Karen Corday October 31st, 2008
In response to your interest in “family friendly employers,” we have compiled information on employers selected as “the best” in several categories, including company ranking, international awards, gender, diversity, healthy practices, older and younger workers, and specific backgrounds and skills. Please let us know what you think of our Family Friendly Employers page and if we missed anyone you’d like to see up there!
Julie Schwartz Weber October 29th, 2008
On Monday, October 6th, the Sloan Work and Family Research Network hosted its first Work-Family Thought Leaders Conference Series. Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and Jessica DeGroot, President and Founder of the Third Path Institute joined Sloan Network affiliates and other guests to discuss the problem of distraction in our technology-laden, time-squeezed culture, its affects on our work and family lives, and practical measures that business leaders can adopt to reduce distraction in the workplace and at home.
Maggie began the discussion, outlining how our modern day, technology-driven culture impacts our work and family lives. Maggie quickly noted that while technology can provide positive benefits, like easy instant access to information and people, technology also leads to lack of attention and focus in our work and home lives. More particularly, in work, Maggie talked about how workers tasks are increasingly fragmented and interrupted, where on average, workers change tasks every three minutes. This fragmentation/disruption results in less productivity, more stress, and less creativity. Socially, too, Maggie notes that while people may be in touch with more people via technology, the quality and depth of the relationships is declining.
Jessica then followed up with some pragmatic solutions adopted by business leaders to keep distraction at bay in the workplace and at home. These solutions included:
1) Using technology strategically (E.g., a partner in a law firm opts to check email and voicemail at a set time each day, not as the messages arrive),
2) Living with intentionality (E.g., a business employee chooses to hire another employee to whom specific tasks will be delegated so that the business employee can leave work at a regular hour), and
3) Finding quiet time in which to do work and think (E.g. one client refuses to allow more than half of any day to be filled with meetings).
More information about Maggie Jackson and Jessica DeGroot is available on our site.
Stay tuned for our second Work-Family Thought Leaders Conference Series, scheduled for mid-January.
Featured Guest Blogger October 27th, 2008
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre is an Associate Professor of Management at Rouen School of Management and a Research Associate at the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.
I am a work-life researcher and an expatriate here in the U.S., in a dual-career marriage, with a young family (local) and elder care responsibilities (at a distance). I approached the book with the greatest expectations and was delighted to find new and insightful food for thought.
Based on hundreds of interviews in the U.S. and Canada, Kossek and Lautsch coin the concept of “flexstyle.” They define flexstyle both as a strategy to handle one’s life and an understanding of what is driving the relationships between one’s work and one’s life.
They identify 3 different “flexstyles”, each introduced with real-life vignettes:
Flexstyles are not personal preferences; they are behaviors that stem both from personal preferences and the resources and constraints of the context, notably the degree of power and control over one’s life.They are a dynamic concept– major life changes require a re-examination of one’s flexstyle to ensure it fits well with the new circumstances and people.
Let me share with you two of my main take-aways from the book.
1. The book steps away from the mainstream idea that flexibility is all good and that flexible jobs automatically benefit employees. Flexibility can also be a trap and it requires monitoring, notably boundary work. Therefore, an “in control” and an “out of control” configuration occur for each flexstyle:
2. The book provides a comprehensive coaching on how to achieve a better fit with one’s current environment. I found a good number of them that I, as a “quality timer,” had been experiencing in a fuzzy way before reading this book. Since they may apply to you, let me quote one of them: “Have separate work and personal email accounts and resist the urge to check work-related emails after your workday has ended.” For instance, I closed my mailbox while drafting this blog, so that I don’t compulsively hit the mailbox tab, which I recognize as a “destructive work pattern.”
Whether you are looking for an optimistic and constructive self-help book, or you are curious of great insights on the relationships between work and life, read this book!
Karen Corday October 24th, 2008
New from the Network:
Work and Family News Headlines:
See our site for more!
Work and Family News From Around the Globe:
See our site for more!
Judi Casey October 22nd, 2008
Recently, I read a fascinating report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research called Parental Leave Policies in 21 Countries: Assessing Generosity and Gender Equality. Written by Rebecca Ray, Janet C. Gornick and John Schmitt, the report examines the policies of “21 high-income economies.” It examines “two key aspects of parental leave policies: the level of support provided to parents; and the degree to which leave policies promote an egalitarian distribution between mothers and fathers of the time devoted to child care.”
The authors examined 21 countries and found that six countries have the strongest policies on both generosity and gender equality. These are three Nordic countries – Finland, Norway, and Sweden – plus France, Spain, and Greece. They also found that “across these six high-performing systems, five policy practices stand out as the most important: (1) generous paid leave; (2) non-transferable quotas of leave for each parent; (3) universal coverage combined with modest eligibility restrictions; (4) financing structures that pool risk among many employers; and (5) scheduling flexibility. ….The experience of the countries following international ‘best practices’ suggests that a generous, universal, gender-egalitarian, and flexible parental leave policy, financed through social insurance would go a long way toward spreading the costs of caring for children more equitably across mothers and fathers, parents and non-parents, and employers and employees.”
Any thoughts on how work-family policies might be synchronized to achieve both gender equality and career advancement, as well as responsive workplace policies and practices in countries around the world? Are you studying or researching this area? Please let us know as the Network is interested in gathering resources that examine this dynamic.
Featured Guest Blogger October 20th, 2008
Up until the point where my husband and I brought our puppy home in July, I was a member of a gym here in the city. I used to go to the gym as a mental break from my research, as a way to improve my health, as a way to feel better about the chocolate cake I had for lunch. However, once that puppy came home, the gym became merely something “I used to do.” Not only did I feel guilty for leaving her in her crate if I left, but I honestly didn’t have the extra time to go to the gym now that I had to fit a couple of hours of walking the dog into my daily routine. Sigh….so this is working parenthood.
I have seen this happen to many of my friends and colleagues, and have read about the cost benefit analysis of taking time to exercise. This is an issue that has come up in online magazines, in the Wall Street Journal online forums, and even on military sites. With health and stress being two forefront topics of our society today, how can we manage our desire to pursue better health while juggling our family and work schedules? Where does it fit into the ever-evolving list of priorities?
We have several scholarly articles on the interplay of work, family, and exercise in our literature database for those of you who might want to delve a bit deeper into the research. Additionally, our Effective Workplace Series on Overwork mentions the role of exercise, and we have leaders in our leaders’ database who have specified that they have expertise in this area.
As for me, I have temporarily convinced myself that my puppy walks me fast enough to justify skipping out on the gym. However, there are days when I still long for the rush of a spin class.
Karen Corday October 17th, 2008
Work and Family News Headlines:
See our site for more!
Work and Family News From Around the Globe:
See our site for more!
Julie Schwartz Weber October 15th, 2008
As the state legislators are busy setting the agenda for the next legislative session, I thought I might share some information about 4 different types of work-family legislative initiatives that I originally compiled in preparation for a keynote talk this summer. While there are numerous types of work-family legislative initiatives considered each year, (check out our bills/statutes database for other types of work-family legislation), for this talk, entitled “9 to 5 No More: State Legislation To Give Working Families More Time,” I chose to focus specifically on:
1. Paid Sick Leave;
2. Education Leave;
3. Flexible Work Schedules; and
4. Teleworking.
My introduction to these topics and the state of the states vis a vis these legislative initiatives:
The entire keynote talk:
For much more information about these policies and others, visit the policy home page.
Judi Casey October 14th, 2008
Today marks the six-month anniversary of our Work and Family Blog and our 90th post! The Sloan Network bloggers have covered the gamut of topics from our first post on Paid Sick Leave to our most recent post on Take your Baby to Work. We have appreciated the opportunity to share our work-family thoughts with you, and we hope that the information has been useful to you in your work and lives. It’s great to hear your comments on our posts, so please, please give us as much feedback as possible.
In case you’ve missed these the first time, we have posted about our latest work-family Topic Pages, including Parents Caring for Children with Disabilities and Military Families. We have also covered a number of our existing focus areas in Family-Friendly Employers, Family Studies, Afterschool Care, Breastfeeding, Family Medical Leave Act, Gen Y, and those geared towards work, Overwork, Part-Time Work, Telework, Flexible Work Schedules in Small Businesses and Retirement.
A number of new issues have surfaced including an examination of the Pros and the Cons of a four-day work week. We reported on new trends for mothers, fathers, parents, grandparents and professors. We introduced an interactive entry with the Work-Life Quiz on Slide Share and linked to the highly useful Caregiver Database.
Politics is, of course, hot this year and we didn’t disappoint with a number of posts on the candidates, including work-family and work-life balance. We have blogged about our travels to many conferences including the National Conference of State Legislators and the WorldatWork Conference. We are privileged to have a number of guest bloggers, including A Better Balance: The Work & Family Legal Center, The Lattice Group, and The National Partnership for Women & Families. Thanks to all of the contributors!
And finally, we had 22 posts on What’s New in Work and Family, which covered over 100 articles and updates.
What’s coming up in the next six months from the Sloan Network? More exciting and relevant posts including a behind the scenes look at our social media efforts, including our new Facebook page. Thank you for reading our blog and do please continue to comment– we love your feedback. If you have suggestions for topics or are interested in guest blogging, please contact us.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=36febf72-22d9-43db-be93-3c33ea464726)
Karen Corday October 10th, 2008
New from the Network:
Work and Family News Headlines:
See our site for more!
Work and Family News from Around the Globe:
See our site for more!
Afterschool Care Aging Breastfeeding Child Care Definition of Family Dependent Care Domestic Violence Elder Care Family Leave Flexible Schedules Gen X/Gen Y Leave Low Wage Maternity/Paternity Leave Medical Leave Military Mothers and Fathers New on the Network Older Workers Organizations Overwork Part-Time Work Policy Publications Research Retirement Scheduling Sick Leave Spillover Telework Uncategorized Workplace
Updated Content on the Network