Recreation and Community Services

In the past 10 years there has been an increasing number of works published detailing the positive impact of family-friendly and work/life balance programmes on workplace culture and pe1formance. While this study does not affempt to refute this body of literature, ir does address all issue which has been largely ignored thus fa1: Thar is. thar work! life programmes with an emphasis onfamily1riendly iniriatives can leave some staff members feeling disadvantaged and create a subculture of dissatisfaction. This paper examines whether these feelings exist ill a small sample of New Zealalld companies. Staff from two groups within Auckland City Council were surveyed and an email quesrionnaire was sent to a non-random sample of childless employees from 10 other firms. These resulrs of these surveys did notfilld evidence to support the idea rhat many childless staff feel disadvantaged by family-friendly initiatives especially where the programmes were flexible and could be used by anyone who needed them