Human Resources: Executive Summary: Changing Family Patterns

Family structures have been evolving since the dawn of humankind, reflecting the many socioeconomic and cultural forces impinging on daily life. Inevitably, household arrangements can either nurture or distract the workers that drive production in organizations. Increasingly, employers find that optimizing employee performance requires responding to the needs of their workers within the context of family arrangements and obligations.

Up until recently, the traditional family - two married parents with children - dominated our cultural landscape and largely set the template for workplace programs and benefits. But today, profound demographic shifts in family profiles have opened up new challenges for employers. Most dramatic has been the rise in cohabitation over marriage as an arrangement of choice. Cohabiting unmarried, opposite-sex couples number five million today, more than a tenfold increase from the 439,000 such couples 45 years ago. And the number of single-parent households has escalated as well, more than doubling between 1970 and 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

What's more, people are continuing to delay marriage, while increasing numbers of women and men are choosing to remain single. Indeed, the question about the composition of legal marriage itself has become a matter of intense debate leading to legal redefinitions and controversial laws regarding same-sex unions. Clearly, the traditional marriage-centric version of life can no longer dictate many of our social and work arrangements.

How children fare in these changing household structures, which are often tied to levels of education and economic well-being, will have a significant impact on future labor pools, both skilled and unskilled. Employers understand that the large influx of immigrant families may well keep fertility rates up and labor pools full, but there is particular cause for concern regarding the education and material well-being of children in immigrant households.

Workplace responses to the transformation of families are already evident. In many cases, domestic-partnership couples, the largest new subgroup of households, qualify for company health and retirement benefits, enforced by new state laws and tax-code changes. Family-friendly benefits are also taking on more importance as an aging population puts greater eldercare demands on workers and as Generations X and Y - with their emphasis on work/family balance - call for greater flexibility in work schedules and family-care support for both men and women. On-site daycare centers, backup childcare, lactation rooms and workplace schools are some of the perks that have helped lure skilled female employees - who make up a growing segment of the workforce - while bolstering overall productivity and company loyalty.

But now forward-thinking HR managers are addressing the broader issue of balancing work with a spectrum of life demands that affect single and married (or partnered) working adults alike. Aided by advancing technologies, employees want work schedules to adjust to their own personal and social needs, and they are less willing to make personal sacrifices. In fact, 80% of workers polled in a Work & Family Connection survey said flextime was the benefit most critical to work/life balance. And employers anticipate such benefits will yield better results from their employees.

According to Cathy Benton, chief human resources officer at Alston & Bird, businesses thrive when they help workers attain sound work/life balance. "Happy employees make happy clients. If our employees have the (personal) resources they need, then they're able to give us 100-plus percent when they're working."

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The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp, inc.) improves corporate productivity through a combination of research, community, tools and technology focused on the management of human capital. With more than 100 leading organizations as members, including many of the best-known companies in the world, i4cp draws upon one of the industry’s largest and most-experienced research teams and Executives-in-Residence to produce more than 10,000 pages annually of rapid, reliable and respected research and analysis surrounding all facets of the management of people in organizations. Additionally, i4cp identifies and analyzes the upcoming major issues and future trends that are expected to influence workforce productivity and provides member clients with tools and technology to execute leading-edge strategies and "next" practices on these issues and trends. i4cp is a for-profit company with offices in St. Petersburg, Florida.