Employers for Work-Life Balance: Putting forward case studies

A simple but effective way to make the most of a feature many sites ‘undersell’.

The Site

Employers for Work-Life Balance (EfWLB) was formed by leading public and private organisations in the UK to raise awareness of work-life issues and practices. Now run by the independent Work Foundation, it provides resources through its website to support organisations looking to implement work-life strategies.

The founder organisations figure among the 18 case studies in a sub-section accessible directly from the home page via a left-hand panel of links. Case Studies also features on the menus of three of the site’s five main sections (Business Case, Benchmarking and Media Centre). Within Case Studies, individual pieces are indexed by company name. The index is repeated in the left-hand panel within an individual file, enabling users to switch directly to another study.

The Takeaway

Case studies are such an obvious and engaging way to illustrate what an organisation does or has achieved that is surprising how they are generally under-used or ‘undersold’ on websites. With its clear focus on a single issue, EfWLB is perhaps better able than most to make a feature of its case studies. On the other hand, its brief also increases the relative importance of getting right its use of illustrative material.

How it goes about this is simple but effective: a featured heading on the home page and within sections where supporting evidence can add the weight of action to its words; and using the power of recognisable company names to make its indexing more compelling.

Organisations with more multi-faceted websites and competing demands on use may find it impractical to give as consistently high a profile as EfWLB does to case studies across a site. But within sections there is scope for adding weight to case studies within the balance.

First published on 26 April, 2005