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Featured Guest Blogger November 16th, 2009

Carol Bryce-Buchanan is the Director of Development for the Families and Work Institute. She served as moderator for the employer panel at the Career Relaunch Forum. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

On October 29th, I represented the Families and Work Institute at the Career Relaunch Forum at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. I am a relauncher myself, having returned to work after a 14 year hiatus raising my children and organizing community programs, so the Forum was of particular interest to me. I wish these services had been available 11 years ago when I began my search to return to the workplace!

With more men than women having lost their jobs in the recession and with the increasing alignment of attitudes and behavior between young men and women concerning child care, ambition, and home chores (see the Families and Work Institute publications Times are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and at Home and The Impact of the Recession on Employers), women who have taken career breaks are needing or wanting to return to work.

The Career Relaunch Forum was a one-day return to work conference educating mid-career professionals on career break about the return to work process, and bringing them together with employers interested in meeting them. The goal of the Forum was to educate the participants on the realities of their re-entry to the workforce and to give them confidence on the opportunities in front of them.

I moderated the panel entitled Employers Discuss How Relaunchers Should Approach Today’s Job Market with Allison O’Kelly, CEO of Mom Corps (specializing in the “flexible” exployment market); Trish Pescatore, US Recruiting Director for Accenture; Priya Trauber, Director of Diversity for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and Elana Weinstein, Learning and Development Professional with Bloomberg, Inc.

Issues addressed by the panelists included:

• What the job market is going to be like in their industry over the next 12-18 months;
• What the driving forces for company diversity initiatives are and how the economy will affect those efforts;
• Opportunities available at each company that are especially suitable for relaunchers; and
• The panelists’ advice on the two or three things relaunchers must do and on mistakes they should avoid.

Participants were high-caliber professionals with significant experience prior to leaving the traditional workplace. One hundred percent of participants had an undergraduate degree and approximately 80% had graduate degrees. More than half of the participants are looking to return to the workforce or make their transition within the next six months. Their backgrounds are varied with the majority in the following categories: financial services, management consulting, consumer products, advertising, or PR.

The Forum is designed to offer guidance on defining next career stages; help participants determine skills, training and knowledge necessary to re-enter; learn more about how the workplace has changed since they left; and facilitate networking with peers and potential employers. Interestingly, 10% of the participants were men.

The participants heard some heartening stories about successful relaunches including that of a woman who had been out of the traditional workplace for 21 years and was now rising in the ranks at Goldman Sachs. Allison O’Kelley emphasized the importance of looking at small and medium sized companies if you are searching for flexible work options, as they are more likely to offer them. Priya Trauber said that Morgan Stanley Smith Barney was eager to train relaunchers to enter their sales force, but that relaunchers shouldn’t initially expect to work part-time in corporate settings. Bentley University and MIT offer educational programs for would-be relaunchers. The group brain-storming sessions on skill-based future work options were very effective and gave participants and injection of optimism and new ideas.

Fox News broadcast from the event and Examiner.com ran a story by Amy Impellizzeri on the Relaunch Forum.

Co-founders of iRelaunch, Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin, introduced participants to The 7 Steps to Relaunch Success, Dr. Pamela Stone from Hunter College moderated a panel of successful relaunchers who told their stories and the afternoon breakout sessions covered “Assessing Your Career Options, and “Networking and Marketing Yourself.”

For more information on future iRelaunch events and Carol and Vivian’s book Back on the Career Track, you can go to www.irelaunch.com. And if you are a relauncher and are interested in sharing your story, please comment below.

• Leave , Mothers and Fathers , Scheduling , Workplace
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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.

• Leave , Organizations , Overwork , Research , Scheduling , Workplace
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Featured Guest Blogger November 2nd, 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.

We connect with millions of people across the globe, yet we have trouble sitting down to share a meal with those we love. We’re often so busy being “productive” that we wind up racing right past the important moments in life.

I’m thinking about time because I just wrote one of my “Balancing Acts” columns in the Globe on the declining health of the American worker. Our experience of time is a key to understanding how we can gain a better quality of life, with deeper human connections.

The new report by the Families and Work Institute shows that too many of us are fat, sick, sleepless and inactive. Just 28 percent of U.S. workers say their health is excellent, down from 34 percent six years ago. Workers in poor health are less likely to be loyal, engaged and satisfied with their jobs, the findings show.

Why are we so unhealthy? Certainly, many of us don’t exercise or eat right, and at the heart of these poor habits is often a time drought. About 60 percent feel they don’t have time for themselves, and an equal number report a lack of time for a partner or spouse. Chillingly, 75 percent report not having enough time with their children.

Moreover, those who most often don’t have enough time for the important people in their lives report poorer health – more depression, higher stress, more minor health problems. Nearly half of people who often or very often don’t have time for family and friends show signs of depression, compared with a third of those who sometimes feel this kind of time famine.

Vacations boost health, too. People with paid vacation time are less depressed and stressed than those without any paid holidays. The longer the vacation taken, the more likely a worker is to show few minor health problems. Still, 40 percent of workers don’t take all their vacation time, and the longest vacation taken on average in 2008 was nine days.

I believe that as a result of the mechanization of the Industrial and Digital Ages, we now pattern ourselves after our machinery. We seem to believe that we can be 24/7 beings, who interact in snippets and tweets, measuring our worth quantitatively. This collective adoration of the machine changes our experience of time, and squeezes the serendipity, mystery, and poetry out of our lives. And it just might be killing us, too.

• Overwork , Scheduling , Spillover , Workplace
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Featured Guest Blogger October 28th, 2009

Andrew Kang is a Graduate Policy Assistant at the Sloan Work and Family Research Network. This is a continuation of PART I: The Current Health Care System in America and PART II: The American Health Care System and Families.

How Health Care Costs Affect Businesses:

Since most people get their health insurance through their jobs, employers are saddled with most of the burden of rising health care costs and insurance premiums. As employees’ shares of the cost of insurance increase, it is easy to ignore the financial expenses employers are absorbing on their employees’ behalf.

• Health insurance expenses are the fastest growing cost components for employers.
• In 2008, employer health insurance premiums increased by 5%, twice the rate of inflation.
• Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have been rising four times faster than workers’ earnings since 1999.
• This increase places corresponding downward pressure on salary increases, new hiring, and capital investment.
• For small businesses, health insurance premiums have increased 12% annually. Rapidly rising health insurance premiums are the main reason cited by small firms for not offering coverage.
• Surging health care costs slow the rate of job growth, contributing to a recessionary economy) and making it more expensive for companies to add new workers.
• The high cost of health care for businesses also suppresses wage growth for current workers by increasing total compensation costs.
• As health care costs rise as a percentage of operations expenses, corporate operating margins are reduced, which limits the capacity of companies to grow through investment in research, plant and equipment.
• High medical insurance costs place American firms at a disadvantage in world markets where they compete against companies with much lower health care costs in the nations where they operate.

Health Care For Profit

In America, health care is not considered a right, but a privilege to be earned. And as a privilege, a lot of money is made by providing it.

• In 2007, health-related companies in the Fortune 1000 earned nearly $71 billion.
• The medical establishment (hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, medical device manufacturers, etc.) spend nearly $6 billion per year on advertising.
• Pharmaceuticals and medical equipment ranked third and fourth, respectively, in terms of profits as a share of revenue.
• From 2000-2007, the annual profits of America’s top 15 health-insurance companies increased from $3.5 billion to $15 billion.
• The 50 largest nonprofit hospitals or hospital systems made a combined net income (profit) of $4.27 billion in 2006, nearly eight times more than five years earlier.

Facts About Medical Malpractice:

Much has been made of the effect of medical malpractice jury awards, settlements, and rising premiums on the cost and quality of health care. However, there is little evidence establishing conclusive links. Meanwhile, medical malpractice premiums continue to increase at a rate that puts economic pressure on practitioners. The question is, does this influence outcomes?

• A new Dartmouth study suggests that medical malpractice jury awards and settlements are not responsible for raising insurance premiums or health care costs.
• The GAO recently found that access to care was generally not impacted by increasing cost of medical malpractice lawsuits.
• The GAO concluded that liability laws have positive effects on doctors’ behavior, and are frequently the only means by which the consumer can hold the medical establishment accountable.
• The Congressional Budget Office estimated that malpractice costs account for less than 2% of the national health spending.
• There is little research to support anecdotal reports that rising malpractice costs contribute to defensive medicine creating barriers to care and reduced quality of service.

With so much information circulating about heath care in America, it’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. It’s difficult to navigate these thick woods of interested party rhetoric to gain a true understanding of the system, its strengths and its weaknesses, but only then can we make a proper evaluation of the best possible changes.

The information contained in this blog was obtained from the following sources:

Beider, P. & Hagen, S. (2004). Limiting tort liability for medical malpractice. Retrieved from the Congressional Budget Office web site: http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=4968&type=0

Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2007). Health care costs, a primer: Key information on health care costs and their impacts. Retrieved from: http://www.kff.org/insurance/upload/7670.pdf

Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2008). Employee health benefits: 2008 annual survey. Retrieved from: http://www.kff.org/insurance/7672/index.cfm.

Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, (2005). Background brief: Medical malpractice policy. Retrieved from: http:/www.kaiseredu.org/topics_im.asp?id+226&imID+1&parented+59

National Coalition on Health Care. (2009). Facts about health care: Economic costs fact sheets. Retrieved from: http://www.nchc.org/facts/economic.shtml

Rowland, D. & Hoffman, C. (2009). Health care and the middle class: More costs and less coverage. Retrieved from he Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation web site: http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/7951.pdf

• Policy , Publications , Research , Uncategorized , Workplace
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Featured Guest Blogger October 26th, 2009

Cindy Krischer Goodman writes a weekly column called “The Balancing Act” that appears in The Miami Herald and is distributed to more than 40 other newspapers on the McClatchy Newswire. Her column explores the conflicting demands of balancing a career and personal life. She also is a contributor to MomsMiami.com, writes a blog called The Work/Life Balancing Act and maintains a website, TheWorkLifeBalancingAct.com. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

Most of us moms and dads have known intuitively that getting the flexibility we need at work makes us loyal to our employers. Let us leave early on Fridays and we’ll work even harder the rest of the week. Now a new report shows that businesses benefit financially from helping their employees achieve work-life balance.

New research by Morgan Redwood, an expert in talent development, reveals that businesses that help staff achieve a good work-life balance enjoyed net earnings per employee of 23 percent more per year than the average for those who don’t. The Morgan Redwood researchers, who surveyed 100 businesses in the United Kingdom, believe this boost in the bottom line is because better work-life balance reduces absenteeism, improves well-being, and increases productivity.

Janice Haddon, managing director of Morgan Redwood, says when companies weigh their management options, they now will have some real numbers to use to make their decisions. She calls the ability to put an actual value on work/life balance “a breakthrough moment,” adding, “Work/life balance is not a “nice to have” when we’re in a boom time. It can have a fundamental impact on the corporate performance at all times.”

What’s more, the report found that in high-performing companies, there was a recognition that the success of the business depended on the success of workers. If a manager goes out of his way to accommodate an employee, the employee will redouble their work efforts later on, the Morgan Redwood study shows.

Will employers embrace these findings? Will they realize that women and men are struggling to manage heavier workloads and negotiate family schedules and responsibilities?

This week, another interesting report surfaced, a nationwide U.S. survey released in conjunction with research on status of women by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress. The survey shows that men and women are concerned about what’s happening to families when everybody’s at work. Both genders said that they would like more help with these challenges. The recession seems to have pushed the challenges to new levels, with some parents working two part time jobs to make ends meet.

The report’s contributors also suggest nothing will change until men push for more family-friendly workplace policies that will benefit both genders. If men aren’t emboldened by their own struggles to balance work and family, there’s certainly some new ammunition in their arsenal—the bottom line.

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Featured Guest Blogger October 21st, 2009

Andrew Kang is a Graduate Policy Assistant at the Sloan Work and Family Research Network. This is a continuation of last week’s entry, PART I: The Current Health Care System in America.

Ultimately, the high cost of health care is borne by families, both working and nonworking. Rising costs and inefficiencies are passed on to the consumer.

Health insurance for workers:

• Nearly three out of four middle-income families are insured through their employers – coverage that is jeopardized by rising unemployment during the recession.
• The recession will cause an estimated 7 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage.  If unemployment rises to 10% (as many predict), an additional 6 million will lose their health insurance.
• The annual health insurance premium for a family of four is $12,700 per family, an increase of 78% since 2001.
• Health insurance premiums increased 119%, with the employees share increasing 117%, between 1999 and 2008, compared to cumulative inflation of 44% and wage growth of 29% during the same period.

What about uninsured workers?

• Over 8 in 10 uninsured people come from working families.
• On average, the uninsured are 9-10 times more likely to forego medical care because of cost and twice as likely to have medical debt.
• Among all personal bankruptcy filings, the average medical debt was $12,000.  Sixty-eight percent of those people had medical insurance, and 50% of all personal bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses.
• From January to March 2009, 44.9 million persons of all ages (14.9%) were uninsured at the time of interview, 57.7 million (19.2%) had been uninsured for at least part of the year prior to interview, and 32.1 million (10.7%) had been uninsured for more than a year at the time of interview.
• Thirty-six percent of families living below the poverty line are uninsured.  Thirty-four percent of Hispanic Americans, 21% of Black Americans, and 13% of White Americans are uninsured.
• Eleven million uninsured people come from the middle class, accounting for a quarter of the nation’s non-elderly uninsured.

Facts about the quality of care we receive:

• Although nearly $2.4 trillion per year is spent on medical care, many people receive less care than they need, more care than they need, or the wrong kind of care.
• Patients fail to receive needed services 46% of the time.
• Patients received services they did not need 11% of the time.
• Patients received recommended preventative care and screenings 49% of the time.

• Total national costs of preventable adverse medical events are estimated to be $35 billion per year.
• There are over 250,000 hospital-acquired pneumonia cases and 23,000 related deaths every year.
• One third of US patients reported a medical, medication or laboratory error in the past two years.

Next week:  PART III: Health Care and American Businesses

The information contained in this blog was obtained from the following sources:

Cohen, R., & Martinez, M., (2009). Health insurance coverage: Early release of estimates from the national health interview survey, January - March 2009.  Retrieved from the Center for Disease Control web site: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/insur200909.htm

Goldman, D., & McGlynn, E. (2005).  U.S. health care facts about cost, access, and quality. Retrieved from the RAND corporation web site: http://www.rand.org/pubs/corporate_pubs/2005/RAND_CP484.1.pdf

Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (2008).  Employee health benefits: 2008 annual survey, September 2008. Retrived from: http://www.kff.org/insurance/7672/index.cfm.

Himmelstein, D. U., Warren, E., Thorne, D. and Woolhandler, S. J. (2008). Illness and injury as contributors to bankruptcy. Retrieved from: http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.w5.63/DC1

McGlynn, E., Asch, S., Adams, J., Keesey, J., Hicks, J., DeCristofaro, A., & Kerr, E. (2003).  The quality of health care delivered to adults in the United States.  New England Journal of  Medicine, 348(26), 2681-2683.

National Center for Health Statistics. (2007).  Health, United States, 2007: with chartbook on trends in the health of Americans, 2007.  Retrieved from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services web site: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus07.pdf

Rowland, D., & Hoffman, C., (2005). The impact of health insurance coverage on health disparities in the United States: Human development report. Retrieved from the United Nations Development Programme web site:  http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2005/papers/hdr2005_rowland_diane_and_catherine_hoffman_34.pdf

Rowland, D., & Hoffman, C. (2009).  Health care and the middle class: More costs and less coverage.  Retrieved from The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation web site: http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/7951.pdf

Next week:  PART III: How the American Health Care System Affects American Businesses

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Featured Guest Blogger October 19th, 2009

Brad Harrington is Executive Director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family and a research professor in the Carroll School of Management. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

This week you will likely hear quite a bit in the media about a report being published by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress called A Woman’s Nation. The goal of this undertaking has been to provide an in-depth look at the status of women in America from a number of different perspectives and across a wide range of sectors - healthcare, higher education, law, public service, policy, etc. It replicates a report that was done by Eleanor Roosevelt in the early 1960’s at the request of President Kennedy (Ms. Shriver’s late uncle.) Look for a Time cover story and extensive coverage on this week’s “Meet the Press”, “NBC Nightly News”, and “The Today Show” (for those of you in the United States) regarding the report and its findings. As part of the report, I was pleased to be the lead author, along with Professor Jamie Ladge of Northeastern University, of the chapter on women in business. We titled our piece “Got Talent? It isn’t Hard to Find” for a very simple reason. Present recession aside, we have heard for so long about the war for talent and the tremendous emphasis leading HR departments put on talent management. I often find these discussions ironic in light of the fact that there are so many talented individuals right under our noses (i.e., women) who are either lost to an organization (i.e., they leave their present employer or opt out altogether) or underutilized due to outmoded management thinking. In our chapter, we lay out six key points, none of which will be surprising to you who are so close to these issues:

• The case for women in business is a talent management one, pure and simple. For a knowledge-based economy like ours, the numbers are truly staggering. Fifty-seven percent of all college degrees are awarded to women each year. Yet many organizations are still reluctant to make even minimal adjustments to ensure they are creating jobs that fit the needs of their “most valuable resource.” If women made up 10 or even 20% of new college graduates, one could argue that organizations don’t have to adjust to retain top talent. But modifying HR practices for 57% of new grads isn’t an accommodation, it’s common sense.
• We have made progress on gender equity on many work fronts, but when it comes to home life women with children still contribute twice the number of hours to dependent care and domestic tasks as men do. That’s reality. So while men have increased their commitment to care giving, the “second shift” that we discussed 20 years ago is still alive and well.
• In spite of the progress women have made in business, they are at the helm of only 3% of the Fortune 1000 companies. This means that women must continue to operate in organizational cultures that are designed by and for men. This creates a myriad of challenges for women who need to adapt to male dominated organizations and ground rules and adopt male oriented ways of operating in order to succeed. Much recent research suggests that women’s ways of leading is at least as effective as more male-oriented approaches, but unfortunately the dominant culture can easily discount new and different forms of leadership as being inappropriate simply because it does not fit pre-conceived stereotypes of how leaders should behave.
• The highest impact actions that employers can take to help women thrive in business cost almost nothing. These include letting go of outdated mental models that suggest there is only one way to work, there is only one place to work, that a 40+ hour work week is the only model for contributing, and a standardized, rigid career path for all is a desirable norm. Rather, we should aim for highly flexible career models that can be customized to maximize the contributions of all employees, not a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Those companies that do offer innovative and flexible approaches to work too often limit their offerings to professional and managerial staff. The case for innovation and flexibility are at least as appropriate for hourly workers who often face greater work-life challenges than salaried workers do. And in many industries, retaining this talent base is every bit as important. Hourly workers in a wide variety of businesses (think retailing, banking, restaurants, hotels, etc.) are the critical means for delivering an organization’s value proposition and provide the company’s face to the customer.
• Finally, the United States federal government must take a more active role in developing and encouraging family friendly policies. FMLA, our great legislative triumph in the work family arena over the last 20 years, places the U.S. as one of only four industrialized countries in the world that does not by law offer paid maternity leave. Can we seriously view ourselves as world leaders in gender equality when this is the only mandated support we provide to working people with acute dependent care issues?

Not much is new to your ears here, I’m sure. But now is the time for the business community to stop debating and begin embracing the world as it really is today. The subtitle of A Women’s Nation is “This Changes Everything.” And it’s about time that it did.

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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.

• Organizations , Workplace
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Featured Guest Blogger October 5th, 2009

Juliet Bourke is a partner at Aequus Partners. She works with leading organizations to develop and implement organizational change strategies to promote equity and diversity, deliver training programs, and conduct workplace investigations and mediations. Juliet Bourke is also a part-time chairperson with the Government and Related Employees Appeals Tribunal, in which capacity she conciliates and determines workplace disputes. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

I recently experienced the visceral alienation of those who fall outside the “work/family” paradigm and it brought me up short. Of course I have written about a “work/life” approach–in an effort to be inclusive–but if I am honest I probably had more of my heart in the “work/family” camp.

My wake-up call came about this way:

Last month, I was commissioned to write an on-line opinion (for a national news service) about the recently introduced “right to request flexibility” (“r2r”) laws in Australia.  Under this law, from January 1, 2010, eligible employees will have the right to request of their employers access to a flexible work arrangement.  The legislation also provides that an employer must respond in writing in 21 days and that a request can only be refused on “reasonable business grounds.”

I’m a big fan of the r2r, but I titled my opinion “Looking past a golden opportunity” to highlight some research we had conducted that found that  3 months out from the start date of the r2r, the majority of employees and managers are unlikely to be aware of their new rights. Given that the legislation provides a workable framework for transparent conversations about flexibility and evidence-based decision-making I see this knowledge gap as problematic. And that was the focus of my article–or so I thought.  What was picked up by the deluge of on-line comments was the unfairness of legislation which gives rights to some people (namely parents with children under school age, or children under 18 with a disability), and not others. For example:

• “It’s always the breeders who take the rights. What about special consideration for those caring for aged or infirm parents or siblings or partners? When I hear ‘family friendly practices’ I want to vomit.”
• “Those of us who choose to benefit the planet rather than selfishly pass on our own equally worthwhile genes, by remaining childfree get what? Stuff all …”

I was stunned.  I had struck a nerve, but not the one I had intended.  I had thought that readers would see the logic of a legislative starting point that was relatively narrow in nature, i.e., one that would allow employers to get used to the new regime and then lead to expanded rights over time for all carers, which is exactly what had happened in the United Kingdom.  What (some) readers saw was exclusion: working parents are in an inner circle that is deemed worthy of primary support and they are not.

It struck me that they are right.  So many of our legislative initiatives have working parents at the center, working families (e.g., those with elder care responsibilities) in the outer ring, and working “lifers” (do we even have a name for this group?) left out. This carries over into workplace policies.  We may entitle the policy “work/life”, but what we really mean is “work/family”, and what gets pride of place even in this group are “parents”.  How can we expect employees to behave in a collegiate way towards each other if our workplace practices endorse a hierarchy of “needs”?  I may have opened a can of worms here, but isn’t it time we face-up to the practical consequences of paying lip-service to the work/life agenda?

• Flexible Schedules , Policy , Publications , Workplace
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Julie Schwartz Weber September 30th, 2009

While part-time work has been a viable option for many workers attempting to balance work and family lives, it has not, generally or traditionally, been available to most law partners. In fact, historically, working part-time in the law has been seen as professional suicide. However, a new study just released by The Project for Attorney Retention, Reduced Hours, Full Success: Part-Time Partners in U.S. Law Firms, demonstrates that there is evidence that providing part-time partners options to employees can be a “win-win” for employees and firms. More specifically, this report shows that law firms can successfully implement reduced-hour programs and that part-time lawyers and their law firms will prosper because of these programs.

The premise of the report is that part-time partners are “key to the law firms’ long-term financial health” and that providing part-time partnership options affords firms the opportunity to attract and retain excellent lawyers from a larger pool of applicants, including groups that value work-life balance (e.g., mothers and Generation Yers). This report also asserts that providing part-time partnership options helps firms “save recruiting costs by hiring fewer new lawyers, retain a diverse group of lawyers, reduce attrition costs, attract new clients, and increase the satisfaction of current clients.”

Some of the key findings of the report include the following:

1. Part-time partners rarely work set schedules and their schedules are mainly driven by client needs (with many such partners regularly working more than 40 hours a week);
2. Reduced hours programs attracted and retained many partners, and in fact, many lawyers were drawn to their firms because of the possibility of reduced hours;
3. Client service is not compromised by part-time schedules, and in many cases, clients are unaware of the part-time schedule due to the responsiveness and availability of the partners;
4. Many part-time partners are financially successful at their firms, and that, in fact, part-time lawyers generate significant revenue both from their own billable hours and from the origination of new business;
5. Most part-time partners (60%) from the study reported they did not feel stigmatized because of their part-time status.

In addition to its main findings, the report also includes “Best Practices Recommendations for Law Firms,” which provides specific steps firms can take to invest in their part-time partners and thus their firm’s bottom line. Moreover, this new report includes “Recommendations for a Successful Part-Time Partnership,” drawn directly from respondents’ experiences and written for attorneys who are hoping to be successful part-time partners.

• Part-Time Work , Publications , Research , Workplace
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