Resources for Employers

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Links to Resources on Workplace Flexibility

All links below are to other web sites, and will open in a new browser window.

• 2009 Guide to Bold New Ideas for Making Work Work – success stories compiled by Families & Work Institute that highlight various innovative ways that employers benefit from flexibility strategies. This free online guide profiles 260 companies and indexes those companies according to various benefits, strategies, and challenges.
• Flex-Options Guide: Creating 21st Century Workplace Flexibility – by US Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau. This online guide provides descriptions and best practice examples of all types of flexible work arrangements.  It also provides tools for structuring, implementing, and succeeding with flexible work arrangements, including templates for creating policies.
• Workplace Flexibility 2010 – an initiative out of Georgetown Law to support the development of a comprehensive national policy on workplace flexibility by 2010. This website discusses laws impacting flexibility, public policy issues, strategy, and research related to flexibility in the workplace.
• Innovative Flexibility Options for Hourly Workers – success stories compiled and published in 2009 by Corporate Voices for Working Families.  
• CultureRx– founders of the Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) at Best Buy.  Their website contains information, tools and other resources.
• Overcoming the Implementation Gap:  How 20 Leading companies Are Making Flexibility Work, Boston College Center for Work & Family, 2008: This study collected in-depth information from implementers, employees, and managers in 20 leading companies in the United States regarding what makes a successful flexibility program work for the employee and the business.
• Families and Work Institute’s 2008 National Study of Employers is a study of the practices, policies, programs and benefits provided by U.S. employers to address the changing needs of today’s workforce and workplace.

• www.teleworkexchange.com - a private-public partnership promoting telework
• The state of Connecticut has an initiative to help more employers start telecommute programs.  Their website has lots of free resources for evaluating and starting a company-wide telecommute program. 
• The state of Virginia also has a telework initiative with free online training, sample policies and more. 

Links to Information on the Changing Workforce

• New Workforce Reality Study by Simmons School of Management
• The National Study of the Changing Workforce by Families and Work Institute
• National Study of Employers by Families and Work Institute
• Global Workforce Roundtable by Boston College
• Alliance for Work Life Progress
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Dept. of Labor
• Families and Work Institute
• Catalyst
• Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children
• National Partnership for Women and Families
• Penn State Center for Work and Family Research 

Eye-Opening Stats

HR executives rank flexible schedules as a more effective retention tool than stock options, pay-for-performance, and bonuses." (From AMA, survey of Human Resource Executives)

Cisco’s 2009 study of 2,000 employees who telecommute revealed significant benefits including $277 million in productivity savings and an avoidance of 47,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

A 2009 study by Right Management found that 60% of employees want to leave their current job when the economy recovers. Workplace flexibility is one important strategy for re-engaging employees.

Best Buy’s Results Only Work Environment (ROWE), allowing corporate employees to work when and where they like, as long as they get the job done, resulted in an over 35% increase in productivity, a decrease in turnover and in increase in customer satisfaction.  

Work-life initiatives (flexible scheduling, compressed work weeks, telecommuting, job-share) were the top non-compensation benefit valued by ALL age groups.  (Western Benefits and Compensation Consulting 2008/2009 survey)

Flexibility enabled Deloitte to avoid an estimated $27 million in turnover costs in one year.

Generation X and Y, whose combined population will represent 60% of the U.S. workforce by 2010, agree that career decisions are primarily driven by their quest for work/life balance (70% Gen Y, 63% Gen X). (Fidelity Investments Study, 2008)

A 2007 Pew Research Center study showed 60% of working mothers view part-time as the ideal work situation.

94% of surveyed employees said they would be willing to accept a change or reduction in their schedule, or take a pay cut to avoid layoffs. (From the 2009 Annual Work+Life Fit™ Reality Check Survey)

British Company BT Group’s flexibility initiative resulted in 99% of female employees returning  to work after maternity leave compared to a UK average of 47%.

Telecommuting allowed Capital One Financial to house 800 employees in space that used to house 300.