Success Factors in Family Life Strategy
Savvy organisations have realised that Family Life Education can be an effective tool for employee engagement. When employers invest in their staff, equipping them with the know-how to manage their lives outside of work, their overall satisfaction and loyalty towards the organisation increases.
These are some vital steps in creating a successful Family-Life Strategy:
Take a long-term view
Too often we hear of organisations that conduct family-life education programmes on an ad-hoc basis, only for these stand-alone events to get lost in the clutter of multiple other staff wellness initiatives. Indeed, the impact of family-life education is felt when it is reinforced repeatedly and through various channels. Rather than hold one-off programmes, organisations should consider rolling out an annual calendar of family-life events, talks and workshops that will successively build on each other, and equip staff with the knowledge to manage various aspects of life including ensuring Work-Life harmony, building happy life-long marriages and strengthening the parent-child bond, amongst others.
Communicate the Family-Life message
Achieving a critical mass of participants is a key challenge when organising FLE initiatives. Consistent reinforcement of the Family-Life message can serve to drum up interest in upcoming programmes. This could include embedding Family-Life tips in a regular employee e-newsletter or even engaging an FLE service provider to supply quarterly Family-Life articles on a variety of topics for your intranet.
Get management buy-in
Family-Life Education programmes tend to be initiated by HR or smaller interest groups within the organisation. In order to roll out an annual Family-Life strategy, we recommend getting the buy-in of Management. This person need not necessarily work in HR, but may have a personal passion for Family-Life Education, and could be a vocal advocate and champion for your Family-Life Education initiatives.
These tips are provided by Focus on the Family Singapore (www.family.org.sg), a local charity dedicated to helping families thrive by providing quality family life education and resources.
