Hook employees before job market changes

Miami Herald - September 26, 2007 - by Cindy Krischer Goodman, "Balancing Act" Columnist

Seize the opportunity employers! For the first time in six years, employees are less eager to bolt. And that means now is your chance to wow them before the window closes.

The uncertainty in the economy has employees saying ''I [had] better stay where I am for a while,'' says Loretta Penn of Fort Lauderdale's Spherion Corp., which just released a new 2007 Emerging Workforce study of employee attitudes.

Penn says now is the time for employers to take stock -- give workers opportunities to advance and show them you are considerate of their personal lives. That way, when competitors start dangling offers, your employees will be more willing to stay, she says.

Workers want good money; that's a given. We want healthcare benefits; that's old news. We want opportunities to manage, advance, help people or earn a bonus. And then, we want someone to say thank you.

Here's a look at what some creative companies are doing:

WORK/LIFE ISSUES

• When SC Johnson, a consumer product manufacturer, discovered its workers longed for more personal time, it began offering them the option of taking up to 40 more hours of vacation time each year as unpaid time off. ''People can use it for anything they want, extended vacation, more time with family or personal things to get done,'' says Petrell Ozbay, at SC Johnson.

• Companies have long been moving to help parents with their child-care issues. Now, in an interesting shift in philosophy, some employers are extending the benefit to include elder-care or, in some cases, even pet sitting.

Baptist Health South Florida recently added back-up care to its offerings, contracting with Work Options, a large national provider of this service. The benefit, Backup Care Options, offers temporary, subsidized care in a facility or the employee's home.

''In the past when employees had child-care trouble, we have had stressed employees,'' says Lil LeBlanc, work/life director for Baptist Health South Florida.

Shelley Schoendorfer, an imaging supervisor at Baptist, became one of the first to use the benefit when her 86-year-old mother fell. After just one phone call, a health worker came to her home for two weeks to care for her bed-ridden mother while Schoendorfer went to work. The cost to the Baptist employee was only $4 an hour. ''If I hadn't had this benefit, her situation would have affected my work schedule,'' Schoendorfer says.

• More businesses are rolling out corporate concierge services to workers. For instance, one day Commerce Bank HR Vice President Grace Migliaccio wanted to ship a package to Australia but found herself too harried to research the process and cost. So she called her company's concierge service for help. About 35 percent of Commerce Bank's workers have used the service for everything from vacation planning to finding a dry cleaner open late.

CAREER MANAGEMENT

• Accenture, a national consulting firm, recently added ''future leave'' to appeal to workers seeking a short break from work. The program lets managers defer part of their salary in order to take a block of time off and still have income coming in. Workers who take up to three months leave are able to keep their benefits and are guaranteed their position when they return.

SCHEDULING

• The 2007 Benefits Survey Report from the Society of Human Resources found that employees who have the flexibility to telecommute are more satisfied with their jobs. The report also shows more companies -- big and small -- and more government offices are offering telecommuting, particularly on a part-time basis.

• Employees aren't working less but they are working differently. The SHRM survey shows more businesses are offering compressed work weeks such as four 10-hour days. ''In my experience, smaller business have a tougher time offering direct benefits, but what they can offer is inherent flexibility,'' says Cali Yost, a corporate flexibility consultant.

PROMOTING FUN

• Businesses are catching on that workers want to have fun at meetings and work in a positive environment. When Hewlett-Packard learned that five of its Latin American executives in Miami had formed a rock band, it hired the group to perform at corporate events. The members of Manik are now in the process of creating a Web page and angling to record an album. Not only has the band made work parties more fun, the company says its executives found ``playing together allows them to have a more positive attitude towards work.''

Send your comments and ideas to Cindy Krischer Goodman at cgoodman@MiamiHerald.com.