Awardee Spotlight

Amplified Therapy

Family Friendly New Mexico is featuring award recipients that really stand out from the crowd. January 2021, we interviewed Autumn Bruton, Chief Executive Officer/President of Amplified Therapy and celebrate their efforts in creating a family friendly workplace!

from the very beginning, we have always been working towards creating an excellent company that is family friendlyAutumn Bruton

Autumn Bruton, Chief Executive Officer/President

Why have you decided to have family friendly workplace policies?

When I started Amplified Therapy, I wanted to create a company that would attract an excellent workforce. Being a working Mom, I tried to build policies from my previous work experience that I felt were beneficial to me and supported me as I was trying to grow professionally and still take care of my family responsibilities. This was something that was VERY important to me from the beginning of our business. I did not really know about the formal concept of “family friendly workplace.” However, when I learned more about this program, I thought it was an easy fit for our company, because we were working towards that from the beginning.

How do family friendly workplace policies contribute to your business success?

Being in a very rural part of New Mexico, it is very hard to recruit and retain a quality professional workforce. I believe our family friendly workplace policies have allowed me to recruit and retain a professional workforce. I think these policies help facilitate increased communication between employees and management. It seems like we are able to work through life stressors in a way that allows us to retain our workforce. I have seen in very traditional business models, where good and capable workers are forced to choose between family and work. We try very hard to be innovative to develop strategies and solutions so that we do not have to lose our valuable staff.

What are the most popular family friendly policies among your employees?

I think our most popular policy is the decision to make our full-time work week be 32 hours instead of the traditional 40. This allows employees the opportunity to have a 3 day weekend, it also allows some flexibility for employees to set his/her own work schedule. Since COVID, we have worked hard to allow most of our workforce to work remotely and increased the work schedule flexibility options. We have chosen to measure our employee’s performance on tasks completed versus hours worked. I believe this has been very instrumental in retaining a quality workforce.

What advice do you have for other businesses wanting to add family friendly policies?

For us, the family friendly policies have only enhanced our business. I can not think of one negative result of implementing our policies. I say for business wanting to add family friendly policies to start little by little and do not be afraid to think outside of the box. I think it is important to recognize the needs of your workforce and to start there. We realized that our workforce was going to be a very high percentage of female workers, and there is a bigger demand than supply of the professionals we needed to hire. So, we just tried to build policies around the needs of our workforce.

How has COVID affected your business? What are your plans post COVID?

COVID has affected our business significantly. Before COVID, we provided services to families in the home and/or community. We were providing services in a very hands-on way. However, since COVID, we have been providing these services via Telehealth. That has been a HUGE shift and required a lot of training, and patience. My staff are amazing and have done everything possible to keep families engaged. Due to the limitations for community outreach, our referrals have dropped quite a bit, and some families are leery about telehealth. Our plans post COVID will be to get back out in the community and continue to try to promote an awareness of the amazing benefits of early intervention.

How can the community support your business?

The community can support our business by helping spread the word of the early intervention program. Obviously, recommending or referring families with children birth-3 to our business for a developmental evaluation would be amazing. Also, looking for opportunities to collaborate with other community organizations to promote early childhood resources and of course, the barrier we always face, INCREASE an AWARENESS of the benefits of early intervention. I always say that early intervention services can change the trajectory of a child’s life. We get to work with the child, the family, and the difference that can be made is just AMAZING!!!

when we started this company, I wanted to build a business that I would want to work for. . . . We drew upon my positive and negative work experiences as well as the rest of my teams’ work experiences and tried to design a business model that would be successful and sustainable, yet appealing to work forAutumn Bruton

During 2020, Amplified Therapy moved from Bronze level to Gold level? How did you achieve this?

After our first application, we were able to better prepare for the second one we did. Also, finding out about this initiative gave my team and I some direction and common language that we could use. For example, prior to applying, we were not using “family friendly”, we didn’t really know what to call our vision of our Company. By having that direction or maybe a goal to strive for, we were able to adapt or refine some of our policies and practices to align better with the requirements of the family friendly initiative. I feel like from the very beginning, we have always been working towards creating an excellent company that is family friendly but I had not given it a name. So my vision was just not as clear then as it is now. I feel like with experience, I have gleaned a lot of knowledge and tools and the family friendly workplace concept is one of them. I think it is very important to my business.

I know that when we started this company, I wanted to build a business that I would want to work for. We tried to draw on the things that attracted me as a worker. I had about 20 years of work experience before we started Amplified Therapy. And during those years, I was raising two girls, married, divorced, remarried, going to college, working part-time, full-time, second jobs, etc. (life experiences). So we drew upon my positive and negative work experiences as well as the rest of my teams’ work experiences and tried to design a business model that would be successful and sustainable, yet appealing to work—that I would want to work for. AND, being family friendly was always important to me as well as the rest of the team.

Amplified Therapy has these Family Friendly Workplace Policies