Family-friendly support programs and work family conflict among Indonesian higher education employees

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of family-friendly programs at the workplace in the Indonesian higher education sector. The focus is the impact that these programs have on employees’ work family conflict.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey of academic and non-academic staff from 30 higher education institutions across Indonesia participated in the research. A total of 159 completed questionnaires from 109 academic and 50 from non-academic staff are reported and statistically analysed using SPSS.

Findings

Work and family experiences in Indonesia do not positively align with the findings reported in most academic literature pertaining to western societies where the use of family-friendly programs (i.e. flexible work options, specialized leave options and dependent care support) leads to a reduction in employees’ work family conflict. In fact, some of the programs were found to have the opposite effect in the Indonesian context.

Research limitations/implications

The design of family-friendly support has to take into account the context in which the policies will operates; these policies are not transferable across countries in terms of their effectiveness.

Originality/value

This is one of the first studies that has examined the operation and effectiveness of family-friendly support programs in an Indonesian context.

Citation

Afrianty, T.W., Burgess, J. and Issa, T. (2015), "Family-friendly support programs and work family conflict among Indonesian higher education employees", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 34 No. 8, pp. 726-741. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-04-2015-0026