Yesterday I attended an EPIC meeting. No, it wasn’t that kind of epic, such as beyond belief. Is there ever a meeting that could truly be called epic? Non-epic meetings could be a topic for another post another day.
This meeting was hosted by a business organization called EPIC Executives Partnering to Invest In Children. Which is a nonprofit based in Denver. They are developing boards in other cities around Colorado. Their website states Our Mission EPIC works to harness the capital of Colorado's business sector to ensure that all children develop into healthy, educated and productive citizens. Our Vision Tomorrow's engineers, bankers, teachers, health care providers, military leaders, and business leaders are starting their educational careers today. At EPIC, we believe that it is our duty to ensure that the children entering kindergarten today will have the skills they need to be the leaders of tomorrow.
What was most interesting about yesterday’s meeting wasn’t about EPIC as much as the discussion on making a workplace family friendly. As a parent, the struggle is real to balance being at every kid activity and still fill out your time card and not lose the hours needed to pay your bills. I faced this dilemma when my kids were young then as my parents aged and had failing health issues.
The panel of speakers were local family friendly businesses, Hilltop, Bonsai Design and Bechtel & Santo each spoke on how they allowed employees the flexibility to attend community board meetings and kid activities made for a happier, healthier and a loyal workforce. That the flexibility they implemented saved money rather than the perceived cost to their businesses. Each echoed that culture, inclusivity, empowerment, and trust were elements that not only gave them as leaders more ability to lead but also created an atmosphere which allowed their staff to innovate and solve problems for themselves rather than interrupting the boss for all the answers.
The room was filled with other business owners who also felt that giving employees the latitude to think like leaders made for less stress. Much of the conversation wasn’t around keeping employees in seats for a certain number of hours as long as the work was getting done well the business was in a win, win situation.
Michael Santos shared a statistic 1/3 of employees know they will leave within the first year after only being on the job for five days. Holy Moly that is a statistic that supports good onboarding, mentoring and keeping an empowered team culture!
Some other suggestions from these team leaders on being family friendly-
- · Allowing autonomy
- · Being a team not employees
- · Offer paid days off rather than just an extra day of pay for incentives
- · Hosting Family Friendly events
- · Non-alcoholic in office Friday afternoon Happy Hour
- · Allow/encourage team members to attend volunteer activities during business hours
- · Assist parents with getting caught up on child support
- · Support professional development activities and time to attend during regular business hours
- · Leaders doing regular walkabouts engaging with staff (weekly or more)
The EPIC team handed out a great resource called the Family-Friendly Workplace Toolkit. Included in this toolkit are the following-
The Family-Friendly Workplace Assessment (FF+)
- A 15 minute survey with free analysis of workplace policies
- Receive real-time feedback and up-to-date resources
- Identify priority areas to support total worker health
- Maximize work-life integration for all employees
- Get connected to like-minded businesses throughout Colorado
- Gain recognition for being a family-friendly workplace
- Other resources
I am convinced adopting a family-friendly workplace is the answer to so many business and social woes. The idea that we can leave our personal issues at home and just push through at work is an idea that needs to die. There was some brief discussion about the social determinates of health, which I’ve heard about before, I'll save that one for another post later too.
Today, I Dare You and your business to become a family-friendly workplace. And guess what I gave you the tools to get it started today! I’m always all about execution on goals.
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