How to Be a Family-Friendly Boss

Focus on What, Not How or When. With today’s information technology, more and more work can be done in places other than the office and at times outside of traditional business hours. This is particularly true of knowledge work.

Get Better at Measuring Performance. For managers to become comfortable with employees working more flexibly, they need to get better at measuring performance. When they don’t have a good handle on output, they rely on generalized impressions of people’s work, or worse yet of the people themselves
Frequent sessions between supervisor and employee (timed around the rhythms of client projects rather than arbitrary annual deadlines) should focus on goal-setting and coaching as much as reviewing accomplishments.

Delegate, Coach, and Let Your People Earn Trust. Another great investment that pays off in the long-term is spending the time to develop employees to the point where they can work more autonomously in the medium- and long-term.

Providing coaching, feedback, and resources to help people not show up might seem counterintuitive — and it will surely be extra work, for a short while. The payback, however, comes with higher productivity and greater mutual trust. Having the confidence to allow employees more discretion over how and where they work frees you up to focus on more value-adding work than double-checking theirs.

Serve as a Work-Family Balance Role Model. Finally, you can help employees struggling with work-family balance by showing them how it’s done. Make it a habit at work to mention your family activities and ask your employees about theirs. Over time, these conversations can change the culture in your workplace

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/how-to-be-a-family-friendly-boss/