June 27, 2008.
The Workplace Flexibility 2010 News Roundup is a compilation of the latest news articles, reports and other materials related to workplace flexibility. The News Roundup appears twice-weekly. If you have questions about any of the items, please contact WF2010@law.georgetown.edu.
Articles
The Imbalance of Life/Work Balance
Working Alone in a Group
Lisa Belkin
• New York Times • June 26, 2008“One reason I write from home is that I work best at my own pace and on my own terms. I am typical of the stream of workers who have left traditional offices for home in the last decade, causing a jump in the number of single-person businesses, to 20.4 million in 2005 from 16.4 million in 2000, according to the most recent census. (Not to mention the rising number of people who work from home, especially as telecommuting grows in direct proportion with the increase in gas prices.)”
Are Two Heads Better Than One?
“Does job sharing really work? With enough planning it can be extremely effective. Sharon Newall is fairly typical of most people who land a job-sharing role. She is a company insider and so is her job-share partner Narelle Hunt. Although job sharing has been entrenched in the corporate vernacular for a decade or more, advertised roles are still few and far between. Job-share positions are most likely to be created from within a company, to meet the needs of existing staff members. As senior business relationship managers with AMP Corporate Superannuation, Newall and Hunt are responsible for maintaining and growing $340 million of assets under management.”
How Large Law Firms Motivate: A Better Chance to Advance, Flexible Schedules
“Large law firms are re-evaluating how they hire and retain top performers. A white paper by Robert Half Legal says law firm managers are realizing they need to do more to retain lawyers in an increasingly competitive environment. Lawyers responding to a survey by the legal consulting firm said the most effective incentives for retaining good workers are advancement opportunities (92 percent), flexible work schedules (82 percent), career development or training (81 percent), mentoring or leadership training (74 percent), stock options or other equity bonuses (57 percent), noncash recognition (57 percent) and spot bonuses (54 percent), according to a press release.”
Women's Summit Panel Focuses on Flex-Time, Staffing
“The only way the stigma surrounding female attorneys on flex-time schedules will disappear is if firm partners buy in and the attorneys themselves are flexible, according to Philadelphia-area law firm leaders…For Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, supporting flex-time scheduling means making sure the partners are supporting those attorneys who take advantage of the program.”
Trial four-day work week announced
“Sudbury Town Manager Maureen Valente announced that, in the interest of reducing costs/energy used by the town and town employees, many offices will be following a pilot program for a four-day compressed workweek this summer. The trial program will begin Monday, July 14. Offices in the Town Hall, Flynn Building and the DPW office building will be closed on six Fridays in July and August. Employees will work the same number of hours per week, but will work Monday through Thursday instead of Monday through Friday.”
The American Workplace is Stuck in the 50s
Sarah Sattelmeyer and Margy Waller
• Alternet • June 25, 2008“It's not your grandfather's labor market. What changed? A generation ago, a typical American household consisted of a family with two parents: a working father, who often earned enough to support the entire family, and a stay-at-home mother. Today, however, most households with children need the incomes from two jobs to make ends meet. One of the most significant trends over the past 50 years has been the movement of women, especially mothers, into the paid labor force. Now that most women have entered the workforce, a two-parent, middle-income family has a husband working full-time and a wife working approximately three-quarters of full-time.”
Needing a place to stay
“School serves as a de facto day-care center for many working parents. But now that the school year is over and summer has begun, parents are under strain to care for their children and stay on top of their jobs. To maintain the juggling act, parents have to hope their employers understand if they arrive a few minutes late, take longer-than-usual lunch breaks or ask to leave early on a Friday afternoon. Employers increasingly are complying.”
Job Stressing You Out? You're Not Alone
"The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which examined a host of studies on the phenomenon, found one-fourth of employees view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives; three-fourths of employees believe the worker has more on-the-job stress than a generation ago, and problems at work are more strongly associated with health complaints than any other life stressor."
Paid leave helps Cirque win a Work/Life Award
“During the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, Cirque Corp.'s employees do not have to come into work. All 33 are considered on paid holiday - not to be confused with the additional six weeks of paid vacation that they can receive per year. It was this convenience, coupled with family-oriented insurance plans, flexible work schedules and a bonus plan that pays up to 15 percent on top of high base salaries, that won Cirque, a developer of touch-input software and equipment, a top spot in the Department of Workforce Services' 2008 Work/Life Awards for employers with 50 or fewer employees.”
High Court to Take Up Pregnancy Leave Case
“Noreen Hulteen gave birth to a daughter, Rachael, in 1968, when she was 34. While on maternity leave, she required surgery and wound up missing 240 days of work. Hulteen, 74, contends that her employer, Pacific Bell -- now AT&T -- did not properly weigh her pregnancy leave into her retirement and other benefits. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the issue in a case that could affect thousands of women who are near or at retirement age.”
Blogs
Friday's Link: The Illustrated Work-Life
“I have been spending some time over at Ribbon Farm, the blog of Venkatesh Rao, who brings fresh insights to the discussion on work-life balance through whimsical and thoughtful drawings like the one above. The drawing comes fairly close to what my blurry work-life looks like most weeks, though I still aim for at least a day or two a week that look like the Sunday on Mr. Rao’s “then” drawing (though not necessarily on a weekend).”
Busting the Balance Myth
“One of the ubiquitous polls on how Americans live revealed that a mere 2 percent of us believe that our lives are in balance. The problem is not so much that they aren't, but that we think they should be. The belief that there's a way to organize our time so that everything stays in balance can lead to the conclusion that there's something desperately wrong with our unbalanced ways. Perhaps a more livable truth is that we're jugglers rather than tightrope artists. From that perspective, we can accept that some things will always be up in the air.”
Should Workers Get Paid for BlackBerry Time?
“I do a mix of mindless and substantive work on my device — from keeping up-to-date on emails and news to writing planning memos and blog posts. And sometimes, all that checking leads to the need to log on to do more work at night, but I’ve only ocassionaly thought about being paid for the time I spend doing this. I’ve viewed it as a tradeoff for a more flexible schedule. I’m salaried, though. I think if I were hourly, I’d want to be paid for that time.”
Young Lawyers Hope for a Better Balance
“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.””
The Basics of Fatherhood
“Dr. Hartwell-Walker notes there is little agreement about what makes an ideal father, but there are some universal qualities that seem to matter most, including: Be there. In study after study, kids consistently say they would like to have more time with their dads. Regardless of whether a dad shares a home with the children and their mother, the kids need dad time. Working together on a chore or simply hanging out can be as meaningful as attending events or having adventures. Kids want to know their fathers. Just as important, they want their fathers to know them.”
10 Family Friendly Companies
“Everyone knows large corporations are bad. They hold monopolies on society and use overpaid lobbyists to encroach on our civil liberties. But how can you stay mad when they offer such family friendly work environments to their minions, I mean employees. Check out these 10 companies that are paving the way for you to put your family first and leave you looking like super mom.”
Bush Says New Moms and Their Babies Cost
“What's even worse about Bush's position is that he, as the father of daughters, is telling all the rest of the fathers in the country that their daughters who work for him don't deserve a few weeks off with their new babies where they don't have to worry about how they're going to pay for the Pampers.”
Reports and Surveys
i4cp Survey Finds Most Employers Have No Plan to Stem Baby Boomer Brain Drain
“If you plan to ease into retirement rather than land with a "Here's your gold watch" thump, don't count on your company to be of much assistance, suggests a recent study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp). The study found that 77% of responding organizations do not currently have a phased retirement program in place. As its name implies, "phased retirement" allows an employee who is approaching retirement to continue employment with a reduced workload.”
Global News
Breaking free: In pursuit of setting a work-life balance
“The grizzled workaholic who once haunted darkened offices across the land is steadily going the way of other workplace dinosaurs - the typewriter, the Christmas bonus, the lecherous boss. Statistics suggest that aging workaholics and their central faith, the Protestant work ethic, are fast losing office space to a new breed committed to the doctrine of work-life balance.”