Work-family balance: Measuring the impacts of parenting support interventions - A toolbox of tools and indicators

RESEARCH REPORT AND TOOLBOX

Measuring the impacts of parenting support intervention

By France St-Hilaire, Patrice Daneau, Marie-Pier Boivin, Isabelle Létourneau and Michel Pérusse

A Global-Watch & Université de Sherbrooke project, with financial support provided by EN3S

Special thanks to the contributors to this important project:

PRINCIPAL AUTHOR AND UNDER THE DIRECTION OF

Pre France St-Hilaire, Ph. D., Université de Sherbrooke

CO-AUTORS

Patrice Daneau, Doctoral Candidate in Administration (DBA), Université de Sherbrooke, Marie-Pier Boivin, Doctoral Candidate in Organizational Psychology (Ph.D.), Université de Sherbrooke, Pre Isabelle Létourneau, Ph. D., Université de Sherbrooke, Pr Michel Pérusse, Ph. D., Université de Sherbrooke

With the contribution of

Étienne Fouquet, Doctoral Candidate in Administration (DBA), Université de Sherbrooke, Josée Charbonneau, Research Professional, Université de Sherbrooke, Benjamin Messier, Intern at the Bachelor of Business Administration | Human Resources Management, Université de Sherbrooke, Sara Pettigrew, Research Professional, Université de Sherbrooke, Marie-Claude Pelletier, MBA, Global-Watch

Global-Watch affiliates and some guests will have the opportunity to attend a presentation by Pre France St-Hilaire on a first part of the results of this important research project during the virtual Global-Watch Rendez-Vous on November 19th.

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SUMMARY

Ensuring universal access to parental social security, or even providing higher, complementary levels of coverage and benefits, requires not only intervention on the part of governments, but also contributions from employers. The latter can be achieved by enhancing the mandatory scheme or making up for a legislative deficiency by establishing complementary social security mechanisms. Providing parental support becomes not only a priority for organizations due to the social changes they are forced to deal with, but also a tool to foster employee well-being and performance by making it easier to balance work and family demands. However, implementing organizational parenting support interventions would mean considerable contributions from businesses, especially as it may prove difficult to measure the effectiveness and impacts of these interventions using reliable performance indicators.

With a view to 1) targeting indicators that make it possible to determine the impact of parenting support interventions at work, and 2) supporting practitioners in the rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of their parental initiatives and their impacts on the organization, employees and society, a “scoping study” scientific literature review was carried out. This type of literature review enables an examination of the extent, range and nature of research activity in a specific field and provides an overview of the current state of knowledge through a process of data synthesis. Scientific databases were explored to identify the most relevant scientific articles based on inclusion criteria developed by scientific experts. To ensure a rigorous process, we added inclusion criteria gradually over the 5 database exploration phases. After completing the selection process, 70 scientific articles were analyzed.

The results presented as part of this report were obtained through a scientific approach, but the information is conveyed in layman’s terms to facilitate assimilation of the results by public decision makers, organizational professionals and managers. This summary of scientific knowledge is a foundational endeavor that allows us to offer our first toolbox of parenting support intervention performance indicators, along with their conditions of use. In addition to presenting the research method and the steps taken, this report contains 4 other sections: mapping of the parenting support interventions implemented, mapping of the success factors essential to the implementation of parenting support interventions, a cultural analysis of the parental role of workers based on 6 international studies and, finally, the toolbox of key performance indicators for measuring parenting support interventions at work.

The mapping of the parenting support interventions implemented comprises 12 different interventions grouped into 4 themes:

social benefits (annual leave—vacation, parental, maternity and paternity leave, sick leave, leaves of absence and sabbaticals for personal or family reasons, compensatory leave);
workplace flexibility (telework);
work time flexibility (compressed week, variable work schedules, part-time or reduced hours, shared work);
integrated programs (individual and organizational).

To ensure that the interventions achieve the desired impacts, the presence of success factors is crucial. The mapping of the success factors required for the implementation of parenting support interventions comprises 18 factors, grouped into 6 themes:

reinforce the support provided by the government and the national culture (only for social benefit interventions);
support intervention implementation;
ensure employee-organization needs fit;
promote accessibility and equality;
facilitate flexibility in intervention utilization;
evaluate the interventions.

For organizations working in an international context, cultural differences must be taken into consideration when interventions are implemented and when their impacts are evaluated because these differences affect the parental experience at work. Thus, the cultural analysis of 6 international studies highlighted 7 factors that need to be taken into consideration: individualistic or collectivistic culture, feminine or masculine culture, the importance attached to power distance, uncertainty intolerance, gender equality, the prosperity of the socioeconomic context and the different impacts of a single intervention.

4 key impacts (organizational, individual, family and societal) were associated with the implementation of the 12 parenting support interventions. To allow organizations to assess the impacts of the interventions implemented, 39 indicators were identified based on the impacts noted in the 70 scientific articles. For each of these indicators, a fact sheet describes the observed effect that the performance indicator was derived from, its definition, sources of information for measuring it, the chain reaction (the increasing levels through which the indicators progress), as well as the conditions of use. The indicator fact sheets are also categorized into three priority levels, which allow organizations to better target the basic indicators to prioritize based on an organization’s level of maturity with respect to parental support. These 39 fact sheets constitute the toolbox of key performance indicators for measuring parenting support interventions at work.