September 2 , 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
Rich Man's Burden
“FOR many American professionals, the Labor Day holiday yesterday probably wasn’t as relaxing as they had hoped. They didn’t go into the office, but they were still working. As much as they may truly have wanted to focus on time with their children, their spouses or their friends, they were unable to turn off their BlackBerrys, their laptops and their work-oriented brains. Americans working on holidays is not a new phenomenon: we have long been an industrious folk. A hundred years ago the German sociologist Max Weber described what he called the Protestant ethic. This was a religious imperative to work hard, spend little and find a calling in order to achieve spiritual assurance that one is among the saved.”
Gov. Mom
A New Twist in the Long-Running Debate on Mothers
“When Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska was introduced as a vice-presidential pick, she was presented as a magnet for female voters, the epitome of everymom appeal. But since then, as mothers across the country supervise the season’s final water fights and pack book bags, some have voiced the kind of doubts that few male pundits have dared raise on television. With five children, including an infant with Down syndrome and, as the country learned Monday, a pregnant 17-year-old, Ms. Palin has set off a fierce argument among women about whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try. It’s the Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition. But this time the battle lines are drawn inside out, with social conservatives, usually staunch advocates for stay-at-home motherhood, mostly defending her, while some others, including plenty of working mothers, worry that she is taking on too much.”
Savvy businesses friendly to families
“Your favorite business can double the return on a financial investment, even in the midst of today's sluggish stock market and uncertain economy. No, this is not some risky speculation strategy or shady pyramid scheme. Instead, research indicates that companies can enjoy significant financial gain by developing family-friendly workplace policies for employees [. . .] Surveys conducted at Boston College reveal that just 18 percent of companies offering flexible work arrangements perceive the financial costs as outweighing the benefits. In fact, 65 to 76 percent of managers (depending on the question) report that flexible work schedules have a positive or very positive impact on productivity and quality of work while having a positive effect on employee retention. Those same managers reported no change in their own workload.”
Helping with a healthy balance
“Flexible maternity and paternity leave and reduced work schedules for new mothers returning to work can help employers retain employees who seek to balance career and family, experts said. “That's a key point in decisions that people make when determining ... an employer," said Daniel Bonsick, assistant vice president of human resources for Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton. While the programs offered by employers range dramatically, the 1993 U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act provides 12 weeks of unpaid employee leave for various reasons, including the birth and care of a newborn child and adoption of a child. According to the U.S. Department of Labor Employment Standards Administration, a business must have at least 50 employees for the act to be enforced.”
The Workplace Can Be a Fun Place
“Maybe it's the people doing yoga in a conference room during the work day, or the workers playing board games in another. Come to the Motley Fool offices in Alexandria, Virginia, and you'll notice immediately the work environment is unusual. The media company, best known for its online financial Web site, encourages staff to take frequent breaks, whether to play ping-pong or video games, shoot hoops, or get a massage. The company also gives workers unlimited paid sick days, as well as unlimited paid vacation days, provided they clear it with their managers. The company deters abuse of those policies by doing performance reviews three times a year. In the firm's Hawaiian-themed meeting area, CEO Tom Gardner explains that all of this goofing off is part of a well-thought-out business strategy to reduce stress, boost productivity, and keep turnover to next to nothing.”
Working at home: Not exactly paradise
“Summertime, and the workin's not so easy. Like millions of other workers, I no longer go to an office. I'm one of an estimated 12 million Americans who ``telecommute'' more than eight hours a week, according to Gartner Dataquest, a technology- research firm. Gartner predicts that more than 25 percent of the U.S. labor force will work from home at least part time by next year, a trend at least partially fueled by rising gasoline prices.”
Hey, Big Number, Make Room for the Rest of Us
“For 75 years, the gross domestic product has been the premier means of measuring America’s economic vitality. It is a celebrity among statistics, a giant calculator strutting about adding up every bit of paid activity in the 50 states. The annual sum, the famous $14 trillion economy, marks the United States as the world’s most prosperous nation — measured in cash. In the absence of any statistic of comparable cachet, however, the G.D.P. is regularly asked to do more than it was designed to do. It measures wealth just fine, but as a stand-in gauge for the nation’s overall well-being, this supernumber is less than perfect. Or, as Robert F. Kennedy put it 40 years ago, the G.D.P. “measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.””
International Report Card on Parenting Policies: U.S. Gets a 'Gentleman's C'
“When it comes to giving fathers and mothers equal access to time off from work to care for new babies, the United States gets a "gentleman's C," ranking in the middle of 21 wealthy countries, according to a Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) report presented to the Council on Contemporary Families in time for Labor Day. But when it comes to the amount of time parents are entitled to take and the provision of subsidies that make it affordable for workers to take the time to which they are entitled, the United States lags far behind most countries with comparable levels of income. In "Parental Leave Policies in 21 Countries: Assessing Generosity and Gender Equality," the CEPR researchers found that the U.S. and Australia were the only high-income countries to offer no paid parental leave.”
Blogs
Does Sarah Palin Have the Ultimate Juggle
“Few politicians have so conspicuous a juggle as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the vice-presidential choice of Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate. A 44-year-old working mother of five children, Ms. Palin has been in an unremitting spotlight since her surprise addition to the Republican ticket on Friday. As promised, we’re taking a look at her stance on work-and-family issues and how they’ve played out in her own life.”
Work-Life Balance: It's the Law!
“Love this story coming out of Victoria, Australia. Starting today, employers have to make sure they do not “unreasonably refuse” to accommodate an employee’s need to work in a non-traditional way to fulfill their personal responsibilities to their families. Although we’d like to see the law extend to anyone, whether or not they have family responsbilities, we’ll comment on things as they stand today. As the last line in the article says, “[w]ork-life balance is a frequently used but not always honoured catch-phrase. From Monday that catch-phrase will be given teeth.” While we applaud this news, we don’t believe that it’s a magic bullet. It’s one thing to enforce better treatment of employees. It’s another to give those same employers the tools they need to live up to the change.”
The Comeback Mom
“May of us have heard about The Comeback Kid. But what about The Comeback Mom? Emma Gilbey Keller, a journalist, staged her own comeback after staying home to take care of two girls, now six and 11. She’s now written a book, The Comeback: Seven Stories Of Women Who Went From Career to Family and Back Again (Bloomsbury). It chronicles the professional lives of women in fields including medicine, law, and design who spent time on the on- and off-ramps. Keller’s book will hit newsstands in early September, and it is getting a lot of media buzz because, frankly, Keller is part of media royalty—she is married to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. But before you roll your eyes, you should know that Keller is a serious journalist, too. She wrote Lady: The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela, before she had a family. I recently had a chance to interview Keller, and she was frank, honest, and even self-deprecating about her own efforts to put her career back on track.”
When Choosing Which Flex-Time Alternatives to Offer, Compare the Benefits
“Employers who may be considering offering flexible work arrangements to employees should do their homework before selecting which type of program (or programs) to offer. We’ve previously discussed the various types of flex-time options. But once you know what’s out there, you should be sure you also understand how each option may or may not maximize your return on investment. Look to the benefits of each type to determine whether those are results that satisfy some need in your organization. Although each one provides benefits in one form or another, they simply may not be benefits from where you’re standing.”
Global News
Let's help parents help their babies
“The more time parents spend with their children, the more they learn how to be better parents. The repeated interactions parents have with their children help them to become better at responding to their baby's needs and identifying problems. When parents are in prolonged employment during their children's early years of life, the opportunities to learn these parenting skills can be affected. We need to find better ways to allow parents to stay at home during the first year of their child's life, to provide these continuous one-on-one interactions that infants need with their parents for healthy brain development.”
Back in business
“No one really talks about working life after full-time motherhood. It is just assumed that women might eventually drift into badly paid part-time work - if they can land a job at all. But there are growing signs that women are unhappy with this limp status quo and are instead seeking second-chance careers where they can actually use their skills. In America the trend already has a name: relaunching. Last year a guide to being a "woman returner" came out called Back on the Career Track, by Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir, two mothers who had six-year career breaks before going back into investment banking and head-hunting. And last month, New York-based novelist Meg Wolitzer, 49 - who has been described as the female Philip Roth - took on the subject. The Ten Year Nap is an addictive examination of the minutiae of the lives of four women friends who find themselves at odds over what to do after 10 years out of the workplace.”
Across France, Pessimism Clouds a Time for Renewal
“The dead city is slowly awakening, but there is still an element of dread in the air. The grand return from the summer holidays — la rentrée — is preoccupying France, but anxiety abounds about what exactly is being re-entered. La rentrée is a new beginning, as if the new school year provides new chances for everyone here to reform, renew, replenish and re-engage. People make resolutions, as at New Year’s, to be thinner, faster, smarter, better [. . .]The French are like “eternal children who return to school,” said Alix Girod de l’Ain, a columnist at Elle magazine. “There is a sacralization of vacation,” since nearly everyone takes August off, with la rentrée as “an important moment because we officially change our rhythm and enter a new cycle.””
How does Swedish parental leave work?
“State-sponsored parental leave (‘föräldraledighet’) is arguably more generous in Sweden than anywhere else. Parents are entitled to a total of 480 days paid leave per child, with both mothers and fathers entitled and encouraged to share the leave. The leave can be taken at any time until the child reaches the age of seven. So far, so good, but the maze of rules surrounding the benefits are anything but user-friendly. Parental benefits are paid out by the state, through the Swedish Social Insurance Administration (‘Försäkringskassan’). In line with the Swedish state’s strict policy of promoting sexual equality, mothers and fathers are expected to share the 480 days equally.”