Why One National Nonprofit Adopted a Family-Work Integration Policy

I had on my best maternity shirt and a cute pair of heels as I paced around the back of the packed Oakland Convention Center. It was May 1994; I was 25. Like any good community organizer, I was scanning the crowd, listening to the speakers up front. I was eight months pregnant and about to become the first person in my national organization to have a baby while on the job.

The community leaders with whom I worked were clear about what that meant. They threw me a baby shower and blew me away with their generosity. Their knitted baby blankets sent a loud message to little baby Elisa: “You are welcome here.”

Some of my other colleagues weren’t quite so clear. I remember being asked by one senior colleague, “Are you coming back to work after the baby?” The question offended me. Why would he assume I wouldn’t? My mom worked, my grandmother worked, all the women in my family worked. Not working hadn’t even occurred to me.

Fortunately, my boss got it. He paid me two months’ full-time maternity leave and two months’ half-time leave. The paid leave allowed this nursing mom to mostly stay home until Elisa was four months old.

During those first days of mommyhood, people offered plenty of great advice. Mariana Chow, a hardware-store owner and San Francisco community leader told me, “You cannot be perfect at home and perfect at work.” Wise words for an overachiever like me.

I asked a senior executive in my organization whether I could take Fridays off every week. He peered over his graying handlebar moustache and said, “You’re ambitious Denise. But, they’re only little once. Do it!”

Without encouragers along the way, there’s no way I would have made it through.

Many people who work for social change must balance work and family life. Many are moms (or dads) with infants, and some of us do this while caring for aging parents.

But too often at work, women in particular are not given equal doses of responsibility, resources, and recognition. Usually women are weighted down with responsibility without commensurate resources or flexibility to get the job done. The odds are doubly hard for women of color, who often suffer from pay disparities and racial and gender bias in the workplace.

To address this imbalance, the PICO National Network, soon to be Faith in Action, has taken a big step forward by enhancing employees’ ability to control the one resource that matters most: time.

We’ve launched a Family-Work Integration Policy, an organizationwide investment in the creativity, health, and development of our national staff. It allows employees to work four days a week and set aside the fifth day for growth and development.

On Fridays, all employees are encouraged to invest in themselves. We have set an organizationwide standard for the day: no meetings and no emails. This has proven hard for some managers to adopt, but everyone is trying to use the day for personal or professional development. The policy is meant to encourage staff members to read, reflect, plan, write, take a class, go to an art museum, or even chaperone a child’s field trip or volunteer at school.

We’re six months into the experiment, and the early signs are encouraging. We’ve done pre-testing and midpoint testing and will do post-testing to measure the impact it’s having on our staff.

Before we began the new program, we surveyed employees and learned that nearly 80 percent of respondents felt they were doing work that was a good expression of their life’s purpose. However, only 57 percent said they would be happy working at their current pace for the next three years.

Six months into the pilot, we surveyed employees and learned that just over 73 percent of respondents indicated they would be happy to continue working at their current pace for the next three years.

These results suggest that employees are more likely to feel good about their work, and the pace of their work, with programs such as this.

One survey respondent, who is a mother of two children, wrote: “The Family Work Integration Plan has turned Fridays into a day that I actually own. One of the huge benefits is being able to have lunch with my daughter and volunteer in her class. It has brought joy back into her life because I used to be able to have lunch with her at least once a month before I started with PICO. I’ve also made time to take a Harvard Divinity School course, ‘Buddhism Through Its Scriptures,’ which feeds my soul.”

And a father of a school-age child wrote: “The Family Work Integration Plan is working well for me so far. It’s a new concept for me, but I appreciate having the time to focus on developing myself and having time to dedicate to my son on Fridays. I’ve set some appointments in the coming months to meet with his teacher and school counselors and plan to make a monthly trip to spend the day with him in class. He lives a couple of hours away, so having that time is only possible because of this plan. I am excited about the possibilities this opens for me.”

We are pleased to see the uptick in employee satisfaction as the data and anecdotes show. We are optimistic that it will translate into better employee retention, too.

I also have personal motivation for supporting this policy. When I look back on those early days as a new organizer and a new mom, I wonder how I survived.

I want all of the amazing people in the fight for justice to find a way to do this work for the long haul — without sacrificing the people and things that are most precious to them. In that spirit, we are creating space for staff members to plan, reflect, learn, and grow.

Our organization and all nonprofits that valiantly stand with, and for, the most vulnerable people in our society need 100 percent of our employees’ creativity, courage, and vision to win real changes for families.

I hope other organizations will join us in sparking the creativity that all of our employees have to offer. Our future and our lives depend on it.

Denise Collazo is chief of staff of the PICO National Network, a national faith-based community-organizing network consisting of 54 local and state federations in 21 states.