Human Resource Executives' Perceptions and Measurement of the Strategic Impact of Work/life Initiatives

Given the stresses associated with today's demanding workplaces, work/life (w/l) initiatives continue to grow in importance as an organizational development (OD) intervention. In a period of increasing accountability, it is important for scholars and practitioners to demonstrate how OD interventions, like w/l initiatives, can be used as a strategic business tool to ameliorate the impact of stress in the workplace. To address this gap, the research questions for this study were based on the resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991), while using the Organization Development Human Capital Accounting System (ODHCAS) model (Morris, Storberg-Walker, & McMillan, 2009) as a basis for generating relevant metrics. This exploratory study used a survey instrument to compare senior human resource (HR) executives' perceptions of the strategic benefit of w/l initiatives in conjunction with their efforts to measure the impact of five types of w/l initiatives as they influence 16 measures representative of the elements of the ODHCAS. Findings from the study extend current research by revealing a relationship between HR executives' perceptions of the strategic impact of w/l initiatives and the decision to measure the impact of said initiatives.