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With a 57-year marriage as a model, the founder of Chick-fil-A wants to help the marital unions of his workers, too.
S. Truett Cathy, 85, has implemented all sorts of marriage-friendly policies and programs for the 600 employees at his 39-year-old company's Atlanta-based headquarters, as well as for the 900 franchise operators who run its 1,250 fast-food restaurants across the country. Offerings range from seminars and marriage retreats to lunchtime sessions and counseling from on-call psychologists.
And now Chick-fil-A's marriage and family-strengthening policies have earned Cathy an award, to be presented Saturday at the national Smart Marriages Conference in Atlanta, which begins today.
"You can't expect people to do well in their business if they've got problems at home," Cathy says. He says Chick-fil-A spends millions a year on programs to help couples enrich their relationships.
Though most human resource departments offer employee assistance programs for workers having trouble at home, Cathy's company is among a very few nationwide dipping further into the private home lives of their workers.
"They're operating on the assumption that an employee's well-being will correlate with a higher success rate in their marriage," says Matt Daniels of the Alliance for Marriage, based in Merrifield, Va. "That's a very reasonable assumption. It's not 100% empirically verifiable, but it's reasonable."
Scott Stanley, co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, says studies he and colleagues conducted a decade ago suggest that levels of conflict at home are related to productivity and absenteeism at work.
Tim Gardner is founder of a consulting firm based in Westfield, Ind., that offers programs encouraging companies to get more involved in the private lives of their employees.
"Everybody in a managerial position knows the effects of a marriage falling apart," he says. But for programs to become widespread, "it's going to take some innovative, front-line companies and hearing back from people that we're not offending our gay and lesbian couples, not offending our singles and those living together."
Gregg Throgmartin heard Gardner's presentation as part of a premarital education program at his church before his own April wedding.
"I was scribbling notes frantically, saying it was what our employees and managers need," he says.
Throgmartin is vice president of sales for Indianapolis-based appliance and electronics company HHGregg, with 69 stores in eight states and about 3,500 employees.
The company's marriage effort started with store managers and will expand company-wide, he says.
The initial program was a mandatory retreat.
It wasn't limited to married employees and spouses, but about 80% of the presentation was marriage-related, Throgmartin says.
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