Firms Extend Benefits To Low-Income Workers

In the rush to create work-family benefits, companies have often left one type of worker behind - low-income and hourly employees whose balancing acts are often most precarious.

That’s changing, according to a report issued Thursday at an annual conference on work and family.

Extending the work-life gains made in recent years beyond middle-class or female employees is a primary goal of 101 work-life practitioners and consultants surveyed by the New York-based Families and Work Institute.

About 40 percent of those surveyed said they planned to or are already increasing attention to low-income and hourly workers or workers overseas.

“The field once focused on large corporations and women and children,” said Ellen Galinsky, president of the institute. “Now it’s become an issue for all.”

She said expanding the reach of such benefits doesn’t have to involve big, expensive programs. “There are real simple things you can do,” she said, such as installing a phone on a factory floor so a caregiver can easily reach a parent if a child gets sick.

Nearly a third of the 101 work-life managers who responded to the institute’s survey also said they were planning or had started to collaborate with small businesses - their suppliers or customers - on workfamily issues, said the report.