Sloan Work and Family Research Network

Welcome to the

Sloan Work and Family Research Network Blog

We are excited to hear your perspective on work and family issues. With our diverse, multi-disciplinary user groups of academics, workplace practitioners and state policy makers, we anticipate some lively and interesting discussions. We encourage you to participate and join our work family community, and we hope that the blog can help you to stay up-to-date on the latest information available from the Network.

What’s New

Karen Corday
September 5th, 2008

 

New from the Network:

Are you finding what you’re looking for at our site? Let’s hear it! Please take the very short quiz on our homepage and let us know!

New work family leader in Who’s Who in Work and Family: Carolyn Kagan

Work and Family News Headlines:

  • Does Sarah Palin Have the Ultimate Juggle?
    John J. Edwards III reports for the Wall Street Journal’s work-family column The Juggle on Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s stance on work and family issues and her personal experiences as a working parent.
  • Working for Balance
    Starting September 1, PBS’s Nightly Business Report launched a special and accompanying series on combating stress in the workplace.

See our site for more!

Work and Family News from Around the Globe:

  • France Says Au Revoir To 35-Hour Work Week
    CBS News reports that a new French law allows companies to negotiate with employees to work beyond the currently capped 35-hour work week, which applies to many workers.
  • Small Businesses Welcome Law on Work Breaks
    Brooke Donovan of Australia’s The Age reports on the reaction of small businesses to the newly-passed Employment Relations Act 2000, which requires businesses to provide workers with an unpaid 30-minute meal break and two paid ten-minute rest breaks during an eight-hour shift. The law also requires companies to provide facilities and resources for breastfeeding mothers when it is “reasonable and practicable.”

See our site for more!

We are Loved!

Sandee Tisdale
September 3rd, 2008

 

One of our greatest pleasures at the Sloan Network is when we hear that our resources have helped someone gain knowledge. Often times, when working on a website such as ours, it can be difficult to measure our success, and we just keep on working and hoping that our mission is being accomplished.

Every now and then, however, we get a nice message that tells us, “you are doing great!” This week we received such a message. Idealist.org has named us one of the Five Blogs We Love. We are thrilled!

We love you too, Idealist–thanks for thinking of us.

What’s New

Karen Corday
August 29th, 2008

 

New from the Network:

Are you finding the information you need? Let’s hear it! Take the short survey on our homepage.

Fan of the Sloan Network? Please join our Facebook page!

August issue of the Network News: Next Generation Corporate Citizenship, an interview with Bradley K. Googins.

Here are just a few of the articles recently added to the Literature Database that our affiliates may access full-text with a free password. It’s easy to affiliate if you haven’t done so already. If you have, and you need the password, please e-mail us at wfnet@bc.edu.

Work and Family News Headlines:

  • Women Battling Infertility Find a Friend in Court
    Sue Shellenbarger of the Wall Street Journal reports in her Work & Family column that a federal appeals court has ruled that women who take time off from work for infertility treatments may invoke the Pregnancy Discrimination Act against adverse action.
  • Senator Biden on Work-Life Issues
    Adria B. Martinelli of the Delaware Employment Law blog writes about Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden’s work-and-family experience as a working parent and as a policy maker.

See our site for more!

Work and Family News from Around the Globe:

  • Kids Home Alone, Inadequate After School Care Blamed
    Gillian Cannon of Australia’s LiveNews.com reports on research from the National Foundation for Australian Women that found three percent of children aged fice to nine and one in five children aged ten to fifteen were home alone after school.
  • Energetic Boomers Far From Retiring
    Heather Douglas of Canada’s Calgary Sun discusses Baby Boomers’ common lack of interest in retiring and offers suggestions to the government to accomodate older workers and benefit workplaces.

See our site for more!

Has Flexibility Gone Too Far?

Judi Casey
August 27th, 2008

 

Those of us who have worked in the work-life arena for a while are thrilled that telework and the four day work week are getting such great press and appear to be gaining in popularity. Typically, these trends are evolving due to high gas prices and concerns about pollution and traffic congestion. Another driver is real estate costs and the expenses associated with providing and maintaining offices for workers.

But perhaps the pendulum has swung too far? Although a compressed schedule or remote work may benefit some employers and employees, it may not fit for everyone. The trick is to determine which businesses and employees will have higher productivity and improved life satisfaction by such arrangements. And for those where it is not a fit, what are alternative arrangements that meet both business and employee needs, such as job shares or flexible schedules?

What do you think? Has the pendulum swung too far?

For resources on flexible work arrangements, telework and part-time work, please see our Topic Pages, Fact Sheets, and Effective Workplace Series. The Flexibility Case Studies provide examples of flexibility efforts at various organizations.

TGIT: Thank Goodness It’s Thursday

Sandee Tisdale
August 25th, 2008

 

The five day per week, eight hour per day work schedule is facing its first major overhaul in decades. Employers, in an effort to reduce fuel and energy costs, are allowing employees to work longer but fewer days. By adding two hours a day, employees can work just four days per week.

Governments are taking the lead in this movement; from Alabama to California, local government offices are closing on Fridays. Going even further, the entire state of Utah is making the shift. By closing all government offices in Utah on Fridays, they estimate that they will save approximately $3 million a year from lights, heat, and air conditioning, not to mention the gas that 17,000 employees would have used for their commutes. Florida’s Brevard Community College has also transitioned into a four-day week, much to the pleasure of many college students who prefer not to meet on Fridays. Ohio’s Kent State University offered the compressed workweek to their custodial staff, and 78% of them accepted.

There has been an abundance of research on compressed workweeks as part of a flexible schedule regime. The Sloan Network has compiled the best research in this area; here are a few examples of our resources:

This is a societal change that we are likely to hear more of in the coming months as four-day work weeks are tried and tested. We anticipate that, if successful, this type of schedule will spread across industries and states.

Would you choose a shorter workweek with longer days? Why or why not?

What’s New

Karen Corday
August 22nd, 2008

 

New from the Network:

Work and Family News Headlines:

  • Working for Balance
    Starting September 1, PBS’s Nightly Business Report will launch a special and accompanying series on combating stress in the workplace.
  • MBA Moms Most Likely to Opt Out
    Yahoo! Asia News reports on a recent study from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in which 28% of the 1,000 Harvard graduates who went on the get their MBAs reported being stay-at-home mothers, as opposed to 6% of the women with medical degrees and 21% of those with law degrees. A draft of the article is available in PDF format from one of the authors, Catherine Wolfram.

See our site for more!

Work and Family News from Around the Globe:

See our site for more!

Total Leadership

Judi Casey
August 20th, 2008

 

In July, we interviewed Stew Friedman about his new book, Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life. What appeals to me about the concept is that Stew frames total leadership as a win-win. Adjustments that we make to improve our personal lives will have a positive impact on other life areas. For example, if I make more time for community service activities, I may develop new skills that help me to be more focused and productive at work. In particular, I think this message may resonate with employers who anticipate that employees who improve their non-work lives will do so at the expense of their jobs. Total leadership anticipates a mutual gain for both employees and employers with employees who have more satisfying lives increasing performance and commitment.

Do you think a mutual gain message might get more traction from employers? Is total leadership the way to frame it?

The Special Case of Military Spouses Returning to Work After a Career Break

Guest Blog
August 18th, 2008

 

Carol Fishman Cohen is the co-author of the acclaimed career reentry book Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work, and the co-founder of iRelaunch, a company providing career reentry programming, events, and information to employers, universities, organizations and to mid-career professionals in all stages of career break. Carol recently spoke at the 2008 Joint Warfighting Convention Military Spouse Symposium on the topic of returning to work after a career break. Contact Carol at ccohen@iRelaunch.com.

Military spouses face specific challenges when attempting to resume careers after a career break. Returning to work after years away is complicated enough, but the confluence of lengthy overseas postings, having to function as a single parent when a spouse is deployed, and moving every two to three years on top of the usual issues of lack of confidence, reviving old networks and creating new ones, and figuring out what you really want to do can make the process even more overwhelming. It’s no wonder that military spouses question their ability to make a successful back to work transition even more than their civilian counterparts.

Military spouses have unique qualifications to offer employers that tend to go unrecognized–by the military spouse herself and the prospective employer. These qualifications include:

  • Emotional Resilience - Military spouses are emotionally resilient because they have had to deal with a spouse being away on lengthy military deployments, often with his/her life at stake.
  • Experience in Dealing with Uncertainty - Dealing with uncertainty about a spouse’s whereabouts and safety, the timing and location of future postings, and maintaining the well being of children through these transitions is a way of life for the military spouse. Dealing with uncertainty is a qualification lacking in many job candidates at any life stage. Employers valuing this quality should seek out military spouses for recruitment.
  • Comfortable with Constant Transition - The business world is in a constant state of flux. Transition is a way of life for military spouses and military spouses themselves take for granted their own expertise in dealing with it.
  • No Benefits Required - Military spouses have insurance benefits already, so these benefits do not need to be part of their compensation package. Therefore, their overall cost as an employee is lower than that of civilian counterparts. Ideally, this gap would not be exploited by the employer, but instead used as a creative opportunity to offer other benefits as part of the employment package.

At the same time, hiring a military spouse can be problematic because of frequent moves.

  • Moving every 2 to 3 years - The biggest issue in hiring military spouses is that their posting in a single location often lasts only two to three years, and sometimes they need to move on short notice. Some employers shy away from hiring military spouses for this reason. However, with frequent job changes among non-military employees becoming the norm, the loyalty of the military spouse to stay with an employer for the entire length of the posting should be considered. Also, companies with a national presence or an option for remote work could benefit by hiring a military spouse if the person could transfer to another company office or work remotely with each new posting.

Determining readiness for career reentry may be trickier for military spouses than for their non-military counterparts. This means military spouses may need to wait longer than non-military spouses to relaunch their careers after a multi-year career break. This also means military spouses need to be extra patient with themselves as they move forward in the process. Issues delaying readiness include:

  • Lack of a Support Network - Because of frequent moves, military spouses often do not have time to develop friends and family support networks to turn to when their spouse is away and they need coverage for going to work.
  • At Home Responsibilities can be Overwhelming - Since military spouses bear the brunt of the childcare and eldercare responsibilities alone, they may feel these responsibilities too overwhelming to consider returning to work even if there is some sort of support community in place.

So what is the best strategy for military spouses wanting to relaunch a career?

  • Take a Series of Baby Steps - Find career-relevant volunteer work (we call this “strategic volunteering”) that can be done when one’s schedule permits, Take one class at a time instead of enrolling in a more demanding program. Seek occasional consulting work from time to time. The objective is to maximize current and relevant experiences, so reference to these experiences can be made during informal networking, formal interviewing and on resumes.
  • Consider Employment with Global Employers - Global employers have offices in many locations to which military spouses could transfer or from which they could possibly work remotely. Some of the big accounting firms actually require their CPA’s to switch offices every few years in order to get broad client exposure.
  • Seek Employment with a Staffing Firm such as Aquent or MomCorps. These companies place employees in interim or part time positions that often convert to full time positions. These firms have offices and opportunities across the U.S. In Aquent’s case, their reach is international as well. Aquent focuses on marketing and creative fields and MomCorps focuses on a range of fields including accounting.
  • Target “Military Friendly” Companies - Military Spouse magazine released a list of the Top 10 Military Friendly Companies in their June 2008 issue. They include Health Net, USAA, Sunbelt Rentals, and West Corporation.
  • Target Small to Mid-Sized Companies - Small to mid-sized companies are often thrilled to hire high caliber employees who are returning from a career break, even for a two to three year period.
  • Develop Transferable Skills - Military spouses in the fields of human resources, IT, nursing, sales, and teaching report an easier time finding employment after a transfer.

Resources:

What’s New

Karen Corday
August 15th, 2008

 

New From the Network:

Work and Family News Headlines:

  • Slackers No More
    Raquel Laneri of Forbes.com interviews Lisa Chamberlain about her new book, Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction.

  • Cornell Study Finds Overworked Husbands Drive Wives from Workplace
    Danielle Henbest of the Ithaca Times writes about a new study from Youngjoo Cha of Cornell University that found that husbands who worked long hours are more likely “to entice a woman to quit her job.”

See our site for more!

Work and Family News From Around the Globe:

See our site for more!

But the California Senate Says ‘NO’

Julie Schwartz Weber
August 13th, 2008

 

SB 2716, Fiona Ma’s 2008 bill guaranteeing California workers paid sick leave, has died in Committee. While our blog recently highlighted a July CA poll underscoring the popularity of and support for paid sick days legislation across party lines, the bill was newly stalled in the Senate Appropriations Committee because it was too expensive.

Opposition to the bill by the small business lobby, including the National Federation of Independent Business, has been strong and appears to have played a part in the sidetracking of the legislation. For instance, NFIB issued “AB2716 — The CA Healthy Workplaces Act of 2008: Economic and Small Business Effects,” predicting, among other things, that the proposed bill would cost California 370,000 jobs and would burden employers with 4.6 billion in new costs over a 5-year period.

Meanwhile, Ohio voters are taking the paid sick days issue into their own hands. There, Ohioans for Healthy Families, a 220-member coalition of organizations trying to bring paid sick days to the 2.2 million Ohio workers without them, has just submitted more than 240,000 voter signatures to the Secretary of State, in an effort to place paid sick days legislation on the November ballot (only 121,000 authenticated signatures are needed). The proposed OH legislation, the Healthy Families Act, would require companies with at least 25 or more employees to give workers at least 7 paid sick days a year.

A recent poll issued by Quinnipiac University has indicated that over 70% of Ohio voters favor the passage of paid sick days legislation. Similar to the California poll, this poll indicates broad support across party lines, with 83% of Democrats, 68% of Independents, and 56% of Republicans backing the legislation.

With no states passing paid sick days legislation to date through traditional house/senate means, it will be interesting to see if the Ohio strategy– attempting to pass paid sick days law through referendum– has a different outcome. Any predictions?

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