Meet the need for work-life balance

Here's how family-friendly policies have helped our business

Happy Ltd is an award-winning training company with around 40 staff. The company has been following a positive work-life balance agenda for several years and was the first in London to achieve the Investors in People Work/Life Balance Model. Managing director Cathy Busani explains how its family friendly policies have delivered excellent staff morale, better customer service and low staff turnover.

What I did

Make a decision

"The idea for a defined policy on work-life balance began when a member of staff became pregnant. After working out a package that would allow her the flexibility she needed, we decided we wanted to offer the same opportunities to all our staff.

"We already had a flexible working culture, but things needed to be formalised. So that we could be absolutely confident that everyone at Happy knew what was on offer we ran a staff meeting to discuss all of the options available.

Put ideas into practice

"We now use a variety of methods, many of which address the needs of families, but the flexibility we offer is available to all. Flexible hours, compressed hours, job sharing and dependency leave are all part of the mix. Parents can even bring children into the office during the school holidays if an urgent need arises.

"Achieving a better work-life balance is a cultural mindset, not just a set of policies. A key element is a "can do" attitude. We always consider unusual requests or new methods within the context of business needs. In practice, we've never had an instance where a workable solution couldn't be found.

"It's also important that managers provide a role model for healthy work-life balance. I work a four-day week and our CEO takes Wednesday mornings off to attend a reading class at his daughter's school."

Involve people

"We explain our policies at induction and hold twice-yearly appraisals that include a question on work-life balance. Because we're flexible with staff and they feel involved, they're flexible with us. They often come up with solutions to staffing issues that we hadn't thought possible. Ultimately, customer service has improved.

"Our workforce is highly motivated and staff turnover is about two-thirds of the national average for our sector. Our policies have also led to several national awards that have enhanced our reputation with both clients and employees. We're constantly approached by people who want to work here and we no longer pay for recruitment advertising.

"The only negative of pursuing family-friendly policies is that calculating salaries and annual leave is more complicated. However, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages."

What I'd do differently

Do it even sooner

"Our family-friendly policies have worked so well and improved customer service so much, that I wish we'd introduced them even earlier in the business' development."

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• Business benefits of improved work-life balance
• Recognising work-life balance problems
• Work-life balance - ways of working
• Checklist: implementing policies to achieve work-life balance
• Here's how family-friendly policies have helped our business

 

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