European top managers’ support for work-life arrangements

When Marissa Mayer of Yahoo! took over from her predecessor, she reduced the flexible working options of employees. After he became a father, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook extended parental leave options.

These examples show that top managers of organizations are of vital importance for work-life arrangements: policies within organizations that help employees combine work and private life.

There are different kinds of work-life policies. For example, the possibility to have flexible starting and ending times of a working day (flextime), the possibility to work from home (telecommuting), the reduction of working time (part-time work hours), the extension of statutory leave options and the provision of on-site childcare.

There are important organizational differences in the extent of work-life arrange provided to employees. For example, organizations in the public sector tend to provide more options as do larger organizations. Also, the number of work-life arrangements provided by work organizations to employees varies between countries.

When do top managers support the provision of work-life arrangements to employees in their organizations? And how does the context of the organization and country affect the conditions under which top managers are supporting the provision of work-life arrangements?

A recent study looks into these questions in the context of five European countries: Finland, Portugal, UK, Slovenia and the Netherlands.