Does it pay off to offer family-friendly practices? Exploring the missing links to performance

Abstract

Family-friendly practices (FFP) are viewed as an important tool to achieve equal opportunities and a supportive culture, with potential benefits for the organizational image and its employer branding. To date, however, there is an imperfect understanding of whether FFP affect firm performance and what are the mechanism of the possible association. This study tests a comprehensive model to investigate whether FFP affect firm performance and analyzes the role played by work–life balance (WLB) as a mediator between the provision of FFP and employee attitudes and firm performance.Using a sample of 724 public and private Portuguese companies and Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression, the results show that the availability of FFP indeed has a positive influence on WLB, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction, but it does not impact family satisfaction. Moreover, WLB mediates the relationship between FFP and firm performance. It is noteworthy that men and women do not perceive the impact of these practices the same way, with FFP having a greater impact on female job satisfaction than on their male counterparts. In addition, participants with lower levels of education and lower levels of annual income perceive a stronger impact of FFP on organizational commitment and WLB than the remaining participants. Men and participants with lower levels of education also perceive a stronger impact of WLB on family satisfaction.