 |  |
Technology, demographics and transformations in generational and gender roles have made work/life balance everybody's business. Traditional notions of flexibility are in flux as companies experiment with programs that stretch the meaning of time and work.
Work/life benefits help employees maintain focus in the face of busy lives and full workloads. For little or no cost, they make it possible for individuals to stay and grow on the job throughout important life changes such as the birth of a child or new-skills training. Employees in flexible workplaces feel more engaged, satisfied and mentally healthy, which fosters productivity and loyalty, according to national studies by the Families and Work Institute.
Once perceived as perks, work/life benefits increasingly are a competitive edge in the war for talent. Fifty-one percent of executive women and 43 percent of executive men desire more balance, and more than 80 percent of both men and women dual-earners would seek out flexible work hours in a new employer, according to surveys by Catalyst, a research group for the advancement of women in business.
DiversityInc spoke with Abbott Laboratories, Turner Broadcasting System, Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers—all national leaders in work/life and retention—about what programs have worked for them, what the future holds for work/life solutions, and how similar projects can be implemented at other companies.
The Retention Connection
In an economy where white-collar workers are working longer hours further from home, programs to ease conflicts between personal and professional lives pay for themselves with fewer hiring costs and improved retention.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) weighs the cost of its lactation program—which provides new mothers with board-certified consultation, a subsidized breast pump and a private pumping room—against the cost of turnover at the firm, estimated at $80,000 an employee. PwC was one of DiversityInc's 25 Noteworthy Companies for Diversity in 2005.
"Considering the cost of the lactation program is around $375,000 annually, if it influenced just five women out of the 630 who enrolled in the program to return to the firm after their maternity leave, we've recouped the entire cost of the program," says Jennifer Duris, manager, office of diversity. PwC's overall retention rate has improved 3 percent over the past two years, during which time the company extended the lactation program to the spouses of male employees and expanded paid parental leave from one week to three.
The program also may reduce absenteeism because breast-fed babies are less likely to experience common infant illnesses that require home care by a parent, according to employee-absence research conducted by Rona Cohen. Cohen is an assistant clinical professor in UCLA's School of Nursing and the founder and president of MCH Services, a Los Angeles consulting company that administers PwC's lactation program.
Work/life benefits clearly are important to the companies that ranked in the DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for Recruitment & Retention. All of them offered telecommuting, dependent-care benefits, adoption assistance, job sharing, flex-time and cafeteria-style benefits, and half of them have onsite childcare facilities. By comparison, only 6 percent of companies nationally have onsite childcare facilities and only 20 percent have adoption assistance, according to a survey of 2,500 human-resources professionals conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management.
Abbott Laboratories focuses tremendous attention on solving the balance issues that impact employees at every life stage, whether a young single, a new parent or a middle-age executive balancing children and elderly parents. A survey of 8,000 Abbott managers in January 2004 (originally reported in DiversityInc's June/July 2004 issue) revealed that 75 percent felt they had the flexibility they needed to manage life and work.
The pharmaceutical manufacturer enjoys one of the lowest turnover rates in the pharmaceutical industry, at 8 percent, compared with 10.7 industry-wide, according to Organizational Research Councilors data cited by the company, with comparable rates of retention at all levels of employment. More importantly, according to data submitted for The 2005 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity survey, Abbott's retention rate was between 94 percent and 96 percent for all racial/ethnic groups and for both men and women.
Abbott was No. 3 on the Top 10 Companies for Recruitment & Retention, No. 1 on the Top 10 Companies for Executive Women, and No. 5 on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity lists.
At Time Warner's operating company Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), the average employee is 35 years old, the age when many couples are starting families. TBS has maintained a low turnover rate (between 5 percent and 10 percent) by allowing parents flexible hours and part-time schedules. Flex arrangements cost TBS nothing and have earned the company an employee-satisfaction score of four (on a scale of one to five) around work/life.
"You can't put a price tag on the flexibility of being on a job that you like and having that job at a company that's willing to help adapt that job around your family," says Loretta Walker, senior vice president, human resources at TBS. "I was just talking to a senior vice president two days ago who works a flexible schedule, and she said that because of it, she never even considered looking outside the company for another job."
Turner ranked No. 4 on the Top 10 Companies for Recruitment & Retention, No. 4 on the Top 10 Companies for Executive Women, No. 10 on the Top 10 Companies for African Americans and No. 2 on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity lists.