The Impact of Family and Work-Life Balance Policies on the Performance of Spanish Listed Companies

Abstract

Work-life balance has become a topic of great relevance in today's business world. In this work we present both a theoretical review on the state of art in this issue and an analysis testing the validity of the positive impact of worklife balance policies in firm performance. For the empirical analyses of these policies on performance we evaluated a sample composed of firms listed in IBEX-35. Findings provide support for the idea that introducing work-life balance practices benefits the company with respect to talent retention and higher employee engagement, as well as achieving a positive impact on productivity, costs and business results.

The Effects of Work-Life Balance towards Employee Engagement in Millennial Generation

“…Whereas, according to Hill (2001), WLB is someone who is able to balance the demands of time, emotion, attitude, and responsibility on his work. WLB provides benefits in the form of a combination of increasing job satisfaction and loyalty, promoting job performance, reducing costs due to turnover, absenteeism, recruitment and selection, increasing organizational productivity (Lazar, Osoian, & Ratiu, 2010), talented employee retention, productive innovation through increased employee involvement (Benito-Osario, Muñoz-Aguado & Villar, 2015). All of these aspects lead to desired outcomes in the form of improving employee and organizational performance.…”

Investing Time and Resources for Work–Life Balance: The Effect on Talent Retention

“…Finally, in competitive environments such as the current one, there is a continuous demand for HR to give their best. Long work shifts and rigid schedules can decrease the predisposition to work and reduce employees' creative and innovative capacities [18]. Furthermore, difficulties in finding a balance between work and personal life lead to stress and emotional fatigue, contributing to inefficiencies and mistakes [19].…”

“…However, the complex nature of human capital makes it difficult to develop a standard package of work-life balance measures [40]. Nevertheless, higher levels of satisfaction and retention as a result of work-life balance practices represents a potential source of competitive advantage for firms, both in terms of productivity and differentiation from competitors [10,18,33,41].…”

Current Trends in European Policies on the Reconciliation of Work and Family Life

“…leaves are not remunerated; fathers can transfer a significant share of the leave to the mother; leaves can only be taken on a fulltime basis); and 272 European Network of Legal Experts (2015) Measures to address the challenges of work-life balance 73  potential of flexible working arrangements is not properly exploited in such a way as to enable workers to have a reasonable measure of autonomy with regard to the management of their professional and family responsibilities throughout the lifecycle;  gaps between parental leave and available and affordable childcare and/or a risk of reduced employment of those providing informal care to dependent relatives;  tax/benefit systems that discourage the parent earning less (often the mother) from working. Source: file:///C:/Users/mushr/Downloads/1_EN_autre_document_travail_service_part1%20 (2) Last but not least, one should mention the research Maternity leave policies Trade-offs between labour market demands and health benefits for children undertaken in 2017 by RAND Europe, a nonprofit research organisation that helps to improve policy and decision making through research and analysis, working with European governments and institutions, charities, foundations, universities and private sector firms that seek impartial, quality-assured research.…”