The balance between work and family is a concept which includes the balance between effective work and quality family life. Among typical consequences of the imbalance of work and family life are greater pressures at work, burnout, and stress of the employees. To establish the balance, it is crucial that the employees and their partners, organizations, and states, who manage this field with laws, regulations, and other measures, cooperate to resolve this issue.
The purpose of the bachelor’s thesis was to research how the process of balancing the work and family life is done in Slovenian organizations: to what extent they follow the measures which are specified in the certificate “Family friendly company” and “Resolution of the national program for equal options for men and women”. The research was done in the selected Slovenian organizations with the survey method. The finding was that the selected Slovenian organizations use a variety of measures to ensure the balance regardless the possession of the certificate “Family friendly company”. Some of the measures are flexible work hours, work at home, and an extra day off when the child enters a kindergarten or a school, and flexible vacation planning. In spite of this, issues with balancing work and family life occur sometimes, especially in organizations with divided working time (department stores, factories). Even though the organizations do their best to follow the “Resolution of the national program for equal options for men and women”, sometimes the difference between genders occurs, especially with payment policies and care in the time when the child is sick. This is still mothers’ domain. Because of their absence from work, they experience a lack of family income. The key part of balancing work and family life is cooperation between employees and employers. In addition to this, it is highly recommended to strictly follow measures that are specified in the certificate “Family friendly company”: flexible working time, a possibility of working at home, and a possibility of using the organization’s kindergarten or a kindergarten that is nearby. By means of additional laws in possible subsidies, the state should ease the coordination of child nursing of those employees who cannot take their children to the kindergarten in the organization or nearby, and of those who do not have flexible working hours and do not have an option to work at home. Therefore, to achieve the successful balance between work and family life it is crucial for an employee, an organization and the state to cooperate with each other.
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