Perhaps it’s unwise to admit this given that I’m participating in a Room of Your Own panel at Blogher called “Screw Worklife Balance, We Need Worklife POLICY!”, but I’m ambivalent about worklife policy. Get your flames ready.
Wearing my manager hat, I bristle at the idea of government involvement in how I manage my employees. How can government possibly understand the unique needs of my business and workers? I’m all for legislating anti-discrimination and family policy — equal pay; affordable, high-quality childcare; and paid family and sick leave, for example. But I’m having a hard time getting my mind around how the government can practically be involved with flexible work. Furthermore, given its reputation for beaurocracy and partisanship, I’m not sure that associating flexible work with government is even desirable for the movement.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t think government has a role in the worklife revolution. On the contrary, when I think about what working mothers and others need to improve their career prospects and family life, a number of social goods come to mind: affordable, conveniently located early childhood centers run by trained professionals; transportation that can improve commute times for workers and limit the need for expensive vehicles; and, support for technology infrastructure that would allow people to work nimbly and flexibly.
These are all pieces of the worklife puzzle, but time and again I see our advocates and legislators focus on flex and part-time work — arrangements that are more appropriately governed by individual managers who understand the needs of their departments and industries. It also strikes me that, from a legislative standpoint, it will be much harder to get business to sign on to a flexibility initiative than, say, improved technology infrastructure. And yet improved technology infrastructure would do more to facilitate flexwork than nearly anything.
We are deluding ourselves if we don’t think we need business to sign on to any kind of legislation that would affect employees. For better or worse, employment policy doesn’t happen in this country without the support of at least parts of the corporate community. Lip service from the White House and legislators is helpful, but — call me cynical — at the end of the day policymakers answer to companies as much as to the greater public. And worklife initiatives billed as such may not make it very far.
Furthermore, it isn’t clear to me that flexible work policies in other countries have been good for women. Lengthy family leave and the right to request flex work arrangements, and be granted those arrangements, has lead to business hiring fewer women of childbearing age. This is a major red flag to me: we need to keep women in the workforce and promote their advancement at the highest levels, not give companies more reasons to marginalize us from business. Kate at No Country for Young Women has a great story from France about how social policy can backfire on women.
On the other hand, my fabulous partner at the Blogher ROYO panel, Morra Aarons-Mele at Women and Work, has pointed out that the federal government has itself been at the cutting edge of flexible work. Consider this recent initiative to pilot a Results-Only Work Environment with 400 employees at the Office of Personnel Management. And Senators Akaka (D-Hawaii) and Voinovich (R-Ohio) are co-sponsoring legislation that would promote telecommuting and flex work for federal employees throughout the system. If government can set the example for business in creating efficiencies through flex work, perhaps there is a greater role for legislators in this area than I think.
So all of you out there, help make a believer out of me. How can policy around flexible work be created, passed and implemented effectively? And if you’re planning to be at Blogher come by our ROYO and join the conversation.
Related links:
- The White House recently hosted a Forum on Workplace Flexibility that has been very well received. Read transcripts and see videos, including speeches by the President and First Lady at WhiteHouse.gov. But is all of this more than just lip service?
- In the aftermath of the Forum, Cali Yost, one of my favorite worklife bloggers, recently wrote that she is starting to trust the government’s work+life bully pulpit.
- Ellen Galinksy, founder of the Families & Work Institute, wrote in the Huffington Post about the White House Workplace Flexibility Forum.
- Georgetown Law and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have launched Workplace Flexibility 2010, an initiative promoting public policy around flexible work. Despite my misgivings about policy in this area, they are a great resource.
Excellent post! I agree that companies need to provide better work/life balance for their employees. Professional and affordable daycare close to work areas would be a huge step in the right directio!
This must be a grass-roots effort by and for working parents. In the current economic environment many parents don’t ask for flexibility for fear of getting the next pink slip.
That being said, new laws mandating greater flexibilty is not the answer.
I look forward to reading your future posts on this subject!
hey, legislation worked for civil rights, worker safety, and the environment– why not for work-life?
Individual action very rarely has enough power to change a system on its own. Organizations are too powerful.
The privileged who are able to advocate for themselves get the change, for themselves, and then lose energy.
Grass roots is good, and necessary, but not enough. The push for profits over other so-called priorities is too strong.
I think I’m closer to your viewpoint.
I want to see policy that turns the things that make me a “lucky” working mom into rights guaranteed to all. Things like guaranteeing the time and space to pump and providing access to high quality day care that you can afford (and hey, policy makers- I’m fine with a sliding payment scale on that. I’ll pay full price, I can afford it. But make it available to people who don’t have big paychecks, too!) Look into the problem so many of us have of what to do when our kids get sick- could there be a government program that subsidizes backup day care (nannies on call)?
Another role for policy: strengthening our anti-discrimination laws to outlaw discriminating against mothers. No, that law is not already on the books in every state.
On flextime, though, I think the roles for government might be in leading by example and in paying for the studies that demonstrate how it can work in the corporate world. Maybe there is a place for a policy that provides incentives to companies that implement good work-life policies. But the problem with trying to legislate that sort of thing is in compliance. Your work-life policy make be wonderful on paper, but if your line managers are only giving it lip service, and still find ways to penalize the people who take advantage of it, then it isn’t really relevant.
You don’t need to be convinced, Mamabee. This kind of policymaking might have an unintended backlash, creating more divisiveness among age groups, those with families and those without, men/women, etc.
You can light a fire to this too: there are good examples of companies that get it, and companies that don’t. My feeling is that the groundswell toward flex is building momentum, and that the workplace will naturally self-correct to the culture.
What I’d prefer to see a lot more of is individual responsibility taking. I wouldn’t want to see more legislation where asking, designing and executing could do the same. We’re afraid to ask.
Why do we want to legislate our corporations to “be awake” if we aren’t willing to wake up too? The answer is in the question.
The video of Kate is anecdotal. It is a single instance of a single employer and doesn’t speak to national or even provincial policy. French labor laws are, in general, much more protectionist of workers than our policies and so hiring (and firing) of anyone is very difficult. This leads to higher unemployment, particularly among the young, than we have in the U.S. However, the unemployment situation is quite a bit different when social supports are tied to the person and not to their job (i.e., health insurance is a national right rather than an employer-sponsored benefit).
I too am concerned that this will businesses will higher women. But how much worse can we be doing? We already see segregation of women, particularly those with children, into lower paying jobs (generally service industry) that have the least worker protections, especially as union membership drops.
Most of the regulations you mention above — FMLA, ADA — don’t universally apply. ADA covers businesses with 15+ employees, if memory serves. And FMLA is a pathetic excuse for family leave — 12 weeks of unpaid leave if you work for a company with at least 50 employees and worked at least 1250 hours in the previous year. Oh, and if you’re a highly compensated worked, you probably don’t get FMLA. Work for a church or other wholly owned religious institution? No FMLA for you.
Sure it’d be nice for employers to sign on. But sometimes legislation must be forced on employers. FMLA was abhorred by several large business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce. They’ve opposed OSHA (granted so too did AFL-CIO initially but later reversed their position; the CoC has not). Major business groups opposed Title VII (pregnancy nondiscrimination).
I’m a believer in policy change. When I look at how little we regulate things like paid maternity leave and primary/preventative health care, and then look at, for example, our world ranking for maternal death (we’re 39th, behind Canada, tiny Malta, Croatia, Serbia, and the United Arab Emirates) I see a need for more regulation, not less.
Employers have had eons to make the workplace a better, fairer place for women and families. Instead we’re seeing national reversal: only 16 percent of employers provide full pay during the period of maternity-related disability, down from 27 percent in 1998. Less pension investment (29 percent in 2008 compared with 48 percent in 1998). Sure some companies (Intel, Raytheon, HP, etc) are great innovators. But why should that innovation be available only to white collar women?
I believe that without policy to push business we’d still have married women bans in employment, pregnant teachers would still be fired, and I doubt we’d comprise half of the workforce unless the ’64 rights act had included sex.
At a *minimum* we should have paid maternity leave. We’re the only industrialized nation that doesn’t. At a *minimum* we should raise the tax credit employers who provide or help pay for childcare (direct payments are more effective than tax credits but politicians HATE direct payment). At a *minimum* we should have paid sick leave a la Kennedy’s bill. Want to stop the spread of H1N1? Give workers in the lowest earning quartile (60ish percent of whom have NO paid time off) guaranteed leave. And the FLSA should be updated to protect individuals and families from mandatory overtime above, say 55 hours per week, unless an emergency demands it.
I’ll probably be at your panel at BlogHer. I blog over with the MOMocrats. Look forward to meeting you.
I want to say “ditto” to Lisa’s comment, I really do. Because that is what I truly believe. However, Melissa hits way closer to the reality. To your first point, the right to request flex boils down to another string in the anti-discrimination bow. It creates the opportunity to simply ask the question without fear of losing your job. Most people don’t ask because they are simply terrified of doing so, particularly outside the white collar world.
Certainly writing the legislation must involve business, much of which will oppose it for the obvious reasons you cite. I believe there are ways to frame it to support the shifts that the Federal government is trying to enact by example. Even something that is nothing more than symbolic lip service is a start. It is too early for data from the Australian model, but that’s essentially their approach – minimal punitive action, but giving language, encouragement and a framework for flex requests to go forward without fear of recrimination. I absolutely agree that any such legislation must be framed for ALL workers. Not just mothers.
Finally, flex does not mean less. Sometimes it does. but often it doesn’t. Flex means control, options, choices and control. Ironic that we want legislation for that? But corporate America typically needs a kick up the butt to do anything remotely innovative. It’s just one tool in the ongoing work life fight. Fundamentally it all comes back to culture. And that’s the big picture battle we are all fighting – but I’m willing to put a portion of my effort into some legislative assistance, fully understanding it is not a complete solution.
I’m a software developer and for as long as I can remember my best work happens from 10pm – 2am.
The only problem with working like that is that going to bed at 2a and getting up at 6am is brutal.
Not to mention that I need to sit my butt in a chair just because someone needs to see me there has always been off kilter in my world.
I’m a typical night owl and work better at night so my bosses have always had a great person who can muddle through the day getting things done and then kick more butt at night but would I rather just get my work done when I want and do it with more efficiency? You bet!
I love the idea of ROWE so much that I created a job board for ROWE “rowejobopenings dot com” so ROWE companies please sign up your jobs and lets get this thing started because I need a new job
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