The Relationship Between Work-Life Policies and Practices and Employee Loyalty:A Life Course Perspective

Using a representative sample of 3,381 American workers, this study investigates relationships among work/life policies, informal support, and employee Patricia V. Roehling is Associate Professor at Hope College and a faculty affiliate of the Cornell Employment and Family Careers Institute. Her address is Psychology Department, Hope College, Holland, MI 49423; e-mail: roehling hope.edu. She has two lines of research interests: one is in the work-family area and includes work-family spillover and employee loyalty. The other research area is in the clinical psychology field. Mark V. Roehling is Assistant Professor at the Michigan State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Kedzie Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824. His research interests are in the area of employer-employee relations including psychological contracts and the changing nature of the employment relationship. Phyllis Moen, the Ferris Family Professor of Life Course Studies, is Professor of Sociology and of Human Development at Cornell University, 259 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-4401; e-mail: pem3 cornell.edu. An underlying theme in her work concerns the implications of historically dramatic and interrelated social transformations: in longevity, gender roles, the workplace, and the family. Support for the research reported here was provided by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ( 99-6-23) and the National Institute on Aging (NIA 2P50AG11711-06). The authors would like to thank Ellen Galinsky and James T. Bond of the Families and Work Institute for use of the data from the National Study of the Changing Workforce. We would like to thank Liane O’Brien and Stacey Merola for their help at the initial stages of the project and Kathy Adamski for her technical assistance. Finally, we would like to thank the following institutions for their support of our research: Cornell University, Hope College, Western Michigan University, and Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, where Moen was a fellow for 2000-2001, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Institute on Aging. 142 Journal of Family and Economic Issues loyalty over the life course (defined by age and parental status and age of youngest child). The central thesis is that our understanding of the impact of work/life policies on employee loyalty will be enriched by consideration of the non-work and work contexts that influence employee attitudes and behavior. The relationship between employee child care policies and loyalty varies for women and men at different stages of parenthood. Flexible-time policies have a consistent, positive association with employee loyalty with some variation based on life stage. Informal support (via supervisors and co-workers) has the greatest positive relationship with employee loyalty.