Work Life News for the week ending November 21

One of the reasons I do this update each week is so that I stay current.  This is especially helpful for this week’s edition as my #worklife last week entailed being at a conference in NYC during my daughter’s birthday and coming home to catch up with work and run around getting ready for her party (where a good time was had by all.)  So needless to say I didn’t catch much of the #worklife news live.

Now where are those thank you cards for the birthday gifts?  They’re not going to write themselves – nor is she old enough to write them yet…

In the News

There are plenty of dads out there swapping gossip with the mums at playgroups every day but when three high-profile fathers play the father card in one week it focuses the attention on the dads who just want to be dads. From a social point of view, it’s applauded. From a business point of view, it’s seen as another challenge.  David Gregory, director of workplace policy with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said there was “definitely a growing trend among males in the workforce to be wanting to better match their work and family responsibilities”.

Military Fights for Women (Sydney Morning Herald)

THE Defence Force has completed 18 months of intensive research to find out why women are reluctant to join the military and why so many of these who enlist do not stay.  A key measure will be greater flexibility in working arrangements so that women who want to have children can take time off without damaging their careers and can be assured of proper support when they return to work.

Home working blossoms as it caters for new careers (NE Business)

The most popular reasons for starting a home business were low costs, 57%, a better work/life balance, 52%, and being close to the family, 33%. These were certainly among the reasons why new mother Lydia McCaslin chose to set up the Jesmond Cupcake Company in her own kitchen earlier this year.

Crowe Horwath in ‘Balance’ with Women (Web CPA)

Crowe’s WIL program promotes career advancement and development among women leaders and includes assigning personal career sponsors and leadership development forums. The program also provides women opportunities to participate in specialized peer interest groups addressing issues such as caring for aging parents, managing extensive travel or participating in a flexible work arrangement.

Study: Morale low at a quarter of workplaces (Puget Sound Business Journal)

Workplace morale is flagging in some offices. In a study, 23 percent of 2,900 polled workers said their current organization’s employee morale is low.  About 40 percent said their stress level at work is high and 47 percent said their workload has increased in the last year. About 20 percent are dissatisfied with their work/life balance.

CIOs fear mass IT exodus following economic recovery (Network World)

Robert Half Technology suggested a few retention efforts IT employers must begin now, including training and career development programs and career advancement opportunities. CIOs should re-recruit their best employees, which essentially means they must start working to convince them to stay on board.  Other suggestions include recognizing excellence and providing project support. Robert Half Technology also suggests managers communicate regularly with staff, encourage team-building activities and promote work/life balance.

IT pays to work@home as technology brings world closer (The Economic Times)

Global hr experts abhor the idea of taking work home. But local HR managers have turned the debate on its head: they now prod

Employees to carry their office home. A raft of technology firms such as Hewlett-Packard, Nokia Siemens Networks, Dell, Cisco and IBM reckon that letting employees work from home not only saves office expenses, but also helps ramp up productivity by saving precious time wasted in India’s labyrinthine peak-hour traffic.

Union warns of a shortage as Edinburgh headmaster jobs are re-advertised (Edinburgh Evening News)

Even at Edinburgh’s top- performing school, St Peter’s Primary in Morningside, education bosses have been unable to recruit a new headteacher and are this week due to advertise the post for a second time. Teaching unions warn this is a growing crisis, with a shortage of applicants across the primary and secondary sector.  They say the situation will only get worse unless headteachers are rewarded with a better work-life balance.

Recession takes its toll:  Employee morale drops (Central Valley Business Times)

Workers revealed a variety of factors that could be contributing to low morale levels. Two-in-five said that their stress level at work is high and nearly half (47 percent) said that their workload has increased in the last six months. One-in-five are dissatisfied with their work/life balance.

Book highlights accomplishments of NIH’s female scientists (Scope – Stanford)

The NIH recently announced a new publication featuring the achievements of 289 female scientists working at the institute. In the book, “Women in Science at the National Institutes of Health 2007-2008,” the researchers highlight some of their greatest professional accomplishments, discuss the importance of mentoring and address the issue of “work-life balance.”

Five million Aussies want to ‘be own boss’: survey (Dynamic Business)

Around five million Australians are attracted to the idea of starting their own business, with the belief it will offer flexible working arrangements or simply fulfil their wish to be their own boss, according to research commissioned by St.George Bank.

Women changing the face of labor (Lansing State Journal)

The shift, outlined in a recent report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, could see organized labor focus more intensely on issues important to women as unions look to broaden their ranks and wield greater political strength in the next election cycle.”When you have a majority of women in the labor movement, issues like work-family balance, paid sick days and paid parental leave become more important,” said John Schmitt, an economist at the left-leaning think tank and one of the authors of the report.

House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Workforce Protections Hearing (Trading Markets)

Transcript of testimony by Maria Ferris, Director of Diversity, Compliance

and Employee Experience at IBM.  Good read which includes some of the innovative ways IBM thinks about work/life and interesting policies they’ve put into place.

Consumer confidence rebounds (Asia One Business)

Singaporeans are also less concerned about the economy and job security, which were their two key concerns in June.  Thirty-three per cent say that the economy is their first or second biggest concern, compared with 40 per cent before.  Taking second place on Singaporean consumers’ list of top concerns is work-life balance, which is now causing anxiety among 30 per cent compared to 17 per cent previously.

Swine flu threat opens door for sick leave legislation (Workday Minnesota)

The swine flu outbreak has only made the problem worse, testified Desiree Rosado, a special ed assistant in the Groton, Conn., school system. That’s not because the parents get sick; the kids do.  Rosado had to miss two weeks of work to take care of her three children, suffering from bronchitis or the flu, this fall.  “I get no sick pay, so my paycheck for that period was almost nothing. That caused tremendous hardship for my family. My husband and I live paycheck-to-paycheck right now. We have no choice…It’s a hard road. And it’s made immeasurably harder because whenever we get sick or our children get sick, we have to decide whether to stay home without pay, or to disregard doctor’s orders and risk getting sicker and infecting others by going to work or school.”

In the Blogs

Misconceptions over family-work conflict hurting women (Everyday Money)

That thud you may have heard recently is the sound of women continuing to hit their heads on that invisible glass ceiling, according to recent research from the University of Illinois.  One key factor: Too many managers, regardless of gender, believe women have more family-work conflict than men And this belief, mistaken though it is, leads supervisors to take a negative view of female employees’ suitability for promotion and salary increases, maintains Jenny Hoobler, the professor who headed up the study.  This seems a bit odd when you consider that, 30 years ago, 41 per cent of women reported feeling some level of work/life conflict, whereas only 35 per cent of men did. Today, the numbers are roughly the same for women, but 59 per cent of men are now similarly torn.

Gross National Happiness (UTNE Reader)

Not surprisingly, they have found that beyond a certain minimum level of income, greater happiness comes from strong and plentiful human connections, a sense of control over one’s life and employment, meaningful work, good health, basic economic security, trust in others and in government, and other opportunities less directly connected with monetary remuneration.  Studies of life satisfaction around the world are now enhanced by regular polling in many countries using a broad range of questions, and have led to consistent findings in recent years that the highest levels of satisfaction are found in such northern European countries as Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden—countries with a strong sense of social solidarity and attention to work-life balance, small income gaps, and—contrary to the thinking of American conservatives—high taxation rates.

Women to Be Majority in Labor Union Movement, So Here’s the Job Ahead (Huffington Post)

A study released last week put the spotlight on a workplace demographic shift that is occurring: women are expected to become a majority of labor union workers within the next decade…Labor unions are central players, in fact leaders, in many of the more significant workplace victories for women over the years. But it does raise hopes that issues of family/work balance will finally come to the forefront of much needed and long-overdue workplace change.

Does working from home make you more productive? Yes (with data)! (The Rescue Time Blog)

So about a month ago, the RescueTime product team decided to experiment with working from home to see how it would effect how we spend our time.  The initial plan was to run the experiment for a week, but we realized that we were paying too close attention to the affects of the experiment and would let it “bake” for a few more weeks to get some better data.  The data (4 weeks of it) is in, and there are a few surprises….Working from home gives folks a lot more time in front of a computer, if that’s what they are after.  With commutes, associated setup/teardown time, getting coffee from starbucks, lunches, and people dropping into the office, we’re all losing hours.  To be clear, all work and no play is a bad idea…  The really interesting thing about working from home is that we felt like we weren’t working as hard, but were actually logging about 22% more development and design hours.

Training Days Keep the Doctor Away (Life Meets Work)

A supportive manager and a flexible workplace can actually make employees healthier.  That’s according to Leslie B. Hammer and Ellen Ernst Kossek, professors at Portland State University and Michigan State University.  Hammer and Kossek found that employees working with managers trained in supporting a flexible workplace were healthier and more satisfied with their jobs.  These findings were reported on Oct. 13 at a congressional briefing and have been reported in Harvard Business Review, Journal of Management, SHRM news, ABC news and others.

Life is a Balancing Act (Calcasa)

The term work life balance is somewhat misleading; this term does not refer to an equal number of hours worked in comparison to an equal number of hours of leisure and relaxation or personal time.  The Work Life Foundation states that work life balance

“is about people having a measure of control over when, where, and how they work.  It is achieved when an individuals right to fulfilled life inside and outside paid work is accepted and respected as the norm, to the mutual benefit of the individual, business and society”

Below is a short list of ideas that management can contemplate doing to promote an employee’s work life balance:

Celebrating Thanksgiving Past (Huffington Post)

Now I know there are many mothers, and fathers, who will forever dispute the benefits of being a working mom. Opinions abound about whether a woman can properly care for her children while keeping her career in tact. Just this past summer, Jack Welch, CEO of GE, referred to women’s attempts to juggle work and family as one where “there is no such thing as work life balance … there are work life choices, and they have consequences.” Well, Jack, I agree, and if women choose not to work throughout motherhood, these consequences can prove dire.

Secrets of Successful Social Intrapreneurs: Advice From Three Major Brands (Triple Pundit)

After filling a variety of roles at Accenture and working closely with the CEO, Nicholus was tapped when the company decided to implement a work-at-home initiative. Like most sustainability efforts, it paid off in several ways – substantial cost-savings for the firm, a reduced carbon footprint and workplace flexibility that employees crave.

The Monday Meeting: Flexibility; how important is it to you? (Girl With Red Hair)

Studies are showing that Gen Y values flexibility in their jobs more than wages. We don’t want to work 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. We want to get off work when the work is done, we want to be able to take a long weekend every once in awhile, we want to be able to take a late lunch or a long lunch every once in awhile. At least I do, do you?  For me, if I made a huge wage but never had any time off to go home for a visit – I live 1,000 km (620 miles) from home – it wouldn’t be worth it. I value my extra time to go home; I value it more than an extra $1, $2, even $3 an hour.

Workplace Flexibility Means One Thing in the Private Sector, Another in Academia (Sideblogs)

“Workplace flexibility is a large, complex notion,” said Kathie Lingle, executive director of Alliance for Work-Life Progress. “It is the one work-life initiative that doesn’t require a specific investment in dollars, yet may require an organization to completely reinvent its culture. It is a remarkably inexpensive power tool for creating higher levels of attraction, retention, engagement, productivity … and even wellness.”

A Character Revealing Situation (My Online Career Coach)

Stop for a moment and think about this.  You are preparing to meet with’your boss tomorrow’to tell him that you’are resigning because you have a wonderful opportunity to learn something new, to move into an area you’ve always been interested in, to gain workplace flexibility, to go back to school, or to [fill in the blank]. How would your boss respond?

Why you DO need work/life balance (Gals’ Guide)

And I think especially in your twenties, the importance of striving to build a balance between work and life should never be underestimated. You may spend 40 (or 60) hours a week at work, but it shouldn’t become the only priority in life — it should be one of many. At your first job, when you’re young and fresh out of college and eager to please, you’ll put in long hours — but don’t let it become your number one priority.

Press Releases

The American Society of Clinical Oncology Recognized for Providing Family-Friendly Work Environment

ASCO employees have several schedule options to help minimize their daily commute and time away from family, including compressed work weeks, teleworking, and flexible core work hours. ASCO also offers a generous paid time off leave program.

Career Life Connection News and Events

Career Life Connection will be exhibiting at the Massachusetts Conference for Women on December 10, 2009 at the Boston Convention and Exhibit Center:  Come on by and talk work/life balance/flexibility/fit at the annual conference where women can connect, be motivated, network, get inspired and build their skill base.  Last year the event brought together more than 5,000 women for the day.  Also be sure to check out the career fair raffle where Career Life Connection will be looking to put more balance back into your life with a one-hour massage gift certificate to Bella Sante.

Social Recruiting Summit – November 16 – NYC

Social media is rapidly becoming more than just another tool in a recruiter’s toolbox — it’s an important part of the future of the talent acquisition profession. The goal of #socialrecruiting summit is to have an industry conversation about these tools, talk about tactics and strategies that are already in the field and working, not pie-in-the-sky ideas.  Leanne Chase of Career Life Connection will be part of that conversation.  If you are attending the Social Media Summit or just in NYC and would like to talk about social media, workplace flexibility or work/life happiness with her contact her at chase at careerlifeconnection dot com.

Career Life Connection will be attending the OnRec/Kennedy Information Recruiting Conference in Chicago November 3 & 4th.  If you’d like to meet Leanne Chase and talk work/life with her contact her at chase at careerlifeconnection dot com.  You can also catch her and many HR professionals talking about how to fail spectacularly in business at this fun industry event.

Leanne Chase of Career Life Connection spoke about #work/life with Human Resources Professionals during the October 8th Episode of HR Happy Hour:  The WorkLife Show.

ERE Interviews:  Career Life Connection (JobRadio.fm)

Last week we stalked some of the job search vendors at the ERE Fall Expo in Hollywood Florida. This is the first of several interesting interviews from the expo floor. Meet Leanne Chase from Career Life Connection, an online community all about finding flexible work.