Building Consensus

Over the last several decades, there have been few significant and successful policy efforts to help American workers balance work and personal responsibilities. The policy debate around the intersection of work and family has been hindered by political stalemate - and dialogue between business and employee interests has been limited to a narrow band of proposals with potential for agreement.

Workplace Flexibility 2010's goal is to identify and develop workplace flexibility policy solutions that can bridge serious political divides in Washington and beyond. We are approaching this consensus-building process in two distinct phases.

Phase I

Since 2003, Workplace Flexibility 2010 has focused on identifying possibilities for consensus-based workplace flexibility policies that can work for both businesses and employees - and laying the groundwork for creating support for such policies among a diverse range of key stakeholders. Over the last five years, Workplace Flexibility 2010 has:

• Created a substantive knowledge base that analyzes how existing laws may support or impede workplace flexibility through systematic legal and policy research;
• Convened a Legal Working Group of high-level management and employee litigators to explore a range of workplace flexibility policy options that could work for both businesses and employees; and
• Spurred meaningful, bipartisan conversations on the need for national policy on workplace flexibility with a diverse range of new constituency groups - including disability, health and aging organizations - and with policymakers and their staff on Capitol Hill.

Phase II

In the spring of 2008, Workplace Flexibility 2010 began the second phase of its consensus-building process. Our goal now is to develop a specific set of thoughtful, workable public policy solutions to advance workplace flexibility - and our hope is that these policy options can capture consensus among crucial stakeholders on both sides of this policy debate.

We are not developing these policy solutions in a vacuum. Over the next year, we will actively seek feedback, reaction, and in-depth analysis of our policy ideas in a variety of ways.

• We will turn to the National Advisory Commission on Workplace Flexibility, convened in March 2008, to provide expert legal, political and economic guidance.
• We will host ongoing discussions with stakeholders from the business community, consumer and family advocacy groups, and others to ensure our policy ideas can work for both businesses and employees.
• We will host a series of Community Policy Forums across the country to ensure the perspectives of local community and business leaders inform the development of our policy proposals.