Pivot Point

As companies scrambled to convert their workforces to successfully telecommute this past spring, issues quickly arose over technology, scheduling, manager oversight and, most important, staffers’ ability to integrate childcare, homeschooling and other family needs with work demands.

Employees at the Working Mother 100 Best Companies are the real winners here. Because these organizations already were highly attuned to the concerns of working families, including parents, their young children and even their college-age kids, they moved quickly to help.

“The global pandemic has hit our reset button. Being agile and adaptive in innovative and inclusive ways made a difference. Organizations with strong, established benefits and flex programs were able to swiftly reorganize and catapult ahead to support employees from disproportionate setbacks,” says Deborah Munster, vice president of Working Mother’s Diversity Best Practices subsidiary.

Other organizations, on the other hand, “needed to start from scratch,” says Amber Clayton, director, Knowledge Center, the Society for Human Resources Management. “They had to determine if telecommuting or flexible work days were even an option. If so, they not only had to develop policies, but they also had to determine which positions could successfully work from home and what would happen to those employees who could not do so.”

Here’s how