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Flexible work schedules have long been a boon for employee morale and productivity, but new evidence shows that they can also be beneficial to employee health and reduce health care costs for employers, a panel of speakers said recently.

At a discussion sponsored jointly by the American Psychological Association, the New America Foundation, and Workplace Flexibility 2010, several researchers and policy advocates outlined flexible workplace policies that they said reflect the realities of today’s workforce and better address workers’ needs for work-life balance than most current practices.

Katie Corrigan, the co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, a policy initiative based at Georgetown Uni- versity Law Center, said her organization defines workplace flexibility as including flexibility in the scheduling of work hours; paid or unpaid time off from work; and flexibility with regard to career maintenance and re-entry, such as for women who may leave the workforce to have a child but then later return.

The need for workplace flexibility affects parents and families across a wide spectrum of industries, Corrigan said, a point echoed by Diane Halpern, a professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College in California. Halpern, who has authored several research studies on work and family issues, said that the makeup of families has changed rapidly over the past several decades. “New models of work-life interaction” are needed, Halpern said.

Over the next decade, working parents will make up some 85 percent of the total U.S. workforce, Halpern said, and more and more people are in the so-called “sandwich generation” of caring for both children and aging parents. Workplace flexibility, Halpern said, is not solely a women’s issue, because men are just as affected by these demographic changes. In addition, few families can afford to live only on one income, increasing the need for flexible workplace policies, she said.

Flexible policies can reduce absences. Halpern cited research findings that flexible workplace policies reduce employee stress levels, and also are associated with fewer employee absences from work. Halpern said workers are better able to meet deadlines when flexibility policies are in place, and that workers in flexible workplaces are more loyal to their employers.

Policies such as telecommuting, flexible start and stop times, options for part-time work, sick leave, and child care are some of the initiatives employers can put in place to improve a business’s overall workplace flexibility, Halpern said. She said such policies could be implemented “anywhere,” in any type of business, of any size.

Halpern also made specific public policy recommendations, and addressed why workplace flexibility should be a national public policy issue, and why it could be included in health care legislation. Workplace flexibility “is a government issue because it’s what we are about” in terms of values, she said. “Public policy has not caught up with the nature of the change in families” in the United States, Halpern said, and it must be brought up to date.

Paid family and medical leave are necessities, said Halpern, because missed medical appointments lead to higher health care costs, and ultimately to a loss of employment for workers. In addition, she said working families need “universal, quality preschool programs” located near public transportation. She cited a report from the Children’s Defense Fund, finding that problems securing childcare were frequent barriers to parents finding and keeping jobs.

Meanwhile, Joseph Grzywacz of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine Center for Worker Health, said that while workplace flexibility policies are one part of work-life balance, “they cannot be separated from health and productivity management.” In other words, flexible workplace policies can be beneficial for employees’ health, but do not necessarily have an immediate positive impact.

Lower rates of illness. For example, Grzywacz said, flexible workplace policies could help reduce absenteeism, but probably would not have an immediate impact on diabetes among workers. Still, he said, overall health declines are less likely among employees in flexible workplaces.

“The available data suggests that flexibility is associated with less physical and mental morbidity,” Grzywacz said, and it also “supports positive lifestyle habits.” For that reason, “policies promoting workplace flexibility are a viable strategy for promoting a healthy workplace, but are not a panacea,” he said.

The panel also included speakers who gave specific examples of companies that had implemented policies that promote health and wellness. Shanny Peer, of the Families and Work Institute, highlighted Discovery Communications Inc., which in addition to offering compressed workweeks and job sharing, also has a health clinic on site offering “holistic health management.” The Silver Spring, Md. media company, which has about 2,000 employees, said it had saved some $5 million in health insurance and other costs by putting the center in place, Peer said.

Smaller organizations also have had success putting health programs in place, Peer said, mentioning the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, which has 37 employees. That organization, Peer said, had implemented stress reduction and weight loss programs, as well as offered yearly health risk appraisals for employees. Workers’ health risks have decreased within the organization, Peer said.

The two employers highlighted by Peer had been recognized by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their efforts to promote health in the workplace, she said. Although she acknowledged, “we haven’t seen as many manufacturers or service providers apply for the award,” Peer said there were “some good examples” of those types of employers being flexible.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit grant-making foundation based in New York City. It believes that a carefully reasoned and systematic understanding of the forces of nature and society, when applied inventively and wisely, can lead to a better world for all.

The Foundation makes grants to support original research and broad-based education related to science, technology, and economic performance; and to improve the quality of American life. Though founded in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., then-President and CEO of General Motors, the Foundation is an independent entity and has no formal relationship with the General Motors Corporation.

For low-wage workers in service industries, Peer said predictability in schedules and the ability of workers to control their own work schedules would be key. Workers “face huge headaches” if their schedules change each week, Peer said, such as rearranging childcare or addressing other family needs. To deal with this, employers could give workers more control over their own schedules by allowing them to choose shifts and switch with other workers when necessary, Peer said.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Dental Care & Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.