Document Actions
Small Steps You Can Take Today
Small business can make changes that don't require a large investment, but boost employee morale and retention.
- Develop an internal task force to assess work-life challenges.
- Conduct an employee survey to identify which benefits would be most widely used and show your employees you're determined to meet their needs.
- Provide space and resources for a "Vacation Club" program for school age children during school breaks.
- Create a family resource library filled with helpful books and tapes for parents and children.
- Allow work breaks to be flexible (e.g., to coincide with times that children get out of school, so parents can check in on children).
- Conduct an employee survey to identify which benefits would be most widely used and show your employees you're determined to meet their needs
- Keep the dialogue about work and family alive! Convey employees' appreciation and concerns to management in a way that protects confidentiality
- Arrange for local convenience services that assist employees with day to day errands, For example, most local dry cleaners will agree to pick up and drop off at your work location.
- Establish ways for employees to communicate with each other regarding work/life-related issues, such as bulletin boards, monthly lunchtime chat groups, or through your company intranet.
- Offer dependent care reimbursement benefits for child care and/or adult care needs, and/or tuition assistance for employees who wish to pursue academic or career enhancement studies.
- Promote the business benefits of flexible work options through an employee newsletter or magazine. Highlight success stories and include a "Dear Abby" column to address manager and staffs concerns personally and directly.
- Establish ways for employees to communicate with each other regarding work/life-related issues, such as bulletin boards, monthly lunchtime chat groups, or through your company intranet.
- See if all your "messages" to employees are aligned. Do you offer flextime but schedule 7:30 meetings and reward employees for putting in twelve hours a day? Do you ask managers to encourage use of work-family policies, but include no room for assessing their success at this in performance reviews? Are part-timers ever promoted?
- Show support to caregiver employees by offering flexible work schedules and holding brown-bag seminars on long term care planning and caregiver issues.
- Notify working parents about quality back-up child care options through company e-mail, parent hotlines, human resource family guides or local resource and referral services. Consider deferring some of the costs from working parents.
- Provide your employees with information about local activities, events and programs appropriate for children and families. Share articles by local experts on topics relevant to family life.
- A Lactation Program is easy to implement and has a very low operating cost. The lease for the equipment is approximately $75 a month, the use of a confidential space can be negotiated with the management for no fee, the room furniture can be borrowed from departments or taken from storage and the refrigerator needed to store the milk can be shared. Use periodic surveys to assess whether the mothers returned to work earlier and/or whether they breast fed their babies longer as a result of having the program.
- Incorporate an overview of how work/life management affects employee productivity into manager and supervisor meetings or orientations. Review current benefits and corporate policies that affect work/life management, so managers and supervisors understand the positive impact on productivity and will communicate them to employees.