A Complete Workplace Family Friendly Policies Benefit All
By Bill Stanczykiewicz
A recent national story about parents, their children and the games that they play offers important guidance to Indiana companies hoping to recruit and retain top-notch employees.
The Associated Press reported the story of Michelle Hastings, who admitted to cheating while playing Candy Land with her 5-year-old daughter. For Hastings, the game just takes too long. Disney Monopoly is another offender.
“A game like that, it could literally take you days,” Hastings said. “A lot of times, you don’t play games because they take so long.”
Toy makers are responding with revised games tailored to the busy lives of parents. For example, Hasbro now offers express versions of three classics: Monopoly, Scrabble and Sorry.
Hastings’ story exemplifies the challenge that many working parents face to spend time with their children. According to the Family and Work Institute, nearly 80% of married employees have a spouse who also works full-time. And they combine to work an average of 91 hours per week outside of their home.
A wide range of family-friendly workplace policies can help parents achieve work-family balance. Some involve flex time and telecommuting, while other creative policies provide working parents with additional resources for their families. These same policies can help businesses hire and maintain productive employees.
Setting an example
For example, South Bend’s Crowe Chizek provides free baby-sitting service to staff accountants during the busy tax season and cash bonuses to employees who endure excessive business travel away from their families. Duke Realty in Indianapolis provides up to $3,000 to employees toward the purchase of a first home, and employees are able to donate accrued leave time to colleagues who need additional time to care for a sick child.
LaBov and Beyond, located in Fort Wayne, hosts brown-bag lunches with guest speakers on parenting and other family issues, and the company also provides pick-up and drop-off dry cleaning service, eliminating one more errand and helping parents get home sooner. Walker Information, in the state’s capital city, provides free and reduced-priced tickets to employees to take their families to sporting events, movies and other entertainment.
Meanwhile, Emmis Communications in Indianapolis provides financial assistance for adoptions. Emmis also has negotiated a 10% discount for employees to utilize at selected day care providers. Centier Bank of Merrillville pays financial bonuses to families at the time of marriage, the birth of a child and when an employee’s child graduates from high school.
Ernst & Young, in Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, offers concierge services, helping employees run errands, make dinner arrangements and plan parties and other entertainment. St. Joseph Hospital and Health Center, located in Kokomo, pays health insurance premiums for employees whose families complete annual health assessments. And at KMPG in Indianapolis, employees are leaving the office at 3 p.m. on Fridays during the summer months.
In addition to these practices, some of these businesses offer employees several hours of paid time off per year to attend parent-teacher conferences and other school activities or sporting events.
These companies are among the winners of the Best Places to Work in Indiana award from the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. The annual awards ceremony also includes the “Family Friendly Workplace Award” from the Indiana Youth Institute.
These honors are bestowed not only because these workplace policies help parents and children, but also because businesses benefit as well.
Business benefits
According to research by the Institute for Employment Studies, family-friendly workplace policies reduce the number of days employees call in sick, improve retention of a company’s best employees and increase worker productivity. These employment practices serve as an effective recruiting tool for top-flight talent, while improving the morale and commitment of existing staff members.
Businesses certainly are in business to create wealth for owners while also creating jobs for employees. These economic developments benefit children when parents enjoy increased economic resources to raise their families.
Yet, while a strong economy with good paying jobs is what we all want, this is not all that kids need. Young people need more than a walking wallet. Simple affluence simply is not enough. In fact, economic development without youth development is incomplete.
Family-friendly workplace policies strengthen businesses that help employees spend more time with their children. And if parents do not play Monopoly with their children today, those children will be playing Sorry with us tomorrow.
Author: Bill Stanczykiewicz is president and CEO of the Indiana Youth Institute. He can be contacted at (800) 343-7060 or www.iyi.org
A Complete Workplace