Family-friendly policies and workplace supports: A meta-analysis of their effects on career, job, and work-family outcomes

Abstract

Today, many individuals face the challenge of combining work and family responsibilities. To help employees tackle the issues they face when juggling work and family, organizations often provide formal family-friendly policies. In addition, other people in the workplace, such as supervisors and coworkers, can support employees in an informal way in work and family reconciliation. In this study, we provide the most comprehensive meta-analytic review to date that examines the effects of family-friendly policies and workplace supports on career, job, and work-family outcomes. Based on 1680 effect sizes from 229 samples, our findings indicate that, overall, small to moderate positive effects exist across a wide range of outcomes. Supports tend to have an overall stronger effect than policies, although the differences between individual policies and supports are more nuanced. Moderator analyses indicate that people with greater family demands, such as parents, seem to benefit less. In addition, family-friendly policies and supports appear more valuable in national and organizational contexts that are disadvantageous for people that need to combine work and family responsibilities.