Here’s the latest work/life news:
– The FutureWork Institute: There’s a new organization devoted to work/life issues: The FutureWork Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., is a spinoff of the diversity and work/life consulting divisions of Towers Perrin, an international management and human resource consulting firm based in New York.
Why the spinoff and why now?
“The need is there, said Joe Conway, director of media relations for Towers Perrin. “Our clients have an ongoing interest in the area of work/life.”
The firm has appointed Margaret Regan, who is well-known for her expertise in diversity and workforce matters, as president and CEO of the institute. She heads a staff of 11 former Towers Perrin professionals and 50 affiliate consultants.
The formation of the institute underscores for me the fact that U.S. businesses, despite a slow economy, continue to take work/life issues very seriously–as do their employees.
– There Have Been Some Changes Made: “The American workplace has undergone a significant transformation,” says Ilene Philipson, research affiliate at the Center for Working Families at the University of California Berkeley and author of “Married to the Job: Why we live to work and what we can do about it” (Free Press, $24).
“Throughout the 1990s, corporations subscribed to beliefs about how to manage employees that made workplaces more emotionally compelling,” according to Philipson, who has doctorates in sociology and clinical psychology. “The new workplace is not just a place to work. It’s a place to live.”
The good news here is that employers understand that employees spend most of their waking hours at work–and it needs to be a supportive place to be.
– The Benefits Beat: Outstanding employees deserve rewards that go well beyond the traditional day off, merchandise, travel or gift certificates. That’s the thinking behind Circles Rewards, a new incentive and recognition program recently introduced by Circles, a provider of management awards for employees. The company is based in Boston.
And its newest personalized incentives, which aim to create loyal employees, are right on target: They include such choices as new camping equipment, a night of jazz, a hot air balloon ride, a dinner party for eight with your own personal chef or flowers every month for a year.
Recipients choose the reward they want and Circles makes it happen, according to Janet Kraus, CEO and co-founder of Circles.
And to make sure the prizegiver’s children don’t go prizeless, Circles uses its own award system to recognize its own employees, such as Ryan Gramaglia. In honor of his two-year anniversary at the company, the quality specialist opted to take his aunt on a golfing vacation in Desert Springs, Calif.
– What’s Wrong with the Masters: If, instead of just wanting to play golf in California, Gramaglia’s aunt wanted to become a member of the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, she wouldn’t have been able to do so. No women are members.
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And, as we know, such exclusion costs employed women access not only to the sport of golf but alsoto information and power.
Each April, the club, which has only 10 African-American men among its 300 all-male membership, holds a major professional golf tournament called the Masters, for male golfers only, of course.
The club is under fire because of its discriminatory policies against women, but if it wants to bend just a little about including women in some way, I know where to begin.
Start by changing the name of the tournament. “The Masters” means men and is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s substitute “The Mistresses” instead.
That form of diversity should give William “Hootie” Johnson, who runs the club and makes the rules, something to think about.
It’ll be a hoot.
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Carol Kleiman’s columns also appear in Sunday Business and Wednesday’s Working sections. She is the author of “Winning the Job Game: The new rules for finding and keeping the job you want” (Wiley, $16.95). E-mail [email protected].