Work. Family. Life.

Looking for great ECE's for new workplace child care program

As some of my readers are aware, I have been consulting on the development of a wonderful new workplace child care program for Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers (RBA) in Burnaby, BC.  Below are a few pictures of the new RBA headquarters, which has been under construction for the last year or so, and is scheduled to have employees begin moving in next month.

I am happy to report that things have been moving along very nicely and this new child care program, which will accommodate infants, toddlers and preschool age children, will be opening in the Fall 2009.  The child care centre has been designed to serve RBA employees and their children and will offer exceptional quality child care programming that incorporates the best aspects of multiple early learning philosophies.

The Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers Child Care Program will be responsive to the individual needs of the children and families that it serves.  Qualified, experienced Early Childhood Education and Infant-Toddler trained staff will ensure that the physical, emotional and social development of each child is supported through the provision of an environment that truly respects the needs of young children.

Program goals include (but are not limited to) the following:

• To provide very high quality early learning and child care experiences for all children and families who enroll.
• To create a safe, warm, inviting and nurturing environment where young children can develop, grow and learn in a way that best supports their individual needs.
• To provide a program that supports the ongoing professional development of all staff that work in the program.

Currently RBA are recruiting Early Childhood Educators, Infant-Toddler Educators and ECE Assistants for this new child care program.  If you are a BC or Alberta qualifed Early Childhood Educator I encourage you to submit your resume for consideration via the RBA Careers webpage.  Please share this information with your colleagues or anyone who you think might be well suited for a position in this new program.

Established in 1958, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers (NYSE and TSX: RBA) is the world’s largest industrial auctioneer, selling more equipment to on-site and online bidders than any other company in the world. Headquartered in Vancouver, BC, Canada, Ritchie Bros. has more than 110 locations worldwide, including 39 auction sites. Ritchie Bros. conducts hundreds of unreserved public auctions every year, selling a broad range of used and unused equipment for the construction, transportation, agricultural, material handling, mining, forestry, petroleum and marine industries.

Ritchie Bros. offers an excellent total compensation package including health and dental benefits, education allowance, Group RRSP and Employee Share Purchase Plan with company matching. 

National Work Life Network Society - has just launched!

I am very excited to announce that I have teamed up with my colleagues Dr. Carol Matusicky and Wendy Creelman to launch the National Network Society this week.  We are working on some very exciting things that are moving along a pretty fast pace!  For now, here is what you need to know:

The National Work Life Network Society (NWLN) supports and promotes workplace practices that encourage employee health and wellness. Through best practice research, collaboration, and awareness raising the society works to educate the actions of Canadian employers to become employers of choice. Outcomes such as environments that support the multiple roles of workers provide the platform for healthy productive Canadian families.

The goal of the National Work Life Network Society (NWLN) is to recognize the complexity of family life today and the need for and importance of having workplace strategies that support workers/employees to balance caregiving responsibilities and workplace responsibilities. To that end, the NWLN seeks:

 

• To raise and sustain awareness of the importance of work-life strategies/best practices and the benefits to workplaces in supporting workers and their caregiving responsibilities;
• To identify and promote some of the best practices and practical tools already existing in workplaces and to identify new practices, as these relate to the caregiving issues that families face;
• To identify, profile and recognize employers and workplace leaders and champions;
• To identify incentives that promote more workplace involvement in supporting caregivers in the workplace;
• To increase the level of collaboration among all sectors in developing and sustaining policies and practices that support caregivers in the workplace.

Stay tuned...there are good things to come!

Why Islander Day REALLY is good for business (and families)

Last year in the PEI government's Throne Speech it was announced that there would be a new stat holiday for the Province starting in February 2009.  The holiday, called Islander Day, is to be on the second Monday of every February.  This coming Monday will be the first official Islander Day on PEI and many individuals and families will be enjoying their new found time to relax, play and generally celebrate life on PEI. 

Unfortunately, is seems that there are some businesses who are complaining that this new stat holiday will negatively impact business on the Island.  According to a CBC news report, these businesses feel that the holiday will cost too much in terms of lost payroll with no additional revenues coming in the door on the day. 

Premier Ghiz, on the other hand, feels that the day will enhance business productivity,

"We'll actually see an increase in productivity," said Ghiz. "Usually after people have a day off they go back to work, they're a little more invigorated, they want to get a little more done. I see this as a win-win situation for the province." 

While I have been known to disagree with Premier Ghiz on many occassions about how his government is supporting Island families from a public policy perspective; in this case I fully agree with his thinking.  This seems to be one occassion where he really gets it.  He recognizes that investing in people will pay off for the Island in multiple ways.  What a good thing that is.

Dan James recently wrote a good post on his blog CEO Blues about this issue. In particular, this quote stood out to me:

"My advice to any island business owners reading this: This holiday wasn't meant to help you. It was meant to help your staff. It's a decision made by the public (the government) for the good of the people. We've deemed it healthy to have more time off, just like we deemed it a good idea to compost and recycle. It has to be legislated or greed would creep in and ruin it. Suck it up. Even with Islander Day we're at the bottom of the pile for statutory holidays in the country."

So after considering everything, here is my take on this issue....PEI (and Canada for that matter) need more CEO's that think like Dan James.  Dan totally gets the big picture here.  Even Premier Ghiz sees the value this holiday brings.  The simple truth of the matter is that investing in people pays off. Employees need time for their personal lives.  Employers who take steps to help their employees achieve better work-life balance are rewarded in more ways than we can count.  More and more employers are recognizing that it pays off to offer employees increased flexibility, time off, family supports and more.  Happy employees are more engaged in their work and ultimately that is good for the bottom line.  Study after study shows this. Leading employers demonstrate this through studies that show enhanced employee engagement scores in exchange for things like increased work work-life flexibilty, better communication, improved employee workload control and respect by management. 

Dr. Linda Duxbury, a business professor at Carleton University's Sprott Shaw School of Business, recently delivered her sixth and final report on work-life balance with the warning that policies to support working families are a must to get the economy rolling again.  She argued policy-makers must recognize that heavy workloads and their interference on family life are key reasons for Canada's declining birth rate and labour force. They need to develop strategies, polices and interventions to help stem this work-life "tsunami.

So for those businesses who disagree with this new holiday I say this....get with the program. (Or - even better - as Dan says: Suck it up.)  As a Province and as a Country we need to be doing more to invest in the wellbeing of our people and our communities.  What goes around comes around.  Believe it or not, your employee's wellbeing will be all the better for the extra time this new stat holiday gives them. Enhanced employee wellbeing truly translates to a better bottom line....even in these tough economic times.

Friday, October 17, 2008 was Work-Life Balance Day in Hong Kong

From Does Your Company Support Work-Life Balance?

Representative surveys of the Hong Kong working population in 2006 and 2007 have highlighted that Hong Kong employees work long hours, regularly work overtime and that poor work-life balance adversely impacts productivity, health and family life. Hong Kong employees also believe that their employers can do more.

That’s why Community Business is working with the business community in Hong Kong to promote Friday 17 October 2008 as Work-Life Balance Day. Companies of all sizes will be taking the initiative to promote work-life balance on that day. It could be as straightforward as encouraging all employees to leave on time, allowing an hour for exercise or providing healthy snacks in the pantry. It may be a small step, but every little action can contribute to changing mindsets and encouraging your managers and staff to think differently.

The results of The University of Hong Kong's 2008 Work-Life Balance Survey can be found here.

The top 100 - Maclean's 2008

They offer flex hours, on-site daycare, transit rebates and free gyms. They're Canada's top employers, and they're raising the benefits bar.

Google's goof up with child care

About 3 weeks ago Valleywag posted a story on a mess up that seemed to be happening over at Google with their child care programs. After taking their child care program in house they significantly increased the fees to the point that the child care became totally unaffordable for many of the employees.  Some say this was part of a plan to greatly reduce the number of children on their waiting lists for child care spaces! Here is an excerpt:

Google no longer advertises subsidized daycare as a benefit to its employees. So why is the company building luxuriously unaffordable child-care centers at the behest of Susan Wojcicki, the sister-in-law of Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and closing down Kinderplex, a more affordable center operated by an experienced Silicon Valley daycare provider, CCLC?

Today, the New York Times also ran a story by Joe Nocera. Here are a few of the highlights:

Do you think you know how this story ends? You’re probably guessing that because it involves “do no evil” Google, Fortune magazine’s “Best Company to Work For” the past two years, this is a heart-warming tale of a good company reversing a dumb decision.

If only. Although Google is rolling back its price increase slightly and is phasing in the higher price over five quarters, the outline of the original decision remains largely unchanged. At a T.G.I.F. in June, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he had no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of “Googlers” who felt entitled to perks like “bottled water and M&Ms,” according to several people in the meeting. (A Google spokesman denies that Mr. Brin made that comment.) On Monday, Google began the first phase of its new day care plan, letting go of the outside day care firm it had been using.

Valleywag have posted another story today on the ongoing Google child care fumble:

So Google has on its hands a disaster: A disaster for parents, a disaster for children, and a disaster for Google shareholders. How does Google respond?

Not by fixing the problem, but instead by lying to a New York Times columnist. Nocera, a famed reporter, quotes Brin twice. Google PR repeatedly denied that Brin made these comments — an unbelievably brazen act, considering the remarks were made before large groups of Google employees. A sampler:

At a T.G.I.F. in June, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he had no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of “Googlers” who felt entitled to perks like “bottled water and M&Ms,” according to several people in the meeting. (A Google spokesman denies that Mr. Brin made that comment.)

But parents who talked to me said that several times during the six-week-long day care brouhaha, Mr. Brin made comments indicating that he viewed the whole thing as a giant economics experiment. “This is a supply-and-demand issue,” he told one group of parents — adding that Google needed to charge what the market would bear. (Through a Google spokesman, Mr. Brin denies making such a statement.) Given that Google has lots of pre-I.P.O. millionaires, it can clearly charge a lot.

As I look on the benefits section of the Google employee recruitment webpages I note the folllowing quote:

"Benefits Philosophy: We strive to be innovative and unique in all services we provide both to customers and employees, including our benefits and perks offerings. We realize and celebrate that our employees have diverse needs, and that this diversity requires flexible and individually directed support. Our priority is to offer a customizable program that can be tailored to the specific needs of each individual, whether they enjoy ice climbing in Alaska, want to retire by age 40, or plan to adopt 3 children."

Hmmmm...after reading about this mess it would seem that it might be better to stick to ice climbing in Alaska than to be try to have children and work at Google in Mountain View, California. 

Further, the move to the Reggio method is very interesting considering that the founders of Google were graduates of Montessori programs as children. 

Google...what are you doing?  What if all of the child care centres in North America decided to increase their fees as a way to eliminate waiting list problems....hmmmm...maybe we would solve the child care crisis we are facing!  Hey...Google maybe you are onto something.....on second thought NOT.