The Custom-Fit Workplace
Choose When, Where, and How to Work and Boost Your Bottom Line
By: Joan Blades, Nanette Fondas
Published: August 9, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
ISBN-10: 0470633530
ISBN-13: 978-0470633533
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
"The simple truth is that workplace demands often are not compatible with the realities of modern life", write co-founder of MomsRising.org Joan Blades and award winning writer and blogger Nanette Fondas, in their insightful and eye opening book The Custom-Fit Workplace: Choose When, Where, and How to Work and Boost Your Bottom Line. The authors utilize the latest in workplace research to describe how the traditional place of employment no longer works for people and their lives. In place of the outmoded workplace environment, the authors provide the revolutionary and practical twenty-first century solution of the custom-fit workplace.
Joan Blades (photo left) and Nanette Fondas recognize that the needs of people, and the demands of their off hours lives, are not meshing with the demands of the workplace. The pressures of family, activities, and other commitments are causing undue stress on the employees. As a result, both the people and the organization suffer in both the short and the longer term. For the authors, these pressures are not just issues for women, although female employees suffer much stress as a result, but that these are problems facing everyone including employers. There is hope, however, for those seeking a balance between work and private lives. For the authors, that concept is the custom-fit workplace. Almost any job can be made better to accommodate the employee. What is essential for the custom-fit workplace is flexibility and understanding from the employer. The change in employer attitude is taking place, but at a slower pace than the rate of change in society as a whole.
Nanette Fondas (photo left) and Joan Blades present an effective and manageable process for developing workplaces that is compatible with the real world needs of employees. At the same time, the concepts are also innovations that enhance employee job performance for the benefit of employers. The authors share the most recent trends in workplace changing innovations, that range from flexible work hours, to on site baby and child care, to work at home arrangements. These and other win-win concepts are transforming the modern work environment into one that is more employee and family friendly. The new style workplaces are also helping to create a balance between working life and personal time. The result has been beneficial to employers as well. The new flexibility within what constitutes jobs and employment options makes available an entirely new and productive workforce. Existing employees are also more productive and more engaged in the organization as their stress levels are lowered and the nagging pressures of home life are no longer creating distractions.
For me, the power of the book is how Joan Blades and Nanette Fondas describe the quiet, but massive changes taking place in the modern workplace. This revolution is occurring because work no longer works as it did in the past. With the arrival of women and more visible diversity in organizations of all types, forward thinking managers have realized that the previous system of employment is not functional when faced with today's realities. Employees are actively searching for more balance in their lives. Management recognizes that staff members who are not fully engaged, under stress, facing health challenges, and distracted by events at home, are not peak performers. To counter those problems, enlightened executives devised much more flexible and individualized schedules and styles of work. The authors back their recommendation, that this wave of change turn into a much more powerful tide, with solid research demonstrating the effectiveness of positive change. The authors make their case for reshaping the workplace to fit the needs of today and tomorrow.
I highly recommend the leading edge idea packed book The Custom-Fit Workplace: Choose When, Where, and How to Work and Boost Your Bottom Line by Nanette Fondas and Joan Blades, to anyone seeking a convincing, research backed case for developing a more flexible workplace that fits the individual needs of the employees. This book contains not only theory for why the change is necessary, but the practical advice to make a customized employment experience possible, and more profitable for the organization.
Read the important and essential book The Custom-Fit Workplace: Choose When, Where, and How to Work and Boost Your Bottom Line by Joan Blades and Nanette Fondas, and create a company that provides balance between work and personal lives. Your employees will be more engaged and more productive. Along with your staff members, your business bottom line will be much healthier as well.
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