Sloan Work and Family Research Network

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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 From the Network!

Karen Corday
July 2nd, 2009

 

New from the Network:

New, free work-family content on the web:

Trial Court Finds That Milwaukee’s Paid Sick Days Ordinance is Invalid

Julie Schwartz Weber
July 1st, 2009

 

Last month, I blogged about the paid sick days ordinance in Milwaukee that had been enacted by voters last November and had been opposed by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC).  I shared then that the MMAC had challenged the legality of the ordinance via a lawsuit and that the trial court was going to rule on the matter soon.  Back then, we were still waiting for the trial court’s ruling on the matter.  Today, we know more.

On June 12th, Judge Thomas R. Cooper ruled that the paid sick day ordinance was invalidly enacted and unconstitutional.  More specifically, while the trial court upheld the part of the ordinance relating specifically to providing paid sick days to tend to the illness or preventative care of an employee or employee’s family member, he rejected the provision concerning time off for domestic violence victims to seek shelter or pursue legal action.  He ultimately concluded, “The provisions regarding domestic violence and sexual assault are not rationally related to the ordinance’s overall objective of protecting the public welfare, health, safety, and prosperity of the city”.

An appeal is likely.

A Better Balance has a more detailed analytical discussion about the trial court’s ruling available at its website.

New Roles Bring New Rules

Featured Guest Blogger
June 29th, 2009

 

In 2008, Christina Barlowe founded LifeWork Alliance. The organization was formed to address the paradigm shift that is reshaping today’s workforce. The mission is to institute and promote open dialogue between organizations and working parents. Nearly two decades of professional corporate experience, coupled with an MBA and a Masters in Social Work, form the well-rounded skill set necessary to head the innovative organization that is LifeWork Alliance. Christina has a four-year-old son and a newly adopted little boy who have reshaped her life and been her source of inspiration. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

I had this bright idea about how I would build a life with my partner and how things would become bigger and better as our careers grew and our family grew. Sure, I would work, but I would be able to scale back during those tender early years for my children, because of course my husband’s career would be blossoming. And then it happened– 2007, that is.  Most people didn’t speak the word “recession” until late 2008. For those of us in the New York area, however, the decline in stability and rise in fear happened about a year in advance. My husband lost his job, as many people did, and we saw it as the opportunity that would allow us to explore other options for him and for us. We quickly discovered a few problems with this plan: 1) We still needed to pay the mortgage as we were “exploring,” and 2) Things become increasingly harder at home because our usual roles had changed greatly. As much as we like to think that we are not gender role-specific in this day and age, it is a simple fact of conditioning that we still are bound to these roles, however loosely. We have slowly adapted to me being the primary breadwinner and he being the primary caregiver. Sure, there is jealously and resentment and even envy at times from both sides.

What has been more challenging than either one of these roles, though, have been the roles within the marriage. Who are we now? It is clearly different that what we were when we married and what we imagined we would become. Do we like these new people? Do we have a choice? I have found that communication, as clichéd as it sounds, is the key to mental and emotional survival in these circumstances. My husband is a wonderful father, and men in general are more involved with their children today than they were in the past, which is a blessing for all involved. Even if there are new rules that have been bestowed upon us in this new economy, the rules will always shift. It is an individual’s ability to adapt to those new roles; that is the necessary skill for survival.

What’s New From the Network?

Karen Corday
June 26th, 2009

 

New from the Network:

New, free work-family content online:

Do We Really Need Public Policies To Encourage Flexible Work?

Featured Guest Blogger
June 24th, 2009

 

Sandy Burud, Ph.D., is a researcher, consultant and author on human capital and work-life. She is the Chief Strategy Officer for FlexPaths, a flexibility-focused software platform for employers and employment portal for individuals. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

I believe that flexible work practices will naturally continue to filter into the fabric of organizations — at the rate of an iceberg melting.  So, unless we’re willing to wait another generation or so, it will take a policy “push” to move things along.

We know that:

  • Businesses thrive when they embrace flexible work practices. Employees are more focused, engaged, and productive, overhead costs are reduced, and earnings and shareholder returns grow. (Workers, families, the economy and the environment also benefit significantly.)
  • Though many employers ‘allow’ flexibility, most employees still are not using it, even though most would prefer to do so.  In most organizations there are substantial barriers to its use, even in ‘best practice’ companies — a condition that has changed little over the last decade.
  • A catalyst is required.  Businesses are not sufficiently motivated to ensure that everyone whose job is suited to flex can work flexibly, despite the fact that it’s in the organization’s best interest.
  • A significant barrier to the widespread use of flexibility is the lack of systems to ensure consistency and practical application.  Managers and employees don’t know what’s possible and flexibility is inconsistently applied in most companies. (Hewitt, 2008) Employees are afraid to request it, fearing a subtle or not-so-subtle penalty. Nine in ten low-wage workers who do not use it would, if it carried no penalty. (WFD and Corporate Voices for Working Families, 2009) When employees do request it, they often are refused because their manager is resistant to considering the idea or lacks the support to make it work.
  • A mandate?  While employers resist mandates and more regulation, a mandate that ensures a thoughtful consideration of an employee’s request for flexibility is one such motivator.  Companies say informally that without a doubt, such a mandate would cause them to be more systematic, consistent, and transparent in their decision-making about whether to grant employees’ requests.  Such a requirement would also encourage internal record keeping systems that by themselves would raise the level of knowledge.  The systems can include ‘informal’ flexibility — a change work hours or location on short notice — and ‘formal’ flexible arrangements negotiated in advance.
  • Mandates should be coupled with incentives for companies to provide pragmatic information.  Incentives are also essential (tax incentives, for example) for employers to disseminate practical information internally, e.g., how to manage teams who work flexibly.  Incentives alone are not sufficient, however.  More is required to overcome the inertia of the old way of doing business.

It will take a combination of ‘sticks’ and ‘carrots’ to achieve the desired results — workplaces that are more productive because they place the emphasis on achieving results rather than on where and when the work is done and citizens who can navigate their complex lives successfully.

Maybe It’s Not All Gloom and Doom for Work-Life Balance

Featured Guest Blogger
June 22nd, 2009

 

Adria B. Martinelli has practiced employment law in Delaware since joining Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor in 2001 as a senior associate in the Employment Law Section. She is also a regular speaker on employment-related topics, and trains individual employers in various areas of employment law, including sexual harassment, performance evaluations and documentation, and exceptions to at-will employment. Adria serves as an editor of the Delaware Employment Law Letter and writes for the Delaware Employment Law Blog. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

Much has been written in the legal blogosphere lately related to the topic of work-life balance.   Law 21, which describes itself as “Dispatches from a Legal Profession on the Brink,” recently posted a well-written and thought-provoking blog on this topic that concluded that “we’ll soon be closing the book on one of the legal profession’s most-used and least-understood phrases of the last decade: “work-life balance.””

Most commentators in this area seem to agree that—at least in the legal profession—any discussion or concern about work-life balance is a thing of the past.  A past when the economy was good, attorneys were in great demand, and law firms competed for the best and brightest by offering whatever they could to attract them.  This included at least engaging in discussion of the now-verboten work-life balance topic.

Few would disagree that economy drives this discussion.  Law firms (or any employers, for that matter) are rarely going to promote work-life balance because of their generosity or genuine concern for the well-being of their employees.  However, they will consider it when they believe it ultimately benefits their bottom line.  In good economic times, some employers bought into the notion that promoting work-life balance (or at least uttering the words during the hiring process) would make them competitive in recruiting the top candidates, and that retaining these qualified employees would also mean saving on the bottom line by not having to retrain new employees to replace those who might decide to leave the workplace as a result of inflexible work policies.

What is overlooked in the current gloom-and-doom forecasts, however, is that “flexible” (or reduced) work-schedules can also benefit the employer’s bottom line in a very direct way.  Typically, reduced or flexible schedule means reduced compensation.  In the legal world, reduced work-schedules usually means the attorney is “off,” or at least seriously derailed from, the partnership track.  Nobody wants to share the partnership pie in these trying economic times for firms.  The old model of the most desirable associate being one who was willing to do whatever it takes in terms of billable hours, in exchange for partnership on a 7-, 8-, or 9-year track, is no longer such an appealing one.

At the same time that people are declaring the end of work-life balance, law firms are delaying start dates for new associates, paying associates a portion of their salary to take a year off to spend time with their family or pursue non-profit endeavors, and some are apparently considering reducing attorneys to four-day work weeks. While these employer-driven, sometimes mandatory reduced schedules with accompanying reduced pay is certainly not ideal for many, it beats layoffs.  In the end, it continues to redefine the model of the perfect lawyer.  When the economy heads north again, I believe this rethinking of the old standard will help, not hurt, the work-life balance cause.

What’s New From the Network?

Karen Corday
June 19th, 2009

 

New from the Network:

New, free work and family content online:

Marrying Social Security and Paid Family Leave

Julie Schwartz Weber
June 17th, 2009

 

While the majority of Americans agree that individuals should be able to take paid time off from work to attend to their family at critical times, including the birth or adoption of a child or the serious illness of a family member, there is substantial disagreement, especially among businesses, as to how that paid leave should be funded and administered. Heather Boushey, Senior Economist at the Center for American Progress, has newly provided a thoughtful and detailed proposal, a proposal that she herself states is a variation on some themes that fellow colleagues have been discussing for some time: funding and administering family leave insurance via the already existing social security system.

According to Boushey, this new program, which she calls Social Security Cares, is an “ideal way” to finance paid family leave.  She argues that the bureaucracy is already in place to finance the system and deliver checks, and the system, that contends with retirement and disability matters already includes a structure to “establish the criteria for eligibility that takes into account a variety of circumstances.”

She also states that Social Security Cares would benefit nearly all workers by being inclusive of low wage, young, or part-time workers in addition to full-time and middle and upper wage workers.  Furthermore, she indicates that Social Security Cares would encourage both men and women to take time off to provide care, an interesting point where today the majority of men and women are in the workforce and most families no longer have a stay-at-home caregiver.

Social Security Cares would entail the following:

  • Workers will be able to access social security benefits for income when they experience birth or adoption of a child, the worker’s own serious illness, or to care for a seriously ill family member, for 12 weeks per year;
  • The program will cover every worker currently covered by Social Security, which covers almost the entire labor force;
  • Eligibility will be based on a worker’s lifetime employment history and will use reasonable terms to enable young, part-time, and low-income workers to qualify;
  • The cost of the program will be minimal, and could be financed in many ways, including adding a small increase to the payroll tax.

Boushey makes sure to provide substantial detail throughout her proposal.  She also underscores that the Social Security Cares program is not a panacea, and that additional changes need to be made to other laws, including the FMLA, to ensure that the program would be fully effective.

Kids With Disabilities Shut Out by Economy

Featured Guest Blogger
June 16th, 2009

 

Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her penetrating coverage of U.S. social issues. She writes the popular “Balancing Acts” column in the Sunday Boston Globe, and her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Gastronomica, and on National Public Radio. Her latest book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, details the steep costs of our current epidemic deficits of attention while revealing the astonishing scientific discoveries that can help us rekindle our powers of focus in a world of speed and overload. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

A caring society benefits us all. Sadly, this simple truth still surprises us. We assume that lean, mean, Darwinian forms of capitalism are best, when mounting evidence show that a caring society is more beneficial, even economically. Socially responsible and diverse companies, for instance, fare better on many measures. Companies where women make up from 14 to 38 percent of top management have an average 35 percent higher return on equity than employers with the lowest women’s executive representation, Catalyst data shows. Doing the “right thing” is good business, as many in the work-life field know.

My latest Balancing Acts column in the Boston Globe underscores this point in yet another way. I wrote about teens with disabilities who yearn to experience that classic rite of passage, the summer job. In a down economy, as you can imagine, many willing, tenacious talented teens with disabilities find it nearly impossible to find summer work. (Just 15 out of 100 youths with disabilities likely will find work this summer, estimates Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University.)

But we all lose out when teens with special needs can’t find work, because early work experience is strongly predictive of success in the labor market later in life for people with disabilities. In other words, kids who can’t get work early on tend to become a burden on society and on their families later.

The good news is, a few simple measures can help enormously. In researching my story, I stumbled upon a gem of a project, Project Summer, created by researchers at the University of Wisconsin/Madison in 2006 to help kids with special needs find summer work. The project involved 400 kids with special needs in more than 30 Wisconsin public high schools.

Put simply, when kids got the right supports, they were far more likely to work. These included advance help from teachers in planning their job hunt and high expectations from families and teachers that they could and should work. As well, schools benefited from having a liaison to the business community, such as a contact at a local chamber of commerce. These low-cost measures worked wonders. In one follow-up study, 65 percent of youths with severe disabilities who received such interventions found summer work, compared with a fifth of students who didn’t get such help.

Sometimes, caring isn’t about added funding and expanded bureaucracy. It’s all about a dash of imagination and a soupçon of common sense.

What’s New From the Network?

Karen Corday
June 12th, 2009

 

New, free work-family content on the web:

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