Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research
AWLP Awards
Work-Life Awards
Work-Life Rising Star
Alliance for Work-Life Progress (AWLP) needs your help in identifying stellar, up-and-coming professionals who embody passion for change, for work and for life as a Work-Life Rising Star. The Work-Life Rising Star encourages professionals to remain engaged in the work-life profession and ultimately advance work-life effectiveness.
Nominations will be sought for innovative, high-potential career starters who exhibit a combination of professional and personal attributes that demonstrate emerging leadership and growing contributions to the work-life community.
Process
Self-nominations will not be accepted. Nominations must come from someone other than the nominee who can describe and verify the nominee’s achievements and can speak to their character and contributions to the work-life field. There are no specific age or tenure limits for nominees. Nominees may be affiliated with any type of organization or industry sector. They do not have to be nominated by their employer. There are no nomination fees.
Criteria
Before completing the nomination form, please be prepared to describe specifically and give examples of what the nominee has done, said or produced that has captured your attention and respect in the following areas:
Initiative and innovation
Resourcefulness
Mentoring or coaching of others
Participation in public and/or community service or work-life activities
Political acumen and emotional intelligence
Examples of being a team player while still exhibiting leadership
Aptitude for mediation, diplomacy and bridge-building skills for reconciling disparate points of view
Selection
The Work-Life Rising Star Selection Committee will evaluate nominations. The committee is composed of work-life leaders and representatives from several major work-life institutions. No single accomplishment will automatically qualify a candidate for recognition. A pattern of high achievement and future potential is desired.
Submissions for the Work-Life Rising Star and Work-Life Innovative Excellence Award are accepted each fall. Please check back often for details to be considered for recognition in work-life effectiveness.
As the highest honor offered by AWLP, the Work-Life innovative Excellence Award was created in 1996 to showcase programs and policies that demonstrate excellence in enhancing and promoting work-life effectiveness while achieving organizational goals. Past recipients have exemplified forward-thinking organizations that look beyond their own cultural, demographic, and organizational boundaries to continue their work-life efforts.
Eligibility
The Call for Applications is open to all. There is no application fee. Eligible entities may submit a program/initiative that has been in effect for at least one year from the date of this submission. Exceptions to this prerequisite include individual, one-time events (such as a summer camp program) that have completed development, implementation and evaluation phases. Overall work-life strategies may not be nominated for the award. The following national and international organizations will be considered:
Corporations
Labor organizations
Collaborations between service providers or consultants and employers
Government agencies
Work-life service providers
Non-profits and community- based organizations.
Academic institutions
Consultants
Criteria
Potential applicants should keep the following award criteria in mind when selecting a work-life initiative to submit.
Innovation is our first priority. We define innovation as either a new practice or method, or a creative, new application of an existing approach.
Greater consideration will be given to applications that can demonstrate the initiative’s ability to impact more than one organizational stakeholder, especially the quality of life experienced by employees. Please also explain the impact to specific business and greater community outcomes. The potential for the initiative to be shared, replicated or disseminated across other organizations is a strong plus.
Specific attention will be paid to those applications that can provide both quantitative and qualitative measures of the results. This data should capture evidence of continuous improvement. We are interested in specific ways the program or initiative was modified over time based on feedback and evaluation data.
Please be prepared to answer the following questions when completing your application.
Description of Program or Initiative
Summary description of the program or initiative along with the following components:
Date of roll-out or pilot (must be at least one year from the date of submission)
Target audience and scope of project
Department or area to which the program reports
Rationale and Vision
What is the vision of the work-life program or initiative?
What are the short- and long-term goals?
How does the rationale and vision of this program support your organization’s mission, business goals, or work-life strategy?
Responsiveness to Need
How does the nominated initiative address overall business or organization needs?
How were these needs identified? Please supply internal and external data and input from the target population.
How does the initiative respond to employees' or other target population's work-life needs?
Quality Enhancement
How do you measure the quality and effectiveness of the initiative? Please provide an overview of metrics used to monitor success or progress.
How did these measures or standards impact the development and roll out of the initiative?
How is the ongoing evaluation and continuous improvement achieved?
Innovation
What new ideas or processes have been considered or implemented? Were there any barriers and/or challenges faced? If so, how were they addressed?
What internal and external partnerships or collaboration have been fostered?
How may this program or initiative be shared with the work-life and human resources field in general?
Effectiveness
How has this initiative contributed to the benefit and well being of employees in its target population? Please provide examples and testimonials.
How has the initiative contributed to your organizational goals? Please provide examples.
What are the measurable benefits? Please provide both quantitative and anecdotal information.
2009 Work-Life Innovative Excellence Award recipients:
Submissions for the Work-Life Rising Star and Work-Life Innovative Excellence Award are accepted each fall. Please check back often for details to be considered for recognition in work-life effectiveness.
The award is named for Rosabeth Moss Kanter, who has been identified by leading scholars as the person having the most influence on the modern research literature on work and family. The proposals contained in her 1977 monograph “Work and Family in the United States: A Critical Review and Agenda for Research and Policy” remain timely almost a quarter-century later.
The Kanter Award is given to the authors of the best piece of work-family research published during a calendar year. No external nominations are accepted for the award. Instead, every article published in a large number of scientific journals is scrutinized by a large committee of esteemed scholars who generate a list of candidates for the award. For more information about the Kanter Award and its winners, please visit the official Kanter Award Web site.
“Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?”
Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Benard and In Paik co-authored the outstanding research, originally published in the March 2007 issue of American Journal of Psychology.
Work-Life Innovative Excellence Award