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I thought it would be helpful to report back on a work life balance
panel I attended yesterday for all of you out there who might be considering requesting a
flexible work arrangement in the New Year. Or, perhaps there are those
of you who, like me, were content before to work part time or
as consultants but who are now thinking, “crap, I really wish I had a
full time real job.” However, it’s a challenge to give up the
flexibility that comes with working on your own schedule. Perhaps, in
this tight new economy, you don’t have to. Would you negotiate on other
terms in order to lock in flexibility at your job? If you're a new mother, how best to do it?
Several of Working Mother magazine’s recent winners have gone under or
cut so much staff as to make their family friendly benefits irrelevant.
But, to quote from Lisa Belkin’s column
“Will Family Friendly Jobs Disappear,”
“Sylvia Hewlett, who runs the
Center for Work/Life Policy, sees this moment as “a kind of opportunity
and also a big danger,” for the parent-friendly approach that is her
own life’s work. The opportunity, she says, is that employers will see
flexibility as a way to improve morale and loyalty among employees who
remain. A relatively low cost way to make workers happy, if you will.”
Yesterday I spent eight whole hours outside the house attending the Massachusetts Conference for Women, and it was a major victory. I am literally due any day and my baby weighs 7.5 lbs. But every hour I was touched by the kindness and consideration exhibited to me- whether it was the cleaning lady who opened up the handicapped restroom when she saw me waiting in line to the parking lot attendant who valeted my car for free, to the many women who gave me surreptitious thumbs up smiles as I hauled my giant body around the conference center. I spoke on social media, with the wonderful Susan Getgood. But the sessions I went to in between both fed my post-baby anxiety and reassured it.
Say you want to negotiate a more flexible schedule. What did the experts yesterday suggest?
There are several types of flexibility. Informal flexibility, which most salaried workers enjoy but few hourly employees do, is when you are late because something came up, and it’s not a big deal. There is also career flexibility, in which you ramp up and down in your career depending on life stage, who you are, and what you desire. For good resources on that, I recommend checking out the excellent book “CEO of Me,” by Ellen Kossek and Brenda Lautsch, and Mass Career Customization. Finally, a formal flexible arrangement, or FWA, is an agreed upon contract of reduced hours, compressed schedule, teleworking, or job share coverage. I’ll focus on that for this article.
Karol Rose is on a campaign to get rid of the “b word”: work life "balance." When management hears that word they think they’re going to lose something. And for women, it sets you up to fail. She uses the term “work life effectiveness.” The experts agreed management can understand effectiveness; they cannot understand balance, and they probably don’t have it either. Think about the vocabulary you use when negotiating your flexibility. What we really mean is we need control: the control we need to make our schedule work for us.
“The notion of balance has been destructive for women- life is never going to be that,” said Rose. It’s a constant negotiation with you and your universe.” You need to plan, network, and negotiate to set up an FWA.
Jennifer Sabatini Fraone, who co-directs the Center for Work and Family at Boston College, said it’s about being in touch with your goals to live your life, and then having a strategic plan to meet your needs and your commitments.
Kathy Simons, who runs the Work Life Center at MIT notes there is a policy on the MIT books that MIT will support a flexible work arrangement when it is beneficial and doesn’t incur undue costs to the university. She helps workers step forward with individual proposals. When coming up with your proposal, you need to think about it like a business plan or business case. What will work for you and for your key stakeholders: boss, co-workers, clients? Be open about what the difficulties might be- and discuss it. Remember: what’s in it for them? Until flexibility is a right, not a perk in this
