Trabajo y Familia: La Política que Retiene

The HR director of a fictional Spanish food distribution company with 3,200 employees in Spain and Mexico has one year to turn work-family balance from a brochure into a programme people use. Voluntary turnover is 16 percent, absenteeism 5.8 percent and engagement low, and exit interviews blame shifts announced three days ahead.

Stage 1: what to measure (exit interviews, a team-level survey of the work-family environment, or a policy count for a ranking), the flexibility on offer and leave and care. Stage 2: how to prepare the supervisors, what goals they have and what to do with the climate survey. Stage 3: a high-performing platform manager who refuses every shift adaptation, what the management committee does and a budget cut.

Stage 4: an employee whose refused request reaches the press, the public response and next year's programme. The model is deterministic: each option has fixed effects on three indices (policies available, supervisor support and work-family culture), the programme cost and absenteeism; the share of the policies people actually use is set by supervisor support and culture, so policies alone move little.

Turnover, engagement, absenteeism and a net result that nets savings against cost follow from effective use. The score combines the quality of each decision with those four outcomes and is capped when a decision breaks the law (re-identifying the authors of an anonymous survey, dismissing the employee in retaliation).

Inspired by published research on family-responsible employers, supervisor support and work-family culture. Spanish (primary, peninsular register) and English.

An advanced simulation for participants used to working with the main frameworks and trade-offs of the subject, designed for executive education and experienced professionals.