SHRM Workflex Conference - After Thoughts

This week I had the honor of attending SHRM’s Workflex Conference as a member of the press team. Here is what the workflex conference is all about taken right from the website.

The 2012 Workflex Conference is an innovative conference that offers solutions for HR professionals and other business leaders who are actively engaged in building and implementing effective and flexible workplace strategies.

Attendees of this conference either have or are interested in creating flexible work environments that help employees better balance their home and work life. These individuals work for companies who want to be able to offer some type of workflex situation for their employees and send HR professionals here to figure out how to do it. Conversations between attendees run the gamut from sharing of really cool practices that are working for them to continued trepidation about whether or not workflex could really work in their company.

The conference opened with JR Martinez sharing his hero’s story. It is inspiring and from the stage you can tell that he is extremely personable, is great at infusing humor into life and does not let what happened to him define who he is. During a nice sit down lunch, attendees were encouraged to talk about workflex situations at their work which offered an opportunity to share best practices. After lunch I was privileged to attend a press briefing with SHRM and the Congressional Management Foundation. The briefing discussed a joint research report between the two groups which surveyed more than 1,400 congressional staff about workflex. The information they shared was very interesting and while I haven’t had time to dig into the full report just yet, I plan to write about it in the future. One thing I want to share is Brad Fitch’s opening statement (paraphrasing) “Improvements in Congress’s work environment could have far reaching impacts beyond Congress.” Interesting to think about, no?

I took off early from the press briefing to hear my friend Susan Avello talk about “Gaining a Competitive Edge in a High-Tech World Through Workflex” Attendees got to wear 3D glasses for part of the presentation – how cool is that? The conference closed with Holly Robinson Peete sharing her amazing story of four kids, one of whom has a disability and how she manages workflex in her life.

While I will be talking about all of this more later on, I do have one major takeaway. It is amazing to me that in this day and age we still have to convince companies that workflex can be done, it can work and nothing is going to blow up because of it. I have been blessed to work for companies for almost my entire career who understand this and I can’t tell you what a difference it makes in my productivity. I really appreciate the fact that SHRM in conjunction with the Family and Work Institute continue to bring this issues to the forefront and offer practitioners an avenue to learn more. This will continue to be a talked about issue for years to come as companies slowly get on board. Just like social media, it isn’t going away, but adoption rates are slow.

Do you have any cool workflex environments that you would like to share? Do you get to work from home or work a reduced schedule? Does your work have a daycare on-sight or do anything to make your outside-of-work life better? Share it below….

To read the original article, please click here.

This week I had the honor of attending SHRM’s Workflex Conference as a member of the press team. Here is what the workflex conference is all about taken right from the website.
 

The 2012 Workflex Conference is an innovative conference that offers solutions for HR professionals and other business leaders who are actively engaged in building and implementing effective and flexible workplace strategies.

Attendees of this conference either have or are interested in creating flexible work environments that help employees better balance their home and work life. These individuals work for companies who want to be able to offer some type of workflex situation for their employees and send HR professionals here to figure out how to do it. Conversations between attendees run the gamut from sharing of really cool practices that are working for them to continued trepidation about whether or not workflex could really work in their company.
 
The conference opened with JR Martinez sharing his hero’s story. It is inspiring and from the stage you can tell that he is extremely personable, is great at infusing humor into life and does not let what happened to him define who he is. During a nice sit down lunch, attendees were encouraged to talk about workflex situations at their work which offered an opportunity to share best practices. After lunch I was privileged to attend a press briefing with SHRM and the Congressional Management Foundation. The briefing discussed a joint research report between the two groups which surveyed more than 1,400 congressional staff about workflex. The information they shared was very interesting and while I haven’t had time to dig into the full report just yet, I plan to write about it in the future. One thing I want to share is Brad Fitch’s opening statement (paraphrasing) “Improvements in Congress’s work environment could have far reaching impacts beyond Congress.” Interesting to think about, no?
 
I took off early from the press briefing to hear my friend Susan Avello talk about “Gaining a Competitive Edge in a High-Tech World Through Workflex” Attendees got to wear 3D glasses for part of the presentation – how cool is that? The conference closed with Holly Robinson Peete sharing her amazing story of four kids, one of whom has a disability and how she manages workflex in her life.

While I will be talking about all of this more later on, I do have one major takeaway. It is amazing to me that in this day and age we still have to convince companies that workflex can be done, it can work and nothing is going to blow up because of it. I have been blessed to work for companies for almost my entire career who understand this and I can’t tell you what a difference it makes in my productivity. I really appreciate the fact that SHRM in conjunction with the Family and Work Institute continue to bring this issues to the forefront and offer practitioners an avenue to learn more. This will continue to be a talked about issue for years to come as companies slowly get on board. Just like social media, it isn’t going away, but adoption rates are slow.
 
Do you have any cool workflex environments that you would like to share? Do you get to work from home or work a reduced schedule? Does your work have a daycare on-sight or do anything to make your outside-of-work life better? Share it below….