The Evolution of Work-Life

by WFC Resources

Jobs Vacancy, Employment, Job Vacancies

Over the past year our Center has been engaged in a number of interesting research studies and initiatives. We began a Global Workforce Roundtable for organizations faced with the challenge of managing a workforce spread across many countries and cultures. We have undertaken interesting studies that look at how to organizations can engage and be responsive to the needs of older and low-income workers. We have completed two books. One is a comprehensive look at the issue of aging, co-edited by our research director Dr. Jackie James. The other is a work that ties together career management and work-life integration, illustrating how critical self-assessment and a clear sense identity are to navigating contemporary careers. I was fortunate to co-author this book with Professor Douglas T. Hall of Boston University, one of the country’s preeminent scholars on career development.

One of the most interesting initiatives at the Center over the past year was a project we termed the Work-Life Evolution Study, which was funded through the generosity of our Center’s members. We are all aware that the work/life field has evolved in many new directions over the past 15 years. These new directions encompass virtually every aspect of an employee’s working life – recruitment, retention, development, rewards, and evolving corporate cultures. The comprehensive nature of the field is illustrated by the fact that work-life initiatives can be housed and led from virtually any HR function whether talent management, total rewards, diversity, organization development, or employee health and wellness. The fact that work-life has so many different homes speaks to the tremendous breadth of the field.

What we were attempting to do with the Evolution Study was to review how the field had grown and changed in recent years with an eye toward making some predictions about the future (never an easy undertaking.) We used a variety of approaches to gather our data and develop our findings including reviewing literature, interviewing experts, and reviewing transcripts of interviews with leaders in the field who in recent years had received the Conference Board’s Work-Life Legacy Award. Perhaps the most innovative approach was to gather 25 thought leaders at Boston College last summer for a future search conference, exploring through conversation where they thought the field was heading in the future.

The study is not yet complete but let me share with you two sets of tentative findings that you might find interesting. First, what are the trends that leaders in the field (mainly from the world of practice but also researchers) feel will have the greatest impact on corporate work-life efforts? The experts felt they were:

The increasing importance of diversity that has driven the need for creating more inclusive workplaces.

Changing workforce demographics, most notably the aging of the workforce. This has raised important challenges for older workers, but perhaps more importantly for workers from different generations in terms of how they interact and work with one another.

Increased workload and stress levels among employees that may well be contributing to rapidly increasing healthcare costs (another important trend.) This workload issue seems in many ways to be aggravated by technological tools that are supposed to be helping us be more productive, yet seem to be having a deleterious effect.

The impact of globalization which creates enormous challenges for working across cultures, countries in a virtual fashion
None of these trends is probably too surprising. We have certainly discussed these issues many times at our Center’s Work & Family Roundtable. More surprising however is the call to action. What do our experts feel we need to do about this?

The focus of the work-life professional has mainly been on HR policies and programs. But when given a list of potential ways that we could have a positive impact on the challenges we face as employers, developing and implementing HR policies scored a distant 3rd in terms of what we should be doing. What were the top vote getters?

By far the highest priority was influencing organizational leaders. This means working in a consultative manner with leaders at al levels of the organization to ensure effective work-life practices are ingrained in the fabric of the organization.

The second most important priority is helping individuals make and negotiate good career choices. This means providing individual employees with the education, consulting, and support to make good choices (for them and their employer) and proactively manage their own career and work-life options.

Addressing these challenges will require new skills for tomorrow’s work-life practitioner. It will involve us more directly in employee development, leadership development, and cultural change initiatives as well as with the work of the organization. I will be presenting further on the results of this study at the AWLP conference next month and our Center will publish a report on the Work-Life Evolution Study in the spring of 2007.

I wish you all a happy New Year! It looks like an exciting year ahead for all of us.

Suggestions for Work/life Professionals

by WFC Resources

Jobs Vacancy, Employment, Job Vacancies

This tip comes to us from Arlene Johnson, vice president of WFD Consulting. It caught our eye when it was first published in the January issue of Work/Life Today, and Arlene and Sharon O'Malley have given us permission to republish it.

Work/life professionals might consider making four New Year’s resolutions for 2006:

1. Spend less energy on making the “business case” for your efforts and more on clarifying how work/life meets the needs of the people in your organization. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying you shouldn’t make it clear how work/life connects with organizational priorities and goals. We certainly need to let everyone know about the value that work/life efforts bring to the business. But the “business case” has morphed into both a defense of work/life programs and a way to talk people into adopting them. Neither is the most effective way to make work/life a part of an organization’s culture.

Take a step back. Instead of pushing programs on your organization because you can produce numbers that prove they would enhance productivity or cut turnover, listen to employees and managers to learn what kind of work/life help they need. The real business value of a work/life perspective is its ability to address people issues that matter to the business. Spend 2006 starting conversations with the question: “What is important to you?”

2.View managers as a primary customer of work/life services, not as a barrier to their adoption. We all know that if managers don’t support flexibility, there will be no flexibility. What we overlook is a primary reason why they often don’t support it: They don’t feel supported themselves. Managers need flexibility, too. They need support in managing the personal demands on their time with the incredible pressure of supervising people of all skill levels, meeting quotas and keeping production steady.

You know the best source of referrals for your company’s products and services is a happy customer. Likewise, managers who experience support for their own work/life effectiveness are more likely to see its value and to be champions of your cause.

3. Make work load your organization’s No. 1 work/life issue. Let managers know that one-third of all employees feel overworked, and that overwork causes stress, burnout and turnover. Then do something about it. Help managers identify and rid their staffs of low-value work so employees can spend less time on unimportant tasks.

Give managers tools for building team resilience or bring in trainers who can help teams and individuals cope with heavy work loads and burn out. Elevate work load issues to the top of your work/life agenda for 2006 so senior leaders in your organization will address them and find ways to solve them.

4. Develop one unlikely partnership. It has become common for work/life advocates to work with human resource and diversity experts toward shared goals. In 2006, make a point of teaming up with people elsewhere in your organization: line management, compensation, training or marketing, for example. The more you expose others to the problem-solving power of work/life benefits, the broader your organization’s understanding and acceptance of those benefits will become.

In return, you might learn something about how to market your programs internally or how to engage business managers in employing flex-time or telework. Partnerships increase the impact of work/life advocates. Any time you can integrate work/life concepts into the work of your organization, you advance your goal of making employees and the business more effective.

Reflections on Work/Life

by New York management consultant Barbara Adolf

Jobs Vacancy, Employment, Job Vacancies

I was fortunate this summer to spend some time reviewing old business (and personal) files from the past 20 years. What a trip down memory lane and what an opportunity to reflect on the path work/life has taken and where it is today!

It was fascinating to see how far the field of work/life (formerly employer supported child care, then work and family, then variations on work/life) has come. Twenty, even 10 years ago if you said you were in work and family, people would look at you quizzically or even suspiciously. Today everyone seems to know what we do. We have been more than legitimized – we are mainstream! I remember when we didn’t know where we "fit" in the organizational structure. We now have a domain, and like the other branches of human resources, e.g., compensation, benefits, learning and development, work/life directly affects and is affected by every other.

It occurred to me that what work/life has brought to corporate America is a new awareness, a unique orientation, even a new morality about the workplace. It is built on a belief that while work is important to each individual and to the society as a whole, family is the bedrock of our lives and should come first – not just in words but in the actions of organizations. As work/life professionals, we made these concepts real – actually bringing child care programs and elder care services to the workplace and developing unique work processes that take into account employees’ personal responsibilities. The movement of organizations toward "valuing people" may have originated with our efforts; at the very least our work has bolstered this principle.

We have come a long way. When I worked at large consulting firms – (I established the first work and family consulting practice at such a firm in 1986) – I was considered an "advocate" – something I tried desperately to hide. In truth, work and family professionals were out to change the world. We brought personal and family needs out of the closet. Ultimately we turned things around, making corporations vie for public visibility as organizations that "care" about employees as individuals. (Witness Working Mother’s Top 100 List). We have been major change agents, pushing organizations to examine and dramatically change the dominant "corporate culture" of the last 20 years.

My own career has been an interesting journey. I discovered I have a deep interest in helping women and minorities gain their fair share of society’s rewards, perhaps not a great departure from my work/life roots. In my practice today, the work/life "agenda" colors everything I do. For the last seven years a major thrust of mine has been developing and implementing strategies to advance women and minorities in the workplace, not the least of which is the design and management of group mentoring programs. The beauty of these programs is that they help those who might otherwise be marginalized overcome the challenges of isolation in the corporate world by helping one another. I attribute my persistence in this work largely to my work/life background. The constant pressure from organizations to justify work/life’s value taught me the importance of demonstrating success scientifically. I have been fortunate to have much of my work scrutinized in this way, providing strong evidence of its value to organizations as well as to individuals.

At this point in my career, my focus is on professional development of employees in the service of corporate goals, for example, retention of high potential employees. An important element in all my projects is work/life – its principles and issues. In short, I am convinced that no program, structure or process within an organization can succeed without integration of employees’ work/life needs. My journey has taken me to management consulting and organizational development. I gained the SPHR (Senior Professional in Human Resources) credential this year – another step that enabled me to see how essential work/life is to all aspects of HR.

What is “work-life” anyway?

by Judy David Bloomfield

Jobs Vacancy, Employment, Job Vacancies

A simple question. A nagging reminder.

I was talking with a reporter the other week and she asked me, “Is it still called “family friendly”? I want to get at what helps people with the juggling…not all that other ‘stuff’.”

I said, no – the term “family friendly” isn’t used much anymore, and I informed the reporter that “work/life” is the most commonly used phrase these days. Yet I, for one, have never liked the term “work/life” much. That said, I have yet to come up with an alternative. I closely watch the words others use – balance, integration, navigation, effectiveness… I’m still searching. Waiting for that “Aha.”

What do you do?

When I read our industry newsletters, I feel so comfortable. We all speak the same language. Like traveling in another country and finding someone who speaks English. Easy.

But put me in a social situation where someone I’ve never met before asks me “what do you do?” and after 15 years of repeated opportunities to refine my reply, it’s rarely easy. My response sounds something like this: “I work with employers in the Bay Area who are interested in addressing work/life issues.” Then I get “the look” – those eyes that seem to say “I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about, but say more.” So then I add, “You know, things like on-site child care, telecommuting, other flexible work arrangements…” then the click of recognition, and usually more conversation.

At a recent One Small Step symposium, our guest speaker Linda Roundtree encouraged our audience to always have your “elevator speech” ready – that is, your pitch for whenever you run into key players. It should be fast, energetic, compelling. It’s a basic part of a successful strategy for getting where you want to go. Important advice. I still want to take people for a walk around the block.

So back to this ‘what do you do?” question – I wonder, why don’t I have an easy answer? Why can’t my reply be simple and understood quickly? Do I just need to patient with this important change process and wait for more and more circles of people to become familiar with the concept of work/life and the kinds of things enlightened companies are doing? Or is there something inherently wrong about the term “work/life”?

Perhaps a more powerful term is waiting to be coined. One that will better capture – and advance - the changes we are seeking. One Small Step’s co-chair Phyllis Stewart Pires from Cisco Systems recently said to me, “We need to call work/life something different if we still want to be doing this in a few years.” I absolutely agree. But what exactly is the “this”?

Something different.

To find that other word or phrase – that something different - means fully grasping what it is we are doing. Earlier this year, One Small Step released a new edition of our guide for employers on child care options. The response has been strong – orders coming in from employers and advocates across the country. Child care is still an important piece of what we do, and rightly so because there is still so much more to do. But what about all the other “stuff”, as alluded to by that reporter? Well, it’s changing, that’s for sure. More interest these days in elder care and older workers. Continuing interest in telework and other flexible work options. More talk and progress around changing work environments. But to be honest, I’m not sure how to think about what “work/life” is anymore.

At One Small Step, we have an email benchmarking service we offer our members called “eSteps” – our members pose a topic and a few questions they have about it, and we poll our membership and summarize the responses. Over this past year, I’ve found myself often questioning the topics our members have raised. For example, Transition Services. Employee Privacy. Exit Interviews. Now are those topics “work/life”? I’ve found a work/life thread in all of them, but maybe it isn’t a thread…maybe work/life is becoming more of a lens through which we see and think about a wide range of business issues.

The other day a One Small Step member with a large international workforce contacted me for help. Supporting health and resilience in their workforce has become a major concern and gotten the attention of their executive officers. Signals are coming from every direction that their employees are overloaded, out of balance, fatigued and burnt out.

Sound familiar? Now here’s what I found intriguing: This member said, “We are not looking so much to compare our work/life programs and policies. We think that we have most work/life supports in place and it's our sense that our supervisors and employees are not complaining about these options. Rather we are interested in the message that best practice companies send and the behaviors that they engage in -- from top management to the supervisor and employee level -- that effectively helps employees to take care of themselves and honors their life outside of work, while dedicating their energy to making our company successful.”

Those messages and behaviors – are they work/life? Very much so, I think.

And I think Ellen Blizinsky of United Health Care’s Working Solutions, an active Partner of One Small Step, would say yes too. I was catching up with her the other day and found myself scribbling down something she said: “Work/life is a set of values, from the top, translated into initiatives.” I would add: messages, behaviors, and choices - choices that top executives make with business and employees and their families in mind (or not). And the every day choices that individuals make as they try to take care of themselves, honor their lives outside of work, and give their best to help their company succeed.

Work-life professionals on the subject of work-life

by WFC Resources

Jobs Vacancy, Employment, Job Vacancies

The current scene

"The terminology has become muddled. Because some of the big vendors refer to 'work-life' as resource and referral, a lot of companies think that's all it is. Are legal and financial assistance work-life or benefits? Is flexibility a work-life perk or a business strategy? Would it help if we all knew what we were talking about when we said 'work-life?' " "Everything we've always held sacred has been violated – corporate leadership, the presidency – everything feels tenuous."

"Work-life has disappeared from the corporate scene! Employers who once boasted about being a 'Best Place to Work' have reneged. People are on their own."

Employees' role

"It's time employees take responsibility for their own work-life balance, for raising their children. Personal responsibility seems absent. People are making a choice to stay at work 60 hours and leave their kids at daycare long hours or home alone. It's time we stopped blaming work, stepped back to see what's driving us. Is it greed? Power? Money?" "I believe it's fear, fear about the job, insecurity. The component of fear is so strong, it's unforeseeable, it overshadows all decisions, the risks I'm willing to take. Can I do the right thing or dare I risk it? It's the biggest challenge we have right now." "I also am aware that people are making a conscious decision not to become too loyal.

"What if everyone could lay out their own boundaries. Maybe a new responsibility for work-life people would be coaching people do that, to have the courage to ask for what they need – ask for flexibility." "We could call it 'Personal Work-life Effectiveness Training." "How do you get people to take action? How do you get people to own their own work-life balance?" "And how would top management feel about encouraging everyone to do that – making everyone feel powerful?"

"How can you keep people from being resentful. How do you prevent resentment, backlash, internal bickering?" "As Margaret Wheatley says, once you know their stories you don't fear them. It's all about communication."

The corporate work-life person

"I feel like we can't change the world. As the work-life person at my company, I see my role as helping people balance, given the world that we have." "We just had our 8th layoff, but our high potential people are also leaving – not necessarily for money, but to get a life. And the role of work-life at my company is still to try and hold on to them, to figure out what people value most that we can barter with. We've been surveying to find that out, and it's different for each demographic group, age, gender, type of work they do. One group of consultants who travel were more money-driven, and they wanted the flexibility to fly home when they could; site-based workers wanted flexibility to work from home, and the opportunity to purchase more vacation days. Tech people wanted more training. Women wanted longer maternity leaves."

"I'm apprehensive about doing surveys. What if you're not able to give them anything they want?" "Have you thought about trying focus groups? You may get just as much information with no promises, and it would be cheaper." "Focus groups may be a better tool for this striated workforce."

"Selling" work-life

"It all gets back to top management. If the CEO is committed to a supportive culture, everyone will be. So we're back to the same old question: how do you get top management on board? Executives still don't have a clue." "I used to think the best question to ask them was 'what keeps you up at night?' and then show them how work-life efforts could alleviate their pain. From what I'm hearing, maybe a better question is 'What do you value most?' And then turn them on with the possibility of achieving their vision." "We all have to be salespeople." But we have to speak the language they can hear. "So again we get to the point where we have to 'morph' work-life, pretend it isn't about making families healthier and people happier. We have to pretend it's about the bottom line!" "The only way we can maneuver is to maximize the business case. If you need facts and figures, the Great Place to Work Institute Website has all these graphs about the financial benefits." (http://www.greatplacetowork.com/great/graphs.php)

Line managers

"It's also about individual managers. When I got hired, I told my manager, 'Here are the hours I'd like, and I need this flexibility,' and my manager was fine with it. Other managers wouldn't have been" "In our company some managers are still focused on face-time. They're afraid to try flexibility because they don't know how to deal with telling one person they can have it and another they can't. They don't think they could measure what people on flexible arrangements have accomplished." "We lack the systems to measure what's been done. Maybe if we changed the word 'productivity' to 'contribution level' it would be easier to define."

The future

"What will happen to work-life when the economy turns around and skilled labor is hard to find again?" "I don't think it will ever be quite the same. The fact that so many jobs are being shipped overseas is going to make a difference. Work-life will become more important again, but we'll have to quantify everything." "What role does HR play now?" "It used to be that they would be the liaison, bringing the message down to the people from top management. Now supposedly they bring the message up from the people to let executives know what we can do to keep them, to motivate them?" "I think now HR is very interested in being more of a business partner – more than in taking care of the wellbeing of employees."

"I wonder how long it will be before we start to feel the impact of neglecting our children – the debate is heating up about the effect of long days in daycare, leaving kids home alone for hours." "The whole issue of human capital will be very important to work-life, the idea that employees are assets that have value to the company." "But 'capital' is such a fungible commodity. I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the term. There's something amazingly incompatible about thinking of work-life that way. Do we keep retreating from our real commitment, which is to family?"

"Maybe it's not necessary to identify what a company does to support its employees as work-life. At Land's End, there is no work-life person. They have a pool, flexibility, childcare assistance. It's not known as work-life. It's just known as a great place to work."

Work-life over the years

by WFC Resources

Jobs Vacancy, Employment, Job Vacancies

Each year the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) picks a random sampling of its members (this year that number is about 200,000) and asks them what they're up to in the way of benefits. The results give us a snapshot of about 375 companies that have from five to more than 500 employees. We don't have a breakdown, but we assume these are mostly small and medium employers.

A little later in the year, Hewitt Associates polls about 1,000 companies, the smallest with 1,000 employees and the largest with 50,000 or more. We've been collecting SHRM surveys since 1999, and Hewitt since 1995 (now Hewitt conducts their poll every other year). Neither organization asked as many questions in the early days, but it is possible to make some comparisons. If you're someone who doesn't like to read about numbers you can skip this column, but we thought it was an interesting exercise.
Flexible work arrangements have not done well in companies large or small.

We could never have predicted what happened to flexible work arrangements in ten years. Back in 1995 it looked good for flexibility, and Hewitt said alternative scheduling was becoming increasingly popular, offered by 67% of employers to at least some employees. But in ten years that number went up just seven percentage points; just 74% said they offered flex options to at least some employees in 2005. And we can't figure out what they're providing. Of that group, the individual offerings have dropped drastically.

Between 1995 and 2005 . . .

• The percentage of large companies offering flextime went down from 73% to 59%.
• The number offering part-time work plummeted 18 points, from 65% to 47%
• The percentage offering the opportunity to job share dropped from 36% to 26%.
• The number offering compressed workweeks changed little in ten years (from 21% to 22%)
• The only option that gained was telecommuting, which went from 19% of companies to 32%.
• Even the "flexibility at manager's discretion" category, often nothing to brag about, dropped from 3% to 1%.

In 1999, the earliest year we have for SHRM, alternative work schedules were offered by about one-fourth of small and medium employers (the larger companies on this list were more likely to report offering flexibility). This year the report didn't give an overall percentage, but here's how the comparisons break down:

• Flextime among small companies crept up from 54% of the total in 1999 to 57% this year.
• Compressed workweeks rose a more respectable 10 points (25% to 35%).
• Job sharing dropped from 22% to 18%
• Telecommuting soared – from 28% to 51%

Little has changed in childcare assistance

If you covered up the dates you'd be hard pressed to figure out which was the 1995 Hewitt work-life survey and which was the new one. Overall there was some difference; ten years ago 85% of large employers were offering some kind of childcare assistance (up from two-thirds in 1990) and by 2005 that number had gone up to 97%. But looking at the breakdown within that percentage, the figures were amazingly similar among large companies. They were nearly identical for . . .

• dependent care spending accounts (96% then, 97% now)
• resource and and referral services (40% then, 42% now)
• sick and emergency childcare programs (13% then, 14% now)
• onsite or nearsite centers (7% then, 9% now)
• discounts at neighborhood centers (5% then, 8% now).

In the SHRM sample of smaller employers, the number offering childcare referral services has gone up a little more, from 15% in 1999 to 22% this year, and the percentage providing some kind of assistance in emergency or sick childcare rose slightly; it was 11% and now is 14%, the same as Hewitt's results.

Only 4% of small companies report having onsite childcare centers; in 1999, that number was 6%.

Here are some of the offerings that have grown two points or more in the SHRM sample in the past seven years:

1999 2006
Dependent care spending account 64% - 76%
Domestic partner benefits 25% - 32%
Paid family leave 27% - 32%
Eldercare referral services 19% - 26%
Lactation programs 16% - 23%
Adoption assistance 16% - 22%

The percentage offering family leave above FMLA dropped from 29% to 25%.

In large companies, Hewitt tells us these offerings have grown two points or more since 1995:

1995 2005
Eldercare assistance, general 47% - 39%
Childcare assistance, general 90% - 97%
Dependent care spending accounts 88% - 96%
Childcare centers 10% - 12%
Lactation programs 7% - 12%
Adoption benefits 31% - 41%

As costs have gone up, employers have become more generous with adoption assistance; 28% offer $5,000 now, compared with just 7% in 1995, and 9% offer more, vs. none ten years ago. Also, the number of employers who are offsetting unpaid leave with paid leave has grown from 46% in 1995 to 73% last year.

Work-life obviously hasn't progressed as fast or as steadily as one would wish, maybe because of that deep dip the economy took in 2001-2002. But here's the truth, and it's not just because we're optimists at heart. It has more to do with the fact that we read virtually everything that's written about the workplace and the workforce. I say we're on the edge of a big increase in every initiative that will recruit and retain much-needed skills, especially those young people who are more clear about priorities and refuse to sacrifice their personal lives for work demands. We'll save this column and revisit it in a couple of years, just to check it out.

Combating Sleep Deprivation in Shiftworkers

by WFC Resources

Jobs Vacancy, Employment, Job Vacancies

This tip comes to us from an article in a periodical called Occupational Hazards. Writer Josh Cable interviewed Bill Sirois, senior VP of Circadian Technologies, about how to make sure your shiftworkers aren't sleep-deprived.

We weren't built for shiftwork, says the article, so it's up to employers to manage the risk factors that come with the territory. Educating your shiftworkers in the following areas can help you make a positive impact on their safety, health and productivity.

Caffeine management: Caffeine is a powerful stimulant, but drinking too much coffee or drinking it late in a shift can interfere with sleep. Encourage shiftworkers to use coffee in moderation and to drink coffee at the front end of the shift; they should switch to decaf or juice for the rest of the shift.

Diet: Encourage shiftworkers to "graze" through their shifts on low-fat, low-sugar snacks such as low-fat crackers, popcorn, pretzels, tossed salads and celery and carrot sticks with low-calorie dip.

Exercise: A 20-minute aerobic workout can delay by 3 to 4 hours the energy/alertness drop that workers experience during their circadian lowpoint and can help workers sleep when their shift is over, according to Sirois. That's why Entergy Corp.'s Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass., has installed aerobic equipment in its facility. "Guys are encouraged to use it if they're feeling a bit down," says Paul Coffey, a project manager at the facility. The facility also has incorporated surveillance walks into the schedules of many of its 125 shiftworkers.

Naps: A 20-minute power nap has been scientifically proven to provide a 4-hour boost in alertness and productivity, according to Sirois. Develop a policy that allows overly tired workers to take short naps – with supervisor permission – as needed or during breaks.

Scheduling: A growing number of employers are moving away from 8-hour schedules to 12-hour schedules; advocates include author Glenn McBride, who contends that 12-hour schedules, if managed properly, provide more energy, recovery time and quality time with family. Sirois recommends starting morning shifts around 7:30 or 8 a.m. to accommodate the circadian rhythms of the most workers. For rotating schedules, clockwise rotations from days to evenings to nights are user-friendly; counterclock-wise rotations "are extremely stressful," Sirois says. Any restructuring of schedules only will succeed with employee involvement and input.

Training: Incorporate education on the basics of sleep, circadian rhythms and other shiftwork issues and strategies into training. Bayer Material Sciences of Baytown, Texas, hired Circadian Technologies to provide train-the- trainer classes for six of its employees, and now the facility provides mandatory training for its newly hired shiftworkers and newly promoted shift supervisors as well as voluntary training for all employees, explains site HR Director Shirlyn Cummings. Training covers sleep management, nutrition, family relationships and other tips and guidelines for managing a shiftwork lifestyle. Family members, spouses and friends are encouraged to attend.

Work environment: Changes to the work environment can reduce physical and mental fatigue. Bayer Material Sciences, for example, recently lifted a 35-year ban on music in its 15 or so control rooms. Cummings says the previous anti-music policy "was based on the belief that additional noise or music would be a distraction," but recent research shows that "within certain parameters, music actually is a stimulant." Other musts in a work area include bright, full-spectrum lighting; bright colors on the walls; good airflow; and temperature control, as the human brain works best in a 68- to 70-degree environment.