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for Business
Introduction
The staff of the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) welcomes you to the Father Friendly Check-Up™ for Business. This on-line survey will help you assess the degree to which your business’ operations include helping fathers find a successful balance between the demands of their jobs and the commitments to their families.
Did you know that 7 out of 10 fathers say they would take a pay cut if it meant they could have more time with their families? NFI believes this is an indication that fathers, like mothers, are looking for new ways to balance work and family. This survey is designed to help the dads in your company!
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Why Help Working Fathers?
Working parents want to spend time with their families and show their commitment to their employer! A 2002 USA Today (12/9/2002) poll (taken during a recession) found that “finding time with family was a more pressing concern than layoffs.” It's not just women that are seeking work/family balance in their lives. Dads are too!
Helping Working Fathers Leads to Successful Businesses
Today’s working father cares deeply about succeeding at work
and at home. Men report higher levels
of interference between their jobs and family lives than do women in the same
situation. More than half of fathers, in fact, report
that they are under a great deal of stress dealing with the pressures at work
and the demands at home. One factor that has undoubtedly led to this
stress is that fathers have increased the time they spend on doing household
chores by more than 42 minutes a day. Mom’s share of the housework, while
certainly more than dad’s, has not increased in recent times.
But, why should a business care about helping fathers balance work and family? Here are just a few reasons:
- Fathers are more likely to have career success, as well
as happy marriages… devoted dads on average are more likely to thrive in their
careers.
- Fathers who care for their children’s intellectual development
and their adolescent’s social development are more likely to advance in their
occupations.
- Well-adapted fathers more successfully learn and master leadership skills.
When companies help fathers balance work and family, they help themselves!
In other words, they improve their bottom line through increased productivity and loyalty, and reduced absenteeism and health care costs!
Need some evidence?A study by IBM, for example, found that the highest performers in the company are more likely to focus on balancing work and family than employees who performed at a lower level.
Johnson and Johnson enjoyed a 50 percent decrease in absenteeism among employees who use flexible work options and family leave policies.
Employees at DuPont who use work-family balance programs are more likely to “go the extra mile” for the company.
Struggling with High Turnover?
Offering work-family policies and programs helps businesses realize tangible gains! Plus, increased employee loyalty (a bi-product of helping employees balance work and family) reduces the costs associated with turnover! The Society for Human Resource Management reports that it costs an average of $2,328 to hire and train a new non-exempt employee and a whopping $9,328 to hire and train a new exempt employee. Wouldn’t you rather be spending that money somewhere else?
Need Good News for Shareholders?
Helping employees balance work and family can also provide a positive return to shareholders. In 2004, for example, Fortune magazine’s List of Best Places to Work placed Smuckers in the top spot. The company boasts a workplace culture that celebrates its employees and promotes respect for all as if employees were family. The company has not only posted incredibly high worker satisfaction, but its stock has had a total return of 100 percent over the past five years.
Want to Help Working Moms? Help Working Dads.
Wondering what the moms in your company will say when you announce you are helping working dads? Just remember that helping working fathers integrate work and family commitments directly helps working mothers.
3 out of 4 households today have two working parents and most working adults find it challenging to take care of both their family and work obligations. Some 70 percent of married mothers work outside the home and are challenged to balance work and family early on in the parenting journey. In fact, two of every three women work during their first pregnancy, and the majority of working moms (55 percent) have an infant at home. Moms benefit when the father of their children is also able to help with responsibilities at home.
It makes sense that through helping working fathers, companies can also help working mothers. By helping working fathers find a balance between work and family, it eliminates the need for mothers to be the only parent who must juggle the needs of their children and family with work.
Helping Working Fathers Helps Children – The Future Workforce
Fathers who are involved emotionally, spiritually and intellectually with their family –more than just physically present – have children that perform better on almost every measure of physical, social and cognitive development. These children have higher self-esteem; less depression as teenagers; higher grades, test scores, and overall academic achievement; lower levels of drug and alcohol use; and higher levels of empathy and other pro-social behavior than do children of uninvolved dads.
Father involvement also helps children get a good education and prepares them to be more productive workers and citizens! In fact, a father plays a key role in his child’s likelihood of academic success according to a landmark study by the U.S. Department of Education, children in two-parent families with highly involved fathers were 42 percent more likely to get mostly A’s, 55 percent more likely to enjoy school and 28 percent less likely to repeat a grade than were children in two-parent families with fathers who had low involvement. These positive effects even extend to the children of highly involved, non-resident fathers. Children of these fathers were 54 percent more likely to get mostly A’s, 70 percent more likely to enjoy school, and 50 percent less likely to repeat a grade than were children whose non-resident fathers had no or low involvement.
The next generation of leaders, and workers, will be impacted by this generation of fathers! If you want a well-adjusted, well-educated workforce in the future, make an effort to make your company father-friendly now!
Begin the Survey
Forget the survey! Send me more information about NFI's Work/Family Balance Programming!
Browse NFI’s Work/Family Balance Solutions
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