Implementing family friendly policies is a business strategy having a dual outcome: it can help you achieve organisational effectiveness along with employee wellbeing. While some measures are no doubt rather costly for most organisations, even small initiatives can make a huge difference and positively affect the bottom line of your business. What does family-friendly employment mean? Simply explained; a family-friendly employer recognises the family responsibilities of his/her employees and how they (responsibilities) impact the employees’ working life and productivity. A family friendly organisation seeks to facilitate reconciliation between the staff’s work and personal responsibilities. This makes the staff feel supported and helps them better balance their work and personal lives. What’s in it for the employers? While the benefits for employees of family-friendly organisations are obvious, there are actually many hidden benefits of such policies for employers as well: You enhance your capacity to attract a wider range of candidates – both men and women - in a competitive job market. You get reduced absenteeism and tardiness You benefit from the enhance productivity of employees You reduce your attrition rate which in turn reduces your hiring costs You create and maintain a competitive environment How to achieve the ‘family friendly organisation’? Each workplace is different and unique in terms of its needs. The main challenge in achieving a family friendly organisation is to seek to match the needs of the staff with those of your organisation. If needed, you could do a complete assessment as a starting point for designing best practices. Read the full article here for some tips that can help: