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Building Memorial Sloan-Kettering's Work/Life Initiative
employees truly appreciate the program. Here’s a sampling of their comments:
“It's a great benefit...one of the best benefits MSKCC offers.”
“Offering this benefit sends a clear message that family issues are a priority.”
Full-time child care
Somewhat more challenging was finding a way to meet the full-time child care needs of our staff. Since space is at a premium in the densely populated neighborhood of Manhattan’s Upper East Side where our hospital and research institute are located, we were unable to build a center that would serve our entire population. So we decided to focus on a very specific population that is hard to recruit, but critical to our mission: research fellows who are recruited globally each year. It’s hard to attract these highly sought after scientists to Manhattan where child care and housing are both very expensive and hard to find. Having a residence with a child care amenity, we reasoned, would make it easier for them to make the choice to come to MSKCC. In 2003 we opened a state-of-the-art children’s center in a residence we had just constructed on Roosevelt Island, about 30 minutes from the main campus. Today the center is thriving and living up to our expectations of aiding recruitment not only of research fellows but also hard-to-recruit faculty.
Telecommuting
The other major focus of our work/life program building effort was launching a formal telecommuting program. We introduced telecommuting in two departments that were experiencing very different business needs. The Clinical Information Center (CIC) needed to hire more staff but had no room, and Information Services (IS) had a quality of life issue: employees worked long hours, were on call 24/7, and many had long commutes. Both departments were right for telecommuting because patient contact wasn’t necessary and the technology was available to work remotely. In CIC the work was very independent and measurable and most telecommuters work from home full time. In IS, the focus that a day or of two working from home gave to program developers increased both productivity and morale. We now have more than 300 formal telecommuters in myriad departments. Their telecommuting schedules vary as to when, where and how they work and they adjust their schedules to optimize personal efficiency. We regularly survey the users to confirm the value of their telecommuting option and get a very positive response that they strongly value their telecommuting opportunity. Here’s a sampling of what we heard from our telecommuters:
“Telecommuting has increased my job satisfaction. The flexibility is wonderful. Telecommuting allows for ‘quiet time’ to work on specific projects that require long periods of concentration.”
“Telecommuting definitely decreases my stress level. Since I work late on many occasions, not having to travel late on the subway is really a relief. Being able to work late from home relieves me from looking at the clock.”
Seven years ago there was a lot of skepticism about telecommuting, but its success has opened our culture to the potential positive impact of flexibility. Today we are proud to offer many flexible work arrangements, including compressed workweeks, flex time, and job shares. More and more, senior management is encouraging managers to use telecommuting and other flexible work arrangements as creative, innovative ways to deal with their space, workforce and workload issues. For us, that’s a very measurable ROI – another example of the business case for work/life.
Conclusion
Our work/life program began with two backup child care slots and six telecommuters. We now have backup child and elder care for all employees, more than three hundred formal telecommuting arrangements, many on compressed workweeks and other flexible work arrangements, five lactation rooms, full-service information and referral, lunchtime seminars and a NannyResource web site.
In the end, our goal is to sustain a culture of flexibility and a work environment that supports both formal and occasional flexibility; a workplace where people feel empowered to do their best work; a place that attracts the best and brightest no matter what phase of the life cycle they are in or what their personal and family circumstances are. An environment that gives employees more control over their time and life, in turn, contributes to feelings of greater job satisfaction and commitment. It’s a setting where everyone wins.
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