Best Practices - Characteristic 4
Article Index
- Best Practices
- Characteristic 2
- Characteristic 3
- Characteristic 4 (current position)
- Characteristic 5
- Characteristic 6
- Characteristic 7
- Characteristic 8
- Characteristic 9
- Characteristic 10
Characteristic 4: Encourage individual pursuit of work/life balance.
WellStar Health System
Over the past five years WellStar Health System has been steadily implementing workplace flexibility across the organization through a variety of work units and at various levels. Recently, the growing culture of flexibility led senior leadership to take a formal stance on workplace flexibility by launching a formal statement, policy and program, FlexWorks. Working alongside the workforce management team with an initiative to develop a better and more robust scheduling tool to support the clinical areas, FlexWorks has now been established as the single business strategy for Right People, Right Place, Right Time. Leaders work with their team members to develop base schedules that best match patient volumes and workflow. In an effort to meet the growing business needs for more innovative and creative scheduling options, internal workforce management consultants have helped the organization identify more than 200 different scheduling options. To keep the FlexWorks model from becoming restrictive, every leader can work with their teams to determine the best work arrangement for their team/employee. The criteria are – meet patient/customer needs, meet employee desires, achieve business goals. Employees and leaders are becoming highly creative and motivated to find work arrangements that will create wins for everyone. A new flex video motivates and inspires leaders and employees to make flexibility work and has been enthusiastically embraced. More than 80% of the workforce has access to some form of flexibility either occasionally or routinely. Employees are utilizing compressed work weeks, job shares, reduced work schedules, daily flex, and telecommuting.
Ryan, LLC
Ryan, LLC does an outstanding job encouraging the pursuit of work/life balance. The company has transformed its culture from an environment that blatantly valued face time, with employees wearing their hours worked as “badges”, to one that focuses on results and appreciates the need to allow employees to function in a manner that enables them to address all of their life responsibilities. A key message that is reinforced throughout the organization is, “In exchange for incredible flexibility and freedom comes the responsibility and accountability for producing results.”
myRyan, the company’s flexible work environment initiative, allows employees to choose where and when they work. The basic principles of myRyan are:
- Everyone focuses on results, not hours;
- People have flexible work schedules and locations;
- Employees eliminate activities that waste time and money;
- Everyone collaborates and supports each other;
- Employees thrive in a guilt-free work environment; and
- Everyone has the freedom to achieve work-life success.
A cross-section of employees at various levels was involved in the design of myRyan and all employees can provide input as part of the surveys the company administers. Managers receive training about making myRyan work in their organizations. Also essential to a program such as this one is appropriate alignment of systems, processes, and measurements to facilitate fairness.
Ryan is effectively balancing the needs of employees and its other key stakeholders. Even while the organization grows and new employees are integrated into its corporate culture, the company is able to maintain its commitment to helping employees handle their personal and professional life.
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