New Effective Workplace Series on Small Business and Work-Family
Judi Casey May 6th, 2009
We just released our fifteenth Effective Workplace Series on Work-Family Initiatives and Small Businesses. This one-pager highlights the experiences of small businesses that support the work-family concerns of their employees. We often hear about how large organizations, or the “Fortunate 500,” provide work-family supports, but much less is known about the experiences of small- and medium-sized businesses. According to a 2006 Census report, approximately 80% of US businesses have less than 20 employees.
The Australian government formally launched an innovative work-family program specifically for small businesses: the Fresh Ideas for Work and Family Grants program. It is intended to help employees balance their work and family obligations and to improve employee productivity as well as retention. The program is specifically focused on small businesses, which typically have fewer resources to implement work and family initiatives.
The new EWS includes a quote from Diane Stoneman of Winning Workplaces, a nonprofit organization committed to helping small and midsize organizations create high-performance workplaces. They collaborate each year with The Wall Street Journal to “to identify and honor exceptional small organizations, regardless of whether they are private, nonprofit or publicly held” for the Top Small Workplaces competition.
The Network has additional resources on Small Businesses and Work-Family including a Topic Page, Fact Sheet, and a Policy Mini-Brief as well as a Network News interview with Bruce Phillips from the National Federation of Independent Business.
80% with less than 20 employees could do a lot with a bit of increase productivity.
At this time, support should be given to small businesses to encourage them and to help them increase productivity.
With two small children and running a business myself - this is a subject incredibly dear to my heart.
The business was a year old last week and as a bit of therapy for myself, I decided to write a list of all the things I had learnt from a business and personal perspective. It was a great exercise and it’s been read by over 1,500 people.
If your readers are interested, type “51 lessons” into Google - it’s the first entry.
#2 is seriously relevant to your post above… don’t make the same mistake as me!
Will keep reading what you are publishing!
Thanks,
Mark
Congratulations, Mark. A year in operations is a significant accomplishment. Thanks for sharing your list of lessons learned - very practical tips. Wishing you continued success.
Thanks Judi!. Glad you liked - it’s been a popular post. Happy to write something for you from a small business owner’s perspective in the future if you’d be interested.
All the best,
Mark