`It is clear that work/life has expanded to include nearly every aspect of a person’s working life,” according to a report in the executive briefing series of Boston College’s Center for Work & Family.
I asked Kathy Lynch, the center’s director of corporate partnerships and editor of the series, exactly how these benefits have grown.
Lynch points out that work/life programs have become a large umbrella, encompassing many vital business areas.
As stated in the report, the programs include “employee recruitment, benefits, health-care plans, job design, career advancement, employee transfers, travel policies, leave taking, career paths, work teams and evolving corporate cultures.”
And though work/life benefits initially focused on the important needs of employees who are parents, usually those at the professional level, today “work/life encompasses the needs of all types of employees at all levels of the organization: young, aging, males, females, exempt, non-exempt and managerial,” the report says.
The publication also includes an astute analysis of why work/life programs are so important in today’s business world:
“Work/life is not only a social movement to benefit the next generation of children in our society, it’s a field with powerful ideas for cultural transformation that compels businesses to make more intelligent and humane use of people and technology,” said Stewart Friedman, professor in the management department of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Here’s how it’s done: Last year, California became the first state to pass a family leave act that gives employees six weeks of partial income during their absence, an improvement on the federal law that allows only unpaid leave. Similar paid-family-leave bills have been introduced in 28 state legislatures.
And that’s why all eyes are on California, to ascertain if and how the new law has worked.
“We have a year of experience now that says California’s paid leave law is working well, and the naysayers who predicted economic catastrophe were once again wrong,” said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, a non-profit advocacy group based in Washington.
“California is leading the way in adopting real solutions that help people balance the needs of work and family.”
Employers and even the State of California are doing OK too.
Ness said a study prepared by economists at the University of Chicago and University of California at Berkeley “estimates that, as a result of the law, California businesses will save up to $89 million annually, and the state will save $25 million each year.”
The payoff: The Chubb Group of Insurance Cos., based in Warren, N.J., recently ran a pilot workplace-flexibility-effectiveness demonstration program at its western claims center in Phoenix.
Seventeen employees participated, and the results were positive: There was a more than 50 percent reduction in unscheduled paid time off each month; a 40 percent decrease in overtime hours each month; and a reduction in the number of requests to “adjust work hours to accommodate outside commitments.”
And a number that always catches the eyes of employers: Performance increased by 5 percent.
Because the flexibility option was so effective, Chubb is rolling out the program to each of the Phoenix claims center’s 180 employees.
More Top Picks Best Pool Tables
The greatest gap: “A gender gap in earning is easily detectable among all race-ethnic groups,” according to the authors of “Moving Up or Moving On: Who Advances in the Low-Wage Labor Market?” (Russell Sage Foundation, $29.95). “But among whites, the gender gap is much more pronounced than it is among other groups: 10 percent of white females but only 3 percent of white males had low earnings.”
The authors are Fredrik Andersson, Harry Holzer and Julia Lane.
———-
Carol Kleiman’s columns also appear in Monday’s and Thursday’s Business sections. Watch her “Career Coach” segments on CLTV.