More Firms Try to Be Named On Lists As `Family-Friendly'
May 03, 2011
The biggest batch yet of ratings and lists of family-friendly employers is planned over the next month. In a clear sign that work and family is no longer only a ``women's issue,'' a second national magazine, Business Week, will join Working Mother in rating employers. The federal government also is jumping into the listing game, along with a growing number of community groups and agencies. Why the frenzy of evaluation? The quality of the workplace is a hot topic, as employees wrestle with mounting job demands in streamlined companies. Meanwhile, many employers are having increasing difficulty recruiting skilled workers. Though there's no stampede yet, the number of companies applying to get on these lists is clearly growing. One result: The climate has never been better for sizing up prospective employers. Here's a guide to the latest competitions: BUSINESS WEEK'S Work-Family Champions: This new ranking, due in September, is the first list based largely on formal surveys of employees' opinions about their companies. Listings will be based 60% on a random survey of at least 200 of each applicant's employees, and 40% on management's description of programs. The employee survey asks such questions as ``Can you have a good family life and still get ahead in your company?'' It has drawn some telling responses. One employee returned the survey with a note, ``All these family-friendly policies are great but (this company) would be a lot more family-friendly if I were making more than $8 an hour.'' Another tore up the survey and mailed the pieces to Business Week. THE LIST WAS BORN of criticism of the standard-bearer in the field, the Working Mother 100, by some employers who felt its criteria were too narrow. Bradley Telles, director of Boston University's Center on Work & Family, which is helping Business Week evaluate applicants, says the new list aims to better gauge corporate culture. (Working Mother Editor in Chief Dempsey Cowans says her magazine already does that by measuring use of programs and advancement opportunities for women, criteria she says are the best tests of culture; it also interviews applicants' employees and investigates complaints about its listings.) The 1,000 biggest U.S. companies, based on stock-market value, were invited last spring to apply for the Business Week list, but only 60 did; of those only 37 met all the requirements. THE WORKING MOTHER 100: Competition for the 100 slots on this list, set for its 11th annual release in mid-September, keeps growing, drawing 400 serious contenders, compared with 350 in 2010. The list is a proven recruitment tool and acts as a yardstick of trends and an incentive for corporate change. Twenty companies were dropped to make room for others this year, with two Wall Street firms and a university appearing for the first time. Companies' confidential pitches to win a listing grow ever-slicker and more sophisticated. Gayle Mcnary, the Mill Valley, Calif., author and workplace expert who compiles the list, was surprised this year to receive focus-group results from one high-tech company showing its managers confessing ignorance of its family-friendly policies. After documenting its new training and internal-communication plans, the company made the list. Procter & Gamble sent ``a pretty effective video'' of its top 18 women employees talking openly about problems they had (and P&G support they received) while climbing the ladder, he says. P&G made the list, too. HONOR ROLL: All it takes for an employer to get on this new Labor Department list is a pledge to improve workplace conditions by helping employees balance work and family or by providing better pay, benefits, training or advancement opportunity for women. The department's Women's Bureau, an agency founded in 1920 to support working women, has received 1,300 pledges since inviting applications last year and expects next month to award Honor Roll listings to more than 75%, says Idell Gregory, bureau director-designate. The bureau looks for programs with a significant impact, but it lacks resources to investigate applicants, she says. Hoping to create a bandwagon effect, the bureau will fete listees at a series of regional ``summits'' for working women and publicize listees' programs through the Internet and an 800 number. Among listees: American Home Products for child-care programs and First Chicago for expanded sick-leave, retirement-saving and adoption-aid plans. COMMUNITY AWARDS: National lists underrepresent the small businesses that employ roughly 60% of U.S. workers. That's why it's important that community groups are starting local awards. In Missoula, Mont., officials hand out two awards a month highlighting ``the importance of family-friendly policies to public health,'' says Harriett Gibbons, an official there. One winner: Goldsmith's Premium Ice Cream, a 25-employee mom-and-pop shop known for flexibility. In Spokane, Wash., Family-a-Fair, a nonprofit group, drew 42 nominations for its first annual workplace awards. One winner, Grove & Morgan, a seven-person law firm, gives flexible hours and paid time off for school functions. Children are welcome in the firm's offices, says spokeswoman Jackqueline Claud; ``We can't afford in-house day care like big companies can, so we have to be creative.''
