Balancing Work and Family in South Korea's Public Organizations: Focusing on Family-Friendly Policies in Elementary School Organizations

Abstract

Family-friendly policies have emerged as a new issue in human resource management. Previous studies mainly focused on the effect of family-friendly policies on organizational productivity or job satisfaction at the organizational level. Little attention has been paid to examining the effect of family-friendly policies at the individual level. Our research fills this gap by examining the effect of family-friendly policies at the individual level with a sample of 127 teachers in four elementary schools in South Korea. We empirically examine the influence of family-friendly policies on job motivation, work performance, and employee morale using a survey method. As a result, we find that a balance between work and family is the strongest predictor influencing job motivation, work performance, and employee morale. Unlike our expectation, however, knowledge and use of family-friendly policies do not have an impact on these three dependent variables. Considering that such a balance between work and family has a positive influence on the three dependent variables, public organizations need to consider the implementation of available family-friendly policy programs to help balance work and family.