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...Management Consultants, WFD Consulting, WFC Resources, and numerous other consulting firms exist for the sole purpose of helping businesses develop and maintain workplaces that are responsive to the family needs of employees. Social scientists have applied increased conceptual and methodological rigor to their investigations into the work-family connection, hoping to minimize the strain often associated with managing work and family experiences while simultaneously enhancing business productivity. And, although the federal government has incorporated some work-family policies into its workplace environments, the majority of the research informing policy has taken place in the private sector, leaving the public sector at the local level relatively neglected in both the practice and the research arenas. (2)
To adequately recommend strategies municipalities can adopt to create workplaces that are responsive to employees' work and caregiving responsibilities, HR practitioners, researchers, and consultants must first appreciate the complexity of work-family issues experienced by municipal employees and the places where municipal employees work. This study is one of the few research efforts to examine the challenges faced by local city government employees who manage the multiple demands of work and family. Further, it presents insights into strategies that should create work environments that are supportive of municipal employees' multiple roles. A work-family spillover model provides a frame of reference for understanding this complexity, and an organizational analysis is used to present employee-generated organizational strategies that best address work-family challenges.
Literature Review
Research on the Intersection of Paid Work and Family Life
The work and family literature is replete with discourse on the nature, antecedents, and consequences of the spillover from work life to family life and from family life to work life. (3) Much of this research has been focused on the conflict or stress experienced by individuals who strive to manage their multiple responsibilities as paid worker, parent, spouse and adult child. (4) How to alleviate stress has also been explored. (5)
In general, work and family research provides the following insights into understanding work-family conflict:
* Work-family conflict varies from position to position, from job to job, and from life stage to life stage. (6)
* Stress generated in the workplace that spills over into the home is more problematic than is stress that spills over from the family to work. (7)
* Women experience the heavier burden of the conflict. (8)
* Family friendly workplaces benefit both employees and employers. In particular, employers anticipate increased retention, better recruitment outcomes, greater organizational commitment, and enhanced productivity as they increasingly establish family-responsive workplaces. (9)
* Employees report that workplace flexibility, strong supervisory support, and a positive organizational culture within the workplace are necessary to help employees balance work and family responsibilities. (10)
Up to this point, work-family research has been primarily conducted in private sector corporations that have invested in work-family solutions in order to increase their profits. Few researchers have focused on public sector organizations, where profitability is not a major concern. Among 40 important work-life studies identified by the WFC Resources, about 22 involved private sector employees and the remaining involved surveys of the general population. (11) Among the 60 articles chosen as finalists for the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Life Research in 2000, 2001, and 2003, only three addressed public sector employees, and none focused on local government employees. This is significant because the Kanter Award was established in 2000 by the Purdue University Center for Families and the Boston College Center for Work and Family to raise awareness of high quality work-family research among the scholars, consultants, and practitioners' and to identify, the best research on which to base future studies.
A content analysis of work and family research articles in industrial organization and organizational behavior journals revealed some variation in the provision of work-family policies and programs by types of organization, but the reviewers did not address differences between the public and private sector. (12) However, differences between the private and public sectors are generally regarded as important. (13)
Public administration scholars, in particular, assert that important differences do exist between the two sectors in terms of organizational mandates, supervisory structures, employee behavior, and motivation. (14) For example, Flynn and Tannenbaum found that private sector managers reported greater job autonomy and, subsequently, more organizational commitment than their public sector counterparts. (15) Other scholars have asserted that the political and legal environment greatly influences how human resources are managed in the public sector. (16)
In addition to differences between private and public sector workplaces, many types of government services at the local level may be peculiar to that environment and generate unique work-family dilemmas for municipal employees. Specifically, government employees involved in fire prevention/firefighting, child welfare, social services, public health, housing code enforcement, and law enforcement directly serve and protect individuals in the community and primarily deliver services at the local, not the federal, level, (17) It is not unreasonable to expect that employees whose jobs require direct involvement in the daily lives of other families, many of whom are troubled or in crisis, may experience work-family spillover differently from those whose jobs are more removed from the everyday lives of the citizenry. Moreover, many of these local-level public sector workers function as community caretakers or first responders and have responsibilities during times of crisis that may make it difficult for them to respond simultaneously to their work and family obligations.
Studies of Work-Life Issues and Programs in the Public Sector and in Local Governments
We were able to identify just four studies that provided insight into the work-family needs of public sector employees. Of these, two focused on federal government employees, and a third focused on federal, state and local public employees. Only one specifically focused on municipal employees. For the first of the federal studies, Ezra and Deckman surveyed federal employees to determine whether they were satisfied with government-provided policies and practices intended to help employees balance work and family demands. (18) The researchers found that the use of on-site child care was seen as especially important to mothers, that flextime had a significant positive effect for the parents of school-aged children, and that work-family balance was a substantial aspect of job satisfaction for all employees. Increased use of flextime and increased availability of on-site child care facilities were recommended.
Another federal study included quantitative and qualitative components and was conducted by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to update Congress on the implementation of family friendly workplace programs within the federal government. (19) Survey data revealed that the most frequently offered programs were part-time employment and flexible work schedules, and the most utilized programs were compressed and flexible work schedules. (20)
During a series of focus groups conducted as part of the same OPM study, federal employees indicated that the primary benefits of work-family programs were stress reduction and increased personal time. "Inconsistent guidelines, resistance to change, management indifference, and information transmission problems" were listed as the major barriers to the utilization of such programs. (21) Recommendations to combat the barriers included improved communication, the development of consistent guidelines and procedures, increased training and accountability for managers, annual evaluations of established programs, the establishment of a Family friendly Workplace Advocacy Office, the appropriation of funds for child care centers and sponsorship of a child care summit, and the issuance of a work and family training handbook for managers and supervisors.
In a third study, Durst surveyed HR administrators in federal, state, and local public sector agencies and found wide variations in the number and types of programs offered by the different organizations and little evidence of systematic evaluation of the programs. (22)
In the lone study examining work-family issues in municipal workplaces, Roberts surveyed a national sample of municipal government personnel managers about their municipalities' traditional benefits packages for employees, including vacation leave and health insurance, and any family friendly benefits such as flextime and child care. (23) The responses suggested that local governments were similar to private sector employers in terms of traditional benefits packages but lagged in the provision of family friendly benefits and in the recognition of the importance of such benefits. Roberts warned that unless municipal governments better understand the need for family friendly benefits, they would continue to be at a disadvantage to private sector organizations when it came to recruiting and retaining valued employees. (24)
Overview of the Current Study
Given that so little is known about how public sector employees manage the intersection of their work lives and home lives, it is unwise to assume that either the problems or the solutions uncovered in other types of workplaces apply to local governments without closer examination. (25) The study reported in this article was designed to enrich work-family scholarship and the public administration literature by exploring work-family challenges in one local government setting. Specifically, it is one of the few research efforts directed toward local governments and the only one to obtain municipal employees' firsthand insights...
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