Employers’ Responsibility towards Employees’ Families (An Empirical Study)

Abstract

Employers’ responsibility towards employees' families follows from their responsibility for the employed person. It is not responsibility of a direct character. It is indirect responsibility that is, in fact, a consequence of moral and ethical principles. It should be assumed that not all relations between the employer and employee are governed by legal provisions. Some of them should be based on mutual trust, on a will for dialogue and respect. Undoubtedly, the relations between employers and employees in small, often family-type companies, where management is of paternalistic character, are often different from relations in a big company, where the owner, for objective reasons, has no opportunity to meet all workers personally.
Nevertheless, in any company, regardless of size, in my opinion, the employer should take responsibility not only for the employed person, but also for his/her family.
Following the above remarks, the way employers understand the concept of responsibility for employees’ families is presented in the first part of the paper. The description was based exclusively on opinions expressed by employers in the public media. Only well-known employers were selected, so-called “icons of entrepreneurship”. The second part of the paper, based on the author's empirical research conducted among workers employed in the private and public sectors, describes the same problem but from the point of view of employees. The main research question comes down to specifying ways in which an employer's responsibility for an employee’s families is best executed, apart from remuneration paid regularly for the performed job. As pointed out by many employees, an employed person would expect the employer to understand the correlation defined by many respondents as “employer awareness” i.e. understanding that family-related problems affect productivity at work. The research proved that employers’ awareness of taking responsibility for their employees’ families is gradually increasing.