“Family-Friendly.” “Think Outside The Box.” “Generation X.”

According to Marge Brining, these three phrases represent some of the key motivators which has led to the establishment of a new program at USDA. It’s called the “Family-Friendly Work/Life Program,” and its purpose is to improve the work environment for USDA employees across the country.

Brining, a personnel management specialist in the Office of Human Resources Management, is the coordinator of the USDA-wide program, set up in August 1999.

“Its underlying concept is pretty basic,” Brining affirmed. “Officials at USDA realize the advantage of valuing their best resource at the Department: its work force.”

“One way to protect that resource,” she continued, “is to try to minimize outside pressures on that work force. Examples of pressures may include family matters and commutes. So if USDA can help out, it’s in its enlightened self interest to do so, because it should lead to a less stressful--and more productive--work force, with less absenteeism.”

Brining noted that a memorandum from President Bill Clinton, titled “New Tools to Help Parents Balance Work and Family,” dated May 24, 1999, and sent to federal cabinet officials, directed the Office of Personnel Management to establish a governmentwide “Family Friendly Workplace Working Group.” Brining represents USDA on that group.

In turn, last August the Department created its own in-house Family-Friendly Work/Life Working Group, composed of representatives from mission areas or program agencies, from both headquarters and field offices. “That group,” she said, “is designed to be a forum for sharing information about collective initiatives, networking, and brainstorming about solutions to balance the challenges between an employee’s work life and home life.”

Many of the initiatives which the group is discussing are not new to the Department. “But what is new,” Brining advised, “is that, with the establishment of both a Family-Friendly Work/Life coordinator, plus a working group on that same subject, USDA ensures that there is equitability in the way these various family-friendly initiatives are administered--throughout the Department--for those agencies which opt to adopt any of them.”

And just what type of initiatives are we talking about here? Brining noted that they include:

1. permitting 'telecommuting,’ also called 'work at home,’ 'teleworking,’ and 'flexiplace,’ which may include working at one’s residence during predesignated days of the week or month or periodically commuting to a 'satellite office’--equipped with computers and other basic office equipment--in lieu of traveling all the way to one’s normal office. The July 1991 issue of the USDA News carried a story on USDA employees who telecommute.
2. authorizing 'family-friendly leave’ to take care of family members--with a more expansive definition of the term 'family’-- as well as for the purpose of adoption. The March-April 1999 issue of the USDA News carried a story on the newly created federal leave slip which, according to OHRM personnel management specialist Liz Daly, is to be used by federal employees to apply for such leave.
3. providing workshops and/or other forms of advice to help employees who are 'caregivers’--helpers of elderly family members who can no longer survive totally on their own. The November 1989 USDA News carried a story about USDA’s eldercare workshops and caregivers support group.
4. providing child care facilities on-site at USDA offices around the country. The June-July 1998 USDA News carried a response to an employee “Letter to the Secretary” which outlined how USDA employees may request space in their office buildings for such a facility.
5. authorizing administrative leave for employees to participate in certain predesignated and preapproved forms of 'Adopt-A- School’ volunteerism. The July-August 1999 issue of the USDA News carried a story about how the Department is reemphasizing its 'Adopt-A-School’ program.
6. providing employees the option to participate in some form of a monetary 'transit incentive’ program, to encourage employees to use qualifying forms of public transportation to commute to and from their USDA workplace. The September 1999 USDA News carried a story on that program.
7. setting up 'Nursing Mothers Rooms’ at USDA offices, to provide USDA employees, who are nursing mothers, a private place where they can quickly, hygienically, and comfortably pump their breast milk, and then store it, so they can provide it later to their babies, away from the office. “Contrary to a common misconception,” Brining pointed out, “the nursing mothers rooms are not intended to serve as a place for moms to nurse their new babies on-site at USDA.” The January-February 1998 USDA News carried a story about nursing mothers rooms located at USDA headquarters and field offices.

“These creative, 'family-friendly’ tools,” affirmed Brining, “are helping USDA managers 'think outside the box’ and create options to entice current and prospective employees.”

“And these tools are becoming even more critical as members of 'Generation X’ enter the work force, who’ll generally want--and expect--more flexibility, independence, and options in their career development.”

“And if they don’t get them,” she observed, “chances are the 'Gen X’ers’ may simply leave USDA and join the private sector--or maybe not even join us at USDA in the first place.”

“These tools should help USDA be the 'employer of choice’ in the new millennium.”

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