The Custom-Fit Workplace: Choose When, Where, and How to Work and Boost Your Bottom Line - Hardcover

Blades, Joan; Fondas, Nanette

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470633530 ISBN 13: 9780470633533

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2010

Synopsis

Ideas for transforming the workplace to fit today’s workforce

In this book, Blades and Fondas offer business professionals an indispensable handbook for transforming the way we work and breaking free from the old, inflexible, 40-hour workweek. The authors show creative ways for individuals to fit work requirements with life obligations, and persuade managers to adopt these custom-fit work strategies to improve their bottom line. Readers will finish the book convinced of the place of custom-fit work arrangements in today’s workplaceâ and of how honoring employees’ lives outside of work is an effective and innovative strategy for both managers and organizations. Featuring compelling stories of companies like Jet Blue, Ernst & Young, and Best Buy, the book profiles strategies that are gaining traction in workplaces across the country:
· New twists on traditional flexible hours and part-time work strategies

· Virtual workplaces

· Results-Only Work Environments (ROWEs)

· “Babies at Work” programs

· “On ramp and off ramp” opportunities

Practical and engaging, The Custom-Fit Workplace provides individuals and employers the tools they need to be successful and happy both at work and in life.

About this title

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Product Description

In this book, Blades and Fondas offer business professionals an indispensable handbook for transforming the way we work and breaking free from the old, inflexible, 40-hour workweek. The authors show creative ways for individuals to fit work requirements with life obligations, and persuade managers to adopt these custom-fit work strategies to improve their bottom line. Readers will finish the book convinced of the place of custom-fit work arrangements in today’s workplace—and of how honoring employees’ lives outside of work is an effective and innovative strategy for both managers and organizations. Featuring compelling stories of companies like Jet Blue, Ernst & Young, and Best Buy, the book profiles strategies that are gaining traction in workplaces across the country: 

·        New twists on traditional flexible hours and part-time work strategies

·        Virtual workplaces

·        Results-Only Work Environments (ROWEs)

·        “Babies at Work” programs

·        “On ramp and off ramp” opportunities

Practical and engaging, The Custom-Fit Workplace provides individuals and employers the tools they need to be successful and happy both at work and in life.

5 Ways to Custom-Fit Your Workplace
Amazon-exclusive content from authors Joan Blades and Nanette Fondas

1. Embrace Flexibility.
Flex time, job-sharing, compressed schedules: these practices are needed now more than ever as people juggle the demands of work and other life commitments. Young people, older employees, parents and non-parents alike all need flexibility at times. And when they get it, productivity soars.

2. Go Virtual.
Whether it’s for one employee, one business unit, or an entire company, virtual work is here to help. Here to make our lives saner, our environmental impact smaller, and our businesses more efficient. The virtual office is virtually perfect.

3. Realize Only Results Matter.
Today business competitiveness depends upon results. Period. Organizations that focus on results create a culture of high performance and high commitment that rewards them in spades. Employees don’t quit. Employees go the extra mile. Customers return again and again because service is good and product quality is great.

4. Merge a Workforce of Lane Changers.
Today’s workers are a diverse lot: some stay in the fast-lane, some slow down for a while and return energized, some thrive at a steady pace for decades. Success is creating career paths that maximize each person’s ability to contribute. Realizing how to lead a workforce of young, old, fast, slow, single, parent, newcomers, and veteran workers is a new challenge, but one which ensures that everyone thrives.

5. Let a Baby Come to Work.
As the saying goes, “they’re not small for very long.” When a valued employee gives birth or adopts a child, sometimes the simplest solution is to let the infant come to work with the parent for a few months. Businesses are making this new practice work for both the worker and the bottom line.

From the Inside Flap

Change is afoot in businesses across America and throughout the world: Dual-earning households continue to grow in record numbers; men and women are taking time off from their careers to take care of children or aging parents and are struggling to find a way back in; and workers at the top and bottom of the pay scale are struggling to balance their jobs and personal lives while making ends meet. At the same time, businesses are looking for creative ways to boost profits and retain their talent rather than eliminating positions to make their numbers. We are, in short, standing on the precipice of a workplace revolution.

The Custom-Fit Workplace explains how to navigate the changing landscape. It reveals cutting-edge strategies for managers, workers, and executives everywhere to fundamentally transform the way we work. Today's tumultuous, 24/7 world is wreaking havoc on the fit between the workplace and workers and, unlessaddressed now, will put our families, health, and communities on a collision course with our jobs. It has never been more urgent to align work and life. The Custom-Fit Workplace shows you how to do this.

Thoroughly grounded in research, The Custom-Fit Workplace distills the best practices that are transforming workplaces across the country, including work-from-home arrangements, results-only work environments, babies-at-work programs, and successful career lane changes. From flexible hours to part-time work strategies, these innovative approaches create win-win solutions for both businesses and employees.

With examples from both private and nonprofit sectors, The Custom-Fit Workplace will help managers and employees at every level forge a unique work-life fit while boosting the bottom line. This is an eminently practical guide for anyone who wants to reshape the workplace, reclaim their lives, and build resilient, effective, and respectful organizations.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0470633530
• ISBN 13: 9780470633533
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240