Last week Melissa at Momocrats responded thoughtfully to my recent post expressing ambivalence about legislation around flextime saying:
I wonder how we can continue without government intervention. I’ve no doubt that MamaBee is a terrific manager but…she is one manager. For most U.S. employees, your work life balance, your ability to telecommute, to have flextime or comp time, to have paid time off, or to job share, is only as good (or bad) as your manager, your department head, your unit, and/or your company. Most of us are one job reclassification, downsize, merger, acquisition, or reorganization away from instantaneous disappearance of our work life policies.
So here’s my question: what would legislation around flexible work really look like? Mandating that companies integrate flexible scheduling into their day to day operations is not realistic for all jobs. If we take the recently passed bill sponsored by Senators Akaka (D) and Voinovich (R) on telework for federal employees as an example, a flex work bill would say something like employers must have flex work policies in place, and must consider requests for flexible scheduling without prejudice. In other words, all employees have the right to ask. Well, it’s something.
But for those of us “on the ground” legislation around flex work will have relatively meager impact. Yes, we won’t be discriminated against for asking about flexible scheduling, but neither will we be any less at the mercy of individual corporate cultures and managers. Most critically, legislation will pay lip service to flex work without putting any of the support in place that would practically make it work for most businesses, notably improved technology infrastructure and universal high-quality childcare.
Many managers, including myself, will not support flex work for all employees under current conditions. Most of us in the corporate world have been in situations where a President or big boss of some kind needs information immediately, but the staff person who holds the keys to that info is unavailable. Whether we think this sense of urgency is good management or not, it is common in most offices, and highly stressful. Especially in these lean times, the kinds of redundancies we need to allow people to work at different hours simply are not there.
In most cases, executives want to do right by their employees. But not at the cost of their own sanity or the sanity of others. As managers, we simply don’t have the tools to offer all employees access to flexible scheduling. (We should all be so lucky to be able to hire someone like Cali Yost to help us out with this!)
So where do we invest our energy if not in flex work policy? Let’s start with the basics. I want to see the same kind of pressure that built up around healthcare brought to bear around childcare. It’s not just a family issue, early childhood education directly affects our workforce. It should be something we can all get behind. The school day and year needs remodeling to fit the needs of working parents, not an agrarian society that no longer exists. Parental leave certainly needs to be addressed; as Melissa notes it is disgraceful that the US offers so little relative to the rest of the industrialized world.
And more practically, technology and transportation infrastructure are critical pieces of this puzzle. While they aren’t “family issues” per se, improvements in these areas will make all the difference in changing the nature of work.
There are only 24 hours in the day, so us working mothers (and by that I mean all mothers) need to use our advocacy time wisely. The business case for flexwork is there, but the social supports are not. I suspect that if we shape a broader culture that is amenable to flexible and telework, we will see strong, sustainable change. Just framing legislation around flexwork without those supports, I worry that our impact is limited.
Even more importantly improved childcare, education, technology and transportation would meaningfully improve the lives of all workers, not just those who can take advantage of a flexible work situation.
Related links:
- Take action: help MomsRising.org advocate for universal, high-quality childcare legislation.
- Sandy Burud at Flexpaths guest posts on the Sloan Work & Family Research Network blog about flex time and health. She points out the flexwork may correlate with lower stress levels for the employee; I would say we just need to make sure it doesn’t also correlate with higher stress levels for the manager.
- Attending BlogHer? Join us on August 7th for a ROYO panel: Screw Worklife Balance, We Need Worklife Policy!
What would legislation around flexible work really look like?
Well, maybe it’d look like a combination of the Workplace Flexibility Act (HR 1274), which guarantees employees the right to ask and consideration within 14 days. Or maybe it’d be HR 1274 plus the Commute LESS Act (HR 3517), which expands commuter benefits and would fund metropolitan transit areas that expand commuter options from bus to carpool.
Or maybe it’d look like the program in the UK which gives parents of young or disabled children and caregivers of adults the right to request flextime. Employers have to consider the request seriously; rather than right to refuse, it places the onus on employers to explain why such an arrangement is unworkable.
Or maybe it’d be a re-thinking of a paid family leave policy. In many other nations, paid family leave can be taken in small increments (a single day, or even by the hour) until the child is 5 or 8. Imagine if we built upon FMLA – made it 16 weeks paid instead of 12 unpaid. Imagine if, to start, 12 weeks had to be taken in succession but the remaining 4 weeks could be taken in 4 hour increments over the next year. Even that sort of policy would be an improvement.
Yes, it is true that Akaka’s bill would have little impact on employees now. But it doesn’t follow that simply because one bill is weak that all subsequent legislative efforts are going to be milquetoast.
You mention social supports. What if the legislation was phased in, as in the UK? It started with parents of young children and gradually expanded to cover other workers. What if the legislation included a tax credit for employers who granted so many requests – say at least 25 percent of employee requests – or made them eligible for a grant to expand their infrastructure.
It is poor management to have only one person in the office with some special knowledge. You’re right though, it does happen. I, for example, am the sole policy person in my current place of employ. Flextime isn’t a zero sum game – it is a conversation between employer and employee in an attempt to meet the needs of both. I know asking for flextime during certain times of the year (around the budget resolution, during appropriations negotiations, right before a crucial vote, etc.) is unworkable. However, there are significant portions of the year when Congress recesses. During those lulls, flextime makes sense. Many other professions have cycles of up and down time. For shift workers who have unvarying tasks, allowing them to take time off if they replace themselves with a coworker.
You write of costs and redundancies. I see it from the other side. Employees who feel very little control over their work life are more likely to be depressed, more likely to have issue with presenteeism and absenteeism. In 2003, Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that the annual cost of depression to the US labor market at more than $40 billion in lost productivity. Is all of that depression attributable to lack of flextime? Certainly not. Some is, and some is probably exacerbated by lack of flextime.
If you look at studies from the Conference Board or the Global Workforce Study, you’ll see that employees are disengaged, looking for better offers; in Feb. the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that more employees were voluntarily quiting than being fired or laid off. Consider the costs of replacing a good employees who has left for greener pastures – I think the rule of thumb is that it costs about half of the former employee’s salary to replace him/her. There is the inevitable settling in period when productivity is lower.
Social support is incredibly important. Should the US be wired for high speed internet everywhere? Yes, yes it should. Should better public transit exist? Yes, as a regular MARC train rider, I can attest that public transit needs a big overhaul, complete with subsidies (it is a public good, like roads, and ought not be expected to turn a profit).
Technology and transportation and childcare are all important. But I’m just not willing to buy that employers and managers can’t start implementing some basics that encourage autonomy. Limited advocacy time does mean a choosing among issue for what it your first, second, third priority; what you’d like vs. what you can live with; and your last, best, and final offer.
I choose to advocate for childcare as part of flexwork, for transportation policy as part of flexwork. To silo these issues are social supports for flextime misses the point, I think. I’ll advocate for this over here but not that over there isolates us as a community. We miss out on the opportunity to form coalitions around a better, more autonomous, fair workplace for everyone – not just working moms.
I come from health policy where for far too long we’ve put clinical care over there and preventive care over here and mental health in the next room. Sidewalks? Oh, that’s an environment issue, get thee to your zoning board. Kids not graduating from high school? Oh, well, that’s an issue for the Department of Education. On government assistance? Go see the Department of Social Services. Until fairly recently all these department toiled away in their own fiefdoms. As social scientists looked at health factors, we started seeing how the social determinants of health – environment, housing, poverty, education – were inextricably linked. The health care reform bill is the first piece of legislation to seriously recognize this and forms a council of all relevant federal agencies to address our (poor) national health status.
Similarly, to break off flextime from childcare and infrastructure development is to narrow your vision. Policy isn’t just legislation, of course, but a whole collection of statutes, regulations, and informal power structures that must be tackled simultaneously. That doesn’t mean that a single working mom should try to take it all on – to the contrary it means we must be the proverbial village and use our many hands to make light work.
While I don’t disagree with Melissa about the importance of flextime… I personally think access to high quality childcare is more important. If I had to pick one thing that makes me a happy work-outside-the-home mom as opposed to a guilty, stressed out one, it is my day care center. They are excellent, and I feel great about the care my children get there.
But they are also pretty expensive, and therefore out of reach for many working families.
I want every working mother to go off to work in the morning with the same level of confidence in her day care that I have.
As to the problems of having people with key knowledge out of the office due to flex time… I don’t think it is possible to avoid that. In the small company I work for now, it would make zero sense to have redundancy on my job. We’re just too small. In the large company I worked for before, there was some redundancy, but there were still things that only I knew.
However, at that company, I had and used flextime. At my current company, I have slightly less official flextime, but still have a lot of control over my schedule. The workarounds I use: (1) good organization of my documents (and good documentation practices) so that my boss or subordinate can find info if they need it- or at least I can direct them to it over the phone, (2) a published schedule, and (3) an agreement with my boss and subordinate about what sorts of things it is OK to call me about when I am not at work and an agreement about how often I’ll check my blackberry for important but not urgent things.
Cloud, I think affordable childcare is incredibly important too. I’m in a mid-sized, mid-Atlantic city. They only NAEYC accredited centers near me cost more than my mortgage every month. Needless to say, we use licensed childcare but cannot afford the NAEYC locations.
It is mostly that I don’t see the issue of affordable childcare as divisible from flextime.
I wonder sometimes if childcare isn’t too simple a solution. By which I mean employers or the government or whomever will provide excellent, affordable care (without question, a GIANT leap in the right direction) on one hand and require more hours or reduce flextime on the other.
I know some women (anecdotal; I’d like to see some better quantitative data) have alleged that when their employer provides childcare, they are expected to work all the time; work longer; work without complaint. The employer is providing a (valuable) service that behooves them too – it enables mom to be a good cog in the system.
Again, this isn’t to say that childcare shouldn’t be provided — it should — but simply providing it, at least to me, doesn’t automatically mean that moms or dads then can type their way down the proverbial easy street.
To me, childcare and flextime are partners in making families work, making employers and employees happy and productive, and making sure our kids are getting excellent pre-K exposure to reading, writing, and just plain playing/socializing.
The agreement you have with your boss and subordinate about when to call you at home is great. I like it because it is a joint agreement that empowers you but leaves your employer with a way to protect the bottom line. It seems all too often that flextime is presented as a one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it policy that make only for cranky employers (“I’m offering this policy and everyone still complains!”) and employees (“The policy is crap and they won’t negotiate.”)
Does that make sense?
(Also, MamaBee, thanks for this conversation. I feel a bit like I’m crowding your personal space so please let me know if I should take the comments elsewhere.)
Melissa, you and your comments are welcome here anytime. We may not always agree, but the conversation is always lively, respectful and worthwhile. However, comments — pr or con — on my “Legislating Worklife” piece at ForbesWoman are also very welcome — and may reach a wider audience. Check it out at:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/25/work-life-balance-childcare-flexible-work-forbes-leadership-government.html
Warmly, TMB
You know, the more I think about my life as a working mom, the more I think cash is king. Anytime I really analyze some piece of what makes me a happy working mom, it comes down to money.
I can set up my boundaries on being reachable outside of work and stick to them because I know that if things get really bad and I get fired (or quit in a fit of anger), I’ll be OK. My husband and I keep a hefty financial buffer. We initially implemented this because I work in a volatile industry (biotech), but I love the feeling of power over my work life that it gives me. I don’t NEED my job the way I did before we built up that buffer.
So I don’t feel like I have a problem getting flextime or whatever work-life arrangement I need, because I feel empowered to ask for it and I ask for it from a position of relative strength.
How to get that same level of empowerment- or at least the same flextime benefits- for women making less money and/or working in less flexible industries? I don’t know.
As for child care… I actually do not want my employer to provide it, because I wouldn’t want to have to change child care if I change jobs. Look at the mess that employer-provided health insurance has made. In my fantasy land, child care is subsidized by the government on a sliding scale, but provided by independent centers (or nannies, or whatever). So, something actually very similar to our current tax credit system, but with a limit that bears some resemblance to what child care actually costs and with far more help for people on the lower end of the salary range.
Very thoughtful article. For a fresh take on building strong careers and families, check out Getting to 50/50 — on how men and women share roles with all sorts of good results — including a healthier sex life. The book also debunks some common myths that cause many moms to back away from their jobs. Authors Sharon Meers (a Goldman MD now in tech) and Joanna Strober (a private equity exec) share their often funny tales of combining work and family. Definitely a book worth checking out. http://www.gettingto5050.blogspot.com
Everyone, this is a good exchange. I can’t let it wrap up without a mention of collectively bargained workplace flexibility policies. This is one scenario in which managers and employees all breathe a sigh of relief that the workplace is unionized. This is because at the bargaining table, you have the ability to work together to craft a policy that works for everyone and keeps the bottom line in mind. It’s tailored to the specific workplace! Hourly workers, who often get ignored in public policy discussions of workplace flexibility, can be given more flexible work arrangements too. I’ve just gone through a round of negotiating my own union contract and we got the employer to improve upon a grossly out-of-date family leave policy, with no struggle at all. See the Labor Project for Working Families site at http://www.working-families.org for details and a database of family-friendly contract language.
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