Quality of life benefits

I know you don’t need anyone to tell you – least of all, me – that your employees still are feeling the stresses and strains of the sluggish economy, at work and likely at home as well.

I have a horrible commute. Truly, truly horrible. It’s expensive, long, often unpredictable and exhausting — about 90 minutes each way.

There are outstanding workplaces with prodigious employee benefit packages all over the world, judging from the Great Places to Work Institute’s recent eighth annual conference in Los Angeles, where about 20 employers of choice shared their respective grand visions.

I hear a lot of joking (and I confess, I’ve made a few cracks myself) about what’s been called a, shall we say, relaxed, work ethic among Gen Y/Millenials.

With all the chatter around health care reform, you may have missed (like I did) last week’s White House forum on workplace flexibility.

Okay, I thought we all needed a brief respite from health care reform. So, we’re going waaaay in the opposite direction today with results from a new study by work-life provider SitterCity, which claims to have noted a “SitterCity effect” among employers using its child/elder/pet care resource services.

So, with an unemployment rate still hovering close to 10% and a growing number of employees feeling detached from their jobs, I’d suspect Digital Insurance is getting a lot of interested applicants these days.

Here’s another tidbit about me: my reality TV-watching habits generally trend toward whatever life change I’m undertaking at the moment.

Due to two monstrous snowstorms in the D.C. area, it has now been a full week since I’ve left my home. Did you hear that, pros? A WEEK.

Perhaps you’ve heard, but here in the D.C. area, it’s been a bit snowy lately. By a bit, I mean we've already gotten about 2 ½ feet of the white stuff, with some 10 to 20 inches more expected as I typed this.

Okay, so Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, which means it’s time to talk about such things like heart disease/hypertension, the health benefits of chocolate and of course, workplace romances.

Americans work longer hours than people in most other developed countries, including renowned workaholics in Japan. As a result, work-family conflict is much higher in the United States than in other nations.