Workplace Flexibility a Rarity for Many

May 29, 2002 -- With a boss who often tells her, "I don't care where you do your work — just do it," Barbara Goldberg knows she's lucky.

A vice president at a New York City-based public relations firm and a mother of two children aged eight and six, she works a flexible 30-hour work week that allows her to pick up her kids from school and spend time with them. She typically leaves her office in the early afternoon for her suburban Maplewood, N.J. home and continues to work from there.

But Goldberg says most of her friends are not so fortunate.

"Everyone that I know, whether they're working moms or non-working moms are like, 'Wow I wish I had your deal,'" says Goldberg. "I get headhunted all of the time and I always tell them, 'You'll never be able to do what my employer is doing.'"

Indeed, for all of the lip service that many companies pay to providing flexible schedules, the reality is that many employers remain reluctant to give options like telecommuting, shortened schedules or work-sharing programs that enable workers to have more flexibility in their lives.

The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that 29 million full-time wage and salary workers, or 28.8 percent, had flexible work schedules in May of 2001. That's only slightly higher than the 27.6 percent of workers who had such options in May of 1997.

Further, these statistics reflect workers who can simply vary their workday by alternating when they start and end their shift while still putting in the same amount of hours every day, something many human resource experts don't consider a truly flexible schedule. More than one in four workers can vary their schedules, but only one in 10 are enrolled in a formal, employer-sponsored flex-time program, according to the Labor Department.

Slacker Stigma

With more and more two-income families and single parents in the workplace than ever before, flexible schedules are a benefit that many employees would love to have.

But many companies are reluctant to institute such plans because of the ingrained culture of "face-time" that most workplaces have, say experts. Many employers still abide by the notion that if employees are working from home, they are really just sitting on the couch watching Oprah and picking up the phone from time to time instead of working hard on their next presentation.

"There has to be a change in the culture in order to make this work," says Carol Sladek, who heads up the work-life group for Lincolnshire, Ill.-based human resources consulting firm Hewitt Associates.

Another hindrance is that employees themselves are hesitant to take advantage of these programs because they're afraid of being looked upon as a slacker.

"You have relatively low usage rates because people find that they very often have depressed pay rates and no opportunity for advancement," says Joan Williams, director of the Program on Gender, Work and Family and professor of law at American University's Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C.

Widespread Reluctance

While almost 75 percent of 945 major U.S. companies recently surveyed by Hewitt Associates said they offered alternative work arrangements, the majority of those companies offered only flex-time benefits or part-time work, options that many human resources professionals say don't allow for real flexibility.

Only 30 percent of the companies surveyed offered an option to work at home, while 28 percent allowed work-sharing (when two people share responsibility for the same job) and 21 percent offered shortened work weeks.

Many companies that do offer these types of programs do so on an individual basis, where it's up to the employee to convince their supervisor that they should have a flexible work arrangement and can handle the responsibility.

Insurance provider MetLife, for example, asks associates to demonstrate to their managers how their business' needs will be met if they have a flexible work schedule. Right now roughly 2,000 of the company's 20,000 employees have expressed interest in these arrangements.

"They're not for everybody," admits Peggy Fechtman, MetLife's chief information officer of corporate systems and chief e-business officer. "There really has to be a business case that is established. Not all jobs and not all people lend themselves to working within a flexible work model."

Flexible Movements

Still, some groups are taking steps to combat the wall of inflexibility.

The Bar Association of San Francisco recently put forth a No Glass Ceiling initiative aimed at boosting the numbers of women at the top echelons of law firms, which includes a commitment to flexible work schedules and part-time partners — a concept almost unheard of in the workaholic world of law. Almost 60 Bay-area law firms have signed on to the initiative, says the bar association's president Angela Bradstreet.

"When you tell an employer it's going to cost them 150 percent to recruit someone else because they've lost a woman; when you talk to them about the economics they suddenly see the light," says Bradstreet. "We're seeing a huge burnout factor in the legal profession. People are re-evaluating their priorities."

There's also a movement at the government level to give private sector hourly workers the option of taking time off in lieu of overtime pay, a benefit that many public sector hourly workers already enjoy. The House Education and Workforce Committee, the sponsor of the bill, says around 20 million full-time hourly workers would be able to take advantage of this benefit.

Though the bill does specify that workers should choose whether they want time off or overtime pay, some unions fear that employers would take advantage of employees by forcing them to take comp time, or taking it when it suits the company, not the worker.

"That doesn't take care of the problem," says Rick Bank, director of collective bargaining for labor union federation AFL-CIO. "If [flexible options] really were to be what employers are making them out to be, which is family friendly, then the employee has to have control over it."

Experts say that some of these efforts can help. But ultimately, widespread use of flexible workdays will happen when companies realize that they can reap the rewards of a work force that is not a prisoner of its schedule or cubicle.

"It's sort of a Catch-22," says Sladek. "They actually have to experience that before they see it."