Women More Positive About Employers' Work/Life Balance Programs
The perception among women of employers’ efforts to help workers balance their personal and professional lives tends to be more positive than that of men, with the gender gap being especially large among employees of smaller and moderately large companies, according to a study published by human resources consultancy Kenexa Corporation.
The study is based on the results of a survey of around 10,000 nationally representative workers conducted by the Kenexa Research Institute. When asked if they work for a company that supports employees’ efforts to balance work and family or personal responsibilities, 58.5% of all the female workers surveyed replied that they did, compared with 55.2% of the male respondents. Results also showed that employees of both genders who indicated their company supports work/life balance were far less likely than other respondents to say they are seriously considering leaving their employer within the next 12 months.
Broken down by company size, the survey found that the gender differences in perceptions about employers’ willingness to support work/life balance were especially noticeable among workers at small (100–249 employees) and moderately large (5,000–9,999 employees) companies: The gap between male and female employees of small companies was 7.2 percentage points, while the gender gap among moderately large company workers was 9 percentage points. By contrast, researchers noted, very little difference in the responses of men and women on the subject of their employers’ commitment to work/life balance was observed among employees of the largest companies (10,000+ workers).
The survey also found that women working in the accounting and legal sectors, light manufacturing, transportation services, and education tend to be more satisfied than their male colleagues with their employers’ support of work/life balance. On the other hand, little difference was found between the perceptions of men and women working in retail, health care, financial services, electronics and computer manufacturing, restaurants, and hotels. Among all the employees surveyed, the sectors that earned the highest marks for supporting work/life balance were construction and engineering, business services, and pharmaceuticals; the industries ranked the lowest for work/life balance were heavy and light manufacturing, food industries, and personal services.
Jack Wiley, executive director, Kenexa Research Institute, said the survey results suggest that there has been a shift in women’s perceptions about work/life balance. “In the past, women often found it more difficult to maintain balance due to the competing pressures at work and demands at home,” Wiley observed. “For many employees today, both male and female, their lives are becoming more consumed with a host of family and other personal responsibilities and interests. Therefore, in an effort to retain employees, it is increasingly important for organizations—especially those in knowledge industries—to recognize this need for balance.”
The survey further revealed that both women and men who are relatively new to their companies are, on average, much more likely to report that their company supports work/life balance than workers with longer tenures: Whereas 67.4% of workers in their first year of employment and 60.7% of employees in their second year on the job said they have a favorable view of their employers’ efforts to encourage work/life balance, barely half (50.7%) of all respondents who had worked for the same company for 11 years or more gave their employers positive marks for promoting work/life balance.
