This article explores the barriers and strategies experienced by Spanish working fathers regarding work-family balance. Based on 29 in-depth interviews with Spanish working fathers in different types of organizations and sectors, the results of this study present different barriers that are divided into three groups: contextual barriers, organizational barriers and internalized barriers. The results also suggest that the study’s participants fall into three categories or patterns: hegemonic gender order conformers, borderers and deviants, who use three different strategies (no strategies, invisible strategies and visible strategies) to overcome the barriers detected in this research. The dynamics of reinforcing, being complicit and challenging hegemonic masculinities within the workplace are discussed in light of recent theories regarding gender and organizations, masculinities and fatherhood.

This chapter aims at contributing to a better understanding of the challenges and tensions that French working fathers experience at work in trying to achieve work-life balance. Drawing on a sample of 20 fathers, aged 27–51, working in different work organizations, in-depth interviews were conducted to investigate how these fathers navigate tensions between the simultaneous pressure for having a successful career and for embodying an involved fatherhood. The findings show that the fathers’ perceptions and expectations towards work-life balance are different from women, fathers often associating their needs for work-life balance with occasional and informal flexibility and not always viewing the organization as a source of solutions. Heterogeneously influenced by their cultural ideals of work and fatherhood, they expect now more proactivity, recognition and support on the part of their organization and supervisor to fully carry out their fatherhood. A typology of three profiles with different ways of combining fatherhood and work is derived: the ‘breadwinner’ father, the ‘caring father’ and the ‘want to have it all’ father. These categories are further developed highlighting the practices and strategies French fathers mobilize to solve their work-life equation.

The development of work–life policies—e.g., employee assistance programs, on-site childcare, flextime, part-time, compressed week, and so on—is increasingly important for a growing number of organizations. Though such programs provide benefits for both employees and employers, usage rates are still low. Scholars have called for research that addresses this phenomenon and more particularly explains the underlying processes of individual decision-making concerning work–life balance, and describe why and how certain social groups differ in their approaches to policy use. Our inductive study –based on 44 individual interviews- aims to address these issues. We found that the policies are used differently depending on the employees’ social group, and that certain salient social identities—such as gender, parenthood and managerial status—shape their use. Such programs are a structural and cultural change for organizations and often present an opportunity for redefining the centrality of work. Indeed the values inherent in them, including resting and taking time for oneself or for one’s family, may conflict with the traditionally masculine values associated with the ‘ideal worker’, intuitively linked to performance and production of positive results. The clash between the two, which permeated the interviews, causes employees to fall back on the social identity or identities they find meaningful. Our findings show three main strategies that individuals use when they feel that their social identity is threatened: (1) engage in workaround activities to avoid using work-life policies; (2) try to compensate for policies use (by engaging in projects outside one’s job or doing overtime work) ; and (3) significantly limit policies use. These results contribute to literature by showing that many managers and men do not feel legitimate to use work-life policies and find workarounds to manage without them, thus perpetuating stereotypical masculine norms. We demonstrate that the identity threat that underlies work-life policies taking may help women in the short term, but also contributes to their discrimination in the long run as well as is detrimental to the work-life balance of men.

L’intérêt et la controverse suscités par l’émergence de la fonction de Chief Happiness Officer (CHO) posent la question de sa contribution effective au bien-être au travail. Le CHO incarne-t-il une fonction « gadget » ou constitue-t-il une réelle avancée dans le développement du bien-être en entreprise ? Pour répondre à cette question, nous nous sommes appuyés sur la littérature consacrée au bien-être au travail et sur une étude qualitative menée auprès de CHO ou apparentés. Nous montrons que si le recrutement de CHO s’inscrit dans une logique de contribution au bien-être hédonique et de recherche de transversalité, il relève assez peu d’une logique de bien-être eudémonique. Nos résultats montrent également que le CHO peut être recruté dans une perspective utilitariste, ce qui peut compromettre sa contribution au bien-être sur le long terme. La contribution du CHO au bien-être est donc partielle et doit être complétée par d’autres dispositifs ou d’autres fonctions.

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