EFR: for Family-responsible companies only.

What makes a company a good place to work? Flexi-time, home-office, educational budget, team events? How about all of them? Let me take you for a ride on the Family-responsible certification path.

What is EFR?

EFR is the Spanish acronym of “Empresa Familiarmente Responsable” and there is no better explanation than what Fundación Másfamilia points out:

“The EFR Initiative responds to a new social and business culture based on flexibility, respect, and mutual commitment”.

The certificate, idea born in 2003, is issued by the FundaciónMásFamilia and supported by the Ministry of Health, Social Services, and Equality, is directed to organizations with a company culture where productivity takes over 9-17 schedule systems, it also recognizes the environment based on the performance and efficiency of the people.

EFR in numbers

For more than one reason implementing a good work-life balance policy, the following image shows how impactful measures can be and in which strategical fields are also influenced.

(Credit to EFR-Fundación MásFamilia, a study based on success cases within the EFR members)

Productivity increase: 31% – 40%
Better quality of the services: 15% – 25%
Reduce absenteeism: 43 – 51%
Rotation reduction : 33% – 58%
Better engagement : 30% – 55%
Better labor environment: 55% – 65%
Better reputation of the company
Employees retention improve
Better rentability of the company: 15% – 28%

If you are interested in knowing more about the companies part of the EFR-Family and their success cases, then I would recommend you to take a look at its Blog.

“The PESTLE”

The pathway to the certification focuses on 6 principles, and the interesting finding while translating them is that the acronym is PESTLE, (and…NO, even if it could be interesting, I am not talking about the PESTLE analysis)

P = personal & professional development
E = equal opportunities
S = support to employees families
T = time & space flexibility
L = leadership and management
E = equal opportunities

Companies opting for the certificate”Family-responsible” also need to meet some minimin requirements related to the PESTLE, however, it is not important in which abovementioned principles they are based, at least 6 measures ( with better conditions than the essentials stated by the Spanish government) need to be put in place and could space from more vacation days to flexitime, to home-office and/or educational budget.

How does the process usually work?

Once the organization decides to begin its journey towards the EFR certification, a first analysis of the documentation presented takes places, followed by a 2-steps external audit, one by collecting anonymous information through calls and surveys to the employees, the other collecting info from the management, furthermore both info are compared and a verification report is generated. The verification report includes the analytics of the surveys and matches with management info, and the point assigned to the organization, those points would then define the level of engagement and correspondent badge. The evaluation scale has 4 levels and to be able to reach the following levels, new measures should be put into practice every year.

(Credit to EFR – FundaciónMásFamilia, an example of the verification process.)

The Novatec’s way

As explained during the audit, we launched the idea and presented it in one of our lean-coffees.

A positive response 13 people out of 16 votes to move forward in achieving the certificate, of which seven offered to take on some responsibilities and create an EFR-team, based on the foundation feedback in 17 years, it was the first time they saw such collaboration and flat-hierarchy.

The decision was taken by the majority of the people, it means the time to deliver the required documentation had come. This caught us exactly in the middle of the pandemic which slowed down a little the paperwork but thanks to the EFR-Team did not stop it, 36 measures were presented and verified. In May the anonymous survey was being sent out by MásFamilia and an external Auditor was preparing the external audit, which took place in June.

End of June, the report was sent to our mailbox, with good news: we achieved it, and with “good grades”, we received our official certificate awarding the Design, Strategy and Implementation of Good Practices within the organization.

Survey insight

To conclude, I would like to give you an insight into the survey and the results (lower percentages in the first place, followed by the higher):

6% of the people are satisfied with the current conditions and 94% of the people are highly satisfied;
6% sees basic needs covered and 94% sees all the expectations met.
11% sees measures have been taken into consideration by management, but not proposed by it, and the 89% that measures are part of the company culture, values, and principles.
17% says the company makes measures attractive for most of the employees, and the 87% that the company is positively supporting the measures.
100% affirms the work-life balance policy of the company is above the average;
100% affirms there are no blockers for the use of measures.
100% affirms no one is expected to bring home tasks or work to do.

If you have arrived here, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read the blog post and, I hope this will inspire you to continuously find ways to improve your workplace, never underestimate the “butterfly effect”, every small step taken with the right people could really make a big difference within an organization.