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By Ellen Pearlman
Strategic Thinkers: Claire Shipman and Katty Kay
Credentials: Shipman is the senior national correspondent for ABC News' Good Morning America and a regular on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. She has also been White House correspondent for NBC News and a reporter for CNN in Moscow. Kay is the Washington correspondent and anchor for BBC World News America. She's a contributor on Meet the Press and The Charlie Rose Show and a regular guest host for Diane Rehm on NPR.
Big Idea: Flexibility in the workplace is not a favor; it makes employees happier, more productive, less stressed, loyal-and it can reduce fixed costs.
Book: womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success, published by Harper Business, June 2009.
Is your job satisfying? Does it leave you time to lead a fulfilling personal life? If so, the information contained in Claire Shipman and Katty Kay's new book, womenomics, won't apply to you. But if you are like most people, you need and want more control over your time. Take a look at some of the statistics from their book:
- 78% of couples in this country are dual-earners.
- 63% of us believe we don't have enough time for our spouses or partners.
- 74% of us say we don't have enough time for our children.
- 35% of adults put significant time into caring for an elder relative.
- Americans failed to take an estimated 438 million vacation days in 2007.
- Half of us want fewer hours at work.
- Half of us would change our schedules.
- Three-quarters of us want flexible work options.
What does a flexible workplace look like? The Families and Work Institute defines flexibility in its 2008 National Study of Employers as:
1. Flex Time and Place includes various forms of flexibility that affect when and/or where employees do their job, such as flextime, telecommuting and compressed workweeks.
2. Choices in Managing Time reflects the degree to which employees can exercise some choice about when they work-from scheduling hours and overtime to deciding when to take breaks-and about how their time at work is spent.
3. Reduced Time includes options such as access to part-time or part-year schedules.
4. Caregiving Leaves looks at whether the organization offers leaves for birth, adoption or caregiving to ill family members, and whether any of this leave is paid.
5. Time Off includes policies and practices that apply when employees take time away from work, including scheduled absences (such as vacations and time for training) as well as formal policies for taking sick days and planned sabbaticals. It also includes informal access to time off for unanticipated or unplanned events.
6. Flex Careers refers to flexibility over the course of an employee's career or working life, including provisions that enable employees to enter, exit and re-enter the workforce and to increase and decrease their workload or pace.
7. Culture of Flexibility reflects whether supervisors are knowledgeable about flexible practices and promote and communicate them effectively.
The Institute Study breaks the seven definitions of flexibility into 20 options for its research and then shows how well employers (both large and small) are doing in providing this to their employees. Generally companies do a much better job of offering flexibility to specific groups of workers (i.e. women returning to work after childbirth or adoption or workers taking time off for education and training) rather than all workers.
When comparing the results of its 2008 and 1998 studies, the Institute finds that employers with more women and more minorities in top positions, and nonprofit organizations, are more likely to offer flexible workplaces. The latest research shows that 79% of employers now allow at least some employees to periodically change their arrival and departure time, up from 68% in 1998. But some flexibility programs are on the decline: 47% of employers today allow at least some employees to move from full-time to part-time work and back again while remaining in the same position or level, down from 57% in 1998.
In their book, Shipman and Kay focus primarily on the flexibility that professional women want, with advice on how they can get it even in this tough economic environment. The authors believe that a flexible way of working is even more valuable to employers in a recession since it gives them a way to reduce labor costs, avoid layoffs and still reward their employees.
The title of the book — womenomics — is based on the concept that women professionals are in demand and hiring and retaining women makes good business sense. Research has documented the fact that companies that employ more women make more money. Moreover, with a talent shortage looming, and the high cost of replacing experienced employees, companies don't want to see their best and brightest leave. "Talent has become more important than capital, strategy, or R&D," says Ed Michaels of McKinsey & Co. Career women typically leave top positions because of the personal sacrifices they have to make to stay in those demanding jobs. And since women are responsible for 83 percent of all consumer purchases, companies need their expertise in developing products and services that appeal to their highly valued female customers.
All of this, say Shipman and Kay, points to the fact that women have more power than ever before in seeking and getting more control over their busy lives. And guess what, while women pursue a saner work life — four out of five women say they need more flexibility at work — it will open the door to more flexibility for all workers.
What are some companies doing to encourage work-life balance? Here's a quick sample from the many examples in the book:
- Capital One - extended its Flexible Work Arrangements program, originally part of its women's initiative, to the whole company after discovering it was a need that all employees had.
- Best Buy - created a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) that allows employees to control where, when and how long they work - as long as they meet their professional obligations. Departments that adopted it saw productivity rise an average of 40 percent.
- Deloitte and Touche - came up with Mass Career Customization that allows employees to customize their careers based on their needs. Employees can "dial up" or "dial down" their careers based on what suits their current lifestyle. Instead of employees having to individually negotiate flexible arrangements, this program allowed the company to standardize a flexible workplace.
"Companies increasingly realize that what's important is what you produce, now how, where, and when you do it," the authors say. "The measure of success in this new business environment is changing." It's not the number of hours worked but the results of your efforts. Employees too need to embrace a new definition of success-having satisfaction in both your personal life and your professional life.
Moving towards a more balanced life means "you will give something up," say the authors. If you scale back on your career ambitions there will be some tradeoffs along the way. But many people are discovering that by working smarter rather than harder they can find greater personal satisfaction along with career success.
Excerpts are from womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success, published by Harper Business, June 2009, copyright 2009 by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay, all rights reserved.
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