By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady
Just My E-pinion
For years, BLR has surveyed HR and benefits professionals to find trends in benefits. We appreciate your participation in our monthly series of brief, targeted benefits surveys. Today’s Survey Topic: Family Leave Practices. (We’ll publish the results in a future issue.)
Family responsibility leave. It’s a hot topic for employers both as a positive—a method of increasing employee engagement—and as a negative—as a new source of lawsuits alleging family responsibilities discrimination. What are companies doing to handle the steadily increasing number of requests for time off to deal with family issues?
Let’s find out. Please participate in this brief survey and we’ll determine just what employers are offering their employees:
- How much paid and unpaid leave, other than FMLA, do employers offer for spouse care? For child care? For eldercare?
- What sorts of programs are offered to assist with family responsibilities?
- How are benefits and seniority handled during leaves?
- May employees use their own sick leave to care for others?
Take this brief survey and see how your existing practices and future plans stack up against those of the country’s most successful companies. The survey takes only a few minutes to complete, and it will help you stay on top of your industry and keep your organization competitive.
Complete the Family Leave Practices Survey now
By sharing your insight, opinions, and experience, you’ll help us highlight trends and define benchmarks—by industry, geographic location, and size of employer—that will inform your decision-making for the coming year. At the same time, you’ll find out how your fellow HR professionals are handling tricky benefits challenges, and you’ll be able to compare your practices with those of your competitors.
Complete the Family Leave Practices Survey now
Rest assured that all responses are confidential, and only aggregate findings will be published. All respondents will receive a report of the results.
Thank you for your valued input. We’ll report on the results in a future issue.
Robert Brady, CEO, Business and Legal Resources
P.S. Here are some upcoming employee benefits surveys:
- Benefits for Part-Time Employees
- Profit-Sharing and Bonuses
- Voluntary Benefits
- Nontraditional Benefits
- Relocation and Business Travel
Because the survey is short it forces the choice of response which may be mis-leading. We have no-fault unpaid leave available to employees for personal issues, and this leave is different from an unpaid leave of absence. I can’t communicate this in the survey, but just checked the blocks saying we have leave for spouse, child or elder parent.
With the creative ways HR people are coming up with ways to help out employees, the survey needs to encompass these new options.
Folks
I just completed the Family Responsibilities Survey.
I have a request – please ADD to Question # 16 the option to select “Other”. Currently, I have to select from 4 categories – “Other” is not available to choose as one of your choices. Please update for folks like us who don’t fit into one of the four categories.
Thank you!
Bob Jewell
Bob and Les,
Thanks for your comments; we should have sent the survey to you before we sent it out! As you would imagine, we can’t change the survey once it’s gone out, but we’ll learn from your suggestions and be clearer on the next one.
Thanks for reading and thanks for participating in the surveys.
Best wishes,
Steve
Stephen D. Bruce, PHR
Editor, HR Daily Advisor