Management August 28, 2009, 12:11PM EST

Creative Management Practices for Making Work Work

Smart companies are coming up with bold ideas to keep employees engaged, while offering them ways to faciliate career and lifestyle changes

By Ellen Galinsky, Tyler Wigton and Lois Backon

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The economy is uncertain, unemployment has increased, and with U.S. productivity at a six-year high, employers everywhere are doing more with less. So why is now the right time to make bold moves to keep your workers engaged?

"Our people are our greatest asset." The sentiment is ubiquitous, but translating this management rhetoric into practice can be a stumbling block even in the best of times. Yet even now—with a beleaguered economy still in the tentative, early stages of what could be a long road to recovery—it is more important than ever for managers and organizations to help employees manage their work and personal lives. Why? The answer is simple, though maybe counterintuitive: because it makes good business sense.

The 2009 Guide to Bold New Ideas for Making Work Work, just published by the Families and Work Institute (FWI), reveals that even in the midst of a turbulent economy, employers across the country are creating imaginative workplace approaches for improving the work environment and for helping employees navigate the shifting demands of their work and personal lives. They are offering assistance, for example, on how to manage job stress and overwork, welcome a new baby, or cope when a spouse loses a job. What is key (and perhaps surprising) is that these strategies help these companies achieve business results and respond to fluctuations in the economy. They help companies create effective and flexible workplaces, where work "works" for both the employer and employees.

Published annually, our guide highlights winners of the Alfred P. Sloan Awards for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility, a national award unique in its rigorous criteria. To win, applicants have to score in the top 20% of employers nationally in providing effective and flexible workplace programs, practices, and culture. What's more, two thirds of the winning score is based on the results of a confidential employee survey. In other words, not only do these employers have programs and policies in place, but they are having an impact where the "rubber meets the road"—in the employee experience.

Learning from adversity

Challenges can necessitate and stimulate creativity. Many of the employers profiled in the 2009 guide view their initiatives to create effective and flexible workplaces as tools to manage through the recession. Among the trends we see:

• Employers are using schedule flexibility to deal with the recession in constructive ways: avoiding layoffs through voluntary reduced hours; allowing employees to work at home one or two days a week to save on commuting costs; allowing employees greater scheduling flexibility if their spouses have lost a job or seen their hours reduced and the family needs to make changes; and reassigning responsibilities when no hiring is possible.

• Employers are providing direct financial assistance to their own employees. At 1-800 CONTACTS, a direct-to-consumer retail contact lens business in Salt Lake City with 850 employees, the company's Associate Outreach Fund offers emergency one-time financial assistance to employees in a financial crisis. More than $14,000 in emergency relief was distributed in 2008, enabling a number of employees to keep their homes. A health-care company, Bon Secours Richmond Health System in Richmond, Va., with 6,579 employees, developed a comprehensive economic relief package that includes financial education, seminars for employees' unemployed family members, an employee crisis fund providing monetary assistance to employees in financial trouble, the ability to trade time off for cash, a housing assistance program, discounts at many area businesses, and various college tuition assistance plans for employees and their families.

• Employers are offering programs that range from financial literacy initiatives to calculators for helping employees manage their money. Topics covered in seminars include assistance with budgeting, saving for children's college education, saving for retirement, financing housing loans, and reviewing choices that affect tax rates.