Corporate Family Responsibility: The Core of Social Responsibility

Modern corporate responsibility entails a company's capacity to integrate a new anthropological model that puts people at the center, thereby generating trust and loyalty in addition to economic value. Corporate family responsibility (CFR) is a company's commitment to the promotion of leadership, culture and policies on workplace flexibility to facilitate its employees' integration of work, family and personal life. Thinking of sustainable development only in economic and environmental terms ignores essential variables that affect people and their quality of life, as well as the future of society. Employees must be given the ability to attend to their personal and family needs. This technical note describes the key points of CFR as an essential component of corporate social responsibility (CSR); it presents data obtained from the IFREI research undertaken by the International Center for Work and Family (ICWF) at IESE Business School in 1999 in 23 countries. It shows that by offering nourishing environments, companies can increase employee productivity and enhance their creativity and loyalty.