The Changing Workforce

The tremendous growth in the number of women in the nation's workforce in recent decades has dramatically affected both government and private-sector employment. Most husbands and wives now work, so many families with children or elderly parents no longer have a caregiver at home during working hours. Yet traditional human resources policies are ill equipped to help workers balance work and family responsibilities. For example, federal employees are now prohibited from using any of their sick leave to care for parents with Alzheimer's disease. GAO found that nonfederal employers generally approach work/family issues strategically, establishing work/family offices or positions and forging their programs into an integrated support system designed to improve recruitment, retention, and productivity. In contrast, while individual federal agencies have undertaken work/family initiatives, no governmentwide work/family strategy exists. The federal government offers many of the same kinds of work/family programs found in the private sector, but the federal programs are often not as family supportive or fully utilized as they could be. Some programs are unavailable to federal workers. The primary barriers to such programs are cost, a lack of statutory or regulatory authority, and concerns about their appropriateness for federal employees. Nonfederal officials offered many suggestions on how to assess the need for and implement work/family programs.

GAO found that: (1) nonfederal organizations offer their employees a variety of work/family programs, including flexible work arrangements, flexible leave policies, child and elder care programs, and other programs; (2) such factors as employee input, recruitment, and retention goals led the organizations reviewed to adopt work/family programs; (3) the organizations stressed the importance of conducting needs assessments, effectively communicating the programs within and outside the organization, and recognizing concerns about equal treatment of employees; (4) the organizations believe that the programs have aided their recruitment and retention efforts and improved employee productivity; (5) the federal government lacks a comprehensive work/family strategy; (6) although the federal government offers many of the work/family programs that nonfederal organizations offer, the federal government does not utilize the programs as extensively as it could; and (7) barriers to federal work/family initiatives include cost, a lack of statutory or regulatory authority, and concerns that such programs are inappropriate for federal employees.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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