Mission statement

Work-family conflict costs both employers and employees in terms of family tension, absenteeism, productivity, retention, employment, and stress-related illness. It is to everyone’s benefit to have productive, not distracted, employees who can contribute to families, communities, and a healthy economy.

We are committed to finding ways to help Saskatchewan workplaces become more family-friendly. We work with Saskatchewan people, organizations, businesses and communities to help shape work environments that meet the needs of the 21st century economy while, at the same time, building and strengthening the Saskatchewan tradition of caring for family and community.

Our mandate is two-fold:

• To provide leadership and co-ordinate government activities to help reduce the negative impacts of people’s inability to balance their work and family responsibilities.

• To work with business, labour and community organizations to help them develop and implement work and family strategies.

We offer a variety of resources and services to employers, employees and community organizations. These services are available to anyone who wants to learn more about this issue, or who wants to implement work/family change in their workplace. Such capacity-building support includes resources, such as journals, books, newsletters and videos. We can also provide consultation and arrange for training.

Characteristics of a Family-Friendly Workplace

Based on research in North America and Europe, we have identified five basic characteristics of a family-friendly workplace:  

Flexibility:  This refers to an operational style that, as much as possible, allows employees to have some capacity to adapt their workday to respond to family issues such as a child becoming ill, school visits or special needs of elders. It typically includes family responsibility leave for employees.

Supportive Supervisors/Managers: This refers to a management style that values staff, and is characterized by a desire to help employees achieve better balance between work and the rest of their lives.

A Culture that is Family-Friendly: This type of workplace is characterized by overall attitudes, beliefs, values, and taken-for-granted ways of doing things that support work-family issues as legitimate workplace concerns, and as an opportunity to develop ‘new ways of working.’

Alternative Work Arrangements:  This means an array of options are available to employees including daily or scheduled flextime arrangements, job-sharing, reduced hours, compressed work week, family leave options, telecommuting, other leaves and sabbatical options. Such alternative work arrangements are seen simply as ‘ways of working’, so that employees using them are not sidelined, marginalized or belittled.

Recognition of Child and Elder Care Issues: This might include providing some form of support for child care, providing access to a referral service regarding child or elder care, establishing on-site child care or, as has been done in some Canadian cities, developing a consortium with other employers in order to provide emergency child care/elder care respite.  This includes accommodating the needs of employees who are breastfeeding their children.

Historical background of the unit

Concerns about the amount of stress that has arisen as Saskatchewan people attempt to reconcile the often competing demands of work and family led the Government of Saskatchewan to launch the Balancing Work and Family Initiative in 1997-1998. The Initiative included:

• A public task force which visited 10 communities across the province to listen to Saskatchewan people and hear possible solutions to integrating paid work and family responsibilities. The task force findings and recommendations are in the report, Towards More Work–Family Balance in Saskatchewan. 

• Primary research involving Saskatchewan employees and employers in the private and public sectors. Forty employers, with a total of over 5,300 employees, participated in the research conducted by Dr. Linda Duxbury of the School of Business, Carleton University, and Dr. Christopher Higgins of the Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario. The findings of this research are outlined in, Work-Life Balance in Saskatchewan: Realities and Challenges.

• A community development process that distributed information on work and family issues, identified leadership in the business, community and labour sectors, and helped communities establish partnerships to work on this issue. This included a Round Table for Business Leaders and a Round Table for Labour Leaders, both of which were conducted by Michael McCracken, Informetrica Ltd., of Ottawa and Linda Duxbury of Carleton University.

• A provincial forum in September 1998, presented by the Government of Saskatchewan in association with the Conference Board of Canada. The forum brought together a wide range of Saskatchewan people to review the research and task force reports and develop ideas on ways to respond to the issue of balancing work and family.