I’ll admit it last night I was star struck and I don’t get star struck easily.  I’ve worked in too many high-profile jobs to let celebrity be something I’m overly enamored by.  But last night I listened to Valerie Jarrett, Sr. Advisor to President Obama and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff talk about workplace flexibility.  And in the end, they weren’t even the biggest stars.  The biggest, in my opinion was J.T (Ted) Childs, Jr., Retired Vice President, Global Workforce Diversity at IBM.   I’m still a little overwhelmed that I was invited to last night’s invitation only event.  And I’m thrilled that the White House and the Pentagon are talking about the challenges faced by today’s workforce and how to better recruit and retain them.  And the answer for all was more flexibility at work.  Here are some of the highlights of the evening:

• Valerie Jarrett being realistic and poking fun at life in the White House:  “You don’t want to create the expectation that you can work at the White House and only work 8 hours a day…We don’t care which 15 hours in the day our people work….”  Which is funny but also important.  Flexibility isn’t necessarily about working less and there are some jobs that are just going to be long hours and not as flexible.  I think leading the free world qualifies…but others do as well.

• Admiral Mullen about the military’s forward march on flexibility. “I think there are those that don’t realize there’s no going back here.  We’ve burned the boats.”  And while he acknowledges they need to be adaptable and will definitely need to evolve, going backwards and taking flex out of the equation is not an option.

• Hearing Ted Childs talk about why IBM finally accepted a 3-year sabbatical was music to my ears.  It wasn’t about being the right thing to do or some moral test.  It was good business.  It was better for their bottom line.  It costs less to retain a good worker than to recruit a new one.  Once a CFO provided him some data, the C-suite got in line quickly.  I did love this quote from him, though:  “If a man serves many years in the military, we give him a 3-year leave and call him a hero.  If a woman serves many years in the corporate world and asks for a 3-year leave to be with her child we call her a pariah.”  Which I think is true of anyone in the corporate sphere who wants to take a 3-year leave – whether for child or not.  Don’t we all believe that is the death knell of that career.

• I’ve been hearing about the “war for talent” for so many years in the HR/recruiting space that to hear the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff refer to it and talk about how workplace flexibility is a focus on talent was a bit jarring and fun.

• Valerie Jarrett describing Chicago’s Mayor Daly (a larger than life figure to many of us) as someone who cared enough to be sure she made it to her kid’s Halloween parade was interesting and did not jive with the picture I had in my head of how Daly’s office would run.

• Ted Childs:  “Flexibility isn’t about doing good.  It’s about winning and if your leader doesn’t want to win then they’re not a  leader”  when asked how to convince business leaders that workplace flexibility is a priority.

• Admiral Mullen when talking about his decreased budget these days:  “If we figure out how to take care of our people and their families we’ll be okay.  If we don’t we won’t”  Meaning it will cost much more to recruit leaders with less combat experience into the military than it does to keep those with the needed experience that are performing well, happily.

• Ted Childs – when talking about decisions made in the workplace: “Men, ask yourself, would you want this to happen to your daughter?  If not, draw a line in the sand because if you’re <imposing a bad policy> on someone else’s daughter, there’s nothing to stop it from happening to your daughter, too.”

Here are the themes that were consistent and constant throughout the session:

Flexibility helps recruit talent

Flexibility reduces stress at home helping employees come back refreshed and be more productive

Flexibility is a reason employees choose to stay with employers

Flexibility is strategic…not a perk

When a company walks the talk on Flexibility from the top down (and doesn’t use it simply as PR fodder) then Flexibility becomes a competitive advantage

Flexibility leads to happy homes & happy families which allows employees to focus and engage more at work

And after August’s employment figures were recently released, where for the first time since the recession started more employees chose to voluntarily leave organizations than got laid off, can anyone in HR and the C-Suite honestly say they are not thinking about how to retain their talent?

In a video that kicked last night’s session off, an executive at Ernst & Young says: “Everyday every one of our assets goes home and we have to make sure they want to come back the next day.”  Yeah, flexibility make that a whole lot easier #Imjustsayin’

Woo-hoo!  I’m on a business trip.  This celebration seems odd right?  I’m cutting short my family Thanksgiving visit to head to the Sloan Foundation’s conference all about Workplace Flexibility on a Sunday Night.

But you know what?  That was my choice.

Did you see the movie Date Night?  Do you remember Steve Carell asking Tina Fey about her fantasy and his great surprise that her fantasy includes a hotel room, with no one else in it, just some peace and quiet to actually be able to eat lunch?  I do.  And it’s my fantasy, too.  Okay not the lunch part, but the quiet hotel room.  Seriously what’s not to like.

The breakfast fairy delivers you breakfast in bed.

The bed-making fairy comes and makes your bed.

The cleaning fairy cleans your room.

The laundry fairy takes away your dirty sheets and replaces them with new ones.

There is no stove to cook supper, no sink to do the dishes, no children to be bathed.

There is cable TV and I can watch it without having to pause for my nightly cardio workout of running up and down the stairs to see what “ailment” my little one has come down with in the last 5 minutes at bedtime.

There is quiet.  There is no one saying “Mommy?!” or “Where is the…” or “Can you please do…”

I love my family and I thank them for the extra work they are taking on for the next few days but as I am typically the All-of-the-Above Fairy at my house…this business travel thing is bliss!

This is not an article about why you should network.  You should.  End of story.  It’s how you get jobs, make friends, find out information about your industry, neighborhood, school, company.  It’s something we all should do more.  But I’m not your mother or your career coach so if you don’t want to network – I don’t care.

I network.  I do it as much as I can.  Why?  Because often I don’t have time.

I have clients who pay me for projects and they expect they will get done.  I have a little one who needs to be dropped off and picked up at school each day.  She needs to be fed every day and from what I’ve heard leaving her unattended is frowned upon…by society and by her and most definitely by her father.  Speaking of her father, I haven’t seen him all week.  He’s working and he loves his work and there are weeks like this when he comes in late at night, goes out early in the morning or is staying in another city for work.

So my human contact thus far this week includes my little one, my hairdresser, a couple of store clerks and brief interactions at school pick up and drop off.  Thank goodness for the play date we had this week…where there were other interesting adults in my home for far too short a time!

So I network.  Not because I’m looking for a job but because it staves of the loneliness of working from home in a home where your husband often commutes by airplane.  Don’t get me wrong…I’m sure my next job will come from networking…it’s just not today’s goal.  Today’s goal is basic human contact, and getting the juices of my mind flowing on something other than client issues and pre-school schedules.

What about you?  Why do you network?

I was at dinner the other night with a very good friend.  He’s a little older than me, he’s that in-between group the is the buffer between the Boomers and Gen X.  He’s a top ten biz school grad and he’s really smart.  But we differ in a lot of ways.  One of which is how we look at employers today.  He came through business school during the Gordon Gecko “Greed is good,”  decade and while he is one of the nicest human beings I know…he also believes the role of business is to make money.  Period.

Now I get it…without profit there are no jobs or American dream.  And I am not against profit.  But I came of age a decade later when boom times had turned bust and “greed is good” was no where to be found for college grads.  I also believe companies can make a healthy profit without losing their soul…but I just don’t see much of that these days.  And that was the debate he & I were having at dinner.

I pointed out the Conference Board’s report regarding job dissatisfaction.

He pointed out that of the 4 of us at the table no one believed the company they worked for was evil/immoral.

I pointed out that many companies were making record profits and still cutting labor – which to me is evil.

He pointed out that it is the job of the company to make money.

We will certainly never agree on these points.  But I think there is a trend among workers that they want and expect to be treated decently.  And while they are willing to take a cut or a wage freeze if a company is truly hurting, they should be rewarded for good work when a company and their c-suite is doing well.  I think a couple of trends back me up.

1) The intense scrutiny of CEO pay these days

2) Universities adding morality/eithics courses to MBA curriculum.

3) The popularity and discussion of the show “Undercover Boss.”

Employees today do not think the boss has any idea what they do day to day nor do bosses care.  I believe that’s true for the most part.  But I also believe change is in the wind.  And those that change will create the employer brand/culture that will attract top talent for years to come.  Which in my opinion is much more valuable in the long run than excess profits today.

I want to be contigent.  Sounds weird, right?  But I am not alone. I don’t want to be tied to one company and their whims and follies.  I don’t want to change my world when they decide to change theirs.  I want more control.  And it appears workplaces are on board with this.  But there are a couple of issues…and one is regulation.

A good friend of mine from college was working last year.  She had found a contract job she really liked, they liked her.  She got to work where, when & how she wanted.  She was excited.  They were excited.  Until 1 year later when the legal department descended.  It turns out, she can’t work for them anymore.  Because the government says they would need to hire her on as an employee, offer her health benefits, and collect taxes from her directly – which is way easier than making sure she files quarterly.

She doesn’t want health benefits, she has been paying her taxes.  She just wants to do good work and get compensated for it.

Nope – no such luck. She is now looking for a new job that allows her to work where, when & how she wants and needs to.  The company is now looking for a new worker with skills like hers that they can hire- probably again for  just one year.

Seems foolish doesn’t it.

I understand the basic reasons behind the laws.  I was around in the 80′s & 90′s.  I remember companies trying to save money and hire temporary workers on a nearly full-time basis to save money on benefits.   I get it.  Except there are many of us who want to work on our terms and companies who would like to hire us on as independent contractors.  We don’t want the health benefits that this law is forcing the company to give us.  And here is where I get excited and cautious.  Health care reform.  Excited because if health care reform stays in place by 2014 we may no longer be afraid to change jobs/employers.  I may no longer hear, “No, I don’t like my job, but I can’t risk giving up my health insurance.”  Cautious because none of us knows what form Health care reform will take by 2014.

Did you know that health care as an employee benefit really started during WWII as a way to attract and retain workers during wage and price controls?  So some employers decided it would be a competitive hiring advantage to add health care to the total compensation package for their employees.  And the rest of the dominoes fell into place. Well I and others believe those same dominoes will start falling again…just the other way.

Did you know that today, this very day, many employers are crunching numbers and looking at dropping healthcare as a benefit between now and 2014?  Now stop panicking.  They are not going to just drop it and give you nothing in return.  They’re looking at adding compensation to make up for it.  And why 2014?  Because that’s when some taxes on healthcare benefits hit them and they’re thinking they’d rather give that money to you and let you decide how best to use it.

I was fortunate to help promote and therefore be invited to listen in on a webinar the Corporate Executive Board’s Corporate Leadership Council recently gave on this topic.  It was quite interesting.  There are lots of factors being considered.  No one really knows what will happen next.

But honestly, wouldn’t you like to work for who you want, change jobs as you see fit and work contingent if you’d like?  Yeah, me too and so would my good friend from college.  We just can’t right now…at least not for more than one year at a time.

Oh, and on the tax issue.  No worries.  If you’re a global company, just do what other global companies are doing.  Make your contingent workforce employees of one of your overseas arms.  No tax legal issues then.

If you’d like to learn more about the future of the American workforce and changes a foot regarding contingent workers check out the video to the right by Susan Burns and Master Burnett from Recruitfest last month.

I haven’t been doing much writing.  And it’s not because I’ve been doing lots of thinking.  I actually have been shut off for the last week or so.  Why?  Because I’m really tired of being told how to think and what to think and why I should be supporting certain stances. The world is not so black and white.  One party good, the other bad.  Healthcare reform evil, taxes evil, government inept.  Wouldn’t life be much more simple if we could really boil it all down to just that?  And wouldn’t life be much more simple for candidates if they truly could lump us all into simple groups who group think.

But I don’t want to hear about Momma Grizzlies, or the New Mommism or why working moms should do one thing or the other.  It’s exhausting.

Dear political campaigns,  if you’d like me to vote for you tell me what you think, what your positions are, what you will be doing in the future…do not tell me why I need to support you.  Don’t try to scare me.  Don’t try to herd me along with other sheep.

You’ve tired me out…I need a break.