Implementing conciliation programs. According to studies carried out in the United States, there are four factors that influence:
1. Size of the company.
2. Competitiveness in the labor market.
3. Percentage of women on the workforce.
4. Interest in retaining their human resources.
There is much research and expert opinion that supports the adoption of reconciliation measures. These are studies that reflect the high cost for companies of doing without women: the economic and social cost of the majority of women opting for certain jobs and the cost of the private sphere of life.
Companies can help their employees to reconcile in various ways: flexible hours, reduced shifts, compressed shifts, teleworking, nursery schools, development of services for the care of dependent people, awareness of values, etc.
The public powers have played a priority role in promoting equality between men and women, promoting employment promotion policies and promulgating laws that establish reconciliation measures. But on numerous occasions, these policies have lost their universal character, becoming policies for women, diluting the driving effect of equality.
Law 39/99 on measures to reconcile work and family life for workers represented an important advance, but it had many gaps that prevented effective reconciliation and the assumption of family responsibilities by men.
A very important aspect to change this trend is the awareness and education of equality, the distribution of responsibilities and conciliation from the school environment to change the attitudes and paradigms of the new generations.
Numerous economic studies have pointed to the work-family conflict as the cause of the ills that afflict the business sector. The economic cost that it has for the company is assumable, since the benefits far exceed it.
Workers who manage to achieve this balance are more satisfied and more willing to commit to their company, while their productivity levels grow as the company is sensitive to their expectations and needs.
