Work-life balance is an important part of providing a great place to work. There are a multitude of best practices that illustrate the innovative, inspiring things companies are doing.

Here are some best practices I've collected from organizations of all sizes throughout the country. Hopefully, these will inspire you to think creatively about how you can develop and enhance your own programs to help employees achieve better work-life balance.

More flexibility

Flexibility is one of the most requested benefits to help employees balance their work and personal lives.

Kraft Foods has a flexible program called Fast Adapts for hourly employees and production supervisors who work in manufacturing facilities. (Read a related story on page 40 for more noteworthy programs for hourly workers.) It began this program in response to employee dissatisfaction, particularly among hourly workers.

The program offers shift-swapping, single-day vacations, employment of hourly retirees, tuition reimbursement for online courses, and job sharing. After implementing the program, Kraft found hourly employees reported increased satisfaction with work-life integration and increased accountability and autonomy.

PCL Construction, a general contractor with over 4,000 employees, allows employees the flexibility to set their own schedules, between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Most districts have summer hours, and the company offers unlimited sick days, which can also be used for the care of sick family members. Interestingly, PCL has found that these policies rarely are abused.

Toymaker Mattel closes at 1 p.m. on Fridays, year-round, to allow employees longer weekends. It's one of the single most popular perks they offer.

More time

Sabbaticals are a great work-life balance perk, and some companies have exceeded the norm by offering exceptional benefits in this area. The Men's Wearhouse offers an unusual practice for the retail industry by giving employees a three-week paid sabbatical for every five years of employment.

Whole Foods Market's sabbatical leave can last as long as 24 weeks, depending on how long an employee has been with the company, and the employee's job is guaranteed upon their return.

New York City law firm Nixon Peabody provides a paid-time-off buy-back program for employees with good attendance. The firm buys back the first five days of any unsused scheduled PTO days left over at the end of the calendar year at 100% of the employee's base salary (less applicable withholdings).

Any unused PTO days left over at the end of the year are bought back by the firm at 120% of the employees base salary (less applicable withholdings).

W.L. Gore, a manufacturer of fluoropolymer technologies, allows all new employees to keep the same amount of vacation they had with their prior employer, as long as it doesn't exceed the vacation time Gore would give a current employee who has the same years of service as the new hire.

EOG Resources, an oil and natural gas company, uses a point system that recognizes age (as a measure of life experience) plus years of EOG service to determine benefits such as vacation allowance and contribution to the company's retirement plan.

Family assistance

In today's economy, helping employees during financial need or stress is a growing necessity. Law firm Alston & Bird provides a catastrophic sharing program that allows employees to donate accrued vacation and personal time to other employees.

It's designed to help employees who are dealing with the devastating illness of a family member, who've exhausted all available paid leave of their own and who will face financial hardship because they have to take significant time off without pay.

During busy tax season, working Saturdays at Plante & Moran, a Michigan-based accounting firm, is a fact of life. To make things easier on employees, they offer free child care on Saturdays during tax season at 11 of their 15 offices.

Boston Consulting Group instituted a red zone report, which highlights those individuals who've worked more than 60 hours per week, on average, over a period of five weeks.

The report is distributed weekly to management and, if someone is identified as being in the red zone, there's a process in place to determine what can be done to lighten the employee's load.

Helping employees with their dependent care needs is another aspect of work-life balance. EBay, which also owns Skype and PayPal, enables communications among family members after a new baby has arrived by offering Skype-related benefits to all employees.

The company's Skype-a-Bye Baby program gives expecting employees and their spouses three free Skype phones - one for the parents and one for each set of grandparents - so they can talk more frequently during this special time.

American Century Investment, meanwhile, added a new surrogacy benefit, similar to an adoption benefit, up to $10,000 to pay for medical expenses.

Hopefully these examples have given you some inspiration and creative ideas for new work-life balance benefits. Offering work-life balance programs is the right thing to do. They contribute to increased productivity, retention, morale and serve as a great recruitment tool.

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