Checklist: Helping Employees Balance Life and Work-Ten Tips

Here are some suggestions for helping your organization implement programs that meet the needs of today's workforce and make sense for the bottom line.

• Find out why workers aren't at work. Track absences for a six-month period; conduct focus groups and surveys to pinpoint barriers to attendance.
• Take a demographic snapshot of your workforce to help understand the needs of your employees. Be sure to capture different employee constituencies, if applicable, to determine if there are any specific patterns of which you should be aware.
• Review your organization's policies, benefits and programs to determine what is currently offered.
• Measure usage of existing programs.
• Compare fit between existing programs and your workforce's current and projected needs. If differing employee needs surfaced in the demographic snapshot, make sure your comparative analysis also considers these groups.
• Identify new policies and programs, or fine-tune existing policies and programs, that will fill these gaps.
• Consider organization culture and workflows to ensure proposed new policies and programs will be supported in the work environment.
• Communicate and reinforce the value of balancing work responsibilities and personal and family needs and the availability of useful benefits and programs.
• Evaluate usage/cost of work-life and absence control programs.
• Measure unscheduled absences at set intervals to determine if offerings continue to make sense for your organization.