Work+Life Fit™ Tips for Employers

Work+Life Fit Tips for Employers

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The main takeaway for employers from the 2011 Work+Life Fit™ Reality Check survey is that work life flexibility is here to stay and a majority of your full-time employees say they have some form of it.  But are you using that flexibility to achieve your organization’s broad profit, growth and employee goals?

Here are some tips based on the survey findings to help your business get started optimizing and benefiting from the flexibility that’s now a foundational part of the way we live and work:

Tip 1: Understand the consequences to your business if you don’t pay attention to work life flexibility. The majority of respondents agreed (66%) that the business would suffer in a number of key areas without work life flexibility, with the top three areas being health (48%), morale (41%) and productivity (36%).

Tip 2:  Increased workloads may be here to stay but work life flexibility can help employees strategically manage their lives while getting the work done. Unfortunately, according to the survey results, individuals see their workload and lack of time as the primary obstacle to work life flexibility (29%), not as an opportunity.  Encourage experimentation with flextime and telework as ways to meet the needs of the business as well as manage life outside of work.  As noted in Tip 1, the business will benefit as well particularly in the areas related to health/wellness, morale and productivity.

Tip 3:  Position work life flexibility in your organization as a “strategy to help retain talent, manage workload and grow.” Avoid references that would imply a “benefit,” “program,” or “perk” that’s nice to have but not critical to the business.  Language and perception matter.  According to the 2011 Work+Life Fit Reality Check, only 50% of respondents believe that work life flexibility is a strategy.  The remainder either thought it was an “employee perk or benefit” (36%) or didn’t know what it was (14%).   There’s work to do in this area.

Tip 4: Tackle lingering fears that keep individuals from optimizing their work life flexibility. Even though the levels of concern have decreased dramatically over the five year period, in 2011, respondents said they didn’t improve their flexibility because:

  • 21% thought they’d make less money.
  • 16% were concerned they’d lose their jobs
  • 11% felt others would think they don’t work hard, and
  • 13% worried that their boss would say “no”

Reinforce compensation parameters for flexibility.  Make sure individuals understand how to present flexibility plans that will make sense for them and the business.  Train managers how to create an environment in which conversations about solutions can comfortably take place.

Tip 5: Expand the continuum of work life flexibility in your organization to include both informal, day-to-day flexibility as well as formal plans that officially change when, where or how work is done.  According to the survey findings, the most commonly used type of flexibility was “some type of day-to-day, ad hoc” flexibility (62%), followed by formal flextime (46%) and formal telework (33%).  In many organizations where flexibility means “formal” arrangements, the opportunity is lost to leverage the day-to-day flexibility that 6 out of 10 respondents say they have.

Tip 6: To make day-to-day flexibility a win for the business and the individual employees, encourage communication and coordination across all stakeholder groups, because right now it’s limited to employee-supervisor (79%) and employee-spouse/family/partner (63%).  But it needs to also include colleagues (52%) and those you supervise (45%).

For the 2011 Work+Life Fit Reality Check Press Release, go to http://worklifefit.com/pr11a/

For the 2011 Work+Life Fit Reality Check Executive Summary of Findings, go to http://worklifefit.com/pr11a/long/

To connect with Work+Life Fit, Inc, the Flex+Strategy Group and Cali Williams Yost:

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