By Jan Civian
Senior Consultant

The Database/Flexibility Project is an innovative collaboration among the Sloan Foundation, the academy, and the private sector. WFD Consulting, a Boston-based work-life consulting firm, received a grant from the Sloan Foundation to create a multi-company employee database that can be used to investigate the impacts of workplace flexibility on organizations, individuals, and families. This effort is directed by the research team at WFD and guided by an academic advisory committee.

It all started with a strong interest on WFD’s part in marshaling the power of its dozens of corporate studies to answer broad workplace questions of interest to practitioners, academics, and the business community. WFD has been conducting employee research for over 20 years on a variety of workplace topics including work-life support, access to and attitudes about flexibility, management effectiveness, engagement, and health and well-being. Historically, data like these remain proprietary in nature – unavailable to third parties for analysis.

Because much of current academic research on work-life and flexibility issues is hindered by the difficulty researchers have in obtaining access to workplaces and employee populations, and because much of the work-life research published in the business media is limited by lack of robust measures, absence of advanced statistical analysis, and/or small sample size, WFD was commited to find a way to tap into its treasure trove of client studies and merge them for more robust analysis. The Sloan Foundation grant allowed WFD to do just that.

The first year of the grant has been spent securing permission from WFD’s clients to include their studies in the database, and in harmonizing and merging client datasets. All of the clients that WFD contacted granted permission to use their data, in a strong show of support for this unique research effort. Because results will be reported in aggregate non-identifiable form, the database will preserve the confidentiality of both companies and employees. The database will be continually updated, thus permitting this resource to remain current. The database now contains 35 studies collected in 28 organizations and five industries, with key variables included from each of these studies.

In addition to answering research questions about the impact of flexibility, a major goal of the database project is to generate publications for business, family, and other academic journals. The Advisory Committee is currently investigating several research topics drawing on the database. Findings will be published in a special issue of Community, Work, and Family in Winter 2008.

The multi-company database project is being directed by WFD’s research staff, in collaboration with a distinguished Advisory Committee of scholars who have experience in researching work-life and workplace issues. The Advisory Committee consists of E. Jeffrey Hill, Associate Professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University (Committee Chair); Nan Crouter, Professor of Human Development and Director, Center for Work and Family Research, Penn State University; Joe Grzywacz, Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine; Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, Associate Professor and Co-Director, Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility, Boston College; and Kathleen Christensen, Program Director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The WFD research staff includes Arlene A. Johnson, Vice President, Jan Civian, EdD (Project Director), Amy Richman, EdD, and Laurie Shannon, PhD.

It is anticipated that the database will be made available to other academic researchers through an application process beginning late 2007. Questions about the database project may be directed to Jan Civian at WFD, 617-219-8712, jan.civian@wfd.com.