Unknown Speaker 00:01 Just general level of interest or experience on some of these issues. As I said, my name is Kathy Christensen. I'm a professor at the Graduate Center City University of New York. I am also a professor of environmental psychology there. I'm also currently the director of the work environments research group. And for a number of years, I have been conducting research on work at home, and particularly on the effects of such an arrangement on women and their families, and have also, over the course of time examined some of the corporate arrangements and some of the Union policies, I think what you'll find with Arlene Gill and myself is that there's about 30 years of experience, total. So we're each going to bring prep some similar views, but also some very different experiences, and perhaps also some different points of view on some of these issues. What I was saying is with what we'd like to do is, since we are going to be a small group of we could just go around briefly introduce ourselves. And if you have any particular questions or interests with regard to work at home for company employs really women. Unknown Speaker 01:15 Just Hi, I'm Dana Zakon. And I'm a research analyst at the Conference Board. And we do research on more family issues. And something that we did recently was a survey at Pella community, where we asked about 250 organizations, different questions, until the community has actually worked with some of these people in the process. So it's a great interest to me, because I found out that there's much more going on, probably realize, and I collect information about the suspect. Now I'm telecommuting. There's a lot going on. And so I just wanted to hear from the experts. Unknown Speaker 01:54 On crowd Freeman, I'm an apologist. I'm coming out this sort of different perspective, I just spent the last three and a half years living in Caribbean studying women workers who are doing offshore data entry and more sophisticated computer kinds of work as a sort of next step to what happens often when clerical work gets rationalized and fragmented and moved into home. So I'm looking at telecommuting from a sort of more distant geographical perspective, as well as at the kind of lowest level in terms of org restructuring. And I'm curious about the linkages in terms of the experience that these workers had, along with their US counterparts, and how the restructuring of clerical kinds of work and even more sophisticated computer work is half is having international ramifications along the lines of production work on that. Could you just briefly introduce yourself in any particular person worked at home, or general interest, Unknown Speaker 03:11 General, high anxiety, murder or work in very large organization. But my interest really in this is for what I'm doing. I'm doing some research on women's issues. This is certainly something that is impacting upon the workforce, and I wanted to just get what's happening. I'm interested in. Unknown Speaker 03:36 I'm Dorothy laying down. I'm on the faculty of the City University of New York, in Staten Island. I teach management there and I've been interested in for a number of years. Work stress. Work stress, people said to me, you should stay commuting stress because stress at work is so interested in the whole issue of flexible workplace arrangements as a way of reducing stress and increase improving quality of life. For managers and professionals, especially interested in Unknown Speaker 04:10 being part of the research. Unknown Speaker 04:13 My name is Rama Jaguar, and I'm a freelance writer formerly on staff and I decided to go off and now communicate electronically. And I'm sort of Unknown Speaker 04:22 less stressed. Unknown Speaker 04:26 So I just have general interest in Unknown Speaker 04:30 Megan Knox, communications with the Center for Community and Economic Development at the University of Unknown Speaker 04:36 Southern Mississippi. And, as far as I Unknown Speaker 04:39 know, we don't have a lot of telecommute telecommuting going on right now in Hattiesburg, which is where this is located. But I'm interested from a general perspective and we have a lot of economic development that's happening very rapidly in and around that area and I want to be knowledgeable about it and One of our directors also directs a Caribbean Studies program where we have students over there I think about four weeks out of the year. So where were Jamaica, where it happens in June might have some possible link up. Because I'm at Unknown Speaker 05:25 University of North Carolina, I was just middle. Unknown Speaker 05:33 So all kinds of injuries. Unknown Speaker 05:37 I'm Arlene Johnson from the Families and Work Institute, previously at the Conference Board and previous to that at catalyst. And so I come to the issue of telecommuting, or telework or work at home from the perspective of women's careers and working family balanced. And so I consider Kathleen and and Gil real telecommuting work at home experts and I consider myself someone who has sort of bumped into that issue from, from my work with work, family balance and women's careers. Unknown Speaker 06:12 I'm Gail Gordon, I have my own consulting business based in New Jersey specializing in helping employers set up telecommuting programs and other kinds of flexible work arrangements. And I've been doing that since 1982. And before that, I spent about 10 years in human resources with Johnson and Johnson, and your monthly newsletter, an annual conference and some other stuff, but mostly living, sleeping, eating and breathing. And you find us interested in systems point of view? With computers, I can see the real future? Well, I think Unknown Speaker 07:03 that it's clear around the table and also from what I read and Gil saying that there's not only a great deal of interest, there's a great deal of variety in what goes under this, this llevan. And telecommuting is a term that was coined, what 15 years ago by a cemetery. So 20 years ago by Jack Nila Senate was to basically include any arrangement that involves substitution of telecommunication technology for the commute, the predominant form of telecommuting that we all are relatively familiar with has to do with work at home. But there's also been other trends occurring in terms of satellite offices, which are worksites, more adjacent to the home than to the workplace, the decentralization of work into offshore work arrangements and, and a number of other forms, which we'll probably get into today. Also, I think what's really both fascinating and exciting and curious all at once is that 12 years ago, when we were all starting out in this, and I'm starting my research, I could not find where telecommuting work at home home based work or homework in any Periodical Index. And the only reference would have been homework in terms of children's work done as part of the school assignment or some literature on industrial homework. So this is a phenomenon that has really captured the public's imagination, just tremendously partially driven by technology, but a whole lot of other forces are really driving it. And I know that's something that Gil's going to be talking about today, too. Unknown Speaker 08:42 So what we're Unknown Speaker 08:44 what we'll be discussing is basically experienced that may, in some sense, in short, what you know what we've learned over the last 10 or 12 years, but on the other hand, that constitutes much of a whole life experience of this phenomenon we call telecommuting. There was always some work at home, there are always some professions such as professors Rogers, who worked at home. But now what we're seeing is a greater diversity of workers in their homes. And just a wide variety of arrangements and what is also unique, which is why I'm here today is talking about corporate employees, people who work for a company who are working at home, and not historically, what was more common, which were the self employed. What we thought we might start off doing is among the three of us just do a very quick round robin, with each of us responding very briefly to a set of three questions. And then each of us have prepared some brief comments to illustrate some of the issues raised I think, by these questions. And then we weren't really one throat open to discussion with all of you. And again, I would encourage you, at any point, you do have questions, jump in your small group, and it really makes sense to keep this as informal and engaging for all of us as possible. Um, the first question is, you know, dressed, I mean, girls, what are the trends? What do you see happening? Unknown Speaker 10:09 Looking at telecommuting or telework over the last couple of years, I feel it's like birdwatching. In that the closer you look, the more diversity you see. First, you just see a warbler, and then you see a Tennessee warbler in 15 Different kinds of models. And so what impresses me is what you're seeing in terms of trends, not only a rapid increase in the in the recorded number of people, we're gonna think there are a lot of unrecorded numbers. But and part of it is because of the diversity of arrangements is a person who works at home one day a week to telecommute, or do they get counted or not. Or one day a month, we have never counted all the executives, more of whom I see now, who hardly are ever in their offices are operating off of phone, mail and email, but they aren't called telecommuters. And they don't think of themselves as that. But they're in planes all the time. And people who work a couple hours of the home and you're saying sourdough so I think I'd say diversity, increase in numbers and increasing diversity and complexity of what we're talking about. Unknown Speaker 11:18 Everything that Arlene said, I would agree with, and I would continue with a birdwatching analogy. By saying that, not only the closer you get, the more diversity you see, but sometimes when you hear a racket that sounds like a huge flock of birds and you get close, you find that it's two birds making a whole lot of noise. And to a certain extent, that's a little bit true with telecommuting. While there is certainly more of going on, with generally better results than ever before and more interested in before. To a certain extent, there's more talk than there is action, which isn't a training issue. And I'll come back to later. The latest numbers that I think are fairly believable, from last year that there's something like five or five and a half million people that the caffeine strike has telecommuters the salary people involved at least one day a week during workday. Yep, when you try to find them, they're hard to find. Most of them do not work in the Fortune 500. Companies. So that's a tricky issue in itself, I think talk about some of the reasons why. Unknown Speaker 12:24 I guess, you know, I would see two aspects of this trend. One, as far as I'm an Indian commenting on is the fact that I think it represents it's a lens through which we can see a really radical change going on in the workplace, I think that there is driven by a number of forces of real movement towards decentralization of work. And one could have, say, a radical increase in flexibility in terms of people working anywhere, anytime. At home, in cars, and hotel lobbies, wherever. So that I think that telecommuting is the tip of a mix of our metaphors is the tip of the iceberg, which can make us all penguins. But the other thing is, and this is the cynic in me speaking is I also see, as part of this trend on telecommuting more or less being seen as the snake oil of the 90s, it's being promoted as a solution to all sorts of problems. And I think we'll talk about that a little bit more later. Ranging from, you know, clean air getting, you know, decreasing commuting and better meeting targets for clean air for work family homes, from childcare, to elder care, to, you know, facilities management, it's a great way to save costs to, you know, changing the relationship between the worker and the company in terms of them being on site. So I think that we have to be very careful when we talk about it to say really what is driving it, but also what are its real benefits and for whom and under what conditions? And can it be everything to everybody in some of the ways that that it's sometimes talked about, I don't think it's talked about like that by people who really have looked at it, but there's a great deal of, of commotion. It's a very seductive image, and it's good. It's gotten a lot of attention. Okay, that I think completes into a second question, what's driving it, whatever it is, what's driving. Unknown Speaker 14:28 We've had a lot so far with natural images. Continue to, you know, just like any kind of species that is very specialized to one environment is very susceptible to extinction or, or danger to its existence. I think that the drivers now are so many for for telecommuting, telework has become like the raccoon you know that it can just I live in any kind of that there are many environments now in which you can live because it's because there's so many people and interests that have a stake, the drivers are employee interests, employer interests, cost savings, societal interests, clean air, and trip reduction. And I think it was really cemented when vendors and the technology industry got a stake in making this go, because now, there are profit making organizations actively promoting the benefits of this part of like tackling the gaggle, I think, because it's in their interests, to another use of telephone lines. And the the other driver that has just entered the scene recently is a recognition that the customer can benefit from this. And just the last week, I heard of two major companies, Xerox and American Express, who have made part of their total sales force of one division, totally a work from home, Salesforce, so that it could be closer to the customer. So all of those forces are driving it at this point. The Unknown Speaker 16:23 stay with the same imagery, all seen these, you know, the National Geographic or the PBS nature shows where they have an aerial view a herd of Fila, whatever animal is being chased by a predator. And you see this huge mass of animals making way across the plane. And at some point, the predator loses interest or gives up, but the animals keep running. And to a certain extent, and I'll say more about this little bit later, there are some drivers that are still pushing it and others that were there before that are no longer there yet all the herd is still running. I do think that while we've learned, as Kathleen has said very well, a lot about the sort of the dark underside of this, there continues to be a lot of very positive sides. It's something that generally but not always, many employees want to do, and that tells me something about it. What it what it also tells me sometimes is that is that sometimes what they think it's going to be it's very difficult work turns out to be. I think the hardest thing we have to contend with and talking about drivers is raining this in when tough was booked, the third wave came out 1981 was the first time that the concept of this electronic cottage and work at home really made its way to the mass media. And it was like somebody threw a spark on a pile of dry hay because this flame started that created the image everybody was going to be working shopping, being educated being entertained from home. And we have to realize that this is not going to solve everything but but selectively used the right way. It has tremendous potential. And that's a potential it's proven to work. But the drivers sometimes are like that line behind. Unknown Speaker 18:20 Yeah, I don't really know if I have anything to add to what you've just said, Because I wonder if that's okay. But I would agree. I mean, there's so many different forces. And you get a real sense of that when you look at a large corporation and you find people in human resources, you find people in compliance, you find people in cities management. And this is the only flexible arrangement. I know in a corporate organization that has so many different players in so many parts of the organization pushing. And then you may also find that you know, the true believer in the boardroom or the you know, the executive suite, so that you put that together. And it makes for a very, very powerful set of forces within the organization. It also makes for oftentimes powerful reactions, particularly on the part of middle managers. So that's something we're going to explore a little bit more as, you know, although there's this this force this way, there's a counter force. So it's not all just moving ahead without any obstacle in place. Is it good for women? I mean, we're here today to talk about women work and family in a changing economy. Unknown Speaker 19:27 Do you want to go first? Unknown Speaker 19:30 Well, I guess in a Unknown Speaker 19:31 true academic fashion, I would equivocate that. It's a terrible profession to be I once had an advisor told me something one point he thought he would look up and see me strangling myself at one point and then on the other side. It really it depends on on the circumstances of the woman, the degree to which she has some just and it would also depend from into the degree to which she has some leverage in the marketplace. And I think what is now more important than ever before the degree to which he's doing it voluntarily, because up until now, it has telecommuting has always been a Voluntary Arrangement. But as Eileen was indicating with the Xeroxes in the 1880s, and the IBM is moving towards whatever they want to call it, virtual offices Hotelling concierge assistance, it is becoming increasingly involuntary, not again, huge numbers, but it is a trend that we have to watch. So there was I think, a profile under which is a profile of a set of circumstances or a woman's set of circumstances under which telecommuting could work. But one of the key ingredients has to be done. It's it's a Voluntary Arrangement, it's a choice. And the other has to be the parts of her life work together, whether or not she's taking care of children, elderly relatives, herself, that that the family piece has to put together, the home piece has to fit together. And the workplace says to be Unknown Speaker 21:00 well, building on what you'd say, I'd say, just to be this morning, it came up does does something become legitimized when men do it? And I would like to think not, but my experience in all kinds of work arrangement says that, yes, that is so. So I think that Telecom, the answer, whether telecommuting can continue to benefit women is kind of if it benefits men, it's more likely to benefit women. If it becomes if it's seen as a predominantly female arrangement, which it is not now, then its benefits for women, unless the world changes a lot quickly, will probably decline. And since you set the tone for academics, let me deconstruct the question and say, what do we mean by good? Because good could mean, does it mean leading a happier life? Or does it mean good in the sense of a more rewarding career with more opportunities, and so on. And I think that, as I will say, later, the evidence is pretty strong, that if the, if it's a fairly well regulated and honestly and in good faith kind of agreement with the employer, a woman's work, family balance probably can improve through the use of a work at home arrangement, in most cases, whether the career can benefit. I think there are more hazards for women than for men at this point, but probably less hazards in a telecommuting relationship than almost any other kind of flexible workforce. Unknown Speaker 22:45 Your it sounds like you're mostly addressing Unknown Speaker 22:47 middle management level people. Unknown Speaker 22:52 I mean, this discussion mostly really about Unknown Speaker 22:55 I'm saying, when I get into my comments, I'll get into the the research that's been done on women and all different kinds of family situations and on balance, women prefer it. I mean, the unbalanced they think that gives them something for the work and family area. What it means for the career, I think, depends on whether other men at that level, whether men at that level, are doing this job. Unknown Speaker 23:24 But I think what, I don't want to steal anyone's thunder. But I think that also will Chicago be talking about it's that telecommuting is the one arrangement that there are more apt to be professionals and managers, then some others. Unknown Speaker 23:38 Although I think you had in mind these, it was you that mentioned the offshore arrangements. Unknown Speaker 23:45 So their counterparts would be, you know, women or people who are not considered full time employees of a company, they're often Unknown Speaker 23:58 well, they're considered Unknown Speaker 23:59 glore glorified fashion consultants, or just in my hypothetical model, then I would say, you know, if only women have that kind of arrangement, chances are it's not in their career benefit. If men also have that kind of career arrangement, there's it's there's a greater likelihood that there will not be career penalty or that they won't be stuck at the bottom of the ladder. There's no and with the exception of Gil and a few others who've had a long career working at home, we don't have a lot of people who had a career working in women that's something else we'll talk about is that you know, among the diversity, or when we talk about diversity, Rachel we talked about work at home as though it were always work at home. You know, you can work at home for a couple years, or for a month or four following a pregnancy leave. That's different than being a telecommuter or working home for your entire career. And there very few of those people. Unknown Speaker 24:59 Also don't Those people that working on working home for party Unknown Speaker 25:11 as one of I think, by count this morning, one of three men at this conference today being asked whether this is good for women or not get me into deep spent and the other part of that is last night, my wife and I came in and we saw Jackie Mason's show politically incorrect. So I have to be real careful here. I mandated flexibility is an oxymoron, whether it's for women or men, or whether it's telecommuting, whether it's job sharing, or part time. So that's, I think the first comment, I think the second point is that it's not good for women, if managers misconstrue the work family balance side of it. We'll talk more about later. And my last comment is that I find that some of the worst potential offenders in that regard are prospective, or just anointed first time mothers, who many times in their heart of hearts believe they can do it all. But they can work at home, how many days a week is and take care of their child. Sometimes it's out of belief, sometimes out of necessity, whatever the reason is, but but as Kathleen's research has shown, without a doubt over the years, whenever you do that, instead of everybody winning, everybody loses a child loses a job loses the mother loses. So I think if we, if we bought this up to five good for women, but if we use it more selectively and more smart or smarter, it can be with women. And Unknown Speaker 26:48 do you think it's better for women? Obviously, not now, because like that people are still going into the office setting, you know, future, ideal world where you work at home, and appearance is not such a huge issue at that point. Unknown Speaker 27:05 Because right now, Unknown Speaker 27:06 I think it is working on a dress up a certain way to look a certain way and have a certain amount of professionalism. Do you think that that will be less of an issue with the lobbies that would be less of an issue with telecommuting is that you think that would be helpful to Unknown Speaker 27:25 you? I think, you know, appearance is just one symptom of a whole paradigm of what it means to work in the profession to attribute that has to do with the hours you're there and how results are measured in behavior in corporate culture. And so I suppose my answer to some simplistic answer would be yes, if if appearance means less, it means that the whole has changed, and therefore, ways that people are being evaluated and judged has changed. But I don't think that changing appearance or dress code or dress down days wouldn't itself if that's is that. I don't think you were asking that either. But I don't think that there's a direct correlation between how how the workplace appears and whether telecommuting would work in that organization. Unknown Speaker 28:17 I think use the term paper and put it by telecommuting at the tip of the iceberg. That's an extremely important point here. My annual conference last year last speaker Bennett, Paul sattel, gave a very good speech. And one of the comments he made in this regard was he said, talking about telecommuting for its own sake is like fishing for minnows while standing on the back of a whale. There is an awful lot of stuff going on in corporate America corporate taxes corporate everywhere these days. Some of its terrible and a lot of its to me very fascinating. Telecommuting is at the intersection of a lot of that, but we can't I don't think talk about that for its own sake, without looking at these technology issues at the rationalization issues at the employee lifestyle issues. It all gets mixed in there. Unknown Speaker 29:05 And also, I think, going back to your point, I think one of the assumptions in our comments today has to do with the employee contract assumption that we're really talking about employees. There are there's a lot that each of us can say from our experience about the issue of contingent work, and the way in which companies are in hiring increasing numbers of their workers on contract or temporary arrangements. And certainly in the course of the research that I did on when working in home, there were a lot of women in very ambiguous situations performing as employees. But once I started working at home, there's their status was changed to contract workers. So there's this whole gray area of contract work that can lead to a lot of real abuse for both men and women. And I certainly saw a lot of it with women doing clerical work at home on a contract basis. That is still around. I'm not sure it's around as much as it was because the IRS has taken a much more aggressive stance on it. So that I think that's been one of the impetus is to shift some of this work offshore. But it's still there. But I think so that, you know, we don't confuse issues. I think probably most of our preliminary comments are aliens and ghosts, potentially, we'll be talking about the employee who are working at home, but certainly in the discussion, we can talk about some of the contract slash contingent workers who are under these arrangements. There are there are clerical workers working in home as employees there are also large chambers of clerical workers working has contracted if you wouldn't mind if you can take a few minutes and talk about some of you know, we've mentioned a lot then maybe now if you could pull back and pull together some of the trends driving some of the issues driving this and more or less give us a status report as to where we are with regard to telecommuting. Yes, thank you Unknown Speaker 31:01 well, let's see if we can leave them on well, they're literally the case few words as many pictures as possible, especially to Archie Park and wonderful and maybe the only redeeming value of my photos passion for origin comics is a she occasionally finds great things. This friend of mine from work, she says what do you do is really mean that fireplaces finish for my philosophy of doing here on my work process would be a good idea. I think we got it right. So this portrays the work at home as work oriented into projects out of the office a terrible place to work. From probably use later. What's the scenario? The woman and this is whatever it is, she writes, Dear Diary, good pleasant surprise. I came home today, Mom. What are you doing here? You know, what the hell why? Well, so my boss had relegate home he said love so I can still work with the computer. Once this develops, I do my work here and send it to the office by the way the phone modem happily ever after. But why it's a lot of work at home. Unknown Speaker 32:20 Oh, I guess it's because I'm more of a professional homemaker, that career. Any unhappiest the most? Right? You're making a comfortable cozy environment Unknown Speaker 32:37 this example just shows how hard now whether you're working at home or away to me your best, the most important variable of being a mom. We are 1994 I'm against the Okay, now, let me just bounce around a little bit USA Today. Thursday, December three was out and was in I was out is Unknown Speaker 33:08 commuting without working from home in popular culture indicators of where we are. You will think about one of the drivers literally. You mentioned that Eric bar this traffic is backed up. Obviously it's not just in downtown Manhattan anywhere. And we want to deal with it. And we have this science fiction image here is Dr. Drive work. We try to deal with car people. And yet the plumber says it will be at least a week. Unknown Speaker 33:48 And here we have this open collar worker telecommuting away productively while it's backed up here in Iowa in the air. I think a lot of time talking about this. But it is very clear that this air quality and gridlock issue in the form of Clean Air Act is a very, very strong attention getter about stimulus as opposed to a real stimulus. That mixed results all over the country about what's actually happening with this but this certainly is one of the primary issues is bringing telecommuting to the forefront in this area. And in about 10 areas across the country that are under the strictest guidelines and trying to clean up the air. Telecommuting. My view was the only trip reduction offers directly off to the employer or the air that's why it has been an advantage here but that's what the key factor here today. We jumped to the next image. The parenting issue I like this because it happens to get banned. I like this more because if you notice, both the cradle and the computer are just beyond which underscores he is Whew, that is hard to do once. We're seeing many success stories where people are using telecommuting, or civility as a way to bring their lives back into balance, where it's clear that it doesn't work is on anything approaching a full time schedule when you find people but if we weren't telecommuting with part time, or with job sharing, so we have the time flexibility and the person is in a job is not time dependent. And if she can do the work, as well, kind of the morning at seven at night, and it can work out well. Important gifts aren't always present. She told me she killed her again. But then funny he said she hands it smoothly is done. Yes, here. One of the undisclosed issues about work at home a lot of times is not just a childcare issue, but the significant other. And one of the points that I take great pains with my clients, or prospective telecommuters is to ask them to decide will proximity paid content for more time together bluebird proximity breed? And when we talk about word family issues, we tend to talk a lot about parenting issues, but it really is this much significant other spouse issues and elder care issues which are part of this later this morning. Risers the push for flexibility and a balanced pushing. Now, we all know the point caffeine textile, and don't worry about the fine print. This is the state of California space action request. And basically, if you're a state agency employee, California and you have more people that have spaceships to fill out this form and you want to duplicate and this gets the wheels rolling to find more space. Let me show you one part of the year. It has one question they added telecommuting chemical gearboxes have home office, telecommuting and reset by telework centers considered in lieu of additional space, yes or no? And is BGS Palmer dental services telling you that and customization desire. Very interesting issue here with what the state has done largely. The flooding has been championing this for many years there has to put in to the space planning process, this little source of sort of thumb sticking up saying basically, before we rubber stamp your investment space, we want to make sure is there a way of bringing work to the workers instead of having more space for workers? The good side by telecommuting is that corporate America is waking up to this. So these safety issue and we're talking about big dollars. Bad side is the risk of what we're doing and giving us some indication of the amount of money we're talking about 18 T in some of your Virtual Office programs. So here we are elsewhere, with a taking salespeople who were assigned offices. But we were never there because they were all the same customers and dramatically shrunk me their offices giving people the hardware, laptop computer, the voicemail and all that. And according to their studies, there's roughly a six month payback. That is the cost of getting them the equipment software is recovering on average and 66 months worth of real estate costs. And after that, Unknown Speaker 38:40 we start to look at how many gazillion things you have in, in offices across the country. Those are big dollar signs in front of their eyes and working out with a major brokerage house or brokerage house. And we're estimating that just looking at the New York metropolitan area facilities alone. If they had as little as 10% of their people tell us three days a week, their real estate costs and savings would be about $2.5 million. Those numbers get people's attention. And the real challenge as we look at this is to say can we do it smartly? I'm never surprised potential corporate America. Now, let me delve into technology real quickly. take a careful look at this laser printer. And look at a fax machine. What's different about them, you probably have in your office or your desk. Again about a third of the size in fact they are upfront. They have what's known as a trade as a small footprint. These are two companies the first one was Panasonic and canon that had said this foamboard market is big enough and real enough for us to invest our dollars for products, it only makes sense that many of the people they're targeting or the self employed home based business people are increasingly spilling over into the market. And this to me is a sign of the validation of this concept and not just Unknown Speaker 40:30 the ICO file, focusing on technology outside as well. Now we read the caption here different things to managers looking for white males, saying this is what is loosely known as the workplace race. So the characterization here is useful. So looking at the workplace, and understanding what nobody has ever wanted. True that the office is a lousy place to work. From my point of view, this is gaining steam rapidly as a real significant broad, understanding that the activity called office work no longer need to be done in place. And you hear lots of numbers and claims made for productivity savings for telecommuting, which I'm not going to honor by repeating but there is something going on as well. People are more effective, because they use a timer they get away from a lot of this doesn't imply that we can change within their desks in their home, if there is something inherently anti productive about the office. Unknown Speaker 41:52 Next theme, says Yes, nice work, we hosted my boss prize by rewarding classes to make sure I'm awake. Take everything else away about telecommuting and we are left with the basic incompetence and distrust of the average supervisor. The practice of eyeball management is very common. It's your baseline issue. Plus is the issue that has evolved from supervision as we know it in the fields in the factories where it was literally eyeball magically had to be there for working precious few managers in it. For me to shed that image. I'm going to say something he made this understand that what not to this silver lining in the cloud of downside is that great numbers of the managers who grew up in that command and control type of style advantage are being washed out organizations not making light of their flight, safe, protected, in many cases is that you're moving towards a different type of supervisory style, which I think it'd be beneficial for telecommuting. Okay, we can conduct like the expensive internal evaluation, if you're over staffing, will we be just perfect out the window? The downsizing issue that we're dealing with here, as patients are telling me sourcing managers to as the saying goes do more with less. Yeah, this is an ad for fortunately. So this guy looks like he's just lost his best friend, or maybe the dead. Facing page says what's worse being laid off on Friday or being told you have to slide on one. breaks to the heart? Yeah, this is the issue that we're dealing with. And I'm finding many managers looking to this effectiveness issue intelligently in response to this. I used to manage my department with six people and conversion departments. Now I have 15 people in common scenario. I do something different. follow the same rules. And I also can't have a prayer of retaining the very best people unless I flex and bend a little bit. So what are the other drivers on telecommuting is this need to retain the best way to go back? What are the downsides of early investments before its tagline? Att versus the workplace advertising campaign? anytime anyplace, or just saw a bunch of hands and he said if you're not careful, anytime anyplace is going to devolve into every time. One of those potholes in the information superhighway. Okay, interesting commentary here. Scott is nonprofit's CEO insurance. For the great slash and burn artists from the mid 1990s expenses are still positively guaranteed This did not change. This is that this is the For sure, I have seen in what appears to be a workable setting as CAD there, as Bobby got casual clothes like SEC does not go to the headquarters. That way, I can't figure out what exactly this means, and why decides to portray himself or anything at all. I think the symbolic self, we figured out there you can read this weird Unknown Speaker 45:28 way this point is, is true fan power sends out more than you used to hear us. So suddenly we find that the winds someday unspecified matter, call a six we're not sure I mean, an easy three modern technology. We've actually eliminated more jobs created. Or there may not be enough jobs to go around common technology will provide some sort of solution to virtual reality. My Virtual Patient it's funny, but it's not funny. A point here is that, as we talked about telecommuting tip the iceberg thing that we talked about when millions of jobs and fall on the one hand, the exploitation of workers in the Caribbean and the Far East and other places, is I think only a transitional space. The big issue in most of our spirit one, so many of those jobs. When I call Federal Express to arrange for pickup, they have shifted the labor on to me, they have a voice responsive, like yeah, my pistol caliber is on a magazine as automatically transmitted over the radio to the to the driver, he or she enters my doorstep. So that's how it hasn't gone. It's gone theory and more and more people in those jobs are facing this kind of structural unemployment, which is totally unrelated to telecommuting. Okay, almost done here. Just refer Unknown Speaker 47:15 to some approaches started with the poses to good receptive Unknown Speaker 47:20 rules for not doing a little bit where corporate America was telling you. I've often said to people that telecommuting is kind of flexible option that almost nobody wants to do first. Everybody wants to be first, the second. I have lots of companies that deal with airplanes to try to figure out how far you are and how aggressive you want to be. And then you have this small set of companies like Shai de Los Angeles, young and others that are moving, leapfrogging over America as they look at these virtual offices. So I think it's part of this great teachings are talking about this quote from allows us to university as the only do as you always did you always get what you already got. I think was point in terms of managing strategies that we can't afford to always do that that really wasn't that great. Good. Now, telecommuting, is part of this change challenge we have is to do it the right way. I'll leave you with eight words about telecommuting. characterized, it's all about smart people are insanely smart because it knows bring everybody to the table at the same time. It works because we know with absolutely no doubt how to make it work. To train the technology, we don't know how often to bring it in the first quarter take advantage of it pays in terms of the ability to retain top quality people and it saves in terms of these office space issues and the ability to let people perform better although we'll have to before I get okay good stop there. Later Unknown Speaker 49:40 thank you what we had thought about as holding the questions till after the presentation. However, if there's anyone who has like a point of clarification or you know a brief question they want to ask right now please feel free to Okay, so why don't we hold on we have a just a rich question answered discussion period after the presentation. Unknown Speaker 50:10 I have lower tech visuals here. Well, I have no tech. And I think we just started. Let's you want to have a bar chart? Well, let's wait here. Well, I'll move over here has that I mentioned earlier that I came to this not by the kind of research directly on work at home, happening and guilt. But because of my work with women's issues and work, balance issues and corporate policies in both areas. So the questions that I'm posing are really just two and I'll assemble some research and some theories about the answers to these questions. One is will work will become more accessible to win, this is going to be a trend that can make more use of it. In fact, it is good. And secondly, what effect is this likely to have based upon our knowledge, so far, both have work life balance, but effect will have a work life balance? And what effect will it have on career and I'll look at this in the context of work family programs, primarily core family programs and corporations, the kind of thing that Brian Rogers was talking about in her comments this morning. And I should start by saying that though, I'll be focusing on work family balance as a major driver or motivation for companies, the institute policies in this area. I'm fully aware of all these other drivers that we've been talking about it came home to me last fall, when I went and presented a workshop at the conference that Gil gives each year on telecommuting. He asked me to speak about telecommuting in the human resource agenda. And so this workshop assembled and it was the first time I'd ever been with a group of telecommuting advocates, none of whom have heard the work family balance argument for telecommuting, because they were all coming in from the technology point of view, the space saving point of view. So that was such a refreshing experience because my entire life is lived in the context of people who are arguing for telecommuting in the context of work family balance, it just brought home that telecommuting is really the raccoon or the cockroach, it is going to succeed because there's so many people who are arguing for different for it for different reasons. I'm just to start out and repeat what I know, Fran made very clear this morning. And that is that any company that assesses or surveys its employees to find out what employees think would help them balance work and family responsibilities better, will always identify one thing, and it's not once a childcare, I'll tie childcare, down the list of childcare dependent care issues. The first thing they'll say is flexibility. And so, work family initiatives or programs and corporations usually have a flexibility component. It's a whole menu of flexible work arrangements that include personal leave on the site. Personally, part time work, flex time family medical leave, compressed work, job sharing, sabbatical phased retirement, those are the categories that are usually part of the flexibility menu of a work family program or have a corporate policy flexibility policy. We'll come right back. Okay. Then, if you ask an organization, as we did, we asked, Why did you implement flexibility? Unknown Speaker 54:29 Why did you implement flexibility? This makes the point very clearly that its employee requests employee desire for more control over their time. That has been a major driver at least in terms of corporate policies with a whole range of flexibility programs. Productive productivity and preventing unwanted turnover is part of the picture but two of three of the primary motivations are that For part of your family initiative, and this is a response to employee request. Now I'm back going back to this chart. You were about to ask the question, Unknown Speaker 55:15 what is a different training? Unknown Speaker 55:19 Okay? A formal policy or an informal that. And it's been, it's interesting that you see which kinds of policies are most ad hoc or informal. And I discovered when I got here that I was missing one transparency, and couldn't have it made here. So I'm gonna have to kind of talk you through this. This was a 99. What surveys you see, in 1988, Kathleen Christianson did a survey for the Conference Board that looked at 400 plus companies, 420 companies, I Unknown Speaker 55:50 think it was, well, it's 525 480. At one hand, it Unknown Speaker 55:56 was it was the largest firms sample of the largest firms in the country, and asked about prevalence of most of these same arrangements. And what was very interesting, I've marked with a little blue line, since I didn't have the transparency compare mark with a little blue line, the prevalence of those policies in 1988. And here you see the prevalence of those policies in 1991. And this 1991 of companies that have worked family mission trips, that is that have some sensitivity to work, family issues, employees. So the point that I wanted to make is that, as you see the telecommuting has increased by a greater percentage than any other arrangement. And that it is increased, both in terms of formal and informal policies. And it has increased most in those companies that have sensitivity to work family balance issues. So it makes the point that employee requests and their perceived value of telecommuting or working home is a major force in creating policies. These words that 98 survey, please are primarily Unknown Speaker 57:25 understand that even with large companies, it seems like the vast majority are ad hoc community rather than formal programs. Very, yeah, Unknown Speaker 57:35 most most telecommuting arrangements Unknown Speaker 57:36 are still at the employee request. And as we were saying in our earlier comments, that may not be bad. Normally, we'd say that an informal policy is subject to inequity and dangers of favoritism. But we're pointing out earlier that voluntourism is very important. So as it becomes formal policy, if it's the formal policy for everybody in a certain job category to work at home, the formal policy might become higher, but is that good? If it's good, if it means that it's accessible for all ones make use of it may not be good, if it means that people are forced to use it even in situations where it may not be of benefit to them. Unknown Speaker 58:22 Tell you what it is now Unknown Speaker 58:24 in this in this same sample Unknown Speaker 58:29 72% that they offer telecommuting program, and out of that that makes you present 54% ad hoc formal was 30% and then pilot. Unknown Speaker 58:40 So it's the formal has has crept up in two years in that same population by I would guess about 8%. And the informal remains looks like it may have even dropped a little bit. I mean, it's still in the 70% range, though. Right. So more more policies are being formalized. Unknown Speaker 59:10 Now how does this affect? So in summary, then work family issues and perceived relationship between work family balance and smoking. We are driving policies. How does this affect careers? In the same study that Dana just cited? Companies were asked what challenges do you see in maintaining telecommuting schedule. This is the challenge for employees and it brings up many of the same issues like I've usually been Unknown Speaker 59:47 there, but also Unknown Speaker 59:50 a little bit. No need for working Unknown Speaker 59:59 anywhere We're raising the point about remaining part of the team or being seen at work, that the challenges of the telecommuting program, or against its perceived advantages are that you may not be able to remain part of a team, the communications with the rest of the work or the work project may be difficult. There may be negative perceptions of the kind that Gil was mentioning from supervisors, I think there still is a feeling sort of like real men don't eat quiche, there's still a strong perception that real workers don't use flexible work arrangements or alternative work arrangements put you out of the mainstream for consideration for promotion. They're saying that it may hinder Career Achievement and the household distractions, which was mentioned, by the way, there was one company that did a study of its telecommuters, you probably know about this one, Gil. And they found that the telecommuters reported satisfaction with their arrangement 100% Except for one thing, on average, every telecommuter had gained 10 pounds. Unknown Speaker 1:01:08 I mean, you remember, on average, how many days a week these people work from Unknown Speaker 1:01:11 home. So you should know that this was the response of employers about employees, that this study was not an employee's themselves? This is employers saying, what they think the problems are for employees. And so this says more about the kind of penalties that are in the corporate culture, what the problems are in the corporate culture than it is about what's in his voice. Unknown Speaker 1:01:34 When he worded the questions if you make it clear, it's pretty hard for the community. That wonder, was it implied that it was people that work all the time? Unknown Speaker 1:01:45 No, it didn't, you would go into the Unknown Speaker 1:01:47 number was two and a half days. Unknown Speaker 1:01:56 Now I'd like to tell you about a Canadian study. Tell you about a Canadian study that is the first guy I know of that has looked at a large sample of people using flexible work arrangements, both flex flexibility and time and flexibility in place, and what impact it has on their work arrangements. We've had some smaller studies, but this is the largest one I know. And it found that they looked at effect on role overload, that is to what degree that people multiple roles, role and family role and to work, to what degree did these arrangements affect role overload and the feeling that you just have too much to do between the two, multiple responsibilities, as well as role conflict that has made people feel that there's a conflict between what the job demands and what being a good parent demands, especially in terms of time to study looked at stress, as well as as mood swings, and a sense of well being to all of those things. And the findings were that people who have work location flexibility for the great majority men and women, some flexibility in where they work with being able to work at home was associated with reduced role overload, reduced role interference, and improved mood, and this was independent of gender, parental status, or family status. So it's my point that it's good for men and for women. It also was associated with enhanced feeling of life satisfaction, and enhanced feeling, the ability to manage one's personal and family time. So on basis of self report of people who had access to flexibility of place, they're very happy with it. There was only one group for whom there was a negative impact. I would I don't know, I guess we could. They analyze that by dual career families by dual earner families. That is where people are earners, but don't consider themselves to have careers by traditional family, by single parents, both male female career versus blue collar or hourly worker and there was one category for whom the positive effects of flex place, we're just not there. And that was the single mother career woman. So however, I shouldn't say too, that they found the effects of flexibility of work hours to be even stronger than flex plates that is deciding when you can work. Having a choice or control over when you can work at even greater To find more clarified results Unknown Speaker 1:05:01 than deciding Unknown Speaker 1:05:04 where to work, so maybe part of the benefit of telecommuting that that people see is that it does give them more control over their work. I wish there was no group that did not have at least neutral and most had positive effects of controlling their workout works. Unknown Speaker 1:05:20 One thing has always fascinated me is wonder if at some point, the degree of freedom to choose when you work falls off in terms of benefits. Because if I just find that when I have complete freedom to choose, it's harder than if I have certain limits on it that are set. And as we since it was such an extensive study if they had any kind of well, and I think to the question that Jill, and you both raised earlier that as to how much is this halo effect? Unknown Speaker 1:05:48 And how much is it still romanticizing about having any flexibility and getting out of the controlled work environment? And will it continue? Will Will we find the same kind of results 10 years later, because all of this at this point is self report, we don't have real productivity studies with the exception of a couple that I'm as skeptical as guiltless. There was a separate study done. But I think it's also interesting of the effect that having a computer in the home has on working without and it wasn't necessarily a computer bought by the company. So you might not have been considered official telecommuter but you had the computer at home. And the result was that having a computer at home that you've used for work resulted in people working more hours, longer workout, but greater satisfaction is within the bounds. Again, suggesting that it's not only the amount of hours that you work, but your ability to control the situation in which the work takes place. And when you do the work that contributes to the sense of well being and that you've got your life in balance. Now, the effect on career there are a couple of things going on that I think are working to reduce the stigma attached to flexible work arrangements. The Bank of Montreal, for example, has a program that monitors every request for flexible work arrangements, and if anyone and monitors everyone on that kind of arrangement to make sure that they are not denied promotions, that their careers progressed the same way and so on. Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm has a program in place to allow people to stay on the partner track, even if they choose part time, but for the most part, there is a perception that taking an alternative work arrangement is a possible stigma. So I'm going to show you some things that make us think that the stigma may be less, or that there may be less career risk in telecommuting or working home. This is again is from the study that Kathleen did. And you see here the men are the gray part of the bar women have jobs sheriff's for example. 95% are women only 5%. Regular part time workers you see also that there's a balance. Notice that homebase work is about 6040. Compressed work week more male and female there and there's much less stigma attached. The more that male or the male are involved in there's no single phase retirement. Of course, that's partly because there's no current future. And partly this is this is an entirely agender effect, because it's also an effect of who's in what jobs is all on. But professional managerial are in black, clerical, administrative or kind of gray or the bar as you see, homebase work is primarily a professional managerial arrangement, which is another reason that because of because who's doing it, there's less stigma attached with a promotion now, as more and more clerical or piecework people become involved. People don't become involved in telework that may change. I want to say Just Unknown Speaker 1:10:01 in our recent study it we found that 50% of the people using it will telecommuters anymore supervisors managers. But companies who said all employees to use it were at 42. So the highest group, our supervisors and managers, non exempt employees, companies cited 20%. Unknown Speaker 1:10:25 I'd like to say just a little bit about some possible downsides, which have been mentioned, the possibilities of exploitation, especially with caseworkers or of workers who are monitored, there were some amazing results in terms of increased productivity among claims processors, of people who are on working home arrangements. And it led a number of us to raise our eyebrows about whether these people were working longer hours because they had been good at the office, why were they so much better at home, and there was some speculation about whether they were in fact working longer hours in order to justify the work and home arrangements that they wanted. And there are also some stories that Gil has, that they're not just stories that are the result of research that both Kathleen and others have found of people of women who in order to support the work and home arrangement that they so much wanted, for work life balancing reasons work into the middle of the night and all manner to get the work done, because, as has been mentioned, it was impossible to meet all have the work family and childcare needs and a full time job. Moreover, it has been found that in the same Canadian study, that when people work at home or have a computer at home, not only do they tend to work more hours at their job, they also tend to work the women tend to work more hours in the housework in the childcare. In other words, what they save in commuting goes into either the paid work or the unpaid work, it does not go into greater leisure time. So this is all part of what has led many unions to be fearful that work at home could be exploited. And has led unions to on the whole resist telecommuting, even though, right, there are many workers who would appreciate and want this kind of arrangement. I think that imbalance we have to say that the research shows that people appreciate this kind of arrangement. They feel like that, that they feel their knowledge and their adrenals. And they feel a sense of wellbeing from but there are some cautions that we need to be aware of. I think the best benefit, though telecommuting is that it is the wedge in the door for the kind of changes for a broader range of flexible workers. That is in a company that really learns how to manage telecommuting, and has a good telecommuting program learns how to promote and evaluate people who work at home, the chances are greater that they will also understand how to operate and manage other types of flexible work arrangements. And it is really the range of flexible work arrangement that's mostly benefit rather than the availability of one time. Unknown Speaker 1:13:28 Only you have the reference on the Canadian study. Unknown Speaker 1:13:31 Yeah, I don't have some of that work. Unknown Speaker 1:13:38 Thank you. Just to follow up on one point that I made was, I think one thing that I saw in my research is that in many couples, the couple have had a much more equitable division of labor, when the woman walked outside the home. And then when she started working in the home, it very slowly eroded. And she began doing much more of the work at home for a variety. So it's true. It's kind of it creeps up the change. Does anyone have a question for Arlene right now? Unknown Speaker 1:14:18 Maybe I missed it. The second time we've done the types of Unknown Speaker 1:14:23 positions for most of managing I Unknown Speaker 1:14:27 know that. I was referencing a couple kinds of studies, the ones on the prevalence of practices within corporations. Were all studies done to the surveys were sent to human resource officers or work family managers until the corporation answered the studies of the effect on individuals were a broad, there was a sample a representative sample of the workforce. So it would have been managers, low income workers. That answer your question you I think I still miss some part of it. Yeah, Unknown Speaker 1:15:04 no, I sort of have the impression that you hit the nail on the head, it was the second one that I was concerned about. And I had the impression listening to you that they were mostly managerial Unknown Speaker 1:15:15 and professional. Unknown Speaker 1:15:17 No, they looked at all types of it was a representative sample of the Canadian workforce. And I think the Canadian workforce is close enough in values and the culture is close enough that there is good comparability. It was a study that included public as well as private sector employees, and the whole range of job types. But they were all employed, they were not unemployed people. Unknown Speaker 1:15:52 One of the what I want to talk about briefly has to do with the whole issue of working at home across the lifecycle, particularly across the lifecycle of women. There's been a lot of talk over the last decade about the effects of this arrangement on women with children. And in fact, you'll find her most of my comments will be directed towards that segment. But kind of initially, I'd like to lay out the broader framework, and then and then hone in on on that. Clearly, women are now working in all stages of the lifecycle. And there are women who are entering the job market, there are women with children, and for those women that clearly who are in the childbearing childbearing ages, I think we have to distinguish distinguish between those who have children who are in preschool versus those who have older children, adolescent children, children getting too ready to leave home. Then there are the women who are trying to reenter the workforce, as well as the women who are approaching retirement age, who are trying to leave the workforce. The the research that I did on women working at home covered all the different stages, and I did a survey of 14,000 women who either worked at home or wanted to work at home, and approximately half of them were working at home at the time of the survey. And this was done in 1985. So this is now going on 10 years from that point, what I found that there's probably 7000 are worked in their home, 50% of them had children under the age of 18, and 30% didn't. So I think if we do talk about women working at home across the lifecycle, we have to realize that significant numbers of those women don't have children, and are going to be facing certain issues. Although we are really talking about corporate employees working at home, the majority of women working in home as well as men are self employed. And although there's a great deal of talk about company employees working at home, they still represent a minority, if we look at it a national statistical profile, in terms of groups of women by employment status, there are the self employed, but within that, I think we have to talk about those who are self employed and genuinely in business for themselves. And those who are self employed, who are very ambiguously self employed, those are the contract workers who are hired on by companies and an increasing numbers hired on in that way. And we don't really know the extent to which they think of them as themselves as self employed or the extent to which they think of themselves as employed. I saw a cases above in that contract with a number of the women doing clerical work in their home I thought they were employees of typing services or insurance companies until it came time to do their taxes and many of them went h&r block in which you are technically self employed, you haven't paid anything on your social security with me, nothing affect me no five the contributions that was the first time they realized they weren't compliant. And then there are the employees and then obviously, within the employees with their different occupations. I'm just laying that out to say that that today, most of our comments are really just talking about a segment of the work at home population when I'm but what when I'm talking about some of the issues about working at home the effects on women at different stages in the life cycle. I'm drawing on my research that looks at both the employed and the self employed, because in many cases, the effects don't are partially a function of employment status, but not exclusively a function of employment status. Unknown Speaker 1:19:30 There's a in 19 in the early 1980s, when I started my work, there was a very popular advertisement in the print media that was put out by linear business products and it was of a woman sitting while remember it, sitting at her computer in the kitchen at a kitchen counter with her baby, playing very quietly beside her in a playpen. And the dog was at a playpen and a dog and it was just the scene of your car. like lists, you know, and everything seems to be working just beautifully. And that was and then the federal government at that point was also pushing as part of the Republican National Party platform proposal that working at home would solve all sorts of problems for working mothers, there was also an initiative in Chicago to bat that time, to, in fact, start to help welfare mothers start businesses at home, many of whom were single mothers. And this was seen as an initiative. So there have been a number of federal, as well as state initiatives to promote work at home for women as a way of solving their work, family issues and knees, it was largely because of that, that initiative, that I started doing my research. And what I found was that, you know, the situation was much more mixed, and obviously, the federal policy push or the media indicated, but then we kind of went to the other extreme, which was to say, it doesn't work at all, you know, it's the first it was supposed to be the great solution. And then it was supposed to be the great trap, and that it would, you know, not solve any problems. And you know, where I can now based on on the research and looking at a number of the women I interviewed over time, because I went, I took the sample 14,000, I then interviewed 100. And then I did follow up interviews with a subset of that 100 for another two to three years later. So I was able to track what happened to these women and their families over a period of time. And what became clear is that there were very definite life cycle issues that played out which might make working at home worked fine at one point in life, and not so fine at another point in life. So in a nutshell, working in home is, is, as we've all been saying a set of very, is is a very mixed bag of realities. And if we want to look at working at home and its relationship to childcare issues, then I think we have to be very specific as to what stage and in one's family lifecycle we're talking about. And I think we have to take into account the age of the child, the nature of one's work, and the degree of autonomy or flexibility that the worker has in terms of setting their work schedule. The best mix, from what I can see from my research is for women, a woman working in home as well as a man, although now it might be changing somewhat, but in the 80s, when a colleague at NYU modules, and then I did some comparative gender work, we saw that even when men worked at home, they typically had a gatekeeper, a wife, a childcare provider, more than a woman to, and a man, even if he had children was actually working in home for work reasons. Whereas a woman if she had children was working at home for family reasons. And both of those may have changed somewhat, but I don't think they've changed entirely. So that when a woman worked at home, she was really enjoy had young children, she was really trying to accomplish something in terms of a work family benefit. The best mix of these conditions of Age of child nature, work and degree of autonomy and flexibility is on well not obviously. But it clearly is a case of an older child who is away at school for a certain amount of time every day. A parent who has worked that can be done on a relatively autonomous basis and has some flexibility in terms of when they can do that work. And that they're not necessarily tied to a very strict nine to five a 30 to 430 type of schedule. The corollary would be that the arrangement was most problematic for women who had very young children who did not have adequate childcare, and who had very rigid schedules and minimal autonomy in terms of their work. And what I'd like to do is just kind of illustrate some of the pros and cons of both of situations. Unknown Speaker 1:23:57 First off, the on the pro side, even under, well, let me back up when working in home work for a woman who had preschool aged children and work because she had some kind of childcare in place. And in the sample that I studied, that childcare evenly split between taking the child out of the home to a caregiver versus bringing someone into the home. Um, the majority of women who did professional work, had child care, over two thirds of them get a minority of women who are doing clerical work, had child care, only a third of them had child care. Those women were working the kinds of shifts that Arlene was talking about, those were the women who were if they had any kind of flexibility in scheduling their work, were getting up at 536 o'clock in the morning working into 730 or eight getting their kids up getting them you know, off to school or busy working then around preschoolers to nap schedule and then and then working again after they went to bed. So it was not uncommon for them to be basically up until one or two in the morning and back up to five heard of these texts in order to get their work accomplished, that typically involved women who were doing clerical work, who had no kind of childcare. And most cases, they didn't have time to care for financial reasons. But there was also a value aspect to this. Many of those women were working in home because they really wanted to be full time mothers. And they saw working at home as the way that they can get closest to living out the ideal they want. These were not women who would have been in the workplace had economic circumstances been different. The women doing professional work, were oftentimes working at home because it was the way they felt it was the closest way opportunity to maintain a professional identity keep their career a lot. So I think when we talk about the women, we have to not just talk about their lifecycle issues, we have to talk about their value structures, because it's all very different than just structures in terms of attitudes towards working families. First, virtually, for all parents, regardless of the age of the child working at home, on a benefit side gave them greater access to their child, although it did not necessarily give them more time with their child. And that was that was a misconception that many of the women had when they started working at home, they thought that by getting placed flexibility, they were automatically going to get either more time flexibility or more amounts of time with their children. And that wasn't the case. And in fact, sometimes it was even less, if not less time, less than they expected. Because of you know, we call it the head, the halo effect to what I would call the gratitude effect, it was so grateful to be able to work at home, they were working during times they would have been commuting, they were working during times they would have taken breaks, and they oftentimes didn't feel justified to take lunches. So that was also contributing to them, if they were coming employed, increasing an expectation for their productivity that they would not have necessary that they might have had some productivity increases, but not necessarily as high as they were, if they weren't working during those times that they would not have been working typically had they been going into the office. So it gave greater access to their child, it may have given them more time at certain times of the day. By that I mean if they had a job and were company employees where they had some flexibility in setting their schedule, they could work during times of the day that they normally would have been away, they could they could coach a team after school, they could go to you know, a class performance, they could, you know, take their child to the doctor, they could do things it could break up their day in ways that they couldn't have otherwise. As the children got older, working at home also gave them a greater physical presence in the home. And this was something that surprised me there were two women who had young children, there were two age groups that were most satisfied with working at home. The really the mothers are really young children, if they had adequate childcare and the mothers of teenagers, because they want and I wasn't expecting they they felt that it made a tremendous difference in their child's life as well as in their own peace of mind. Being at home after school when their teenage child got home. Unknown Speaker 1:28:13 Spend more time with the team. Unknown Speaker 1:28:16 It's not so much the end, the teenager didn't always want to spend more time with them. It was kind of an option to me in that there was a presence it was an anchor. They weren't bringing other kids at home, they weren't experimenting with sex, drugs, whatever. They also were there if the child wanted to talk because I'm my kids are still at the other end of the preschool aged. But at that age, the kids didn't want to talk very much. And if you if you weren't there when they wanted to talk, you missed it entirely. So they felt that that made a big difference for them. But on the difficult side is the regardless of the age of the children parents had a very difficult time setting boundaries between their work in their home. And that obviously there are different ways they set boundaries. They either set it physically by having separate office, and that separate office range from anything from a separate room to I saw just a regular closet where they would you know, put a desk on casters and rolled it interact. They wanted a way of closing off the space. But they had a more difficult time setting in some cases temporal that goes to the age of the child as to the nature of difficulties. Even when women who had young children preschool age children, preschool age, children set temporal and physical boundaries. Children at certain ages particularly when two or three when they're going through separation anxiety had an extremely difficult time understanding those boundaries. I mean, obviously a two or three year old doesn't know anything about role theory. Mom is mom regardless. And so many cases of women saying how they'd be you know have been on they'd be on an important call for work and their childhood two or three be throwing themselves against the You're screening at the top of their lungs. And all that child really wanted was to come in be reassured that, you know, Mom was still there and everything was okay. And women went to all sorts of lengths to mitigate sound interference at times one of you know, something on double doors. One wasn't so much to mitigate it with in terms of other people hearing but in terms of her hearing it she wore like ear muffs, you know, a special, you know, like headset, your mouth, she tried everything. Because it was also not just hearing it. It was her first child and she was incredibly torn, that you know, that this child was so distraught. Probably the most radical example I've seen of a woman who had to deal with the kind of separation anxiety was a journalist in Montclair, New Jersey, who had a third floor of her home with a separate entrance. And every morning, she said goodbye to her child, kissed him, walked out the door, got in the car, drove to the end of the block, parked, walked around the back of the house. And the thing was, she was initially working at home to be able to be more accessible to her child just spend more time with her child. But she found the child had such difficulties with her comings and goings, that she had to treat it exactly as the way she would treat it if she worked outside the home. So that it goes back to the notion of initial expectations versus realities, that that oftentimes what was initially assumed to be the case would be more time better time, didn't work out because it was just too difficult. And again, when when a woman was working at home during this kind of very vulnerable, not vulnerable, but kind of more fragile years in terms of separation, she was saying goodbye four or five, six times a day. So it made it just easier to say goodbye once, and then just get through it. Also children whose parents work at home on the benefits, I'd learn more about the nature of work. And again, I saw cases of three, four or five year olds having all sorts of fantasy play, that mimic the mother's job. I mean, when I grew up, basically you were a school teacher, a fireman, a doctor, these kids were, you know, direct mail. Data database managers, I mean, they had a language about work that was amazing. The other side of it, though, again, with young children is that they oftentimes experienced a great deal of jealousy about the accoutrements of work, and the, you know, the computers, whatever, because that was seen as taking their mother away from them. Unknown Speaker 1:32:30 And so it was it, the mothers had gone into this with the assumption this was going to solve all their problems and was going to make for a much richer life. And on balance, I think they felt that was the case. But there was a great deal more negotiation of the roles, the relationships between their work and their family than they had ever expected. And that made it more difficult. I'm going to stop here, because I see that we're getting down to closing, and we've got about another 25 minutes. And I want to make sure we have some some time to really discuss these issues. But I would just say that their work at home is like any work arrangement. It's not perfect. When you look at it from a work family, our family set of dynamic, but it provides many of the women if they do have the right kind of done in the right degree of flexibility to work out, you know, a better balance than they might otherwise but it's not a perfect solution. And if in fact, the woman had minimal leverage minimal resources in terms of childcare, or time for himself or whatever it can, it can really be not the best arrangement. I mean, it can really be very problematic. So I think again, we like anything, anywhere from arranging we have to see the benefits and disadvantages. Unknown Speaker 1:33:48 I have in my case, I have to go to work freelance if you've got a bit more of a positive career number by unpublishing. At least, you know, I don't know about any of these shoes, but you could use it instead of waiting in a position for five years. If you have, you know, connections you have, you know, a little bit of gumption, you can get a much quicker like back into higher position. I'm wondering if there's any other fields that this is true or what that sort of exception to the rule. Unknown Speaker 1:34:14 I mean, what would come to my mind is like