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The purpose is to determine whether there is a gap between what children and youth expect from their parents' workplaces and the family-friendly business practices that employers apply, as well as whether COVID-19 has accelerated the introduction of these practices or contributed to any paradigm change.

Descriptive methodological research was done through electronic surveys with two target groups. The first group of respondents consisted of 1,279 children and youth who expressed their opinion on the impact of the parental workplace on them and what needs to be done to make companies more family oriented. The second survey involved 64 employers, who shared their views on achieving a balance between work and family and provided insight into the pre-pandemic and pandemic family-friendly workplace practices.

An apparent gap was identified between the family-friendly workplace practices offered by employers and the needs that children have regarding their parents' workplace. Although employers confirm that COVID-19 provides an opportunity to encourage FFW practices, during the outbreak of the virus, they demonstrated responsibility towards employees but neglected their family members.

The findings cannot be generalised to the entire business sector as the survey is not nationally representative. Also, the surveyed children do not come from the surveyed employers' work collectives, so it was not possible to intersect the findings.

The research is vital for human resource managers as creators and implementers of family-friendly workplaces, as it indicates the need to involve the important but overlooked stakeholders in this process – the children of employees.

The research gap in the family-friendly workplace paradigm is addressed by comparing the attitudes of children with the employers' practices, before and during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The closer integration of work and family responsibilities has become an important element in the promotion of the decentralisation of the Australian industrial relations system. This article outlines the origins of the work and family agenda and discusses how it has come to be incorporated into the industrial relations reform agenda. A work and family typology is developed. Examples of family friendly workplace arrangements are outlined and discussed, and the extent to which these are incorporated into enterprise agreements is then outlined. There must be doubts as to how far family friendly workplace arrangements can be extended in an economy with high rates of casualisation, falling trade union densities and considerable differences in bargaining power. Indeed, many of the current family friendly arrangements are distinctly family unfriendly. Finally, there are important gender issues to consider in relation to the family friendly industrial relations agenda.

The purpose of this article is to assess the ability of formal equal employment opportunity (EEO) programmes and workplace agreement making to facilitate work and family balance for women workers in Australia.

This article uses documentary analysis and semi‐structured interviews in six Australian organisations that are required to develop formal EEO programmes.

Formal EEO programmes and agreement making are limited in their ability to promote work and family‐friendly arrangements at the workplace. Informal arrangements and managerial discretion are important in realising work and care balance.

The paper is Australian based, and the case studies were confined to six organisations, which restricts the findings.

Leave and work arrangements need to be required within agreements and EEO programmes. Most programmes gravitate towards minimum requirements, hence, it is important to ensure that these minimum requirements provide for work and care reconciliation. Programmes beyond the workplace, such as funded childcare, are important in this context.

The article highlights that formal mechanisms cannot achieve work and care reconciliation for women workers if they are built upon very limited minimum requirements, are voluntary and are dependent upon a bargaining process at the workplace.

This study examines how employee well-being, in combination with spiritual leadership, helps mitigate the negative effects of work–family conflict.

This study followed an explanatory research design to explain the relationship between spiritual leadership and work–family conflict. The approach was based on a cross-sectional survey of 278 workers from diverse industries and functional roles in South Korea's manufacturing and service sectors. Structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression analysis were used to test hypothesized relationships.

Results confirmed that spiritual leadership and employee well-being inversely influenced work–family conflict, in terms of work-to-family and family-to-work role interference. Furthermore, employee well-being fully mediated both of these relationships.

This study suggests that organizational competitiveness can be enhanced through a dual approach of organizational strategies and human resource training that cultivate employee well-being and a family-friendly environment. Notably, this study clarifies the value of leadership practices to both trigger and enhance employee well-being through a sense of meaningfulness in and at work.

This study expands the scope of our current understanding of how employee well-being is an effective mechanism in helping employees cope with work–family role conflict. Moreover, the study demonstrates the role that leadership practices, beyond the narrow interpretation of perceived supervisor support, play in helping employees cope with role conflict. Finally, this study enhances the field of workplace spirituality by examining the influence of spiritual leadership on employees' spiritual well-being and work–family conflict, which has not been currently addressed in the workplace spirituality field.

Family friendly workplace policies (FFWPs) are designed to help employees co‐manage work and personal obligations. With the rising aging population and subsequent emphasis on informal caregiving in Canada, Canadian employees will have to maintain paid work while serving as caregivers for family members at end‐of‐life (EoL). Thus, workplaces need to be prepared to accommodate these workers' requests. The objective of this paper is to explore, qualitatively, the workplace and employee characteristics that are most helpful to employees in EoL caregiving situations from an employer/human resources (HR) perspective so as to inform the development of FFWPs targeting this group.

The authors draw on the findings of five focus group discussions undertaken in 2008 with Canadian employers and HR professionals in the provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

There are clear differences in how large and small workplaces accommodate employees who are providing EoL care. For instance, larger workplaces are more likely to have set policies around employee EoL care leaves and are unable to accommodate employees' needs that fall outside the scope of these policies; smaller workplaces are less likely to have standard policies for caregiver leaves and are more able to customize responses to leave requests. Employee characteristics such as length of time working for the employer and employee skill level also have a bearing on accommodating employee EoL care leave requests. The presence of HR infrastructure, which is more characteristically found in large workplaces, is also related to the availability of formal FFWPs.

The fact that the data were derived from the employer/HR perspective and not those of actual employees is a limitation. The small sample size and convenience (non‐random) sampling limits the generalizability of the findings.

This research contributes to the limited literature on FFWPs and EoL caregiving accommodations. The findings of this study can directly inform workplace practice, both now and in the years to come, regarding how best to support workers who are also providing informal EoL care to family, friends, and others.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of perceived support from family-friendly policies and supervisors on job satisfaction of employees by incorporating work-family conflict as a mediator.

Primary data were collected from 369 employees working in different organizations from the service sector in India. Smart PLS software was used to perform partial least square structural equational modeling.

The result confirms that both family-friendly policies and supervisor support negatively influences the work-family conflict. Also, work-family conflict partially mediates between family-friendly policies and job satisfaction as well as between supervisor support and job satisfaction. Also, supervisor support directly influences the job satisfaction of the employees.

Management needs to know the relevance of work-life policies and supervisor support to increase job satisfaction and reduce employees’ work-family conflict. Results will be useful for implementing family-friendly policies and designing training courses for the supervisors. This will make the workplace more family-friendly.

This study creates value for the employees in meeting their family obligations by reducing their work-family conflict. Organizations are benefited by attracting positive outcomes like satisfied employees, which will, in turn, lead to a more productive and happier workforce. Studies examining the influence of these policies and supervisory support on job satisfaction with work-family conflict as the mediating variable are difficult to find in the Indian context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the inverted U-shaped relationship that exists between exploitative leadership styles and innovation implementation. In addition, drawing on the social cognitive theory, the paper explores the effect of the three-way interaction between exploitative leadership style (ELS), work–family balance (WFB) and family-friendly workplace practices (FFWPs) on innovation implementation.

A quantitative study of 440 employees from 38 medium and large companies based in Italy and Croatia was conducted, using an online survey. The proposed hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression analysis.

The results show that there is an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between ELS and innovation implementation. Furthermore, the findings support the existence of the three-way interaction suggesting that the combination of high-level WFB and high-level FFWPs strengthens the relationship between ELS² and innovation implementation.

This is the first contribution that examines a curvilinear relationship between ELS and innovation implementation. Additionally, it contributes to the work–family literature by providing the first empirical examination of the joint impact of WFB and FFWPs in enhancing innovation implementation. Our results suggest that individuals who perceive a high level of WFB and who work in an organization with family-friendly practices are more accepting of an exploitative leader, and that the positive feelings from the family domain encourage the implementation of innovation. These results may change the attitudes of managers, encouraging them to consider WFB and FFWPs as important for the implementation of innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and analysis of current legislation and various schemes and practices that are available to employers and employees in relation to work life balance, family friendly work arrangements, leave entitlements and diverse modes of flexible work in Ireland. Focuses in particular on the Library and Information sector.

Introduces the concept of flexible working, followed by a review of relevant literature. Outlines what flexible work practices are, giving details of various types of flexible working, both statutory and non‐statutory (in Ireland). Then, discusses why flexible work practices have emerged and details background legislation and the issues that the introduction of flexible working raises. Draws conclusions about best practice in relation to the management of flexible work practices.

It is argued that commitment to work life balance is now firmly in the mainstream and is part of the political agenda in Ireland and the rest of the developed world. Flexibility in work practice is becoming an integral part of employment, particularly in public sector organisations, which are in effect, leading the way on this issue. Flexible work practices have many advantages for both employees and employers. They also create challenges, especially in terms of management. It is important to balance the requirements of the organisation with those of the employees. Key factors in the successful implementation of flexible working are training and communication.

The article provides a firm basis for further investigation and discussion.

This paper aims to establish to what extent family-friendly practices and high-performance work practices are positively related to work–family balance and to identify the role played by job satisfaction and working hours as mediators of this relationship

We use data for a representative sample of almost 17,000 employees of dual-earner couples from European countries. To test the mediation mechanism implied by our hypotheses, we follow the procedure outlined in Baron and Kenny (1986). Given the nature of the dependent variables, ordered probit and regression models were estimated in the analysis.

The results show that, in general, family-friendly practices and high-performance work practices increase work–family balance and that these positive relationships are partially mediated by job satisfaction and working hours. While both family-friendly practices and high-performance work practices increase job satisfaction, only the first increase working hours. Moreover, job satisfaction increases work–family balance, while working hours reduces it. The net effect of these opposing forces on work–family balance is positive.

The use of secondary data posits some constraints, such as the type of measures and the failure to control for a higher number of family-friendly practices and high-performance work practices. Additionally, the non-longitudinal nature of the data set implies that some relationships cannot be considered causal in the intended direction.

Managers should implement family-friendly practices and high-performance work practices, as, in general, they increase work–family balance. A significant portion of this positive effect is channeled through job satisfaction and working hours.

The paper contributes to understanding the relationship between different subsets of human-resources management practices and work–family balance, proposing a model that aims to disentangle the mediating mechanisms through which this relationship occurs.

The purpose of this paper is to outline and assess the role of industrial relations in introducing work-family-related policies and investigate the drivers, nature and scope of contract provisions that were bargained in the following domains: flexible working arrangements, leave schemes, care services and other supportive arrangements. Analyses draw on information filed in a unique and restricted access repository, the SEcond-level Collective Bargaining Observatory (OCSEL) held by Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori (CISL), one of the major trade union organizations in Italy.

This paper presents and examines, by means of descriptive statistics and content analysis, available information on 285 company-level agreements around work-family-related issues that were signed in Italy between January 2012 and December 2015, in the aftermath of the great recession.

Work-family issues do not seem to be a major bargaining concern. The availability of specific arrangements is mostly limited to the domain of working time flexibility and it is not quite innovative in its contents. Besides, there is little evidence that the mutual gains rationale is embedded in collective bargaining in the field. However, mature and well-established labour relations result in more innovative and strategic company-level bargaining that is also conducive to work-family-related arrangements.

The sample is not representative. Thus, the results obtained in this study cannot be extended to make predictions and conclusions about the population of collective agreements negotiated and signed in Italian companies in the period under scrutiny.

Research on the industrial relations context that lies behind the design and implementation of work-family workplace arrangements is still limited. Furthermore, the evidence is inconclusive. This manuscript intends to address this research gap and provide a much more nuanced understanding.