You may have seen a recent press release announcing the “Business Champions” and wonder that that means. At its core, the Business Champions group is local group of diverse business leaders who have joined forces with the High Country Human Resource Association (HCHRA) and The Youth Foundation in an effort to ensure that Eagle County is not only the best place in Colorado to live and work, but also to raise a family.
It’s a lofty goal to be sure. And it’s an important goal that is directly connected to various efforts to grow our economy. It is also in complete alignment with our collective goal to ensure that Eagle County is a business-friendly environment and desired place to do business.
The newly created “Business Champions” partnership is committed to help local businesses increase productivity, innovation and customer satisfaction and thereby grow their bottom line. The partnership will do this by providing data, resources and tools to business to increase workplace flexibility options throughout Eagle County. Lisa Ponder, president of HCHRA and Director of Human Resources at Eagle County Government said it best when she said that “workplace flexibility is no longer an employee benefit or an accommodation – it is fast becoming a winning business strategy. At its core, workplace flexibility is about improving business results by rethinking how, when, and where people do their work – and that is what the Business Champions partnership would like to do for Eagle County.”
The “Business Champions” concept is a result of the Youth Foundation’s Early Childhood Initiative team’s focus on children from birth to age three. “Business Champions” was created in an effort to promote family-friendly practices in the workplace in order to help young families with their work-life balance. Of specific interest to the Vail Valley Partnership, in our effort to lead economic development efforts and provide business services to the community, is that the Youth Foundation soon realized the concepts could also help employees without children, as well as business owners and most importantly the bottom line of businesses.
The Harvard Business Review recently addressed the issue of flextime and the (somewhat overused) topic of “work/life balance” in a blog post stating “work-family guilt is wasted energy”. They further conclude that it would help both individuals as well as businesses to “recognize the need for good policy design” to make the US workforce more competitive on a global stage by implementing flextime policies.
Ironically, tech giant Yahoo! is moving in the opposite direction by not allowing employees to work from home any longer. I’d venture a guess that CEO Marissa Mayer views working from home as “slacking”, or it’s possible that she recognized that Yahoo!’s corporate infrastructure is bloated and this change is simply designed to cull the herd by forcing people to decide if they want to stay with the organization thus reducing their staffing levels and expenses without the negative press associated with layoffs.
In addition, the Yahoo! example is evidence that flexible work environments don’t work for every business or every industry – our restaurants need to operate when guests want to eat, and our retail stores need to operate at the times when guests are shopping. But the research shows that many businesses can benefit their bottom lines by offering a flexible environment that recognizes the ability for employees to use technology to their advantage. When Work Works (whenworkworks.org) is a great resource for businesses looking for case studies of how to build effective work environments and view trends and statistics related to this issue.
How can your business participate? Participate in the “Business Champions” survey. Any and all employees in the county are encouraged to participant. To take the survey in either English or Spanish, go to: Survey – English or Survey – Spanish (as an added incentive for people to take the survey, participants will be entered to win one of two iPad minis). Stay tuned as the results will be shared at a community meeting in April.
Chris Romer is the president & CEO of the Vail Valley Partnership.