She lords over more than one manor. You aren’t the only one whose needs she strives to meet. She’s effectively working two schedules simultaneously. But negotiating power is increasing, and she has a message to potential employers: Work with her, and she’ll work with you.
She is the working mother, and more than ever she is working a flexible work schedule.
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
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A generation after mothers began entering the business world en masse in the late 1970s and early 1980s, their numbers and clout in the work force continue to increase, say experts. The working mother’s counterpart – the working father with significant child care responsibilities – is on the rise as well. Collectively, their need for flexible work hours is being accommodated in various ways by an increasing number of companies, say human resource managers and advocates of working parents.
Today, businesses are placing a higher priority on results than on face time, say the experts. Smart employers understand that employees can spend more time being parents and still get good work done outside of the office and beyond the parameters of the traditional nine-to-five workday.
“Companies want to be known as a place that’s good for working mothers. They want to be able to attract and keep the best, so they don’t want to eliminate half their potential work force – women. And many, many are working mothers,” said Sharman Stein, articles editor for Working Mothers Magazine, based in New York City. “And the gold standard for working mothers is flexibility. Our readers prize that in every survey over everything – even over pay-raises – the ability to work flexible hours on a regular basis.”
Today nearly 20 million Americans have flexible work schedules, according to an online article at Monster.com written by Barbara Reinhold, director of career and executive development at Smith College. They are job sharing, working four-day weeks, telecommuting one or two days a week, and negotiating longer midday breaks and longer paid maternity and paternity leave.
When career coaches and counselors ask their clients what they’re most hoping to find in their careers, one of the most frequent answers is flexibility, according to Reinhold. In fact, among Generation X employees, “flextime” is not a hope but an expectation, said Reinhold.
Additionally, some companies are beginning to do away with the traditional office space and time entirely – by setting up telecommuting equipment in the homes of certain employees or for certain departments, said Stein. Some companies are even designating suburban office outposts – neighborhood cafes, restaurants or other places where employees who live near each other can meet to work during office hours, said Stein.
Employees are becoming more and more flexible because research shows it works. Studies find that people who work four days take shorter lunch breaks, and stay later on the days they are working. Indeed, many parents who work flexible hours claim they often work more than 40 hours, and work more intensely and productively than their nine-to-five counterparts.
“Companies are discovering that there are worthwhile aspects in every way of allowing employees to be flexible,” said Stein. “Allowing for flexibility essentially says to an employee, ‘we know who you are, we trained you, we trust you, and we don’t need to watch you like a kindergartner.’ The gratitude that people feel for that strategy, the payback in terms of retention, loyalty and production, has proven to be huge.”
Working parents have always skipped out of the office when necessary with a manager’s blessing, say experts. The difference now is that so many companies are now making work-and-family policies standard in their employee handbooks.
“More than ever, they do tend to put the policy into a very formal format,” said Stein. “We have found that that’s the best way – the policy exists, it’s on paper, you can ask for it, and the manager may even suggest it.”
And large companies are blazing the trail, said Stein. Her magazine’s 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers – an annual survey list of family-friendly organizations that will be published next week – is an unbroken list of Fortune 500 – Bristol-Myers Squibb, Citigroup, Fannie Mae, IBM.
No companies in last year’s Best Company’s for Working Mothers list were based in Rhode Island.
The large companies have become flexible because they are competing for the best talent available, say human resource managers.
“Having a need for flexible schedules for employees is just growing,” said Kristin Mann, vice president of human resources at Citizens Bank. “People are making more use of these programs in the past few years. In our retail department particularly, there’s just a lot of part-time and peak-time hours available, and people take advantage of that in order to balance their lives.”
