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| Family Friendly’ companies sought | |
| By ALAN JULIAN, Courier
& Press business editor (812) 464-7458 or ajulian@evansville.net Is your company “family friendly?” Does it offer things like flextime or job sharing to help employees juggle their work and family responsibilities? Do you know of a company that helps with child care, or provides incentives for workers to car pool? If so, Evansville’s Diversity Network would like to hear about it. The organization wants to draw attention to family friendly businesses and organizations from a six-county area in Southwestern Indiana. Kim Humphrey, an Old National Bank employee who belongs to the Diversity Network, said the idea is to promote innovative employment practices. “We want to help companies understand what being ‘family friendly’ is all about,” said Humphrey. And it’s not just for the benefit of employees, she said. For example, many companies are learning they need to find new ways to recruit and retain employees as labor shortages develop in today’s economy. “What HR (human resources) people are finding is that we have such low unemployment that we need to do whatever we can to retain employees,” said Humphrey. One way to do that is to provide other perks, such as flextime and job sharing. These types of programs also promote diversity in the workplace because they especially help working mothers and single-parent families. The local award program is similar to the honors presented to family friendly companies earlier this year by a national magazine, “Working Women.” “This is information sharing,” said Humphrey. “Companies can say ‘this is what we’re doing and it works.’” The local award winners will be selected from nominations submitted between now and Nov. 12. A panel of five judges will pick the winners. The judges will include representatives from the Evansville Personnel Managers Association. Humphrey said the idea for the local awards program grew out of a suggestion last year by Nancy S. Chen, regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau in Chicago. Nominations should be mailed to Diversity Network, in care of Raintree Girl Scout Council, P.O. Box 14006, Evansville, IN 47728. The competition is limited to companies or organizations in Vanderburgh, Posey, Warrick, Gibson, Spencer and Perry counties. Companies will be divided into different size categories — up to 25 employees, 26 to 100 employees and more than 100 employees. An award presentation is planned for 5:30 p.m. Jan. 26 at the University of Southern Indiana. Old National Bank and Olsten Staffing Services are among the corporate sponsors for the honors program. |
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