Unknown Speaker 00:00 so adaptable can just go into anything, as long as there were other kids around who doesn't care whether I'm there or not. And I know they said, Well, we have another two and a half way. They're so nice. They called up Unknown Speaker 00:19 assumption that all the important people here and kind of get started. My name is Rita McGrath, I am moderating this panel on workforce Unknown Speaker 00:27 issues workplace Unknown Speaker 00:29 spanner. We're Unknown Speaker 00:33 honored to have a great, it's gonna be very, very honored first speaker is going to be Sharon going. He's the president of the Long Island chapter of nine to five. And she'll be speaking to us about the family bill, and other legal issues that many women are not aware of, and what worked on his rights. And expand on that yourself. Then we have Barbara pitcher ski, from American Express is done some work in kind of real life, corporate world, and how these policies are enacted in practice and addressing these issues. And then we have Deborah Schwartz, whose family got it right Families and Work Institute, which is a research organization. And she'll be reporting on some of the findings, actually research, how these policies are playing out across the land, you know, we hear a lot about what are they doing in the reality. And then I'm at the Columbia Business School. This is the professor there teaching strategy and what obviously, some of the implications that I see for new competition, new ways of working, and what that might mean for each panelist is committed to take about 15 minutes to give you a brief presentation, which should leave us almost an hour for discussion. So without further ado, Jerry, thanks. Unknown Speaker 02:02 Good afternoon, Unknown Speaker 02:03 I thought that before I started talking about family and medical leave, I first like to tell you a little bit about who nine to five is and who I am as a working woman. For those of you who don't know, nine to five is a 20 year old organization that is a membership organization that has done advocacy, around women's rights in the workplace and the issue of work and family for women. I've been with nine to five for four years, because nine to five is on a chapter in Long Island for five years. And we are in the process of reactivating the chapter that was in New York. And there's about 30 Women in New York who are actively looking to develop a board and develop some space. Find some funding to start to start a paid staff chapter in New York right now it's run by volunteers. As a working woman, I started my first job when I was 12 years old as a babysitter. And then when I considered real job was I was a bagger. I was a bagger to dry cleaners who literally took the plastic and pulled it down on the clothes as it came off the racks. And then I was a bagger at Bo hats or I the bag groceries. Then I had a real job, a real real job. And I was a receptionist and the clerical and the bartender and domestic and I was a bill collector. I did surveys at night till three o'clock in the morning, because you can call California till 11 o'clock at night, you know. So I did whatever I could to make a living. So but I really worked for two main reasons. One was to make a living, should I stand still, I'm sorry, I haven't. Okay. I work to make a living. I work to pay bills I work to live to survive. But I made new I make decisions on where to work based on my family's needs. I had my first child I was 19. And I was working at a bank in New York City. That's when I had like real real professional jobs, so called professional job. And I was I started there in September. And in November, I announced that I was pregnant and I would probably be getting birth in June. And by January 15. I no longer work there. Because they felt that if I was really serious about the training program that I was in, I wouldn't have wanted to have a child. And I very politely say you're right. But that was 1975. And discrimination based on pregnancy is illegal. Wasn't until 1978 But it became illegal. So I left that job. And within 10 months I was back to working full time as a secretary with a child. I had two other children After that, and on both occasions, I was given for my second child, I was given six weeks disability. I worked part time. And because I had a vaginal birth, I was entitled to six weeks disability, which is temporary disability insurance, which I hope that many of you know about. Which means that if you become disabled, at any time, during your work time, you can get six weeks off. Well, you can get more than six if you're disabled, but it's up to 26 weeks. And there's like this unspoken rule that six weeks for vaginal and eight weeks for cesarean. Which I get to figure out how the extra two weeks helps you. When I had my third child, I was only entitled to three weeks off, even though I could have gone on disability. But there was some rumor that if I took the temporary disability again, this is the same company, that there may not be a job for me when I get back. Because they were tired of me taking off to have babies, I only had to cope with it. So I came back to work after three weeks with my third child. And I was entitled to three days vacation, they owed me. And I was told I couldn't take the three days vacation because I just had three weeks off. And I had used up all that time. I took those three weeks, I did temporary disability insurance. And I said but there was this guy that worked with me who had had triple bypass surgery. Now, I'm not saying it's not a serious thing to have happened to you. But he was at the three months. And when he came back that summer, he took two weeks off. So I couldn't understand why I couldn't get my three days, but I couldn't. And I say that because a lot of the decisions that I made for my career from my way to earn a living were based on my family's needs. And work nights. I worked with three in the morning, you do what you do to make a living. Unknown Speaker 07:01 And there's TDI there's temporary disability insurance however do there's only five states in the entire country that offer temporary disability insurance is not a nationwide program. It's just five states. Your name, I always forget Rhode Island, Hawaii. But don't move to Connecticut. Don't move to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, because you're not having a disability insurance. So if family and medical leave had been available to me, over the 18 years that I was raising family or having children, since I did both, I probably would have made some different decisions as to what kind of work I would have gone into what's family, medical, family and medical leave means that you are entitled to take time off from your job to care for a family member. I'm a little concerned about the family member because it's government that defines family. Now it means that if you had a child adopted child, you can take time off from work to care for that time. If your maternal or paternal parent becomes ill or disabled, you can take time off to care for that parent. For me, my parents are my in laws. So if my mother or father in law becomes gravely ill, I think I can take care of them. But for a very good friend of mine whose family is for and she can't take time off to Canada. And same sex relationships, forget it. It's not going to go. So my first concern about family and medical leave is government defines family. But what it does offer is it offers 12 weeks leave. Without pay much there is no money attached to this. It is only for workers who work for employers that have 50 or more employees. Now, for me as a long Islander that's a major problem because 80% of the employers in Long Island employ less than 10 workers 10 or less workers. So that means there's a group of people out there who can't take Family and Medical. You also have to work 1250 hours a year to be entitled to family and medical leave. So if you work less than 24 or so hours a week, you're not entitled to family medical leave. Who does this impact on most? Especially women in low income jobs you heard this morning about the idea of flexibility is saying that you can just work part time. We have a contract at Long Island and one of the school districts where you can can work. If you work over 17 and a half hours, you're entitled to benefits. They literally work for 17 hours and 15 minutes. And they clock in 17 hours and 15 minutes. But I know for a fact that many of them were close to 25 hours a week. So they put in extra time. So it's 50 or more employees 1250 hours a week, and it's for up to 12 weeks. However, your employer can first require you to take vacation time or personal time and make it only six weeks or 10 weeks. So it's an equal amount of 12 weeks, it can include your vacation or sick time. So it's not 12 weeks plus my three weeks vacation, which gives me 15 weeks. If you are in the top 10% income bracket within the company, they can deny you Family and Medical. So what does that do about the glass ceiling? Okay, because now I broke through the glass ceiling, I'm making big bucks. But I can take the lead because I'm in the top 10%. Also, in some instances, it's not adequate. For example, I get calls nine to five has a job survival hotline where people call in describe their work environment, we assist them in some way, whether it's illegal, legal referrals, or just questions on how things were Unknown Speaker 11:25 women called and she has twins. And she took six weeks, vaginal winds, and she went right back to work. Well, one of them has problems with their ears. He has to have tubes put in his ear infections a lot. So she was wondering if she could take some time off. But the kids not sick enough for her to take time off, has to be doesn't require hospitalization, it just requires a little love and tenderness to get the child through this difficult time. But doctors not calling your child catastrophically ill so therefore she can't. Unknown Speaker 12:08 It has to be for a medical problem if it's a family member. So you'd have to also document that that person is Ill also family medical leave is for you if you become sick, and need to take time off from your job. What's good about family and medical leave is his job guarantee attached to it. Which means that when you return after 12 weeks, you are guaranteed your job back end or it's equivalent. So if you go back to work and find yourself working in the basement when you used to work on the 10th floor with Windows, that wouldn't be its equivalent. I say things like this because sometimes that's what I hear from women. You know, they did get their job back. But now they're working in a different department. Yes, it's the same Hey, but they don't have the same opportunity to use their skills or their abilities because there's some bias, which sometimes happens from their supervisor, but it doesn't give them the same opportunity. Also, what's wonderful about family and medical leave, and a lot of people are not aware of this is you don't have to take the 12 weeks all at one time. One of the women who gave testimony and supportive family and medical leave, unfortunately had breast cancer. So she would schedule her chemotherapy for every Friday. So that if she wasn't feeling well afterwards, she had Saturday and Sunday off. So if you have to have some sort of medical treatment or therapy or your child has to have some medical treatment or therapy, you can take the one day off a week. But one woman trying to see if she can't take the one day off a week and only pay child care four days a week. And be with her child Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I don't think that's going to work. A lot of people are still testing family and medical leave to see if you can incorporate family medical leave with temporary disability insurance attendance of income. As an organization, we're trying to lobby for money to be attached to family medical leave, which most industrialized countries include a small portion of yourself. I have a fact sheet on family and medical leave and some information on how to expand your rights. Maybe not through the law, but to work some organizing in your on your job to expand family medical leave. And I also have a favor if anyone is willing, I have a survey as to whether or not your employer advised your family and medical look better believe and if so how they do so if anyone's used it, how it worked for them. So if anyone works for an employer, I'd appreciate it. They would fill that out because actually the last day that on August 3 1993 There was supposed to be posters in your office, or somewhere it had to be posted in your office now and if you're in a union by now it should be part of the union contract and I believe if it wasn't already in 15 minutes or up according to one You can ask any questions at the end? Correct? Yeah, let's have some discussion. Unknown Speaker 15:07 It's really it's really interesting. Hearing you it's one thing I might add in my mind is that the law states have or have requirements on and what I'm going to talk about some of the things in American Express that have happened in the, in the history of doing work and family programs in on, just keep in mind, the family medical leave, and the fact that the government has set a floor on exactly what you've described, in terms of the things that have to happen. It doesn't mean that every employer offers just the floor, there are many that offer different twists on it. And I'll go through one of those for you. American Express started piloting Work and Family Programs back in the early mid 80s. And I put the word piloting in quotes, because we never pilot anything and then cancel. Okay, it's kind of a subterfuge that we use in human resources on to get things started, because it's cheap. You can you sell it with the idea that well, we can always cancel it if it doesn't work. And we've never cancelled a pilot. So we continue to pilot things. For those of you who work in organizations or will be working in organizations and want to start new programs, I strongly recommend don't pilot anything, just go full blast. And the reason I say that is that administratively, it's hard. And to a great degree, I regret that we piloted some of the things we did, because it didn't come across with the full force of the needs of primarily women. The law program started in the early and mid 80s, and right through the 80s. And even, you know, into 1990, and 91, focused on women, 90, in in some of our locations. 90% of the population are women. And my feeling is you don't pilot something for 90% of the population to go full force. And I think we would have come out in the 2020 Retro spectrograph. I think we would have come out ahead and with work and family more mainstream as part of our culture had we had we gone full blast. So that's just what we didn't. And, you know, that's where we are today. We started out with Childcare Resource and Referral employee assistance programs, later went on into a pilot of an elder care program and is still a pilot. It's New York City and then we expanded it to Florida locations. Had we thought about elder care and the imposition on an on the employees workday that elder care issues can have, we would have gone full blast on. And so in that sense, I regret it every year we come up with well, how much will it cost us to institute elder care information and referral? And can we afford it this year, and every year it's a fight that we still haven't conquered. So we're dealing still in a pilot phase there, but the pilots don't get canceled. So that's good news, I suppose on in 1987, we decided to go nationwide with child care resource and referral and had been five years or so since we had started as a pilot in New York City that expanded it to major centers that god awful administrative nightmare, and then finally said, This is ridiculous. It's costing us more not to give it to people than to give it to people. So we went full blast there with our resource and referral. Interestingly enough now in the last couple of years, the work family in the last year or so I should say, but almost two years work family hasn't had the impetus that have had at one point in American Express, mainly, you know, his downturn in business, the whole recession now we're starting to build it back. But we still have about 7% of our population using Childcare Resource and Referral without advertising. Which Imagine if we advertised it another company about our size in New York City and located in many of the locations that we are in same kind of employees in terms of mostly clerical, mostly women advertises this service and they get about 18% usage. So um, you can tell by the incredible need, when we get our utilization numbers back, the the people who are using it, and again, it's mostly women, because that's most of our population. And it's typically the mother who's making the childcare arrangements. Unknown Speaker 19:33 They're telling us that they save 11 to 15 hours of time in searching for childcare by using the Resource and Referral 11 to 15 hours of time, and that's date. That's daytime, that's work time. That's not evening time because the childcare centers in family daycare providers are typically open during the day and that's when you go see it so it's work time they're saving. It's phenomenal. We we more than pay for the cost of it in 90 He made 89 with the thought that we might open a childcare center, which never did happen. We felt we would take a survey of the employees in that location to see what, whether or not they would use it. And as it turns out, we ended up surveying the entire company, the entire country. That was one time when we did go and say, what do we want from every, you know, what do we want to do in terms of everybody, and it was a real needs analysis, it was at a time when the company was booming financially. And you know, being a Best Place to Work being in the forefront of work family programs was extremely important to the corporation. So we had instituted family leave and adoption assistance back in 1987. And at that time, it was 12 weeks, including the disability. So basically, the six weeks standard for the on normal vaginal delivery, and then six weeks of actual childcare be not very much time. And often, if women were leaving a week or two weeks before they gave birth, you know, you're talking about a very minimal amount of time to actually be with the child in those critical times. Anyway, as a result of the survey, we initiate we were really working on a needs analysis to see what we could do next. We had the money, we wanted to, you know, we wanted to be a working mother magazine, we wanted the press, we wanted to Shell embargo and the Wall Street Journal to interview us constantly. And, you know, I mean, it was really important to us, the whole strategy was, you know, be out there in the forefront, you know, look in terms of retention look in terms of attraction as a place to primarily for women because women were such a critical segment of the population. As a result of the survey, we initiated something we call kids checks, spelled like traveler's checks like American Express, clever marketers. And kids check family check is a dependent care subsidy of $25 a week, but one dependent, or $35, a week for two or more dependents. Unknown Speaker 22:06 For employees whose salary is no more than $40,000 a year and his family income is no more than $80,000 a year. In New York City, that doesn't sound like a lot. But even in New York, it made the difference of licensed care versus unlicensed care for many parents. And once you get out of the major cities, it can make a tremendous difference is $100 a month on in the type of childcare that that employees can afford. We also introduced part time benefits part timers were non entities in terms of benefits up until then, and we designed the program so that employees who work two days a week could get full time benefits. The purpose of that was to encourage job sharing on a two day three day kind of match. Since then, that was 14 hours a week. Since then, we've moved part time benefits to 20 hours a week, there were a total of 200 employees out of an employment base of 30,000, who would be impacted by moving it from 14 to 20 hours, we grandfathered them into it so that they could maintain their full time benefits on the less than 20 hours. But any new part timers hired would have to work the 20 hours. What we also found is that most job shares were not to a two day three day split, there were three day three day splits, excuse me, with Wednesday being the overlap. So it didn't have a real impact on job sharing. But it would have an impact on what we thought were primarily full time students with part time jobs. So who very often have benefits on as students so we felt the impact wouldn't be too great. And on our current employees, there was no impact. We put in flexibility options at that point, we had had several pilot job shares. Now we were encouraging job sharing in particular little bit of telecommuting, what we found is that, especially women after having babies wanted to work from home a couple of days a week. So we encourage them flexible return from labor, which is our most popular benefit that we have. What it is, is that after taking the a person comes back full in is considered full time back at work for purposes of benefits and job guarantee and things like that, but can ease back in starting at two days a week, for a total leave time of 20 weeks have to come back to work by the end of 12 weeks and then can have eight more weeks or can have 20 weeks of part time work. That's what I did when we adopted a child two and a half years ago. So I wasn't going through the physical recuperation although I have no idea how women have young babies and recuperate that time, because I remember how sleeplessness was just really so awful. But you know, 72 days then go into three days four and then ultimately fine. Let's see then in 1990 too, we were one of the 11 companies in the American business collaboration for quality dependent care. We it's actually one of 247 companies, we were active in 14 cities, we initiated all sorts of good projects that had everything from quality components to increased resources components on a lot of education components, backup, childcare, on holiday vacation time, increased family daycare is an elder care program, since that you've probably all read about that. Um, so I go through all this and, and then now we're getting into more, I'll call them business initiatives that I think have a working family impact. And I'm not sure a positive impact, even though Unknown Speaker 25:51 they're put in place because of the business me thought of as wonderful in terms of work and family. And I'm not quite so sure the questions around on this one is called the Virtual Office, which you may be familiar with, I see some people nodding heads and a little laptop PC, and you can plug it in, you can work 24 hours a day with a laptop PC now because you can work from home. So I think the you know, for our salespeople, that meant that they didn't have to go into the office and then go see clients, they could just go to see clients directly from home. But I question whether or not having all your resources that you need for work in your home has a positive impact on your family. At lunch, I was talking to a few people and I said on Sundays, I want to take a baseball bat and break the PC. Because if I didn't have it, I wouldn't first of all, use it at home. And secondly feel guilty about not using it at home. So I think the question is still out about work from home and telecommuting in terms of the impact on family, the institution of teams, and that's the new the new thing that's I call it buzzword du jour, because it's me. I see a lot of nods. The American Express is no different from anywhere else. Teams have the big way to do things now. But I question in terms of you know, and I think my own work experiences on at the times, and I think that mostly when I was single on Attach, no family traveled all the time, had no reason not to, and how much I was just totally in love with my co workers. And we did everything together. And it was tremendous loyalty and wonderful feeling. And I would have done anything for any one of them, versus the feelings of when there's a more traditional hierarchical boss subordinate relationship. My contention is, and I have absolutely no research to back this up. But I questions rather than content. And I'll say I question whether or not the loyalty that employees sometimes feel relative to teams is more of an imposition on the family than the boss subordinate relationship. And I think the question is out there about teamwork as the most effective way to get work done, when in turn, when in fact, the healthiest employee is the one that's least stressed about all aspects of their lives. So I again, I think the question is out on that. We're also doing lots of Korea Development, cross training, you know, this whole thing about flatter organizations, people more crosswise the cross train, we're doing this wonderful thing for employees with trainings, they can do 10 different jobs. That's really nice. But nobody's getting the promotions and therefore the income increases that the traditional organization has, and where we've been training people really well and telling them that is your career development in case we ever have riffs again, or reductions in force, you'll be so marketable. But the irony of that is that if we're having reduction in force, chances are the company next door is doing the same thing. So, you know, I question, you know, what's the impact in terms of long term on the business and on the family structure, this country, in essence, in terms of all this training is wonderful, and it does well for the business. But unless we start thinking of employees as long term assets, that we could be doing ourselves tremendous harm as a society and as corporations in that society. So with that, I'll get to some of the little topic of and I'll just take another minute about what price family which is a sub topic here. And I say you can't measure what time what price family unless you say what price personal what price me. And the reason I say that is on I think of one day last week, I have a Department of Labor OFCCP audit starting Monday. For those of you who know what that is, it's an affirmative action audit. In Thursday, my nanny called it's the first time she's ever called in She has been with us for months and months and months. Actually, it's almost a year now. And it's the first time she called in sick, she was really sick, and I could hear on the phone, and the next day, I saw how sick she had been. And I sat there a quarter of eight in the morning, and I said, What the hell am I gonna do? And my husband sat there and said, Oh, what are we gonna do? I mean, you know, I mean, we just rely on her totally. We have a two and a half year old, and what are we gonna do? Unknown Speaker 30:28 You know, and Unknown Speaker 30:30 then, you know, we worked out all the details and everything between school and one of us picking up and back and forth. But it occurred in especially in preparing for today, it occurred to me I said, you know, on the one hand, I really want it to be at work, you know, we've got this stuff under control, we think I mean, it's an important thing coming up, it's important that I'm there, and that I check everything before we start handing it over to the government. And I want to be there. On the other hand, I really wanted to be home, you know, in the what price family has a lot to do with what price mean, the desire to be pursuing a career working full time, and really enjoying what you do. And on the other hand, really enjoying your family and wanting to be there, and there's only 24 hours in a day. And I think that the impact on family is one thing, you know, we talk about balancing work and family. I, I contend there's no such thing as balancing it. I think it's impossible. I think there were things companies can do to help. But I think basically, it's impossible. When you're at work, you want to be with the family when your family feel guilty and out of work. You know. It's just not possible, I don't think. But the end result is what price me because I'm caught in the middle. And I don't think that when companies think of balancing work family, yes, the idea is to help the employee balance the stress and relieve some of the stress. But But still, there were all those work demands instilled in still the family demands. So I'll leave you with that in terms of very cynical way to end. You know, what did I do? Well, while my son goes to school from nine to 12, so I brought them and my husband said he would pick them up and pick up time is 10 of 12. And a quarter past 11. He called me to say he couldn't pick them up. And I at that point, so when I was describing this to someone, she said, Are you still married, and my picked him up and the transition, which normally day to day is very easy for me because at the end of the day, I leave work in the 15 minutes it takes me to get home and mentally at home. But that day as I walked into his school, I said, okay, is he ready? Where's his backpack? Okay, come on, let's get home have lunch. And I said to myself, I'm you know, I'm like at work mentally. And it took me a long time to calm down. And basically until I sat down in the sandbox in the afternoon, you know, and I had to say, To heck with work, because, you know, my cut off is that my family always comes first, regardless of what the story is. Thank you. Unknown Speaker 33:07 Okay. Well, I actually have some handouts, which I'll ask you guys to pass around. And I'll say a couple things. First, about the Families and Work Institute. I feel like I need a phone book to sit on this table. Yeah. They cut off the legs to keep the current right. The Families and Work Institute is a nonprofit research and consulting organization we were founded five years ago. It's our five year anniversary this summer, by two women, Danna Friedman and Ellen Galinsky. And I would say the two of them together with Fran Rogers, who smoked spoke this morning are really kind of founders or founding figures in this whole field of work and family, having been in it probably for 10 to 15 years now. The institute is funded by foundations and corporations. And we do research on a whole range of issues looking at everything from our most recent study was the quality of childcare. We've also looked at the role of men in parenting. We've looked at the changing demographics of the US workforce. We've looked at the impact of Family and Medical Leave legislation that was enacted in some of the states prior to this federal legislation. And we've also evaluated the impact of work and family policies in companies. We've been looking recently in a couple studies at issues related to women's career development and the intersection of work and family issues with women's career development. So what I'd like to do is to bring a little bit of that research tell you some of the research findings related to I guess putting in broader QA context or give the bigger picture of what do we know broadly about how prevalent are some of these work and family policies and programs that we've been hearing about? And then what do we know what evidence is in about what kind of impact they're having. So I guess the first thing is for me to just define broadly what I what I mean when I say work and family policies. And I think we've heard about the different categories this morning. And just now and the the broad categories are dependent care benefits. So this would be elder care and child care supports primarily, and then there's leave. And then finally, the third broad category is flexible work arrangements. And this would include everything from part time to flex time, job sharing, compressed workweek, and telecommuting, or work at home arrangements. If you look at the first chart that this reflects findings from two major studies that the Institute has done, gathering information on the availability of work and family policies and programs. In one study, we surveyed companies. And in the other study, we surveyed a nationally representative sample of US workers. In the survey of workers, let me just tell you, what we found about the profile of who has access primarily to these kinds of policies, there's definitely a situation in this country of unequal access that managers and professionals, people who earn more money, and those with more education tend to have far greater access to these types of policies and programs than other workers. Also, workers who are in large companies, and in our survey, the break point was 500 or more employees are also far more likely, again, to have access to these policies and programs than people in smaller companies, although one thing that does happen in smaller companies is that there is some access to more personalized scheduling options. So what the chart shows what the graph will show, then is that because the companies that we surveyed were fortune 500 companies, you can see that the what they report in terms of policies they offer is very high compared to what the average worker across the country reports they have access to which are the the white bars on the right. Unknown Speaker 37:28 So I think the point here is that while there's a lot of press, and we hear a lot in the media about the increasing popularity of work and family policies, there's still a relatively rare form of support for most people. I guess that being said, given that they are being implemented in some companies, primarily large organizations and have been in existence for several years now, as Barbara said, American Express, it's been over a decade from what when you first started with dependent care. This does give us the opportunity to take stock of what has the impact of these policies been. And at the Institute, we were fortunate to get to do that we got some funding from the glass ceiling commission at the US Department of Labor. And they asked us to look at a specific question. They wanted to know what has been the impact of family friendly policies on the glass ceiling. So we conducted a review of the research, tried to be fairly comprehensive, looked at both academic research as well as a lot of the popular literature and did an exhaustive review. And I like to say we arrived at the following definitive conclusion, we don't really know. And it seems to depend. Unknown Speaker 38:45 Which is we weren't surprised actually to find that. Conceptually, a person could see that these policies would be helpful to working women not only because of the physical reality, of pregnancy and childbirth, but then also after the child is born. Research shows that women in their family structures or in their domestic situations continue to shoulder a lot more responsibility for many of the ongoing household things. And you'll see that in your next chart, which came out of our national study, again of the sample of the workforce. And you see that women shoulder a lot the majority of responsibility for many of the time consuming aspects of home life. So this underscores why policies and programs supports in the workplace are of critical importance to women dependent care is important not only the leave period, but then once the leave is over. As the child starts to grow, people need infant care then they move into needing school aged care or care during summer vacations and holidays. So the issues change over the lifecycle and most important Have all and I think this was really emphasized this morning, is the need for flexibility. When we go out to companies and do surveys and focus groups, we hear over and over again that the thing that the people need the most, and that women need the most to really handle this juggling act is the flexibility either to restructure their time in or in certain cases to reduce their time spent at work either temporarily, or over a period of several years, they might want this, but then this gets into a sort of sticky issue or question arises because when people start thinking about and talking about taking extended leave, or using a flexible work arrangement, the question that comes up is, what about the Maumee track? And people start to wonder how is this going to affect my career? How is this going to affect my opportunity for advancement? If there is a setback? Will it be temporary? Or will I forever after be viewed as a second class citizen, somebody who's seen as being on the B team. These questions have been raised and debated and speculated on in the popular and Business Press. But what we what we tried to do for the glass ceiling commission was really take a look at what research has been done, and especially focusing on on the impact of leaves and flexible work arrangements. And we found a couple of major things. One is that there's not very much hard research that exists right now, that really evaluates the impact of these policies. And a couple reasons for that there hasn't been much demand for it by employers. One because it's expensive to conduct and good data are really difficult to obtain. Most of the research that has been done is based a lot on employee perceptions, rather than really hard measures that track track outcomes longitudinally. The second thing that we found is that the primary focus of most evaluation studies has been to look at recruitment, retention and productivity. And it has measured these things which are different from looking at career advancement. In reviewing all that literature, we did find that there does seem to be a positive impact of work and family supports on the recruitment, retention and productivity of women. So that's good news on that front. But what about this question of career advancement? There are a few studies that we turned up that did start to try to look directly at that. One of them was actually a report put out by work family directions. They took a look at their database of 80 client companies. And if you look at your next chart, you'll see what they found. They found that many of their clients, they would categorize as Vanguard employers that they had flexible work arrangements officially on the books. But when they asked the same companies, what the level of usage of these policies was, they were very, very low. Unknown Speaker 43:12 And that's reflected in the bottom chart. And what they concluded was that the low usage was both a reflection of supervisory resistance to actually letting employees use these policies and employees fears of negative career consequences. A study was also done. This was a 1993 study, same year study came out from catalyst where they looked at flexible work arrangements. And in that study, they interviewed human resources professionals and 70 companies. And a quarter of the of the HR professionals that catalyst interviewed said that using flexible work arrangements would have a negative impact on career advancement. There was a book that came out in I guess it was late last year 93. And it was a study conducted in 1992 by two researchers, Deborah Swiss and Judith Walker, and they surveyed 902 women that were graduates of Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, and the medical school. And those survey respondents. 85% of them reported that they believe reducing hours of work is detrimental to a woman's career. I want to read you some quotes. So there's definitely a consistent theme emerging. Women believe on the one hand they want these policies, they need them, they say it's what we most need to really juggle and manage the ebb and flow and balance of our lives. But they seem to be very dangerous, and there's fear about career consequences. I recently finished working on a study for the Institute in which we conducted focus groups around the country with women in science and engineering. backgrounds, and they were working in History. And we were asking them about their career experiences. And I wanted to just read you some quotes from them from both men and women that we talked to about work and family issues and using flexibility in their companies. This is a man in his 20s. Talking about flexibility, he said, our division is flexible as far as allowing women to go out on a halftime basis, part time or half week if they don't want to come back full time. But then they have ended their career by doing that. Another woman in her 20s, in a different company said in my area, there's a job share, there are opportunities like this, but if you do it, there's going to be no advancement, they would not let a manager do it. Another woman who was in her 40s said, I think flexibility can work. I personally have accommodated several employees. One is working for nine hour days, and it's working well for her, but it will hurt her for promotions. And then finally, someone told us last year, the suggestion was made for part time or job sharing, it was rejected right away, the feeling was that people will not be as dedicated and that everyone would want to do it. We lost a very good woman who wanted part time. Now I've heard it's going to be presented again. So I thought that was interesting. I mean, over and over again, we heard these quotes were from five very different companies in different parts of the country, but very consistent theme. And then five final study I found that really looked directly at this was a survey that the American Women's Society of Certified Public Accountants had done asking people about what they felt would happen, what would be the impact if they did use a flexible work arrangement. And if you look at the next chart, you'll see that they were pretty pessimistic that with the exception of flex time, the majority of people felt that if they used any one of these options, that their career would be harmed. And it's interesting, it's in small type. But it's interesting to note that they really said, continuing to be a candidate for upward movement and promotion, even if at a slower pace. So it was Unknown Speaker 47:12 are talking about using these kinds of flexibility arrangements, people are really afraid. But again, we still haven't hit on the issue. What happens to people who actually do use these policies, there's not a lot of data, the policies haven't been around for a very long time. And there's not really any sort of longitudinal very rigorous research going on looking at it Cabalists did do this study of users of flexible work arrangements. Last year, it was a it was a small group, it was about 40 to 45 people. And their conclusion in looking at these women who were using flexibility was that the women said they experienced a career slowdown, but that this was counterbalanced by the fact that they were staying with their companies, they were staying in the workforce. They were maintaining their skills, they were maintaining their career identity, career identities, and presumably they could resume momentum at some later point in time. The Women's CPA study also looked at actual users and found that those people who were using flexible work arrangements said In fact, despite the fears that that people who weren't using the policies had that in fact, there was very little damage to promotions, few problems with the attitudes of their colleagues and supervisors. But a third of the CPAs, who were using these arrangements said that they did believe that their first salary increase, after using the flexible work arrangement was penalized. So summing up the research, then what we found was that these policies do appear to support women's attachment to the labor force their ability to, I guess, get in the game and stay in the game, which is an important first step, going back to this whole issue of do the policies help women break the glass ceiling, it's certainly an important first step to be in and stay in the labor force or be in it stay in the pipeline within your company. Unknown Speaker 49:18 But then, moving from there, I think the findings and all the research tells us that the game is very complex, and that it factors in more than just keeping your name on the payroll. And what research consistently shows is that there are an constellation of factors that also play into this whole issue of career development. And these include supervisory attitudes and actions and the larger organization culture and the career development practices that are all at work. The way I like to think about it is that these are elements of the workplace system, and they really act Has filters which are assessing loyalty and screening people and making determinations about potential for development. And I think what we're seeing is that these other aspects of the workplace culture are very resistant to change, building on what barber said about changes that we hear about all the time in organizations, from teamwork to corporations being reengineered. And that there's this whole sort of revolution happening in corporate America that supposedly is changing the nature of work and the way people work and expanding the possibilities as to how work gets done. We hear a lot about that we hear a lot about managing diversity and having empowerment and all that sort of stuff. But when you talk to people and when you get down to it, it sounds that the very traditional notions of what work and career are about are very firmly in place. And what these notions are, and they've been outlined by a couple different researchers. Recently, I think there's a consensus about this among researchers among employees. These are the things that have not been shaken loose. One is that commitment to career and your company are very often demonstrated through FaceTime time spent in the office. The presence and hours are still viewed in many places as the best indicator not only of loyalty but of productivity, how do I know you're working? If I can't see you? If you're not here? How do I know you're committed, you know, if you're if you're out of the office half the time. I think also there's a notion that real serious professional work can only be accomplished on a full time basis. I think that was mentioned this morning, that part time work isn't seen as real, professional work. And that finally people who are serious about advancing will make themselves available to the office at all times that you will be on call to to the workplace, if you're really a serious employee. Sometimes these requirements are explicit, sometimes they're more tacit, unspoken, and but you just know that that's what's called for. And it reflects really a continuing emphasis not just on performance, but on commitment. I wanted to quote from Lottie Baylands, new book, she's a professor at MIT and has a very interesting book out now called breaking the mold, where she's really looking at these issues about time and commitment and the sort of corporate culture. And she quotes in her book, a 1989 managerial book that's talking about commitment, which I thought was interesting, given that this was just a couple few years ago, this managerial book says, commitment, like motivation is not something that we can observe directly, we infer that they exist because of what people say and do. There are at least two kinds of behavior that signal employee commitment. First, committed employees appear to be very single minded or focused in doing their work. The second characteristic that we associate with committed employees is their willingness to make personal sacrifices to reach their teams or their organization's goals. So we can see how this sets up a conflict. Unknown Speaker 53:25 If you if you display or demonstrate anything less than single minded focus on your career on your place of work. And what Balan and others have concluded is that traditional assumptions, assumptions, attitudes and practices related to commitment, time. And this the shape of what career development should look like, really, still permeate company cultures. And that as long as this continues to be the case using flexibility, which let me say, again, I think Fran said it this morning is really the thing that is most important and most valued, especially by working women, using flexibility will be seen as detrimental to one's career opportunities. And so I think that that's, that's really the dilemma. And then once you get past there's kind of an evolutionary progression of work and family issues. That once you have dependent care, taking care of once you have secured your right to take leave, that then the rest of your life stretches before you and that, you know, that can be 15 or 2020 years of child raising. And also I think it's important to say that people who don't necessarily have children also want to have may have need at different times for flexibility in their lives, whether it's to pursue educational goals or other activities in the community, that people have this ongoing need for flexibility and bow once and that, as long as the company environment or corporate environment really does not allow or support has policies on the books, but doesn't have a larger culture or system, that that really allows use of those policies, that, that we still have a way to go. And I guess we can have some discussion about that I waver between at times feeling optimistic, and seeing that coming and other times thinking, Oh, it's gonna be another, you know, 35 or 40 years, till there's a sort of generational change. So we'll see. Unknown Speaker 55:39 I think each of our panelists kind of stand up, because I think it's easy. I've highlighted a central dilemma that I see all the time when I work with companies. And that's the need of the company, to have commitment from the employees, while at the same time being unwilling to give employees the same level of commitment throughout their careers. And I think it is a dilemma for our time, I don't know of any company that is really successful at negotiating. What I'd like to do in 10 minutes I'll give myself is talk a little bit about kind of bumping up a couple of in academia, we call it levels of analysis, take a different perspective, and look at some of the pressures that are beginning to come to place upon our particularly our economic organizations, and what that means for our lives. And I'd like to start with a basic question, which is what's the person for? In a business? That's a person? What do you need a person for? Why not just have robots, right? And I think we come down to three kinds of things that you do with the person that company, there's basic labor. And I think this is where a lot of our problems start. Because we have our image of work and our image of why, why did you leave the farm and go into an employment situation, which in many cases is a very alien sort of environment, you have to get up not on the sunrises. But when the clock goes, right, very different, not a natural setting. Why? Because they need people to put nuts and bolts and they need people to operate typewriters and they need people to visually inspect things because you don't have machinery does that. So that's one whole element of what we use a person for. And I think a lot of historical Wait, what we're doing that, right now has to do with a basic concept of management as managing labor in a very physical doing things way. So that's the labor piece, then there's an expertise because computers are very clever, but they're not very creative. There's a lot they can do. There's an awful lot to do. You need people to design people to write the software, you need people to make run. People have expertise, people know things that cannot as of yet be sort of codified and put in a recipe book. So there's a big expertise. And then there's a piece of what you don't hear talked about all that much, although you can increase in service businesses attract attention. And that's an element of work that I have to work where what you're doing needs to be done by person, because only a person can establish a relationship with another person. And if you kind of map those three uses of people upon and empathy empathic work, by the way, is a lot of what family is all about you when you're there, because you care about those people there are they dependent on the dependency relationships. Unknown Speaker 58:30 And I think if you look at kind of competitive eras, from the Industrial Revolution, way that 70 words, right through what really through today, what we're seeing is increasing sophistication in the use of machinery to substitute for human labor. I threatened my MBAs, I tell them, they're out there the half life of their degrees, about five years, within about five years, computers will have gotten intelligent enough to substitute a lot of the laborious stuff that they do that investment banks and so forth, hired to do with with machines, they won't be needing to do that anymore. And if you look at kind of the 1950s, through a revolution that I think is going to carry us through to the early 2000s, the information revolution, what I think you're seeing there is human intelligence being kind of codified what into electronic systems. Now, I'm not saying machines substitute for people, what I'm saying is pieces of what people used to have to do, these machines couldn't do, it can now be done by machines. So you used to have a slide rule, then you had a calculator, then you had a spreadsheet. Now you've got systems that actually can design themselves to solve problems where they've been able to identify the boundaries. So we're seeing a lot more expertise getting automated. And what I think a lot of companies are with a great deal of discomfort bumping up against is the fact that at some point if we are to address the issues of productivity and international competitiveness and all those other things, that we need to move increasingly towards competition based on empathy. pathing competition, and it's driven by a lot of different motives. Firstly is as other things become more automated your ability to get an advantage from his increasingly short lived, it's a it's a quality I call competitive installation, you do something as a company to try to get money, right, you want to get a competitive advantage. And increasingly, fewer and fewer advantages are protectable. You build a shiny new plant, somebody else can build a shiny new plant, you buy a new computer system, somebody else can do it to you do great market research so that another increasingly what I'm seeing is businesses protecting their offering, on the basis of the relationship. What is how does that manifest it? How would you see it, you see it in products, we now offer service, a lot of value added customer service, personalization. And American Express, I think is a company that does this beautifully. Don't leave home without it. It's a lot different from the basic function at a credit union, it's more convenient than cash really, don't leave home without it also means reassurance. If you get into trouble, we'll look after you run up against a problem, we'll be there for you globally, worldwide, anywhere you go. That, to me is kind of a lot of appeal based on conditions. And individualization. You're seeing a lot more that have friends in the publishing business, and you talk about magazines entirely written for one person? That's kind of where we're heading, we're gonna have 10,000 cable TV channels, every one of us will soon have our own TV show, we will show only that which is just to us. It can carry these things a bit far. I mean, Does the world really need 500 flavors of vinegar? I don't know. And more and more businesses are going. Unknown Speaker 1:01:42 What? Coffee? Unknown Speaker 1:01:43 Coffee? Yeah, right. I mean, you pick it but more and more in the sophisticated economies, we're seeing this need for individualization personalization, dominance, the competitive field simply because traditional mechanisms of insulating are going away. Now we all are basing our appeal to our customers on trust. Trust me, I look after trust takes a long to build. Once you haven't, it's very difficult for others to do. So it's a good strong source of customer protection your customers when they trust you. And things like personal connection, I have a relationship with my private banker, I can always call this person. And so what we're seeing now is competition that increasingly is dependent upon empathic appeal to to give companies a competitive advantage. What does that mean? It means organizations in many cases have to be able to deliver. And some of the kind of management fads du jour that you hear about I think are fumbling cooping, early organization intends to become responsive. So teams, why a team everybody has if you want to call it a different empathic wavelength, I'm gonna get on with some people that others won't. So if I work on a team, with other people, you will kind of pick up more abilities to create more relationships with more people, it's a basic wind, why do you need a team you can't do it by yourself. Flat organizations are very responsive, able to be very flexible in how people used to move in. constant communication, is telling my husband about this thing Bill Gates is doing it's gonna get satellites up in the air right? So we can all be hooked up there. Somebody has been who looked at me said, Why do these people persist in believing that everybody on earth wants to be in constant communication with everybody else on earth all the time. It's a quandary for our era, there are times I do not want to be called, okay, there are times I do not want to be anybody's. And yet, because of the demands, we're building these empathic relationships with our customers, we're kind of wielding or not being dragged into this very team oriented, flattened, responsible organization role. It's very personal. What does it mean for management as a concept, I think it means that management increasingly will be judged to be successful to the extent that it's invisible. To the extent that the organization can do what it needs to do without a manager having to funnel things. I think I think that will be remarkably successful manager. Now, the downside is that it takes an awful lot of work to get an organization debate that way, and it puts a lot of pressure. So when I think about all this stuff, what do you what does it mean for this panel? I think there's bad news is good news. And I'll start with the bad news. Move towards what I think the good news is. The bad news is all of this stuff eats up time, enormous amounts of time. And I think of it in terms of four things that you need to do if you're going to be successful in these very competitive in epic based organizations. First is, in an empathy situation, you can't analyze your way to a solution. You cannot say Oh, right person 34 plays tennis, put this into my spreadsheet and I'll get the answer to what is it Since he can't do it, you need to get to know it needs to be visceral, you need to feel it out of the relationship, that the item that's time consuming. It's time consuming work, it takes a lot out of you to get that close to the customer or co worker. Second one relationships met many more relationships are going to be the kind of the Barbara was talking about whether these incredible rich committed deep teen relationships at work. Every time somebody calls going to be learning, competitions getting hotter, people are less able to come from traditional sources of advantage, which means the half life of everything you know, is getting shorter. And that means that there is going to be a need throughout our working lives, to continue to learn to build in ways of learning. And that takes time. And experiencing at the moment a very modest version of this in converting from one word processing package to another, I anticipate it's going to take me all summer long to get it done. Because it's so difficult to change overall my work habits to this very modest change in the structure. Unknown Speaker 1:06:08 And the last kind of time consuming thing, I think that we're seeing more and more and more is the need for FaceTime in the sense not have you got to look good to be there. But you've got to be there to understand what's going on. And that means travel. As I talk to executives, the thing that is most dominant in most people's gripes about the increasingly responsible jobs is the amount of travel just now have this vision like half of our employee population is going to be living on it sort of 20 years from now, unless we invent virtual reality or something, I just don't see the same, I see travel getting more and more as a necessary demand of the workplace. And when you think about that, it has dramatic implications for flexibility. Because if you are in Korea, you cannot be home, when the baby's sick back, it just doesn't matter. I travel myself about a month, a week, a month, which is a lot to children. And believe me, very takes time. So I think the bad news is that this empathic, very intense kind of competition is going to require a lot of time. The good news is I think it does open up new kinds of opportunities. And organizations, again, are not dealing with it as fleetly, as I would love to see them, but they're stumbling towards certain kinds of solutions. One is I think there is a lot more flexibility for a lot more people now than it has been in the past. It's not enough. But there's a lot more. And I think most of our panelists today. So there is increasing numbers of second, flat organizations, team based organizations, organizations in which there's a lot of change, open up many more entry points. Many, many companies used to be ahead to get in and 25 and work there to your 65. And you got your old watching that is that we don't see so much of it. We see because black organizations don't have a lot of management, they call it bench depth. That's the you heard of your first if you haven't heard that yet. But the management buzzwords are thin layers of management. If somebody leaves now you're in a crisis, right, the headhunting business is taking off, because there isn't the debt in the organization. What that means is a lot more opportunities for coming higher up. Again, we haven't thought through what that means. But I think in terms of women, if you're willing to jump firms, there's a lot of opportunities to come in later on. I think the work is getting more interesting in very many companies. In contrast to the dire predictions made by those studying automation, I think we're seeing work getting more interesting, less in the better management. I'll use GE as example. Think of the job of a credit clerk in a supply position where what you do all day long as you sit at your desk and you say no, right? The customer calls up. Can I have more credit? No, no, no, Unknown Speaker 1:08:56 no, no click, take that job and figure Unknown Speaker 1:09:00 out how can I make that person? How can everybody play credit? Well, how about using credit proactively? How about if you got to call up the 10 best people? Hey, I've been looking at your reference. Do you know I think we can extend your credit by 4%. Now tremendous competitive advantage to the firm. Now they're actually going out and using this. What's otherwise a liability. Having to carry credit is an opportunity. But think of the impact on that person's job right now they can come in every day, and instead of it being this horrible, no job that you just want to get out of. It's interesting. There's more to it. So I think this new competition opens up. And at the risk of being controversial, I will say that I think when it comes to empathy based work, women seem to do it better than men. Whether it's nature or nurture, I'm not going to get into you but it seems to be easier. We don't seem to be as up on being right all the time, arguing all the time heading into our point of view prevail as most And appears. So I'll put that one in there with a question. I think you may have done research on this. No, but I think judging from my own personal experience, it may open up opportunities. Give me two minutes more intelligence, I will go over some ramifications that I think are important. The first one is this is a confusing, it's very confusing, it's confusing to the man, it's confusing to the woman, I think it's almost more confusing. Because you just don't know. I mean, and, and different companies are approaching this stuff at different paces of progress. So a company like American Express, which prides itself on kind of being in the forefront is going to be very different than the company was at last week. General sigma, which is, and they're, they're a little less concerned about being. So it's very confusing. Confusion tends to create immobility, if you're confused, you tend to get stuck. So there's going to be, I think, a lot of opportunity for leaders to work us out of some of this confusion by doing things like with the people we dismantle, have done, instead of saying, Where are we? Where are we going? Unknown Speaker 1:11:06 What are the written. Unknown Speaker 1:11:08 Second one, for families, this kind of work is very intense, with this evolving is often very engaging, that credit flux job can now be something you know, for the first time in that person's life, maybe they have something unique that they can do professionally. It can leave your family left out. This is typically been a problem of the corporate life, it is now increasingly a problem. Family that's kind of like the kids are less interesting to someone who's very involved in something that's going on. Sometimes the spouse can get there. So I think there's a need to recognize consciously that that experience very intense involvement, and leaving out the people around you that something. The next one is one piece of advice I give to my particularly female VA students, which is the assumptions we make that happens when you go off and on and on. Are not borne out by practice. I'll give you my own personal experience. I had a baby, right? I got pregnant, great news. I'm terrific. Before the baby's born, yes, we're going to do 5050, we'll we'll share Well, it'll be equal after the baby's born. Well, you're the one that's on maternity leave, why is such a problem. And somehow, after I went back to work, all the work stuck with me. It was English. And I'm married to a nice person. But we had to start cutting deals to make actual negotiations around what debt okay, this is great, I love you, you love me, we love our children, that's fine, who has to be where it's 7am Tomorrow, and it's that deal that needs to be cut. And it's not obvious before you've been through it. So to the extent that I can, if that's a piece of advice, I suggest that that's a better way to think about quality of life. One of the puzzles of the new competition is at this point in time, we do not give a whole lot of economic value to quality of life. So you make a widget, I buy your widget and pay me great, you know, that's an economic transaction, we know what its value is right off the bat, I raise a child who doesn't go out and depend on others for their sustenance. You know, if I'm lucky, I get a Mother's Day. Isn't that the same economic direct to that set? activities. And I think that is a problem here. Unknown Speaker 1:13:26 So the larger scholarly community practice, Unknown Speaker 1:13:31 because until we have some way of measuring and rewarding contributions to quality blood, I think work is gonna get sucked into this economic realm, by default is not a countervailing force. And I don't have an answer that but that's. And the last kind of issue that I that concerns me, as I look at this new kind of competition is with the intensity and the level of engagement and the drive that needs to be pulled into this fascinating organizational problems, Unknown Speaker 1:13:58 who provides empathy, Unknown Speaker 1:14:01 who is still at home providing empathic sustenance, but it's getting kind of dragged into the workforce. It's a concern. But those I think there's some of the ramifications for this competition. So what have we argued? What's the person for? Increasingly, labor is getting automated expertise is getting increasingly dragged empathy. We haven't figured out what we don't know how to do it quantitatively yet, but companies are talking. And it's imposing a lot of obligations on people that work in organizations, in this series of implications will have a person which concludes my comments. And then we have, Unknown Speaker 1:14:39 I guess, about 45 minutes for Unknown Speaker 1:14:42 discussion. Questions, comments? A comment that I had. My husband I have coined as a sabbatical for me. I'm in my last year of the savannah Got, it means that one of the things that frustrated me about the partnership of home, family and responsibility was that there was the help, I'm helping attitude, which meant that I was still the one responsible to make the decision of what we were going to cook for dinner. The dinner was cooked when I got home, but I was the one responsible for that. I was the one that was responsible to make the medical appointments for the children for physicals and so forth. And I brought it up six years ago that it was important for him to understand why even though the help was there, the stress the responsibility, there was a great deal of stress attached to the responsibility. So we cut a deal. And I was on a five year sabbatical. This is my last year, I'm going to nurse it to death, the hard part, and that is to open up my dresser drawer. And there's clean underwear in there. And I didn't put it in there. And to come home from work, and the homework is done. And the kitchen is cleaned. And there's a plate for me in the microwave oven. And a lot of people are envious of that and find it surprising. But there's a guilt that I feel inside. And I what bothers me most about that guilt is How could any other human being and I say male, because I've only known men to have had this? Unknown Speaker 1:16:26 How could they have been so blind? To what Unknown Speaker 1:16:30 that sort of assistance means? Because, and I've only been doing it for four years. And I felt guilty the first six months, not guilty in a negative sense. But how could you be so blind to what that means to family and to work to be able to have work and family and just dismiss it? Because it's a wonderful feeling to open up your drawer and you didn't do? Questions Unknown Speaker 1:17:00 from being in that scenario. Unknown Speaker 1:17:05 While I gave, but it's very easy for me to come home. Unknown Speaker 1:17:09 I don't have home again, like four years old. But for me to come home and have somebody already done the homework what kind of they do it? You know, is it okay doing and my husband takes very big. He's Mr. Mom, and he has a flexible schedule. And I believe that schedule and by someone just too much to do, but I'm not there. So how can I tell him? You know, it's a it's a very difficult thing to keep up that become a consultant. And what did you do for dinner? Well, do you give up planning that? A lot of us come in here? Unknown Speaker 1:17:52 Well, what kind of questions? Are we starting any? It's too early to have done it too, to the economic value some of these policies to the workplace. I mean, we've done medical studies there have lunch to know aspects, you know, over 25 years, we can document that certain kinds of food cause certain kinds of physical ramifications, I think that we actually have to look at starting those studies. Now. It's been too early, because not enough of that has happened up to them. But it's happening, we should be looking at it because I run employee assistance programs and other things, people in the workplace computer related things. And we know we can document that, for instance, employee assistance programs say it's an employer anywhere between four and $16. For every dollar spent in terms of less less health benefits before. We shouldn't be looking as a women's organization to have a document. The other thing Unknown Speaker 1:19:04 I shouldn't say there is some there are many studies that have documented or accompanies that have documented impact. For instance, one that I can think of is Aetna looked at after they they implemented a comprehensive, very generous leave package. They were able to document that they reduced their attrition of new mothers, they cut it in half from like 24% to 12%. And then I am sure that they can then quantify that if they know their cost of turnover and that sort of thing. They can translate that out to dollars and cents. And I think you're right that there needs to be more of that. Unknown Speaker 1:19:49 Nine to five did a study a number of years ago on the impact of family medical leave on small businesses, because it was seen that it would be more expensive and more difficult for small business to institute family medical leave. And it proved to be wrong. study was done in the states that already Unknown Speaker 1:20:07 family and medical leave for a number of years Unknown Speaker 1:20:10 see problems things like that have been done on older people will if you take note of the workplace, will they take more time really has proven not to be the case. If anything steadier less victims thing I wanted to bring that up, I'm hearing are still talking about careers as a very Unknown Speaker 1:20:36 a career as a very normal. Unknown Speaker 1:20:39 And I think that this is really not a useful concept to us anymore. Missing people change careers. I'm not saying jobs, careers, 345 times your work life. And if you look at a book lifetime and thinking at age 22, or if you stop working when you're after high school, which most of the people can happen. But most people work till they're 70. Somewhere between 65 and 70. If you're in good health, and they liked what you can do. I think that the ramifications of taking a couple of flexible years for your children, whether it's male or female at one point in one of those reviews may not make any difference couple 20 years. So I think you have to have a short term goal. And you also have to have a long term goal and be cognizant of the fact that when you think is an impossible decision, and one place to look the same perspective. I think some of them will have. Unknown Speaker 1:21:49 I think you're right from a conceptual perspective of Korea. But I think there's another aspect that enters into most of the decisions about flexible work schedules, and that's economics, the most people can't afford to work part time or well at night, if I may, I think is kind of the same issue. Because it's on, you know, unless there's going to be some subsidization to do then, then it doesn't give people the opportunity to do it, you can have all the policies on the books, you can have, you know, the most wonderful environment in terms of supporting the the individual who uses those policies. And I'm not claiming at all that we do, but but I'm telling you, even in an ideal environment, it really can boil down to a person not having the career option. Or thinking about what's my next career, even if they're thinking in terms of our name changed three or four times, but at this particular moment, in order to feed my family and house them, I can't afford to do it. And I see that as the biggest detriment to especially women in a very highly female organization from taking the opportunity to use the flexible scheduling less, much less than the career. Unknown Speaker 1:23:03 And I think I want Unknown Speaker 1:23:03 to respond to that too, because I think there are two pieces to the whole. You know, I agree that to the whole sort of monolithic conception of the career, one piece is sort of our own individual, you know, how do we as individuals feel about it? Is it okay to change careers? A couple to I made a big career change sort of four years into I started out working on Wall Street, and I had to go through sort of my own, you know, reassessment This is wrong. And what am I going to do now, and I have to start over after I've invested five years and the economic ramifications of that. And I mean, I think people have to come to terms with their own individual, you know, needs and, and desires and views about what a career means, and sort of self esteem issues about that. But I think on the other side, and the more difficult piece of this is, again, while we're hearing that there, supposedly this change in America, in employment in America, that it's supposedly now more acceptable to you know, that job hopping is supposedly more than norm that discontinuous careers are supposedly becoming acceptable, that employers no longer should expect to see a very straightforward progression up the ladder because this is supposedly going away. I don't think in reality that exists. I think that, in reality, if you go out to an interview, and say, I took two years off to be with my child, that you're at a disadvantage to somebody who is going in with an unbroken resume. And, you know, I think that that's, that's something that hasn't changed. And that's a reality that that people that we as individuals might decide we're willing, we're able to make the economic sacrifice. We're willing to, you know, change careers or think about a different career, but we're still confronting an external A world in which we have to explain ourselves in which this isn't the norm in which and men, you're viewed as a high risk proposition. Again, it's this whole thing of, she's less committed, less potential less high potential person, if I'm looking at this woman who's had this, you know, sort of broken career path and starts and stops and starts and stops versus somebody who just had a very straightforward, continuous, no timeout. I think that prejudice is still there. And that's from my own personal experience. I would say that, I suppose. Unknown Speaker 1:25:39 I guess what I want to say is we're talking about careers, and many of the women that I work with, don't even identify what they do. It's such as career, it's a job. So for them, which is the majority of American working women in America, it's Well, I'm a secretary, I do clerical work, I'm looking to work as a receptionist, or a dental technician in medical office of some sorts. So it's an entirely different mindset for them. When they look at work and family policies. The flex time is really good, because they're thinking, well, if I only work for the company, 20 hours a week, I'm only paying for childcare, 20 hours a week, and my mother is free on Tuesdays, and my sister is still in school. So for many women, a career path. It's irrelevant to them upward mobility, I just want to keep my job, I want to know that when I come back into it, I'm still going to make $22,000 a year in my health benefits are going to pay for upward mobility comes in another period of time in their life. And I guess that's the woman I've worked with the most. Unknown Speaker 1:26:57 flexibility issue isn't just any touch. It's not just professional children. So I think cities we Unknown Speaker 1:27:17 work for when we took off working family survey back in 1989, flexibility was distinctly for men and women the biggest issue to the point where the dry cleaners became so symbolic of like, yeah, they never open on Saturday. Many people spend Saturdays at work. And it was the biggest single issue for the unmarried population or the married population without children, to the point where we looked into, you know, the costs and the availability of having a dry cleaning service on site, which many companies are now starting to do, by the way, but dry cleaning became just so symbolic of the lack of personal time for it, once we, you know, unpeel the onion of what is this about? And we said, okay, it's not just about dry cleaning, or shoe shines, or, you know, walking the dog that, you know, we said, it's about what are the impositions work, make, make some people's lives. But, um, I also think that, you know, getting to what Debbie was saying is that, as long as we still have the men in the top of the organization, and these men have wives at home, who are not working that on is at least don't bet it's they don't get it, they don't understand. And I have heard senior managers say, what my wife and I made a deal. So you made a deal with your husband. And the deal was that he will do everything in anything to get ahead in his career and make it and her job is to run the home and raise the family and raise the kids. And it has been said publicly within the organization. And you could just see primarily the women just sitting back saying, Well, what kind of chance Do I have to get ahead in this organization when we're off obviously, for that person to get with he is the sacrifices although he doesn't see the sacrifices that he had to make. You know, and I just think that as long as that's what's running on corporations, that we're all talking a lot of theory, you know, in the practice, you Unknown Speaker 1:29:31 can sleep you will need to do a lot of traveling I don't think I got the job Unknown Speaker 1:29:55 and make more three short months of my students are living Unknown Speaker 1:30:04 with color. And I think one thing I just wanted to mention social stress Unknown Speaker 1:30:09 and work, Unknown Speaker 1:30:11 because women I've worked with, they have two children to eat so many of Unknown Speaker 1:30:21 you know, or, you know, and then they travel to prison, and their job is to transform them, instead of surface. They're emphasizing sales. So there's Unknown Speaker 1:30:40 a lot of changes, Unknown Speaker 1:30:42 which are happening nationally and globally, workers life and the jobs of women. And so I just, you know, wondering, again, Family Policy in relation to gender as company, the business, and that's why it's actually one of the best colleges. But still, the lies that we're reading, like you're saying, the speakers, basically. And now companies are providing examples. Unknown Speaker 1:31:26 I just want one comment that makes me think of is inside companies, they depend on human to do a lot the work that keeps that thing glued together to Unknown Speaker 1:31:35 begin, you know, I mean, all that, and then you don't get paid for doing that stuff. And they had to see Unknown Speaker 1:31:44 what she was saying about their past. They used to do that. Unknown Speaker 1:31:49 Company for 20 years now, we've Unknown Speaker 1:31:54 been doing working for a number of other companies, that leaves the company and less of a reason to invest and to Unknown Speaker 1:32:02 give you that flex time overseas. Unknown Speaker 1:32:07 And so we need to find society ways to encourage companies to see their people invest in despite the fact that they can't count on them to stay there. Unknown Speaker 1:32:21 And I think it's also I think that's part of the motivation is the long term, but I think much more of it is I don't think S corporations, we really think that far in advance. I mean, we say we do we sell the future. But I really don't think we do. I think it's more an issue of what am I going to get out of this person today. And if I'm flexible today, and tomorrow, in the next day, will that help me get more productivity? And I think that's what motivates the manager who says yes or no more than in a long term way. And we sell the programs to get them approved as retention. But I think what's the manager's decision is really more motivated on today's productivity. There's a company Unknown Speaker 1:32:59 in North Carolina, because very interesting. North Carolina bank and national intonations and they don't see the raising of a child as a six to 10 year years to do it, which I got a big kick out of when I saw a presentation they have less time so designed that you can take time off to be a little league coach in the spring. Or if you have a child going off to college, you can take time off to go on college tours. So they see the family as you know, birth to life cycle ending a life cycle type of knee and it they don't define family, which is what I had said earlier, you define family so if you have a great a and or you have a nephew that you want to be able to spend that time with or you have no children whatsoever, but want to give something into the community. Then you can take that time off to be the little league coach or the cookie mom or whatever you're interested in, which is really looking at as a community analyzer. That way. Good business I was told Unknown Speaker 1:34:14 it's progressive senior management. It was a woman who presents