Earlier this week NPR ran a three-part series on how companies are changing their business models to accomodate new work life strategies. It was interesting — though could only scratch the surface of the issues. In response to the NPR pieces, Kathie Lingle, Executive Director of the Alliance for Work-Life Progress, posted this article on Creating Workplace Flexibility: We’re All in This Together at The Huffington Post.
Hold your hats, work life friends: I have major problems with Lingle’s seemingly innocuous response. It perpetuates several work life myths that suggest major disconnect between work life advocates, like Lingle, and actual workers. Lingle draws three conclusions based on online comments to the NPR pieces:
- You can’t wish (Howard K.), wait (Keith R.), watch (Azima S.) or vomit (Decora) your way into flexibility.
- If you want change, you have to have the strength and courage to make it happen, like ST (who refused overtime and got him/herself into a much better place) or Brian C. (who is energetically working on the front lines to eliminate commutes and work days for others as well as himself throughout Atlanta) and Paula R (who put in her notice and works now as she chooses to).
- Barbara S. points out that taking time to be a parent teaches skills that are highly valuable in the workplace. Anne Crittenden said the same thing in her book If You’ve Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything.
Nice thoughts, but I think we need to be telling people the truth, not offering work life platitudes. Let’s take these individually:
First, yes, it’s true that flexibility won’t come to you — you have to be proactive. However, there is often value in watching and waiting for the right time to ask for an alternate schedule. If your company has just done a round of layoffs, it’s probably not the right time. If you have been with the company for less than two years, it’s probably not the right time. If your supervisor seems stressed and concerned about his or her own work life situation, it’s probably not the right time. You want to be in a position of security and leverage before making this kind of request — so watching and waiting are important.
Second, if you are an employee in a position to quit or refuse overtime or take another big stand, great. Most aren’t, and we shouldn’t expect vulnerable middle mangers to put their livelihoods at risk. Work life is not going to improve just because individuals take a stand; rather companies need to see the business value in changing their corporate infrastructure. Counseling people to make grand gestures just means that people lose their jobs or their chance at a raise or promotion.
Third, I really hate this insidious myth that childrearing somehow confers great corporate management skills. It’s the kind of thing we say to make parents who have taken time off feel better about that decision — but there’s no evidence that it’s true. Furthermore, it tricks us into thinking that parenting is something we should put on our resumes as a plus, when mothering is actually penalized in the workforce. (Check out this study from Stanford that indicates women who revealed they were mothers were less likely to be hired and promoted than their childless counterparts.) Furthermore, it’s offensive to people without children.
I want to support people and organizations like Kathie Lingle and the Alliance for Work-Life Progress, but consistently I read articles like this one that don’t reflect the complexity of the issues. I want to empower workers, especially working mothers, but we need to do it in a way that doesn’t require them to sacrifice their job security. We need to be honest about the risks and rewards of taking time off to be a caregiver. All the studies suggest that taking more than a year out of the workforce is especially detrimental to women.
How can we get academics and advocates working in work-life, family policy, and management to understand that these simplistic, grassroots methods are not enough? We need research that proves a link between revenue, productivity and flexible work life strategies. We need data that shows how work life can improve how companies function. And we need to encourage workers to build leverage by gaining experience, skills, and education. How about it, ivory tower?
Related links:
- Cali Yost responds to NPR’s work life series at her blog, Work+LIfe Fit.
- Katherine Lewis at About.com’s Working Moms blog talks about the NPR series and other mainstream media reporting on work life.
- In his response to the NPR series at Minding the Workplace, David Yamada talks about the role of unions in work life — an under-discussed topic.
- Anthony Balderrama at The Work Buzz talks about the NPR series’ discussion of Millenial workers.
Ivory Tower, reporting in. You correctly point out that the NPR series could only scratch the surface. The same applies to our blog postings – mine as well as yours. So, in relatively few words for a complex topic, let me say I hear you loud and clear. There is an abundance of empirically robust data available that nails the work-life business case from every direction: it’s green, it’s inexpensive, it makes people feel good, and (according to a new growing body of research from NIH, Families and Work Institute and beyond) it is good for you, serving a vital role in reducing health care costs. If you want one megapower reference work that contains key business outcomes summarized from 550 studies from real companies facing and surmounting the issues you describe , get a copy of Sandra Burud’s book, Leveraging the New Human Capital. There are tools available at http://www.awlp.org that are used at thousands of organizations to maximize the chances that employees obtain the flexibility they need (hint: consider acting not alone, but practicing flexibility as a team sport; it’s harder to fire a valuable team than it is to pick off individuals). Talk to me about how we can connect you with the data, tools, tactics and other resources you need to succeed. In return, we need you to get these into the hands of everyone out there who needs them.
Kathie, thanks so much for this thoughtful and resource-rich response. You make a good point that it’s incumbent on those of us who can to push out the information and resources on the work-life business case — but I think there’s a bigger question here. The Mama Bee, and others like us, operate largely in the echochamber of the work-life and feminist blogosphere. I can certainly disseminate the info on the work-life business case, but my constituency doesn’t need to be convinced — they’re already on board with work-life change.
The real question is how do we get the info into the hands of decision-makers who would are not yet sold — i.e. the majority of company heads and human resources professionals. Even if in theory they believe in work-life, in practice it’s just not happening for the majority of Americans. We need to be speaking the language of revenue, putting together research on how work-life can directly affect the short-term bottom line. (Health and well-being of employees are mostly longer term propositions, and the environment is not a key priority for most companies.) We need to find ways of convincing CEOs, corporate boards and shareholders that work needs to change profoundly to meet their business goals, not individual work-life needs.
Work-life bloggers have been discussing this issue on and off-line for a while now, and we are still looking for new ways to reach decision-makers in the corporate world. Does AWLP have thoughts on this?
Thanks again for your comment — we love our Ivory Tower and advocacy groups, even when we are critical…
Best,
TMB
Hey TMB! Glad you’ve connected with Kathie. She’s a great resource and I hope AWLP becomes an ongoing source of information and inspiration for you and your excellent advocacy of this issue.
Yes, it can seem like an echo chamber at times, but together we all continue to push forward making the case, changing hearts and mind, then creating a new business-based model of work and life.
We’ve more than established the “why” from both the short term and long term perspectives. The goal now is to keep trying to reach those key decision makers with that research and then show them “how.” The “how” is where the field is and there is still a lot of work to do in this area.
Keep pushing us. Keep telling us what you want and need to know. We hear you and agree. Glad to have you as part of the conversation and solution. We will get there.
TMB – Right on about speaking the language of business, which is finance, revenue, shareholder value. This is what AWLP has been doing for 15 years – identifying, collecting and disseminating the ROI data that accrues from the thousands of business enterprises that make investments in any of the seven pillars of the work-life portfolio. You are correct that business leaders don’t do this to be nice; they do it because it pays off in 2X stock values (Fortune & Great Place to Work Institute data) and creation of 25% of shareholder value (Watson Wyatt Human Capital Index research). But at the same time we never forget our commitment to the people who do the work and the quality of the work environments they inhabit, which range from toxic to terrific. I’m heartened to know about you, your passion and your efforts, because we’re all in this together until every workplace is turned into a great place to work. That’s my organization’s business and we desperately need all the help we can get to push this rock up the hill faster and farther.
I wonder if part of the problem is that the Ivory Tower is itself not a bastion of good work-life balance?
I agree with your point about how harmful to your career it can be to advertise your status as a mother. But I have to say, I DO find a lot of overlap between parenting skills and managing people skills. I happened to be reading Siblings without Rivalry not long after completing a management training course at my job (I am a middle manager in a biotech company), and I was struck by the large overlap between the advice in the book on how to handle fighting siblings and the advice in the class on how to handle difficult employees. So I think parenting does give us some useful “transferable skills” but that the corporate world doesn’t always recognize that.
I also agree with your point about how risky it can be to try to advocate for better work-life policies. However, there may be small things that you CAN advocate for without risking your job. For instance, I started my current job when my first daughter was about 10 months old. I was still pumping at work. I found that the lactation room didn’t have a computer. I can do a lot of work while pumping if I have a computer, so I had one put in. Now, I am the head of IT at my company, so I just had to say “do it” and it happened. But if anyone else had asked (there were two other lactating mothers at the company at the time), it would have been done.
I also think that change will only come to a company if there is someone inside of it who is willing to advocate for it. Yes, we need the data to use to make our case, but someone has to be willing to make that case. I also think that in some cases, advocating for changes to laws is going to be the best way to get things to change in the workplace- for instance, it is my opinion that we should have a federal law requiring lactation rooms and breaks for lactating mothers, similar to the law that we have in California. I don’t think that is ever going to change across the board without a law.