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Judi Casey November 4th, 2009

This blog by our Director/Principal Investigator Judi Casey originally ran on The Huffington Post on October 27, 2009.

Summer vacation season is over and we have definitely moved into fall. As we celebrated National Work and Family Month this October, I wanted to look back to see if workers took vacations this summer, identify the benefits of vacations and discuss the status of vacations in the U.S. Vacations are a critical work-family issue as they provide an opportunity to relax, reconnect with the important people in our lives, and have time to pursue our personal passions.

A poll conducted from August 1-September 11, 2009 on the Sloan Work and Family Research Network website found the following among 74 respondents:

Are you taking vacation time this summer?

Yes, I am taking the time that I desire ….. 23%

Yes, but I am taking less time than I want to ….. 30%

No, I don’t have the money for vacation this year ….. 27%

No, I’m too busy at work ….. 14%

No, I am afraid that it will put my job at risk ….. 7%

So, what does this tell us? Granted, this is a small, rather unscientific sample, but only about a quarter of respondents took the time that they wanted. Another 30% took some time, but wish that they could have taken more. Just under half (48%) did not take vacation time because they didn’t have the money, were too busy, or were afraid that it would put their jobs at risk. Half of the respondents did take some time off, but almost half did not. Should we be concerned?

An interesting article by David Rock in Psychology Today found that if you are a knowledge worker who thinks for work, there are benefits to a break. He reports that time away from a problem allows you to get unstuck from your typical way of viewing situations and promotes new perspectives. Research also finds that we are more effective at solving difficult problems when our minds are less cluttered, which is more likely to occur if we get our heads out of work — for example, by taking a vacation.

A new report by the Families and Work Institute, “The State of Health in the American Workforce,” found a decrease over the past 6 years in the number of employees indicating that their overall health is “excellent” (from 34 to 28%). Co-author Ellen Galinsky says, ” …organizations can promote wellness by monitoring overwork and providing and encouraging employees to take their vacations.” Other indicators of poorer health include more stress, clinical depression, difficulty sleeping, and medical conditions such as high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol. Read more here.

Author Joe Robinson echoes these findings in his book, Work to Live. People who take vacations are less likely to have heart attacks or other illnesses compared to those who don’t take vacations. “But it only starts to work that way when you take at least a two-week block of time,” says Robinson. A long weekend or a few days off doesn’t promote better health; we need a chunk of time off to reap positive health benefits.

Compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. is an outlier around vacation time with 137 countries (including all industrialized nations) mandating a minimum of 4 weeks of paid vacation time. In the U.S., there are no laws requiring employees to have any paid vacation time so employers offer paid vacation time at their discretion. As noted by Julie Weber here on the Work and Family Blog,

“The Center for Economic and Policy Research reports that about one fourth of the U.S. workforce has no paid vacation in the course of their work year. Part-time workers, low-income earners, and workers in small establishments (fewer than 100 workers) are less likely to receive paid vacation and paid holidays, and when they do, these workers receive fewer paid days off.”

Thankfully, there has been some recent attention in the U.S. to mandating vacation time. In May of this year, Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) introduced the Paid Vacation Act of 2009, which would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to require that employers provide a minimum of 1 week of paid annual leave to employees at companies with at least 100 employees. Advocates of the bill note that vacations are important for family well-being as well as for improving workplace productivity.

Vacations — who needs them? We all do! What is it going to take to move us from a nation of overworked, unhealthy, stressed out Americans with no time to relax, explore our passions or engage with our families? Of course, we have to start by taking care of ourselves as much as that is realistic given our financial and employment situations these days. We definitely need to prioritize taking vacation time, but this can’t just be an individual responsibility. Supervisors and managers have to support our efforts to take a vacation, so we can return to work as more productive and healthier contributors.

Employers have to support the use — not just the availability — of vacation time. This requires changing the culture of the workplace and moving our thinking from vacation as a burden for the work team and for the organization to an opportunity for employees to recharge so they’ll return to work more creative and engaged.

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Featured Guest Blogger October 12th, 2009

Mallary Tytel is president of Healthy Workplaces, a national consulting practice.  Specialized areas of expertise are Human Systems Dynamics, Coaching, Cultural Change and Women in Transition. She is the former CEO of an international education and training corporation; has served as key advisor to senior-level civilian and military personnel within the U.S. Department of Defense; and created and delivered an innovative leadership training program in communities worldwide.  She is a Certified Executive Coach and Mediator and in her spare time she writes and mentors budding women entrepreneurs.  Her new book is Vision Driven: Lessons Learned from the Small Business C-Suite. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

Not too long ago the New York Times reported that the students at an affluent New York suburban middle school were learning to be nicer this year, whether they like it or not. The teaching and emphasis on empathy is the latest offensive in a decade-long campaign against bullying and violence in schools across the country. These lessons are seen as valuable tools in grooming children to be better citizens and leaders, and, hopefully, thinking twice before engaging in name-calling, gossip and other forms of social humiliation.

Now if you think this is just kid’s stuff, look around you; bullying has found its way into our workplaces.

Workplace bullying is the unreasonable actions of individuals (or a group) directed towards an employee (or a group of employees) that is intended to intimidate and creates a risk to the health and safety of the employee(s).  This involves an abuse or misuse of power and includes behavior that intimidates, degrades, offends or humiliates a worker, often in front of others.

Bullying behavior is an on-going workplace pattern that creates feelings of defenselessness in the target and undermines an individual’s right to dignity at work.  A report from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health found that close to one-third of the more than 500 private and public companies studied reported some occurrence of bullying in the preceding year.  Examples of bullying include:

• Unwarranted, invalid criticism or blame without factual justification
• Being treated differently than the rest of your work group
• Being sworn at, shouted at or humiliated
• Being the target of practical jokes
• Exclusion or social isolation

What can you do to take action against this destructive behavior? As an employee you can:

• Identify what is going on.  Recognize that you are being bullied and are NOT the source of the problem.
• Understand that bullying is about control and power, not performance.
• Document in detail occurrences with dates, times, places, what was said or done and who was present at the time.
• Work with your employer or trusted advocate to solve the problem.

As an employer you can:

• Create a zero tolerance anti-bullying policy. This should be part of a wider commitment to a safe and healthful working environment.
• When brought to your attention, the bullying behavior should be addressed IMMEDIATELY.  Reporting should be strongly encouraged and complaints need to be taken seriously.
• Hold awareness sessions for everyone on what bullying is; start by investigating the extent of the problem at your own company.
• Ensure management plays an active and attentive role in what goes on within their teams and departments.
• Encourage open door policies and improve management’s ability and sensitivity towards dealing with and responding to conflicts.
• Clearly demonstrate commitment from the top of the organization about what is and what is not acceptable behavior.

Be it the classroom or conference room, no one needs to put up with a bully’s behavior.  If you or someone you know is being bullied do something about it, for yourself and those around you.  Everyone should have a healthy workplace.

For more information visit the Workplaces Bullying and Trauma Institute at http://www.workplacebullying.org.

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Featured Guest Blogger September 21st, 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.

If we are to see truly flexible workplaces anytime soon,  it’s important that we get beyond our own circles and collaborate with new partners whose interests align with ours. I’d like to see us pay more attention to business continuity planners.

It’s easy to superficially add ‘business continuity’ to the list of advantages brought by flexible workplaces — businesses can continue operating in an emergency if teams are skilled at flexible work. But as I read more deeply about it, I find some gems that make my eyes pop out. One in five US businesses suffers a disaster that causes it to cease operations for a time. Of course there are the big ones — earthquakes, tornadoes, horrific man-made disasters, but did you know the scale? Seventy-five of them in 2008, says FEMA. And, 43% of companies that go through a severe crisis never open their doors again; another 29% fail within 2 years. Add to that the day-to-day, basement-flooding variety that may not put a company out of business but still throws a big kink into productivity, and it’s clear why disaster plans need to be taken seriously.

Disaster plans typically involve paying to reserve alternative space in which to operate in the event of a disaster. Ah, but if people are already equipped, trained, and comfortable working from home or some alternate workplace (that serves lattes), it means those costs are avoided and can be added to the plus column of direct savings (aka ‘hard dollars’) from flexible work. Put that in your flexibility ROI analysis! I certainly added it to our white paper on the business case for workplace flexibility public policies: Flexible Work: In Whose Best Interest?

The real kicker, though, is this: we proponents of flexibility struggle to get businesses to ‘offer’ flex. As disaster planners see that teams who can work on the spur of the moment from anywhere, anytime can literally save the business, the disaster planners have begun to do something we have not. They have begun to require (yes, I said ‘require’) that teams (individuals, managers, and executives) practice working flexibly on a regular basis. Otherwise, the reasoning goes, people will not remember the access codes, know the tricks for sharing documents, etc. — all the things that are critical to smoothly functioning in an emergency.

When the disaster planning team says, ‘you will do this’….everyone listens. Now that’s a partner.

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Judi Casey August 26th, 2009

By now, I’ve heard just about every new strategy to engage and retain employees, so I am rarely surprised by organizational efforts to keep the keepers. However, here’s a unique idea implemented by the online shoe company Zappos that really got me thinking. Located in Kentucky (fulfillment center) and Nevada (corporate headquarters), Zappos is just 10 years young, employs more than 1,000 people, and generated more than $1 billion in gross merchandise sales during 2008.

Here’s the idea: Zappos offers their new call center trainees a $1,000 bonus to quit at the end of their 4 week training period in addition to any salary earned for training participation. The thinking is that if you’d take a grand instead of work for them, you don’t have the level of commitment and enthusiasm that they are looking for in their new hires. In fact, the number one priority of Zappos is to provide the “best customer service possible.” Apparently, only 10% of the trainees accept their offer and quit! The remaining trainees have demonstrated that they really want to be part of the organization and definitely embrace the customer-service focus espoused by Zappos as critical for success.

Their business model is also intriguing. Basically, they believe that if they can be the best at selling shoes by providing stellar customer service, they can be the best at “anything and everything,” so their plan is to expand their markets to other products, which of course, is limitless.

From their website: “We believe that if we continue to focus on providing the absolute best service and the absolute best shopping experience, then we can continue to grow as a company. Our hope is that our focus on service will allow us to WOW our customers, our employees, our vendors, and our investors. We want Zappos to be known as a service company that happens to sell shoes, handbags, and anything and everything.”

It will be interesting to see if their acquisition by Amazon changes things. I hope not; I love to buy new shoes.

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Judi Casey August 19th, 2009

As I blogged last month, the IESE Business School of Barcelona, Spain recently hosted the Third International Work and Family Conference on “Harmonizing Work, Family and Personal Life in Times of Crisis.” Some of the participants, including yours truly, made short, videotaped interviews about current work-life trends and issues. The interviewees answered the following questions:

1. How have companies’ work-life policies been affected by the global crisis?  Do you think companies will continue using established work-life polices or will any polices be suspended?
2. How have employees been dealing with the present situation? Do they find that they have more pressure to perform and need to take on additional workloads?

You can hear the opinions of many work-life experts about these issues on this video, including Jeff Greenhaus, Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, Tammy Allen and Karen Korabik, to name a few.

For more about how the global recession is affecting employers, the Families and Work Institute (FWI) just released a timely report, The Impact of the Recession on Employers. This nationally representative sample of 400 employers is the only one I know of that specifically investigates the impact of the recession on workplace flexibility efforts. FWI reports that “most employers are either maintaining the workplace flexibility they offer (81%) or increasing it (13%) during the recession….While more than a quarter (28%) have turned to involuntary reduction in hours, a comparable percentage (29%) have used voluntary reductions in hours. And perhaps surprisingly, 57% report giving employees some or a lot of say about the schedules they now work. (pg. 1)”

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Featured Guest Blogger August 17th, 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.

What makes it legitimate for people to work flexibly isn’t whether their company has a policy allowing it, but whether there is a subtle (or not-so-subtle) penalty for doing so.  Below are four examples of characteristics of a flexible culture, which although rarely focused on, have everything to do with whether the culture supports flexibility.

• Are people who request flexibility or who already work flexibly considered equal in terms of their access to advancement, status, integration into the business, or quality of assignments?

Are those who work a reduced work schedule, for example, considered on an equal par for professional development, as future management material, as ‘high potentials’? Or by definition are ‘high potentials’ the individuals who always put work first and work long hours?  Are the best clients, projects, challenging work opportunities given to the people who work from the office, rather then remotely – because subtly, the manager thinks they are easier to reach?

• Are people valued who–although accomplishing their work well– set boundaries on their time and/or accessibility?

How okay is it to say ‘no’?  When someone consistently leaves ‘early’ (because they may have started earlier than others), or says they cannot do a client meeting when they are on vacation, or isn’t available for spur-of-the-moment overtime, or doesn’t answer email at all hours — do they subtly lose points?  Or is their commitment, engagement, and responsiveness determined by whether they ultimately deliver on their core responsibilities?

• Does the organizational climate recognize and respect that employees have lives outside of work?

Where once the core workforce had an ‘invisible’ support system at home (otherwise known as a wife) that allowed workers to focus exclusively on work when they were at work, those days are long gone.  The typical worker now has a dual focus (navigating work and personal responsibilities at the same time).  But most organizational cultures haven’t quite adapted. So when an employee cannot take on business travel easily, or attend business social events, or needs to take time off in the middle of the day to take children to the dentist – it requires a shift in mindset.  Attendance policies are a good example.  Once they were a key factor in measuring performance – missing 3 days in a quarter was a slippery slope to dismissal.  Now even the best performers must adjust their schedules occasionally.  Attendance alone is no longer a good indicator of job performance or commitment.

• Do cultural norms assume people are not always available to attend to work beyond work hours?

There is an unrelenting tug-of-war between the blessing and curse of 24/7 electronic access.  Do leaders make a point to say, “I don’t expect an instant reply on weekends or holidays”?  What practices do individuals who are considered to be the ‘best’ follow?  Or is there a Jack Welch-like pride in scheduling last-minute Saturday morning meetings that weed out the so-called non-serious team members?  The question is – are long hours and constant availability equated with high performance?  In a human capital environment where the ability to do reflective thinking — be rested and clear-headed, the ability to set your own limits and manage your own attention lead to the best performance.

These ideas, brought to our attention by Lotte Bailyn and her colleagues, rarely receive the attention they deserve.  There is much that must change in a transition from a 9-to-5 culture to a fluid culture that takes advantage of what’s possible now in flexible work (call it ‘anytime, anywhere work’).  Underlying elements like these are among the most important in making it a reality.

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Featured Guest Blogger August 10th, 2009

Charlene DeCesare is a freelance Life Balance Strategist and the Senior Director of Tuition Programs at College Coach, a division of Bright Horizons Family Solutions.

Studies have shown that a large majority of working adults do not complete degrees within six years, while many don’t finish at all. At first blush, this may seem unbelievable, but given the challenges of juggling work, family and education, it really shouldn’t be surprising.

Many years ago, I decided to pursue my MBA using my employer’s tuition assistance program.  At first it seemed that navigating the process around this “benefit” might actually require an MBA!  However, I figured it all out eventually.  Accepted by my school of choice and approved by my manager, I started classes.

As luck would have it, my second semester gave way to my first trimester…of pregnancy. The challenge of balancing work and life (literally) grew exponentially. Childcare was an issue both day and night, depending on my husband’s schedule as well as my own. Business travel sometimes meant missing classes in addition to missing my family. Lactation arrangements were now needed at work, on the road, and at school. As each semester came and went, I made difficult choices in order to feel successful as a mom, an employee, and when I could fit it in, a student. Nine years, a new job and two more children later, I finally completed my degree.

Today, working adult learners face similar challenges of managing work, family, and school. Furthermore, each area’s demands are compounded and mirrored against the next. As if the process wasn’t convoluted enough for me when I attended graduate school, the educational landscape is even more complex today. Whereas aspiring students once had to compete for acceptance into college, many schools are now competing for students –- especially the working adult demographic. Because of this, the availability and diversity of distance learning options is growing at a rapid rate. Yet, aggressive marketing is no longer limited to online for-profit institutions. More and more “traditional” schools are launching programs specifically targeted to employees. All of this makes the decision making process much more complicated and potentially very time consuming. As we know, time is the most precious commodity for those of us trying to “do it all.”

In addition, employees must have awkward conversations with managers who are conflicted between meeting budget goals and helping employees meet their personal and education goals. To compound the problem, many employers still have policies and processes that are overly difficult to navigate for the employee and equally difficult for the organization to administer.  This can actually create a perceived disincentive to participate.

In the United States, 85% of companies offer some sort of tuition assistance program. There is no question that the benefit is offered with good intentions. However, the goal for the more forward-thinking employer is to build that bridge between what they intend and what employees actually experience. This includes creating a culture that encourages education and work/life balance while also providing support at the individual level.
Support is not only about funding. It’s about providing resources during the decision-making process and throughout the educational journey as the inevitable issues arise. This kind of support not only increases the likelihood that our working adult learners will complete degrees, but that they will stay with the employer who funded that educational journey.  That’s a true benefit for all involved.

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Julie Schwartz Weber July 29th, 2009

Netsy Firestein, Director of the Labor Project for Working Families, and Jenifer MacGillvary, Communications Coordinator from the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, recently issued a new report, Family-Friendly Workplaces: Do Unions Make a Difference? Upon reviewing a number of studies that compare union workplaces with nonunion workplaces vis-à-vis the promotion of a variety of family-friendly policies, the report resoundingly concludes that yes, unions do make a difference.

Generally, the report finds that in most areas, unionized workers receive more generous family-friendly benefits than their nonunionized counterparts.  More particularly, the report finds that unionized workers are more likely than their nonunionized counterparts to:

• work in a place that promotes compliance with the Family and Medical Leave Act
• receive fully paid and partially paid leaves (46% of hourly union workers versus 29% of hourly nonunion workers)
• be allowed to use their own sick time to care for a sick child (1.3x as likely as a nonunionized worker)
• have paid personal leave that can be used to care for sick children (50% more likely than a nonunionized worker)
• receive employer-paid family health insurance premiums (companies with 30 percent or more unionized workers are 5x as likely as companies with no unionized workers to pay the entire health care premium)
• receive child-care resource and referral services or dependent-care  reimbursement accounts
• receive more vacation time and paid holidays

Interestingly, in one family-friendly area, that of providing flexible work arrangements, there did not appear to be a union advantage; instead, the report finds that the few studies related to this issue seemingly show a negative relationship between unionization and flexible work arrangements.  The authors conjecture that this may be due to the fact that many types of flexibility are not an option for some occupations, like telecommuting for factory workers.

The report concludes with a call to action: Future researchers should go beyond “the blunt and largely incidental research” on unions and family-friendly policies that exists today. Rather, they should seek to gain a “more nuanced and detailed understanding of the difference unions make,” by including appropriate controls for industry and occupation in future research.

Do you belong to a union and do you find this to be a positive indicator for promotion of family-friendly workplace policies?

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Judi Casey July 22nd, 2009

A few weeks ago, I was invited to participate in the Third International Work and Family Conference at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. The theme of the conference, “Harmonizing Work, Family and Personal Life in Times of Crisis,” explored the current global economic crisis and its impact on work-family issues.  Specifically, the conference addressed how individuals, families and employers are managing in these difficult times.

The participants were well-known academics and scholars from around the globe, and the conference was organized in 6 main tracks:

• Work-Family Policies & Culture-2 groups
• Coping & Decision Making
• Instruments
• Resilience & Enrichment
• Diversity & Talent Management.

Each track shared their papers in their specific work-family area of study, and then each group was charged with creating their vision of how to move the field forward in our particular area.  On the last day, we presented our ideas to our conference colleagues.

I participated in one section of the Work-Family Policies & Culture Track, led by Suzan Lewis.  What a fascinating group!  Here are a few key takeaways:

1. Culture is a very complicated, multi-layered concept with assumptions, values and artifacts that interact and influence one another in many directions.
2. Tension exists between and within the layers (individual, family, organization, etc.) and can be a driving force for change.
3. It is critical to recognize and acknowledge the cross-cultural norms and values about today’s working families in order to be effective in change management.

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Julie Schwartz Weber July 15th, 2009

I am almost done reading Elsewhere, USA by Dalton Conley, and am finding the book to be teeming with interesting observations on how 21st century living blurs the distinctions between work and family life, public and private space, and leisure and work (the blurring of which Conley coins, “weisure.”) Conley discusses the causes in depth (e.g., entrance of women in the workforce and technological advances), as well as the outcome for middle- and upper-class American workers (e.g., increased economic anxiety and an ever-growing sense that one should always be working.)

In an effort to illustrate this blending and boundary-less living, Conley focuses on Google, a model of a modern day employer who, by its own admission, intends to blur these work and family lines. Google’s goal: to have a VERY productive workforce. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said outright, “The goal is to strip away everything that gets in our employees’ way.  Let’s face it: programmers want to program, they don’t want to do their laundry.  So we make it easier for them to do both.”

Conley details many of the ways in which Google blurs these lines by affording its employees a workplace in which they can eat, socialize, recreate, errand-run, and yes, work.  Among some of Google’s offering, according to Conley, are the following:

• A college campus type workplace, with a fun name, “Googleplex”;
• Gatherings of professionals called “un-conferences”, where large groups of employees meet but the events are unscripted;
• Free talks, including one by a magician;
• Free bikes to get from one location to another;
• Complimentary food and beverages to employees and guests, including family members, during weekdays AND weekends.  Google offers a wide array of food choices, including a cafeteria that serves vegan food, a  smoothie bar, and free mini-kitchen use;
• Ability for employees to bring their children (to visit, but not to stay) and dogs to work (to stay);
• Complimentary gym/exercise equipment use;
• Laundry and dry cleaning services, and washers/dryers located in the basements of select buildings;
• Field hockey games twice a week on “campus”;
• Piano, pinball, video arcade games, foosball, and snack stands;
• Massage services;
• Free shuttle bus (with WiFi, so that employees can work on their commute) to and from certain lower-cost neighborhoods; and
• An herb and tomato garden growing in the main outdoor area.

Is this YOUR answer to work and family balance– blend and blur? Does this purposeful blurring and integrating of work and family by Google seem more palatable than the work and family juggle you experience? We would love to hear your thoughts.

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