Groundbreaking Book on Flexible Work Wins National Award
NEWS RELEASE
May 25, 2011
CONTACT: Gretchen Wright or Molly Tomlinson, 202/371-1999
Groundbreaking Book on Flexible Work Wins National Award
For Promoting Social Change
The Custom-Fit Workplace Awarded Nautilus Silver Award
in Category of Conscious Business/Leadership
The Custom-Fit Workplace: Choose When, Where, and How to Work and Boost Your Bottom Line, a guide to successfully implementing flexible workplace policies authored by MomsRising founder Joan Blades and Nanette Fondas (an expert in organizations behavior and corporate strategy who holds a doctorate in Business Administration from Harvard Business School), has been honored for promoting viable options for positive social change. The book is a 2011 Nautilus Silver Award Winner; one of only six in the Conscious Business/Leadership category.
The Nautilus Awards, now celebrating its eleventh anniversary, recognizes books and audio that promote spiritual growth, conscious living and positive social change, while stimulating the imagination and offering the reader new possibilities for a better life and a better world.
Released last August, The Custom-Fit Workplace includes numerous stories and other examples of how employers can not only accommodate workers’ needs but also improve their bottom line. It serves as a guide for managers and employees at all levels to navigate this workplace revolution, including how various practices can be implemented, the documentation needed and the structures that must be put into place. It details best practices used by large and small private companies and nonprofits across the country, which have created win-win situations for both businesses and employees.
These cutting-edge, custom-fit practices include work-from-home arrangements, results-only work environments, babies-at-work programs, and successful career lane changes, among others. In fact, Jet Blue, Ernst & Young, Best Buy and the University of California are among the companies that have already put these kinds of flexible policies in place for their employees, and their success stories are profiled in the book.
“It’s immensely gratifying to be recognized for our efforts to improve people’s work lives while also improving productivity,” said Blades. “Examples in the book demonstrate that making it easy for employees to balance their work and other life responsibilities is good for the bottom line. We describe a menu of opportunities to achieve that balance. Not every solution works for every business or every employee, you need a custom fit.”
In conjunction with MomsRising, an online and on-the-ground grassroots organization of more than a million people working to achieve economic security for all families in the U.S., the book’s authors maintain a linked web site that provides resources and space for people to share their own experiences with workplaces that do and don’t allow workers flexible workdays, virtual work options or accommodate caregiving needs.
The site, customfitworkplace.org features a blog, and links to research that provides evidence of the benefits to businesses of instituting programs and policies that help employees successfully blend their work responsibilities with their life obligations. The research shows how employee-friendly workplaces can: improve financial performance; cut costs; and retain committed workers and build loyalty.
Through customfitworkplace.org, MomsRising and the authors of The Custom-Fit Workplace hope to help employees and employers implement existing successful strategies for creating custom-fit workplaces and suggest new strategies.
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MomsRising.org is an online and on-the-ground grassroots organization of more than a million people who are working to achieve economic security for all families in the United States. MomsRising is working for paid family leave, flexible work options, affordable child care, and for an end to the wage and hiring discrimination which penalizes so many mothers. MomsRising also advocates for health care for all, toxic-free environments, and breastfeeding rights so that all children can have a healthy start. Established in 2006 and now celebrating its fifth anniversary, MomsRising and its members are organizing and speaking out to improve public policy and to change the national dialogue on issues that are critically important to America’s families. In 2010, Forbes.com named MomsRising's web site as one of the Top 100 Websites For Women.
