Part-time work, job sharing, flexitime, term-time working, personalised hours, career breaks, annualised hours, a compressed work week, teleworking and emergency and special leave may all echo a dream world beyond the reach of many addled parents trying to mix the oil and water lifestyle of work and family.

To suggest that such arrangements could be offered by employers to make life easier may sound even less plausible to many working parents.

The truth is family-friendly working arrangements such as these may be closer to becoming reality than ever before, with the allocation of £4 million from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform under the National Development Plan for the promotion of family-friendly policies. An additional £250 million has been allocated for the development of a childcare infrastructure in Ireland.

The balancing act between work and family life has always been a precarious one; when one weighs heavier on an employee's shoulders, the other is sure to suffer. The need to assist employees in this juggling act is a key concern for policy-makers, employers and trade unions and has been identified as such at both EU and national levels.

In an attempt to address the reality confronting most Irish working parents - an endless race from home to childminder to school to work - the Equality Authority recently published In- vesting in People, a report on the provision, range and benefits of such family-friendly work arrangements in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Republic.

In the report, Mr Hugh Fisher gives examples of such arrangements and their benefits as well as recommendations to promote the operation of family-friendly arrangements at work in the Republic.

Mr Fisher, a training consultant who has done a lot of work on aspects of equality of opportunity, wrote a similar report for the Equality Authority in 1996 focusing on larger organisations. The new report found that when such arrangements came into the equation and employees were given a range of ways to divide their day between family responsibilities and work responsibilities, it made the difference in an employee deciding to stay with a company and work with increased productivity and motivation.

"Because of the revolving door syndrome, employers need to know how to hold on to staff," he said. Implementing family-friendly work arrangements is one of the ways to keep employees.

The benefits of such policies identified by employers who participated in the research study nearly all relate to employee performance. Companies providing family-friendly options have the potential to attract applicants from a wider pool and are more attractive to those unable to work in the 9-5 full-time straitjacket. Existing and new employees are more likely to stay with the company as they know they can balance their work with other aspects of their lives. The report also maintains that employees are working hours when they are at their best and appreciate they have an employer that understands they have non-work related responsibilities. This results in improved productivity and motivation.

Job-sharing, flexitime and time-off in lieu can reduce overtime payments. Similarly, hours of cover for certain services can be increased. Flexitime in particular helps with poor time-keeping and absenteeism. Another advantage cited in the report is reduced stress levels.

In his research Mr Fisher found childcare was a big issue, but the provision of it is difficult for SMEs "given the resources of businesses". A large percentage of SMEs employ fewer than 50 people and small companies tend not to have the same support as large organisations.

The reason behind this, he explains, is that "owner-managers trying to deal with 101 things don't have the resources or the time to focus on family-friendly working arrangements". "Because the economy is booming, companies are chasing their tails, running to keep up with demand.

"All this profile about skills shortage is really topical," he says. Employers are really interested in finding out about it. "Companies are putting in work arrangements to facilitate home arrangements."

Medium-sized businesses with human resource people have more possibilities to arrange family-friendly policies, he says, but a lot of companies are interested in them. One of the main obstacles has proved to be the information gap. Employers do not use or understand the phrase "family-friendly working arrangements". The research indicates that, despite the fact that 53 per cent of the 133 surveyed companies in the SME sector operate such policies, the overall number of employees availing of such arrangements is small.

Mr Fisher explains that this is because there is a low take up rate by men and it is "mainly women and women in administration" who take advantage of family-friendly arrangements and mainly "on an ad hoc basis where a couple of people approach their employer". There is the potential to introduce these policies to a broader spread of employees, he says, but first employers need to be pro-active and target men too.

Very few companies provide the policies on a formal basis - none of the small companies surveyed operated on a formal basis only -14 per cent have a combination of formal and informal arrangements. A quarter of medium-sized organisations surveyed provided family-friendly policies on a combination of formal and informal and another 13 per cent had formal arrangements only. Small organisations were more likely to provide such arrangements on an informal basis (83 per cent) compared to 63 per cent of medium-sized organisations.

Family-friendly working arrangements are still in a kind of limbo. The term is not generally used or understood among small and medium-sized business and there are varying degrees of employer resistance to providing them as the potential benefits are not apparent to some. Top of the list of concerns expressed by employers during research was that arrangements could be open to abuse. A number of employers commented that "you'll always have someone who wants to push it too far or swing the lead". However, this was identified as a fear as opposed to a widespread reality.

Employees aired their concern that their participation in family-friendly working arrangements would increase the demands on supervisory staff, responsible for rostering and tracking the hours that staff had worked and checking they had completed the work.

It was also highlighted that it was not entirely suitable for sales and customer service staff to be unavailable when required to deal with a particular customer.

However, at 72 per cent, the main reason cited for not introducing such work options was that there was "no request". A third of respondents said that it was "too difficult".

According to Mr Fisher "practical business benefits can be gleaned from the provision of family-friendly working arrangements," but, he said, for them to take off and for companies to benefit flexibility on both sides is a key element.