Guess Who Finally Cares About Workplace Flexibility? Men (Lisa Witter)

The world is changing and us men folk, it seems, are slowly starting to catch up.

After two generations of paid-leave policy driven by gender equality and pregnancy, the conversation is expanding. Flex schedules are becoming a top-priority perk for office workers of all ages, family situations, and genders. Oh, let's just say it: men.

Like many others who attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, I am a trend hunter. What are people talking about? What’s hot? Are people optimistic? What’s high on the agenda?

To my surprise this year, workplace flexibility kept popping up in places that I didn’t go looking for it. This isn’t the first WEF with flexibility on the agenda, but what seemed to be different this year was who was talking about it and why.

 

Traditionally, conversations about workplace flexibility have been led by organizations and champions, or at events focused on gender equality--in other words, women’s advocates.

Flexibility, while always framed as “good for business,” was primarily promoted by those who cared about workplace fairness, inclusion, and women’s power.

This year was different.

A session led by Geraldine Chin Moody, a Young Global Leader and board member of UN Women Australia, on “Flexperts”-– the idea of using a technology platform to match business needs with the bits of time “stay-at-home” mothers may have to flex their business skills and expertise on their own schedule-–drew an equal balance of men and women attendees.

Why were the men there? Many came because they see the need in their own workplace. Several took part because they see good business opportunities in tapping unused intellectual and business capital. But most were there because they married professionals who have chosen to stay at home while their children are young and who are struggling with not working, not feeling intellectually engaged, or how to reenter the workforce.

This isn’t the first time that I have encountered the concerned, loving husband ardently trying to figure out solutions with (not for) his wife to get her reengaged in the workforce in a way that strengthens their family. Many confess to major marital challenges because their wives crave the workforce but also don’t want to “miss” raising their small children. (The dual, full-time working household has its challenges as well. I hear about and live it daily.)

But their call and curiosity wasn’t just for the moms to get to work; it was for many of them to work less as well. Not to just share the parental and home duties, but for them to get out of the grind of the 24/7 work-life many (most?) of us endure.

I first experienced this pushback on workplace madness when I posted on Facebook a 2009 cover from The Economist of Rosie The Riveter saying “We did it!”, a reference to the fact that women crossed the 50% threshold and became the majority of the American workforce. Men’s overwhelming response online and off was “you can have it.”

Since then I have heard from men far and wide that they want a different workplace. They want flexibility not just for their wives or the women in their lives but for themselves--not just as parents, but also as human beings.

This bears out in a recent man-on-the-street interview series we did at Fenton, where we asked Gen-Y workers about workplace flexibility. All of them wanted it. All of them saw their productivity going up if they had it.

This is confirmed by a 2012 survey by Cisco of 2,800 college students and young professionals under 30 in 14 countries. One out of three respondents said he/she would prioritize social media freedom, device flexibility, and work mobility over salary in accepting a job offer, and the report also noted there is a high expectation of the employee for the employer to offer a flexible schedule and freedom to work remotely.

 

The maximum length of caregiving leaves offered to new fathers following childbirth, new adoptive parents, and employees caring for seriously ill family members has declined since 2005.

 

So how do worker expectations (across demographics) and reality shape up? Experience has taught me that when one says “flexibility” we pretty narrowly think of “work from home” (think laptop) or work on “off-hours” or part-time hours. In the human resource world, flexible work is defined much more broadly and there are two trends emerging in these expanded flexible provisions between 2005 and 2012, according to the Families and Work Institute. First, employers have increased options that allow employees to better manage the times and places in which they work.

 

These include:
• Flex time (up from 66% to 77%);
• Flex place (up from 34% to 63%);
• Choices in managing time (up from 78% to 93%); and
• Daily time off when important needs arise (up from 77% to 87%).

Second, employers have reduced options that allow employees to spend significant amounts of time away from full-time work.

 

These include:

• Moving from part-time to full-time and back again (from 54% to 41%); and
• Flex career options such as career breaks for personal or family responsibilities (from 73% to 52%).

The maximum length of caregiving leaves offered to new fathers following childbirth, new adoptive parents, and employees caring for seriously ill family members has declined since 2005. And, among those employers that provide any pay for disability related to childbirth (58%), far fewer provide full pay, now at 9%, down from 17% in 2005. Also, fewer employers are providing backup, emergency care, or sick care options. It’s also important to note that just because flexibility is offered doesn’t mean it is actually used. Often a supportive flex-work culture doesn’t truly exist and many employees feel penalized or “weak” for using it.

This must change. Not only because it would improve the lives of the workers, but also when properly managed, it would improve the bottom line for the employer.

Another trend we heard loud and clear was the continued rise of the emerging markets. We heard from one large multinational company that they couldn’t hire or retain enough workers in their emerging market stores, warehouses, offices, etc. One reason? Many of these employees are moms who need support with childcare.

But that wasn’t reason alone that the multinational company was paying attention and taking workplace flexibility serious. It realizes that the future workforce is going to want, need, and demand a different definition of work, of how and when it works, and that this issue isn’t limited to gender or reproductive events.

Frankly, I’m relieved by this. I believe that workplace flexibility framed as a women’s issue is either a losing frame or a slow-as-molasses winning one.

And demographics are changing. As we know, in Europe and North America the workforce is staying in the workplace longer for a variety of reasons. The share of Americans 65 and older in the labor force went from 12.1 percent in 1990 to 16.1 percent in 2010, and the increase was larger for women, according to new analysis of census data in January. These workers may require new and different types of workplace flexibility as well.

 

As soon as men, husbands, CEOs, and HR administrators see workplace flexibility as an imperative for everyone, and for the bottom line, then action will begin to ensue. We’re seeing it already.

Once we don’t only measure the flexibility of women in the workplace, but measure men’s flexibility as well (for all ages), as The Gender Equality Project's soon to be launched EDGECertification (Economic Dividends for Gender Equality) does--the only global gender certification tool--everyone will win.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if workplace flexibility was at the tip of everyone’s tongue this year, but the issue has moved from gendered and novel towards necessary and a solution for the young, old, men, women, parents, and non-parents alike. It was just about smart business and smart living--things that can, and are, co-existing.

 

--Lisa Witter is partner and Chief Change Officer for Fenton and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Find her on Twitter at @lisamwitter.

[Image: Flickr user Major Clanger]

Canada's Work/Life Balance More Off Kilter Than Ever (John O'Kane, Globe & Mail)

Despite years of warnings about striking work-life balance, Canadians are in a deeper rut than ever.

 

Almost two-thirds of us are working more than 45 hours a week – 50-per-cent more than two decades ago. Work weeks are more rigid, with flex-time arrangements dropping by a third in the past 10 years. To top it off, only 23 per cent of working Canadians are highly satisfied with life. That’s half as many as in 1991.

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These new findings are part of the 2012 National Study on Balancing Work and Caregiving in Canada, a survey of more than 25,000 Canadians from all provinces and two territories. It’s the third such study in two decades by professors Linda Duxbury of Carleton University and Christopher Higgins of the University of Western Ontario.

 

The study covered a vast swath of workload and work-life balance issues, from the role of gender in income and parenting-task distribution to the way work roles affect physical and mental health.

 

The findings provide various measurements of Canadians’ work-life balance. Among them: While workplaces have long talked about creating better work-life balance for their employees, one-third of Canadians feel they have more work to do than time permits. That number rises to 40 per cent when family roles are taken into account. “If we want to build the case of being the best country in the world to live, we’ve got to make changes to make that the case,” Prof. Duxbury said.

 

Younger Canadians are taking change into their own hands – by having fewer children. More than a quarter of respondents had no children, and of those, more than made that choice to put their career first. Participants without children were much younger than the survey average – and that, Prof. Duxbury said, was “a way to satisfy work demands.”

 

Those who do have children find themselves increasingly wedged between responsibilities – the sandwich generation that must take care of aging family members alongside children.

 

While family responsibilities weighed heavily on a quarter of respondents, workplace responsibilities took a heavier toll, and were more likely to eat into family duties than vice versa. Workplace roles placed a higher strain on women, who, despite having primary or equal responsibility to provide the family income in half of families, are still largely the primary caretakers of children.

 

More than half of the survey’s respondents took work home with them, putting in an average of seven extra hours a week from home. Nearly two-thirds spent more than an hour a day catching up on e-mails; one-third spent more than an hour e-mailing on their days off.

 

And while fewer workers doing the same tasks may make an employer’s budget more efficient, it doesn’t help workers’ efficiency. One-third of participants found that overloaded work and family responsibilities had a high tendency to cause them to lose sleep or dramatically reduce their energy levels.

 

This leads to everything from sick days to slower workers – perpetuating the cycle. “Organizations are fooling themselves if they think they’re getting increased productivity by expecting those who they have left to do more,” Prof. Duxbury said.

 

Striking the right balance can require serious life and scheduling changes. Nathalie Godbout and her family have made major adjustments in their lives to balance her job as a partner with the Saint John law firm Lawson Creamer. The mother of two children, ages 2 and 5, works intense days, often starting at 6:30 a.m.

 

To avoid the pressure of constant e-mails, Ms. Godbout has set an auto-reply letting people know she won’t respond right away. “The universe is kept at bay because they’re told that I respond to things at a certain time,” she said.

 

She builds family time into her schedule; her rigorous work days let her take a full week off every six to seven weeks. And at home, Ms. Godbout’s family has elected for her husband to be a stay-at-home parent. “It’s a non-traditional configuration that has, at times, been met with some skepticism – but it works ideally for us,” Ms. Godbout said.

 

One of the major limitations of the study may serve to make the results even more telling. Participants, largely public servants and not-for-profit workers earning more than $60,000 annually, skewed the result toward higher income than the Canadian average. (The median total family income in 2010 was $69,860, according to Statistics Canada.) The study found that the less-affluent the family, the more likely it was to feel burdened by excess workloads, so the higher-income skew could mean that the picture of work-life balance in the study – however gloomy – is actually a “best-case scenario,” Prof. Duxbury said.

 

The perception of flexibility in an employee’s workday significantly reduces how overloaded he or she feels, she added. Workplaces need to allow flexibility in hours not through policy, but through an understanding management, she said.

 

“To change workplace culture is a leadership issue. We need organizations’ leaders to not keep pushing this down to HR and saying, ‘Fix it.’”

Cognitive Labour in the Classroom

While the board hasn’t specifically instructed teachers not to discuss their labour dispute with students, it has asked principals to make sure teachers don’t let their frustrations rub off on students.

 

 

Now, we're starting to get somewhere! 

 

Education is the front-line of civil life - the equivalent of the working world for adults.  Teachers are front-line managers, ensuring their charges have the tools and training necessary to do their job, which pretty much translates into passing tests and getting good grades, enabling them to get further training and decent jobs.

 

As such, schools are both a springboard and a microcosm of society.  The skills students learn (and don't learn) in school and the examples they see around them will form the tone of their adult lives.  It's really enlightening to watch school-yard shenanigans, because they're a much more honest portrayal of behaviour we see in the rest of the world.  "But he hit me first" is, from a youth's point of view, an acceptable response for bad behaviour.  Bullying is a method of reducing competition for resources and attention.  Kids haven't bought into the notion that they're supposed to have spilt work/life personalities, so they naturally bring stresses from home to school and vice versa.  Office politics, cliques, etc. all exist in the adult world, too - we just deny this and confabulate justifications for behaviour we chastise in our youth.

There are cognitive differences between children and adults (see sensory fusion), key among these is the fact that they are more resilient and adaptable; it's actually adults that have a harder time making distinctions, despite the social pressure to do so.  Kids will move past emotional wounds more quickly; they'll get over colds more quickly, too.  Part of the reason for that - we let them.  When a child's parent dies, we don't tell them they get two days off and then are expected to be back at peak performance.  If they've had a big fight with their parents or best friend, we don't tell them to get over it immediately and focus on their work.  Good teachers will serve as counselors, too, helping their students learn to cope with and manage through personal and familial challenges, helping to build social emotional skills along the way.

Teachers bridge the gap between the emotional honesty of the playground and the suppressed individuals of the working world.  The best ones are deeply involved in the emotional lives of their students, because they have to be.  Understanding their students is the only way to reach them, and it's only through that connection that knowledge can effectively be transferred.  When teachers refer to their students as "my kids," it's less like a boss referring to a team than it is a parent referring to their family.  Yet teachers themselves are being told to leave their personal baggage at home and not let the work-related stresses that weigh on their minds impact their teaching.  It's impossible to switch selves, so what teachers are really being asked to do is repress their cognitive stresses. 

We're asking teachers to shovel water; it simply won't work.  It's not a coincidence that teaching ranks among the top ten stressful careers.  Again, schools are a microcosm of the working world at large - the mental health challenges that we're recognizing in schools also impact teachers.  In fact, we have a growing mental health crisis in all sectors that's burning out Canadians, dragging down economic growth, dominating insurance claims and placing an ever-growing burden on our health system.

 

A key part of addressing the mental health crisis is to stop using the "suck in up" and "separate work and life" memes as excuses for ignoring the social stresses that lead to mental illnesses like depression and anxiety.  Doing so isn't about ignoring problematic behaviour, but about empowering everyone to develop the internal resiliency tools they need to manage stress better and to start designing work and work environments that are conducive to strong cognitive labour performance. 

 

This is going to be a hard lesson for all of us to learn - but like all education, it's going to start in the classroom.

But ARE They Extra?

She said many students are worried that missing extracurricular activities might affect their chances at university admission.

 

“On university applications, they look at that,” said Tomasov. “If I'm tied with another student with the same marks, extracurricular activities could make or break it for me.”

 

 

Which is absolutely true.  The same applies to volunteer activities, the kinds of things you do for free that serve as an expression of what your personal values are, as well as how committed you are to those values/what you will bring to a job.

 

Why?  Because the sorts of jobs we're hiring for these days don't involve punching clocks and building widgets.  They require creativity, focus, critical thinking, communication skills - things that you don't get to turn off when the whistle blows.  It's a fact, although a decidedly uncomfortable one, that you simply can't leave your personal stuff at home or leave work at the office - it's the same person society is now expecting to be a dedicated employee, a good parent, a social friend and yes, an engaged citizen.

 

Relying on the traditional models of motivating labour - financial carrots and sticks - is breaking the bank and isn't demonstrably getting the job done.  Pushing kids to be fully-formed students before they even get to primary school is adding an unsustainable pressure on everyone involved.  Worse, the friction society is facing by trying to force open a closing door is having a host of negative social impacts, including the well-recognized mental health crisis that's racking our workforce, our military, civil society and yes, our schools.  By trying to make every issues about salary and insisting that fights over wages is completely separate from other social woes, we're band-aiding the symptoms and ignoring the disease.  It's like spending billions trying to cure lead poisoning, yet ignoring the lead pipes we're drinking from.

 

We are increasingly demanding more from employees than just 9 - 5 paid labour; we want their passions, their spare moments, their social communication.  We don't want them to do a job, we want them to live a profession.  Even students are expected to be constantly absorbing skills if they want to stand a chance of success in life.  That kind of commitment can't be bought with dollars - it has to be earned with inspiration, accommodation and participation. 

 

There are lots of canaries in the coal mine adding credence to the notion that the work/life model we're relying on is past its best due date.   The question remains - are we paying attention, or do we still consider that planning ahead piece to be an extra-curricular activity?

Political Staff: Work-Life Bleed

 

The statement provided no explanation for why two of the mayor’s aides listed their city-issued cell phones as contacts on the Facebook page for the Rexdale Raiders, the summer squads Mr. Ford founded after becoming mayor.

 

 

Here's an interesting one - political staff getting in trouble for using tax-payer used phones for off-work purposes.  There's also the fact that they're spending time engaging in activities with their boss on a volunteer, after-work capacity.  Are they, in fact, getting paid more to back the Mayor up in his after-hours activities?  Are these cagey staffers intentionally deceiving the public by using public paid-for devices to do this non-work?

 

There's one big conceit that this argument is based on; that political staff have on and off hours and that anything they do in relation to their boss has to be related to work, not personal life.  It's a false notion that we would do well to discard.

 

Politics is not a nine-to-five job.  Politicians have to be ready and willing to go to events off hours and on weekends.  They take calls from reporters at their homes, speak to constituents when they're stopped on the street or even at church.  As the operational end of any political office, it's no different for political staff.  In fact, political work can be even more time-demanding on support staff.  If there is a crisis, or a question, the public/press/opposition is operating on a 24/7 cycle, as are politicians.  When information is needed, it's needed in real-time - and it's up to political staff to get it.

 

Additionally, part and parcel of political work is capacity building - knocking on doors, barbecues, speaking engagements and the like where politicians learn about the concerns of constituents and express their own policy solutions.  You can't have politics, after all, without the politicking.  If politicians are in the business to engage and be engaged with, why can't that apply to their teams?  Isn't it possible political staff engage in after-hours activities with their bosses because they are like-minded and want to?

 

This isn't to suggest that there isn't an element in politics that pressures staff to do the extra-curricular and chastises them if they don't.  That actually happens a lot, as does pressure to donate to the partisan cause as a requirement of being part of the team.  We'd be foolish to think, though, that there aren't staff who go above and beyond simply because they've been ordered to; I'd argue that the best political staff are the ones who are wholly committed to the vision of their boss/Party.

 

I am writing, of course, as a former political staffer that still dedicates a lot of my time to both the partisan cause as well as related social causes that I believe in.  In my previous life, I was completely and constantly tied to my taxpayer-paid for blackberry, but this worked both ways.  There were calls for family issues that I took on that phone, but I also was doing research and making calls on it from a hospital room within hours of my son's birth.  Politics wasn't a profession for me, it was a lifestyle. I know more than a few staffers that have to juggle up to three blackberries due to the varied nature of their work/lives - they almost need Batman-style utility belts to keep them all in order.

 

I don't think the average employer really cares if their team uses their office phone to make dinner plans with friends, or even posts pictures of family events on Facebook during office-hours.  That would be because the average employer probably knows their employees will equally be dedicating after-hours time to finishing reports or supporting the company charitable causes.  What matters to them is that the work gets done as effectively as possible under the associated time constraints, with as much value-add thrown in as manageable.  The reason we look so negatively on this kind of activity in politics is, frankly, because we view politics as dirty. Political folk are all the same, they are in it for the money, rich friends, power, whatever.  When it comes to backroom operators like staff, they are surely up to no good with the resources we pay for them to have. 

 

Along the same theme, there's a significant problem with the political game of gotcha.  Parties in opposition are always looking for ways to tear down the brand of their opponents by any means necessary, even hypocritical ones.  The "your staff was inappropriately using public resources" is a fun one.  It's all a ruse, though - you can't be in politics without life imitating work.  Using public fax machines to send out partisan material and the like is one thing - we wouldn't want public paper being used to print out reams of paper for some kid's homework, either.  Getting mad because a flat-rate mobile device is being used as a staffer's sole mode of communication, though, is a bit much.  Again, perma-access is what we want in 21st Century politics; are we going to criticize a staffer for sending a personal email on a publicly paid-for  blackberry during work hours, but turn a blind eye when they're using the same device to do work-related research from their home at 10 pm on a Sunday? 

 

Well, folks, I would suggest that we can't have it both ways.  If we want our politicians to be on and answerable about everything 24/7, then their staff need to exist in a permanent state of engagement, too.  If we are paying flat, corporate rates for mobile devices to ensure these staff who don't get overtime are available at all times, is it really such an awful thing to let them to use those flat-rate devices for personal use as well? 

 

The reality of work is this - the wall between personal and professional life is gone.  Particularly when it comes to cognitive labour, we want people to be dedicating a bit of themselves to job-related activities every waking moment.  With that being the case, something has got to give on the other end, too.  So long as they're not being irresponsible - which, as political representatives, staff can't ever afford to be without impacting their partisan brand - I would suggest there's no harm in using flat-rate devices for personal use as well.

 

If you have a problem with that, then stop picking on your Councillor, MPP or MP on Twitter or bugging them on the street.  It's our demand for more delivered faster that's flipping the system on its head in the first place.