Download this: Resources for National Work and Family Month

How family-friendly is your workplace?

Do you know how to measure family-friendliness? And have you considered how important family support is to your employees’ health, performance and well-being?

Family-supportive workplaces tend to score well in attracting and retaining talent. And many initiatives that support families also support health, such as flexible work arrangements, wellness programs that dependents can use, and work-life seminars on financial planning, parenting and stress management.

October is National Work and Family Month, and the Alliance for Work-Life Progress has a robust suite of resources that can help you get a sense of how your own workplace supports families and map your organization’s work-life goals.

You’ll want to conduct a Workplace Self-Audit, which can help you see where your strengths and weaknesses are and give you ideas for improving the family-supportive climate at your workplace. We also like the Seven Categories of Work-Life Effectiveness booklet, which gives an overview of work-life initiatives and makes a business case for implementing these strategies. (Did you know that the negative impact of stress-related illnesses eclipse the combined profits of  the Fortune 500 companies?)

A free on-demand webinar discusses research related to various flexible workplace arrangements and how you can implement them at your organization. And a bevy of other articles and surveys are available here.

From the real world, here are six examples of family-friendly workplace strategies from Mark Harbeke, blogging for the Huffington Post. (Our favorite: The company that purchased a 100-acre preserve that employees may use for canoeing, hiking and other outdoor family activities. Lucky ducks!)

Happy National Work and Family Month! How will you celebrate in your workplace?

[Photo by Eric Ward, CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons]