Innovative Work Life Policies for Employers

The economic crisis provides the time to prepare employers to create child care options, robust work/life policies, and creative approaches to "balance" work responsibilities and the changing personal and family commitments of employees.

• Professor Warner presented at the "Designing Work-Family Policies for Families, Employers and Gender Equity" event sponsored by the Institute for Women's Policy Research and the New America Foundation in Washington, DC on September 16, 2010. See a video of Professor Warner's remarks at right; the slides from the presentation are also available.
• Short summary of Cornell Policies and Workshop Recommendations
• Program for the conference "Preparing for the New Century: Innovative Work and Family Strategies," held at Cornell University on June 3-4, 2009.
  • Conference summary and policy recommendations, distributed by Committee for Economic Development
• Report on the conference:

  Shellenback, Karen and Mildred E. Warner 2009. "Integrating Care, Work and Community: New Policies for a New Economy, A Report from the Cornell University Conference: Preparing for the New Century: Innovative Work and Family Strategies."

  • Full report
  • Section 1: Summary of Conference
  • Section 2: Trends
  • Resources
• Cornell Research on productivity benefits of child care supports to workers in NYC - Full Report on The Working Parents for a Working New York Project. Also see three related impact briefs:
  • Affordable and Secure Child Care Contributes to a More Productive Workforce & Helps Resolve Work-Family Conflict
  • Workplace Partnerships and Interventions Promote Dialogue on Child Care
  • Child Care Workshops Provide Benefits to Employees and Employers

Evaluation Reports on Cornell's Child Care Grant Program

• Morrissey, Taryn and Mildred E. Warner (2009), "Employer-Supported Child Care: Who Participates?Child care vouchers are becoming more common and can provide child care assistance to a wide spectrum of the population. There is little empirical research, however, on which workers participate in their employer-supported program. In this exploratory study, employees with children at one large university completed questionnaires to gather information on their child care arrangements and their experience with the employer’s child care voucher program (N = 949). Results indicate that the employees who were most in need of child care assistance in terms of family structure, job type, and child care expenses were more likely to receive vouchers. Federal policy limiting the structure of employer-sponsored voucher programs appeared to present barriers to participation for certain groups of employees." Journal of Marriage and Family, forthcoming.

• Shellenback, Karen 2009. Child Care & Cornell Child Care Grant Subsidy Program Survey: Impact on the Cornell Community, Summary Report.

• Shellenback, Karen, 2007. Cornell Child Care Grant Subsidy Program, Online Survey - Evaluation Report 2007.

• Shellenback, K. 2004. Child Care and Parent Productivity: Making the Business Case, Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Dept of City and Regional Planning.