At 'Family Friendly' Corporations
1/26/00
By Christine Woolsey

U.S. corporations lose well over $10 billion each year due to problems resulting from stepchildren and working parents and other forms of marital stress, according to a workplace psychologist at Pace University in New York. Relationships between the children and parents in stepfamilies, which often include misunderstandings and unrealistic expectations, cause lost time, absenteeism and lower productivity at work, said Barry Miller, who counsels stepfamilies.

"So-called 'family friendly' corporations provide programs for alcohol and drug abuse, baby care, eldercare and marriage/family counseling," Miller said. "Common as they are, divorced parents with a working step parent or working live-in partners aren't helped through normal family counseling."

Miller proposes that human resource and employee benefit professionals take a closer look at work/family benefits to make sure they are serving the needs of employees with marital relationship problems. "When you look at your diversity programs, an important stakeholder in the corporation is a single, divorced or remarried individual. Their needs are very specific." Employee assistance programs offer counseling and other services for mental health and substance abuse problems, as well as childcare and eldercare, but Miller said they do not adequately target "the larger population losing productivity because of breakdowns due to marital stress."

Most HR professionals have yet to recognize the impact marital problems have on workplace productivity, Miller acknowledged. "Most don't realize the impact modern corporate life has on family," he said. "Efficient as executive men and women are at work, they often lack the knowledge they need to be a good parent."

Miller suggested that companies periodically survey their employees to determine the best types of EAP programs to offer and to make sure the surveys include questions that relate to marital problems. Often, counseling and education for such problems is less expensive than general mental health counseling, he said. "It's not 30 sessions, it's often five to eight."

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