Family Friendly Policies: The Experiences of Three New Zealand Companies

This paper reports the implementation of family friendly policies in three pro-gressive New Zealand companies. ’Family friendly ’ policies and practices aim to make work and family responsibilities easier to manage. Policies that were being implemented in the companies went little further than statutory obli-gations. Childcare was a major need of employees which was not provided by the companies. Information about available policies was not well communi-cated through all levels in the organizations. Supervisor knowledge and understanding was key in effective implementation for employees. Major bar-riers to implementation were senior management attitudes, issues of equity and organizational culture. Recommendations are made on how to improve access to policies throughout the companies. Historically, home and work have not always been separate, but as industrial work sites developed away from home and village, domestic life became excluded from organizational concerns. Recent challenges to this constructed separation have begun to turn the spotlight on the interaction between home and work. Some would argue