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Judi Casey September 16th, 2009

We just finished our Year 2 (July 1, 2008-June 30, 2009) report for the Sloan Foundation.  It’s been a great year! Traffic to the Network website has tripled over the past year to over 300,000 unique visitors and over 550,000 page views (compared to 104,318 visits last year, when our visits doubled from the previous year). Through direct outreach and site traffic, we added 682 new affiliates.  Lastly, we received two Apex Awards for our high-quality monthly newsletter, the Network News.

According to Google Analytics, the top five downloaded documents were:

1. Flexible Work Schedules Fact Sheet, a compilation of stats in Q&A format by topic,  answers the following questions:
   • Are workers satisfied with their work-family balance?
   • How do families deal with the work-family time crunch?
   • Do workers have access to flexible work schedules?
   • Much more!
2. Effective Workplace Series: Flexible Work Schedule, a one-page summary of our Topic Page, considers:
   • Why are organizations implementing flexible work schedules?
   • What are the benefits of flexible work schedules?
   • Why are flexible work schedules an important workplace issue?
3. Women in the Workplace Fact Sheet focuses on
   • How many women are in the workforce?
   • Where are women working?
   • What is the impact of women in leadership positions?
4. Generation X/Generation Y Fact Sheet looks at
   • How have gender roles in the workforce and at home changed for Generation X and Generation Y?
   • How does Generation Y make employment decisions?
   • What does Generation Y expect from and value about their careers?
5. Changing Definition of Families Fact Sheet explores
   • How have families changed?
   • How have marriage trends changed?
   • What do we know about households today?

Check them out if you haven’t read them.

• Definition of Family , Flexible Schedules , Gen X/Gen Y , Publications
• Comments(1)

Judi Casey December 17th, 2008

Did you ever feel that everyone was embracing a concept that just didn’t make sense to you? Maybe it seemed to happen so often, and in so many arenas, that you begin to think, “It must be me!”

Well, for years I’ve felt that way about the buzz around generational differences, and the notion that workers who grew up in specific generations want the same things from their employers, have the same priorities or values and need to be managed in a similar fashion. It just didn’t ring true for me. I’d reflect about the Gen Yers that I’ve managed, and think gee, she is really different than another Gen Yer that reported to me. I’d note that some seemed to like a lot of feedback and supervision, while others seemed to prefer to work more independently, asking for feedback only when needed. They didn’t seem to want the same type of support from me, so how could I possibly manage them the same way?

Then, I’d go to HR conferences where people with prestigious titles from Fortune 100 companies would talk about how they had implemented generational awareness or training programs. I’d even ask questions at their presentations such as, “What were the drivers for these efforts? Have you been able to demonstrate any measurable positive outcomes?” After some serious glares, I’d get answers that they had read a book that was purely anecdotal, or that their competitors were focused on these types of efforts. Again, I’d think, it must be me.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to read two recent articles that get me! The first, “A New Breed of Ageism,” by John Sullivan at Workforce.com, notes in reference to generational stereotyping, “if you are a manager or HR professional who has fallen for this ruse, it’s time to rethink your approach.” After discussing how generational stereotyping flies in the face of what we embrace in diversity, he goes on to say, “…the best way to motivate a certain generation is [realizing] that effective management requires treating every employee and every situation differently.”

Another article in Workspan (for members only) by Frank Giancola, “Is the Generation Gap a Bogus Issue?,” cites numerous high-quality, credible sources of research that “raised serious questions about the validity of the generational approach.” He cites reputable studies such as “The Lives and Times of Baby Boomers,” “What Generation Gap?” from the March 2008 Gallup Management Journal, and The Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground, by Jennifer Deal. He concludes: “The generational approach has many serious weaknesses…. these weaknesses make the Cohort Generation a challenging concept for HR professionals and provide a valid rationale to focus on other talent strategies.”

I think it really comes down to taking the time to ask your employees, how is your work going? Do you have the resources that you need to do your job? Is there anything that I can do to make your life easier, while still getting our work done? No magic formulas. No ten tips. I feel vindicated!

• Gen X/Gen Y , Older Workers , Organizations , Publications , Workplace
• Comments(1)

Judi Casey November 5th, 2008

I was recently asked, “What are the current trends in work-life and work-family?” Reviewing the resources we’ve added, examined or blogged about on the Sloan Network, I developed the following list. In addition, I’ve provided Sloan Network resources and other sources for more information.

1.    Aging Workforce and Older Workers
We are redefining retirement as older workers continue to work into their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s for financial, personal and career reasons. Some demographics indicate that there will not be sufficient younger workers to replace exiting older workers in many industries. As average life expectancy continues to increase, many are physically able to work longer. A few resources: 1, 2, 3, 4.

2.    Family Caregiving
Family caregiving issues are paramount, including elder care, sandwich generation, child care and family responsibility discrimination.

3.    Green Practices
There is growing attention to being environmentally conscious or “green” with increased implementation of four-day work weeks and telework. Initiatives previously viewed as work-family are now being reframed as environmental. A ten-hour work day with Fridays off can be great for some employees and employers, but may be a work-family nightmare for others. Additional resources here and here.

4.    Military Families
Managing work and family responsibilities is particularly difficult for military families, with nearly 1.8 million children living in military families. Challenges include frequent moves, school disruptions, financial strain and family separation.

5.    Multigenerational Workforce
Emphasis has been placed on understanding the multigenerational workforce, with attention to matching employee needs with workplace benefits and work styles— some say that younger workers do not want to work like older workers and have a different vision of a satisfying work environment. A few resources: 1, 2.

6.    Overworked or Underemployed?

Although some workers can’t find enough work, many professional workers complain of overwork with long hours and little time for healthy behaviors such as exercise or family dinners. Reports indicate that workers are reluctant to take needed sick days, and may not use all their allotted vacation time or work while away. A few resources: 1, 2, 3, 4.

7.    Parents Caring for Children with Disabilities
The number of families affected, the stress on family relationships, and the impediments to workforce participation are considerable. One in seven children under age 18, or approximately 10.2 million children in the U.S., have special health care needs. Nearly 14% of parents caring for children with special health care needs spend more than 10 hours per week coordinating child care. Employers and community resources must do their part to better support these working parents and their families. Resources: 1, 2

8.    Talent Management to Keep the Keepers
Increasing employee engagement is a high priority to improve productivity and morale, as well as recruit and retain key talent. Innovative employers have introduced programs such as sabbaticals or extended leave time, mass career customization, lactation rooms for breastfeeding or even bringing your baby to work. A few Encyclopedia Entries: 1, 2

9.    Technology Affects Work Life Balance
Realizing how technology (email, Blackberry, etc.) impacts our work-family lives has led to a blending between work and home boundaries in a 24/7 global economy. What are your work hours when your team is in the U.K., the U.S., Spain and Australia? Is it OK to turn off  your Blackberry after dinner? What does the 21st century workplace look like?  A few resources: 1, 2

10.    Wellness and Health Care Costs
Rising health care costs have pushed employers to pay attention to employee wellness, since healthy employees have lower health care costs. Efforts include on-site fitness or yoga, health assessments, paid sick days and incentives to promote healthy behavior. The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) continues to have a profound impact on employees.

• Dependent Care , Gen X/Gen Y , Leave , Military , Older Workers , Overwork , Scheduling , Spillover , Telework
• Comments(1)

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.

• Afterschool Care , Breastfeeding , Dependent Care , Family Leave , Flexible Schedules , Gen X/Gen Y , Medical Leave , Mothers and Fathers , Older Workers , Overwork , Part-Time Work , Retirement , Sick Leave , Telework , Workplace
• Comments(1)

Judi Casey September 12th, 2008

In August, I was a discussant at the 2008 American Psychological Association conference for the session The Impact of Workplace Characteristics on Employee Wellbeing with Rosalind Barnett (Brandeis), Jackie James (Center for Work & Family at Boston College), Taryn Morrissey (Society for Research in Child Development, formerly Cornell), and Shu-Wen Wang (UCLA).

1) Wang and Repetti examined how job stress affects family interaction after the work day and found that more distressed dads exhibit a negative spillover effect between work and home, while less distressed dads may withdraw from family interactions. These patterns were not found for mothers.

2) Barnett and Gareis identified caregiver concerns as a more powerful predictor of job withdrawal and health-promoting behavior than objective aspects of the care burden. Usable flexibility affected both job withdrawal and health-promoting behavior.

3) James et al. reported that flexible work schedules might be one way to reduce health care costs as they appear to benefit both employees (and their managers) by reducing stress and improving mental health.

4) Morrissey and Warner detailed how child care vouchers resulted in a range of positive outcomes, including decreased work-family stress and greater commitment to employers.

The workplace can help today’s diverse families to better manage their work-family stress, which can lead to a triple win— better emotional wellbeing, stronger family relationships, and enhanced work commitment. Workplace programs and policies can act as a buffer to reduce stress and improve emotional health outcomes, but with three important caveats:

1) We must create a workplace culture where utilization of family supportive policies is encouraged and supported— it’s not the existence of policies and programs that is important, but rather whether employees feel like they can use them without negative ramifications.

2) No one size fits all and FIT is critical. You must match the needs of employees with the programs or policies— for example, it doesn’t make sense to build an onsite child care center if the majority of your employees are over 50 years old or if they wouldn’t bring their kids to work on the subway.

3) The role of the manager or supervisor is critical, and is often the key ingredient. They must assess and monitor with their subordinates what supports are needed to create a work environment that helps employees meet both their business and personal needs.

What do you think? How can workplace characteristics impact employee wellbeing?

For more information, visit our topic pages on Health and Workplace Flexibility and Flexible Work Schedules, or read our interview with Kay Campbell on personal and workplace resilience.

• Gen X/Gen Y , Military , Organizations , Scheduling , Workplace
• Comments(0)

Featured Guest Blogger July 25th, 2008

I almost didn’t want to write this post because the last post that I wrote dealt with Australian work-family policy…and I like to keep a nice variety. But, I can’t help it; I just thought this was too neat to pass up…

Australia’s federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, has just announced her position on several work-family policies (paid maternity leave, women in leadership positions, and sexual harassment, to name a few) as a result of her “Listening Tour,” a 6-month venture across Australia speaking with over 1,000 people about their journey for gender equality. I found one of her post-tour agenda items particularly interesting. As it turns out, she finds herself in a great corner to advocate for gender equality in the workforce, specifically mentioning sex discrimination against working fathers.

While Broderick was once hired to promote women’s equality in the workforce, she recently stated that she wanted to strengthen the Sex Discrimination Act to penalize employers who stick family-friendly fathers on the “daddy track” by refusing to promote them. Fathers have reported that they are not seen as serious players when they “raise their hand” for flexible work schedules, as they are still seen as the breadwinners and as individuals who need to be more committed to their careers. They find that women are more easily granted leave for family time.

Currently, the law only protects fathers who have been fired , not those who have been put on the daddy track without the possibility of promotion. Broderick stated, “If there is one thing I could do to promote gender equality in this country it would be to better share paid and unpaid work between men and women…If we strengthen the family provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act, that will allow men to be more involved in their family and women to be more involved in paid work.”

The opposition states that workers who put more into their careers should rightfully get more out of them. Those employees who take more time off should consider career advancement more of a luxury than a right.

We say, keep the discussion going!

For more information from the Sloan Network on this topic, please see our:
• Class Activity featuring information on the Daddy Track
• Statistics about fathers and family leave
• Suggested Readings about fathers and work

• Family Leave , Gen X/Gen Y , Leave , Maternity/Paternity Leave , Mothers and Fathers , Overwork , Policy , Workplace
• Comments(1)

Featured Guest Blogger June 25th, 2008

Thank you to Phoebe Taubman, Project Attorney/ Incoming Equal Justice Works Fellow at A Better Balance: The Work & Family Legal Center, for today’s guest blog entry. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

In 1829, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story famously declared that “the law is a jealous mistress.” Nearly 180 years later lawyers are still struggling to find a healthy balance between work and family, and successful role models in the profession, particularly for young men, are especially rare. In fact, Justice Scalia recently disclosed that he never participated regularly in his nine children’s activities while they were growing up. He explained: “You know, my parents never did it for me. And I didn’t take it personally. ‘Oh Daddy, come to my softball game.’ No, I mean, it’s my softball game. He has his work. I got my softball game. Of course, she [Scalia’s wife, Maureen] was very loyal. She went to all the games.”

Despite this discouraging history, a new generation of lawyers has begun to voice their objections and argue for a better balance. We recently surveyed 351 students at the NYU School of Law and found that worries about balancing work and family weigh far more heavily on the minds of top law students than other career concerns including compensation and job prestige. Seventy-two percent of male and 76 percent of female students said they were very or extremely worried about being able to balance work and family. That’s more than twice the number of law students who were worried about earning top pay, doing high profile cases or working for a prestigious firm. Seven out of 10 survey respondents expect to make career sacrifices in order to have a satisfying personal life and 8 out of 10 indicated a willingness to trade money for time, that is, accept reduced earnings in return for flexibility and reduced hours.

Furthermore, the lawyers of tomorrow do not see work/life balance as exclusively a women’s issue. In our focus group discussions, one male law student told us, “I wouldn’t like sending my kids to child care all day, and I’d rather be around for them.” Another said, “With what firms pay nowadays . . . the paid leave isn’t as important as the respected leave . . . it’s not the money.” A third male focus group participant didn’t mince words: “It’s the hours, stupid.”

Our survey provides further evidence of a strong generational gap around balancing work and family—one that will impact the legal profession for years to come. In fact, over the past year, several law-student-run organizations (including Ms. JD and Building a Better Legal Profession) have sprouted up and dedicated themselves to changing the culture of the legal profession. The question now is how will law firms respond? Will they be able to deliver on the promise of family-friendly policies they have put on paper, but have not realized in practice?

• Gen X/Gen Y , Publications , Scheduling , Workplace
• Comments(3)

Karen Corday May 23rd, 2008

New from the Network:

New in Work and Family:

• Gen X/Gen Y , New on the Network , Older Workers , Publications , Workplace
• Comments(0)

Karen Corday May 16th, 2008

New from the Network:

• There are two new Bills by Theme pages: Breastfeeding and Military Families.

• Number 14 in the Policy Briefing Series, Breastfeeding, is now available. For more information, see our press release.

• The following Topic Pages have been updated: Flexible Work Schedules, Generation X/Y, Health and Workplace Flexibility, and Older Workers Overview.

New in Work and Family:

• A Better Balance: The Work & Family Legal Center is collecting stories from people who are working, or have worked, a reduced hours schedule, including those who have experienced penalties at work because of their reduced hours. Please register for and complete the questionnaire at ABetterBalance.org.

• This week, I came across popular press articles from the United Kingdom, Australia, Dubai, and Canada as well as the United States. Please visit our What’s New in Work and Family page to check them out, and always feel free to share any interesting articles with us here!

• Breastfeeding , Flexible Schedules , Gen X/Gen Y , Military , Older Workers , Policy , Publications
• Comments(0)

Featured Guest Blogger May 8th, 2008

We agree with Judi Casey in her recent blog “Getting Gen Y to talk about work and family issues.” Young people are surprisingly poorly prepared for dealing with “real” life - with balancing work and family issues, that is. We created The Lattice Group in the summer of 2007, after we graduated from college and realized that we hadn’t thought about these issues either.

Our work with The Lattice Group has taken us to New York, Madrid and Paris and now to Stockholm. Next week we leave for Moscow. In each country we are interviewing college students and young professionals to learn what their hopes, expectations and fears are for the future. Though we have found that attitudes differ greatly between nations—the USA being the most traditional to date by far— there is one generalization that we can make: young people love to talk about these issues! In Madrid, our interviews sometimes ran over into whole evenings of conversation (though this may just be because Spaniards are so darned social). Even in New York, the city where no one seems to have time for sleep, let alone talking to perfect strangers about work-life balance, the conversations were extremely well received. Young people, our fellow Gen Y’ers, are desperate to talk partly because they appear never, or rarely, to have done so before.

Our close to 90 interviews thus far have shown us that young people are craving more resources and guidance before they are mid-stride in their careers. We recommend that action be taken at college. For example, Career Services could be aimed at more than job-placement; they could give increased attention to discussions about the early career challenges. Why not emulate Williams College that teaches “Composing a Life: Finding Success and Balance in Life after Williams?” Encourage young people to articulate what kind of life, both professionally and personally, they want in the long run, not just tomorrow, or next year.

Tools are needed so that they can plan accordingly, and the most important tool is information. After all, you must know what your options are in order to make good decisions. Organizations like the Sloan Network are making incredibly important information available. Perhaps it is time to disseminate the information to college students. If you are an academic or researcher working on these topics and would like to get your voice heard among Gen Y, we invite guest bloggers on The Lattice Group website.

• Gen X/Gen Y
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