Workplace Flexibility: Ensuring Success for the 21st Century

Corporate Voices to Participate and Showcase its Flexibility Campaign in Women's Bureau's First National Dialogue on Workplace Flexibility

Corporate Voices will participate in the first of the Women's Bureau's National Dialogues on Workplace Flexibility in Dallas on October 20. The Dialogue will bring together employers, employees, advocates, researchers, educators, and other stakeholders to discuss the challenges and successes of making flexibility work for small businesses. It will be the first in a series of dialogues to discuss the use of flexibility within different industries across the country, and is meant to continue the national discussion that began in March at the White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility on the local level.

Corporate Voices and its partners, through its national workplace flexibility campaign, have played a leading role in helping the Women's Bureau organize this Dialogue. It looks forward to sharing the best practices of its member companies and "Business Champions" during the discussion.

Workplace flexibility was highlighted at the White House Forum in March as a strategic management tool business can use to enhance their competitiveness in the global economy, and to enable their workers to better manage the dual demands of work and family. Corporate Voices was asked at the White House Forum to lead a national business challenge to create a broader awareness of the positive business and employee benefits of workplace flexibility.

Since then, Corporate Voices has launched its national workplace flexibility campaign, and is now inviting businesses across the country to sign our Statement of Support for Expanding Workplace Flexibility to express support for workplace flexibility as a strategy to ensure success in the 21st Century.

Companies that have signed this Statement so far include: Accenture, Allstate Insurance Company, AOL, BaxterInternational, Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Childrens' Creative Learning Centers, Cisco Systems, CVS Caremark, Discovery Communications, Ernst & Young, George Mason University, Knowledge Universe, KPMG, LifeCare, Marriott International, McGladrey^SM, Sodexo, and Workplace Options, among others.

Corporate Voices will continue to work with the Women's Bureau to spur business engagement around upcomingnationalflexibility dialogues in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and other cities. All companies that have joined Corporate Voices' campaign will be invited to participate.

The Dallas Dialogue will be webcast live-please visit the Women's Bureau's website for the agenda and more information.

We are pleased that Corporate Voices' president, Stephen M. Wing, will contribute the introduction to a special report on "Work-Life Balance" which will appear as a stand-alone supplement in the November 5 weekend edition of USA Today. The special report will raise awareness of the trend over the last 25 years of increasing work pressure in America, its impact on families and individuals, and what is being done to promote work-life balance in the workforce. The 12-page special report will be published by Mediaplanet Publishing in USA. It will have 450,000 copies in circulation with a weekend readership of over 1 million.

Corporate Voices will also contribute a piece in the report highlighting best-practice private sector initiatives to promote work-life balance, such as Corporate Voices' National Workplace Flexibility Campaign.

The special report will include articles featuring: how to effectively deal with stress; personal financial management; new entrants to the workforce; the role of technology in work-life balance; and how innovative companies are paving the way for work-life progress.

This special report will be published on the heels of National Work and Family Month, as well as the mid-term elections in November. As the U.S. experiences high unemployment, increasing poverty and inequality, and demographic changes revolutionizing the workforce, November will be a critical time to discuss what role federal and corporate policy can play in helping working families.

Please look out for this special report in USA Today on November 5! Partner companies interested in highlighting their work-life initiatives in this report through an ad-spot can contact Karynn Elio at karynn.elio@mediaplanet.com. The deadline for ad-spots is quickly approaching the week of October 18-and discounts are available for Corporate Voices' partner companies.

Corporate Voices will host a Congressional staff lunch briefing on October 19 as community and business leaders in Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Nashville discuss the model partnerships they are building to ensure that all youth are ready to succeed in college, work, and life.

In these and other communities across the nation, innovative leaders and educators are coming together under the Ready by 21® banner to make youth their top priority. This briefing seeks to highlight and discuss these local partnerships, and how federal policy can support and enhance the most promising efforts.

• Karen Pittman, Co-founder, President & CEO, Forum for Youth Investment
• Stephen M. Wing, President, Corporate Voices for Working Families

• Ronnie Steine, Metro Councilman-at-Large, Nashville, TN

• Gaye Morris Smith, Executive Director, Georgia Family Connection Partnership, Atlanta, GA

• Thomas A. H. White, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Unum Group, Chattanooga, TN

We've noticed our weekly readership is growing.  In order to reach even more readers and to provide them with the most up-to-date and relevantarticles, we have decided to move our distribution of the Corporate Voices' Weekly Update to Thursday mornings.  We hope that this new schedule will provide our readers with even more time to read and share news about Corporate Voices' activities and work-life news that matters the most to them.