Family friendly work benefits in the U.S.: Origins and directions -- 1973 to 2011

The purpose of this study was to examine several environmental factors affecting a category of benefits that have been labeled "family friendly" and that may have contributed to the recruitment and retention of the US private sector workforce between 1973 and 2011. As tracked by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the rate at which private sector firms in the US offered family friendly employee benefits grew between 1973 and 2007, but declined between 2008 and 2011. The research question asked was: How did workforce, technological, legislative, and economic factors in the United States - whether independently or interdependently - influence the degree to which private sector firms offered family friendly work benefits to their employees from 1973 to 2011? The study employed an evidence-based research approach.;First, a longer term trend toward gender balance in the workplace formed the impetus for the adoption of family friendly work benefits, but this trend may have reached its maturity by 2011. Second, improvements in voice and data communication technologies facilitated the adoption of family friendly work benefits, but only for those types of jobs whose characteristics also support remote management and control. Third, while the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 codified the practice of larger firms place-holding jobs for people who take short-term leave under specified family caregiving circumstances, legislative initiatives at the federal level have generally not addressed the longer term issues inherent in the conflict between parenting and work. Fourth, because job creation in a service economy is concentrated at the lower end of the pay scale -- a place where all benefits including those that are family friendly are less often offered than for jobs at the upper end of the pay scale -- the longer term trend in the growth in the service economy has had a dampening effect on the rate at which family friendly work benefits are offered.;The study concluded that between 1973 and 2011, family friendly work benefits may have been more valuable to private sector firms in the United States where human capital made a critical contribution an organization's core competency than to those firms whose core competency was principally based on other types of resources.