$630K grant promotes family-friendly policies

Kellogg Foundation funds back recognition of progressive workplaces

A major philanthropic foundation is pumping $630,000 into an effort that promotes family-friendliness in New Mexico workplaces.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s grant will support programming that recognizes companies with family-friendly cultures and uses them as examples for others to follow.

Albuquerque’s Collective Action Strategies, which will administer the three-year grant, will use an award-based system to encourage employers to embrace policies like paid leave and flexible scheduling and then get them to share their experience and strategy with their peers.

Collective Action Strategies’ Giovanna Rossi said the program is separate from recent efforts to legislate terms of the employer-employee relationship, such as last year’s Fair Workweek Act that was presented, but ultimately withdrawn, by a pair of Albuquerque city councilors.

“I think we’re taking a completely different strategy, which is to say rather than trying to change policy or change laws or rather than trying to mandate something, we’re simply highlighting where people are already doing a good job,” she said.

The grant will expand the Family-Friendly Business Award program, which Rossi said was softly launched last year. Companies achieve the recognition based on how many family-friendly policies they have in place. The program considers areas like paid leave (including personal and maternity/paternity leave), employer-subsidized health and dental insurance, flexible work scheduling, telecommuting opportunities and wages.

The funding will provide new avenues for those companies to share their experience with others, whether through networking events, training sessions or new educational materials, Rossi said.

“It’s a lot of positive reinforcement. We’re wanting to showcase those businesses that are doing great at it already and have them show their colleagues and their peers how to do it,” Rossi said.