Our Mission

Families and Work Institute (FWI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that studies the changing workforce, family and community. As a preeminent think-tank, FWI is known for being ahead of the curve, identifying emerging issues, and then conducting rigorous research that often challenges common wisdom, provides insight and knowledge. As an action-tank, we conduct numerous studies that put our research into action and then evaluate the results. Our purpose is to create research to live by.

Families and Work Institute was co-founded in 1989 by Ellen Galinsky, currently president of the Institute, and Dana Friedman. Our work focuses on three major areas: the workforce/workplace, youth and early childhood.

From its earliest beginnings, the Institute has had an enormous impact in creating and shaping the work life movement, not only by raising the awareness about work-life issues with policymakers and thought leaders, including governors and presidents, but also by supporting agents of change in business, early childhood and youth development, education and community engagement.

The issues that Families and Work Institute tackles are broad and timely, affecting life on and off the job. Our current projects focus on:

• the effective workplace;
• the impact of the current economy on employers and their policies;
• workplace and career flexibility;
• gender and generation in the workforce;
• the health of the American workforce;
• life skills;
• leaders in a global economy;
• comparisons among working conditions in the E.U. and U.S.;
• talent management;
• the low-wage workforce and upward mobility;
• children, youth, learning and education;
• school-based health care;
• family caregivers of the elderly;
• working in retirement; and
• the aging workforce.

Ultimately, the Institute’s work benefits American employers and employees, their families, their communities and the institutions that support them.

The research we conduct takes the very real questions that arise from living in today’s world and
turns them into studies that can inform and affect new ways to think and act at every stage of our lives.

- Ellen Galinsky, President and Co-Founder Families and Work Institute

The impact of Families and Work Institute’s work can be felt in every sector of society. We:

•  conduct the ongoing National Study of the Changing Workforce (1992, 1997, 2002, 2008), the largest and most comprehensive ongoing study of the U.S. workforce, a study that is widely used by business to understand and respond to workforce trends as they emerge;

•  conduct the on going National Study of Employers (1998, 2005, 2008), one of the most comprehensive ongoing studies of how employers are responding to the changing workforce;

•  conduct seminal studies on “hot” topics, such as The State of Health in the American Workforce: Does Having an Effective Workplace Matter?, The Impact of the Recession on Employers, Times Are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and At Home, Overwork in America, Leaders in a Global Economy and Talent Management, many of which strongly informed the White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility (March 31, 2010) and were extensively cited in the Work-Life Balance and The Economics of Workplace Flexibility Report released in conjunction with the Forum by the Council of Economic Advisors;

•  direct When Work Works, a project on workplace effectiveness and flexibility funded by the Sloan Foundation that is now in 26 communities and five states and oversee the Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility, a research-based award that had close to 1,000 applicants in 2009;

•  study models of financing school-based health care to inform public and private policy;

•  coin the language that becomes widely used in describing trends, such as “life skills” to describe the skills that help individuals thrive in the short and long term; “work-centric,” “dual-centric,” or “family-centric” in describing the priorities of today’s employees; and “intentional” teaching and parenting in summarizing the components of effective caring and teaching;

•  convene the annual Work Life Legacy Awards since 2004 to document the history of the work-life movement, filming the stories of the extraordinary men and women who have created this movement as a living archive of the accomplishments of our past and a source of inspiration for the leaders of the future;

•  spearhead work on the multi-generational workforce, the aging workforce and changes in the workplace and medical systems that will better respond to the aging population;

•  serve as a founding member of The Conference Board’s Work Life Leadership Council since 1983, a group FWI has led since its formation and that has been instrumental in creating new ways to help employers and employers make work “work;”

•  host the annual Work Life Conference—the thought-leader conference in the work-life field—with The Conference Board since 1985;

•  lead Families and Work Institute’s Corporate Leadership Circle (CLC), created in the mid 1990s—as a vehicle for sharing the latest research, thinking and practices with top-level national and global companies;

•  create Mind in the Making: The Science of Early Learning, a multi-media campaign on early learning, which launched with the release (April, 2010) of Ellen Galinsky’s “iconic parenting manual” (Lisa Belkin, New York Times columnist), Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Skills Every Child Needs;

•  write numerous other books, including the first book on parental development, The Six Stages of Parenthood; and

•  amplify young people’s voices through the Ask the Children studies—examining their surprising views on working parents, their future employment, violence and learning—all studies that led to change.

Families and Work Institute’s work is fueled by personal passion as well as economic and societal need.

The Institute ambitiously takes on big issues: from learning to generational differences to aging in America. We go into uncharted territory, to ask the emerging questions before issues crest and to seek answers.

The Institute staff members have the ability to anticipate the future and to find innovative solutions. Success at FWI involves being ahead of the curve.

We are strategic and results-driven. Perhaps because we work cross sector, we bring these approaches to our work. We are strategic in designing projects, for example by bringing together the opponents and proponents of state parental leave laws to design a study on their impact on parents and employers to ensure that our project would be nonpartisan and scientifically rigorous. We are strategic in fostering connections among unusual partners, such as among chambers of commerce, public and private-sector leaders and the White House on creating more effective and flexible workplaces.

We are productive. We have produced hundreds of research reports that are widely used. For example, in the past month alone, our reports were downloaded, on average, 123 times per day.

We are constantly in the news. Since January 1 of this year (2010), we were quoted or appeared in the media 660 times, averaging five times per day. In addition, nearly half of these were in the top ten media markets in the country, averaging more than once a day. Articles using our data appeared in the nation’s top newspapers, including USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post. In addition, many top broadcast and radio programs, magazines and Web sites quoted our research, including CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, ABC World News with Charles Gibson, Good Morning America, NPR’s Marketplace, Time, MSNBC.com, Newsweek.com, CNN.com, About.com and Yahoo! News, as well as top blogs, such as The Wall Street Journal’s On Parenting, The New York Times’ Motherlode, Care2, The New York Times’ Well and The Huffington Post. In sum, the potential viewership of these media hits is more than 1.5 billion.

We have a commitment to excellence. We insist on driving our own agenda, on doing work we truly believe in, on doing work of the highest quality and on achieving results. Our hope is that, together and with your help, we can maintain our commitment to excellence in providing research to live by for decades to come.