge ahead with a family friendly agenda.'

Almost half the nation's workers - especially those aged under 25 - are looking for a new job, according to a new report today.

Older workers were less likely to be job searching, but up to 60 per cent of younger people were passively or actively on the lookout for a new post, according to research among 800 workers by recruitment firm Reed.

Men are more likely to be in touch with the jobs market than women, it said.

Chief executive James Reed said: 'As talent becomes increasingly mobile, the individuals in most demand can pick and choose what they do, and move at will.

'Organisations need to ensure they know what makes them attractive to people in order to retain their best staff.'

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Source: Birmingham Post (UK)

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