Work Family Flow
- Posted by e2 on 06.09.09
- Tags Family Changes, Modern Family, The Evolving Family
- No Comments »
How do organizations attract great staff, keep them, and ensure they are working at their best? This is the human resource department’s perennial challenge. And with more employees combining work and family, the challenge to help working parents perform at their optimum is even greater.
‘Work family balance’ has been proposed as the answer for working parents to better manage their work and family responsibilities. If working parents can somehow achieve ’balance’ between work and family then parents, children and organizations will benefit. But Australian working parents report feeling rushed for time, having work interfere with family time, and guilt.
So is work family balance really working? Parent Wellbeing argue that the concept of ‘work family balance’ is misconceived. Work family balance suggests that people have a fixed and limited amount of time and energy. If work is taking all that time and energy, then family suffers, or vice versa. But work family research, and the experience of working parents, suggests this is not how work and family issues typically function.
Instead working parents and organizations need a new way of thinking about work and family. This new approach must:
- Understand the interrelationships and interconnections between work and family.
- Recognize that work offers benefits to family life.
- Acknowledge that family life offers benefits to the workplace.
- Recognize that ‘well’ parents are more productive and effective at work, and care better for their children.
Parent Wellbeing propose a new understanding of work and family - Work Family Flow. Work Family Flow is about optimizing people’s work family experience to enhance parents’ wellbeing, children’s wellbeing and organizational success. By helping parents improve their wellbeing, Work Family Flow helps organizations improve their bottom line.
