* struggling to compete in today's complex business world;
* reducing margins;
* increasing product cycle time;
* experiencing unacceptable rates of turnover and absenteeism; or
* losing talented job candidates to your competitors?
This workbook helps you reinvent the way you do business while also addressing the needs of your workforce.
Research sponsored by the Ford Foundation at Tandem Computers, Xerox and Corning discovered a way to integrate work and personal life and improve productivity, quality and customer and employee satisfaction all at the same time. The author of this workbook headed one of the research teams. Now your managers, employees and teams can benefit from the cutting-edge results.
For the first time, concrete strategies are available to help your organization integrate work-life issues into the core business. These strategies improve work quality and productivity as well as provide managers an! d individuals with specific skills to help them meet both their work and personal responsibilities.
The workbook is filled with interactive individual and group exercises that can be used for training seminars or as a self-paced instruction manual for individuals or teams who want to improve their productivity while responding to the needs of co-workers, managers and the organization.
As a result of completing this work book, readers will:
* understand how to reinvent work and change organizational culture for the benefit of the business as well as its employees;
* deal more effectively with their own work-life dilemmas while also understanding the work-life dilemmas of others;
* increase efficiency, productivity, quality, customer satisfaction and morale; and
* have concrete skills to manage change and manage employees more effectively in today's complex business environment.
Chapter Overviews
Chapter I: Seeing the World with New Understandings -
This chapter includes two questionnaires that help reade! rs understand the realities of today's complex business environment and the changing demographic composition of the workforce. The chapter also includes an individual exercise entitled: The Wheel of Life.
Chapter II: A Brief History of Work-Life Issues
In this chapter readers are taken on a swift journey from the agricultural age to the industrial revolution to today's technological global business world. Recent trends in work-life policies and programs are reviewed. A new model is presented to help readers understand the current approaches to work-life and the reasons many managers and employees have resisted adopting this approach.
Chapter III: A Systems Approach to Change: Moving Beyond Policy and Program
The results of the Ford Foundation research are outlined in this chapter. A new model for conceptualizing and addressing work-life dilemmas is presented. This new systemic approach results in a win-win for both the business and its staff. Many case studies ar! e vividly described so participants can learn how other organizations have benefitted from this new systemic approach. Exercises then help readers apply what they have learned to their unique individual and organizational situation. Titles of the exercises include: Exploring Assumptions about Time; Examining Habitual Work Processes Using the Five Point Model.
Chapter IV: Managerial Influence in the Achievement of Work-Life Integration
Numerous research studies have demonstrated the significant influence managers have on an employee's ability to integrate their work and personal lives. This chapter is designed to provide manager's with concrete skills to help them manage more effectively in today's challenging business environment. The old leadership models were created for production workers. Today, our knowledge and service workers require new managerial styles. Managers will acquire practical strategies they can use at their work sites.
Chapter V: Managing Change a! nd Flex-Ability
Most change efforts fail because they a! re managed poorly by both managers and staff. This chapter provides specific strategies for planning and implementing change so the results are welcomed and the goals are achieved. Readers are taught about the emotional response cycle for change.
Chapter VI: Integrating and Implementing Personal and Organizational Change
For change to succeed, measurement criteria need to be identified up front. This chapter suggests specific criteria and helps teams determine appropriate criteria for their unique environment. Readers are provided with an action planning framework so they can commit themselves to follow-up activities that will improve their personal and organizational effectiveness.
Chapter VII: Supplemental Information
This last chapter provides page after page of research facts and testimonials from organizations that have benefitted from using this approach.
