ABSTRACT
Living to and from the environment in which they are integrated, organizations are currently facing a huge challenge, such as to act in a socially responsible way. At the same time, the conciliation between work and family is a challenge that all workers face, as professional demands and family responsibilities are largely difficult to reconcile. In this sense, it is then important to implement good practices of conciliation within organizations so that the changes in both domains do not affect neither the work nor the family.
This chapter, which is part of an exploratory case study and based on a CSR context, addresses the conciliatory work-family policies implemented in a Portuguese company. Using the semi-structured interview as a way of obtaining data, in order to understand the adoption of conciliatory organizational practices between work and family life in a Portuguese medium company in the chemical sector, this chapter also aims to explore the resultant organizational and individual benefits.
The results demonstrate that the main factor for the implementation of such practices is the profit achieved by reducing labor conflicts, reducing costs, and improving work quality and organizational climate. It follows that the organizational benefits are productivity and the increase of the turnover. 214At the individual level, there is a greater concentration and commitment in the work by the employee and a greater well-being having positive effects in the satisfaction of the employee. In this sense, and always in a perspective of social responsibility, the conciliatory work-family policies have an instrumental effect on employees’ lives, since internal conciliation practices and mechanisms facilitate and support the responsibilities of family life with the objective of reducing the effects of these responsibilities on professional life.
