If seven in ten Americans suffered from depression or hypertension, headlines would blast and tweets would trend the news. But when the ailment is work-family tension and imbalance, the story is relegated to the parenting, women, and gender niche. Yet 70 percent of U.S. workers do struggle to achieve an acceptable balance between work and family duties, a number that has climbed over time, to the point where people tell reporters and researchers that they’re chronically stressed and overwhelmed. That’s a big number suggesting people and their families are taking the hit privately via sleep-deprivation, marital conflict, parent-child tension, alcohol and tobacco use, and more.
But notice the words “people,” “workers,” and “Americans.” In 2010, I co-authored The Custom-Fit Workplace, a book about solutions to work-life conflicts mothers face. Back then, mothers were primarily the target of work-family discussions and solutions, in both academic research and mainstream media. The Custom-Fit Workplace surveyed innovative personal and organizational strategies for mothers to perform optimally as both employees and parents. It profiled different ways of working: scheduling flexible and compressed workdays and weeks; joining virtual jobs and teams; “changing lanes” to slow down or speed up a career; going entrepreneurial with contract jobs; taking young children to work; and seeking results-only or high-commitment organizations. Though the book was aimed at mothers, they were canaries in the coal mine, warning of problems most people in the workplace would encounter at some point in their lives—from child- and elder-care responsibilities, ageing and health demands, and dual-career pressures.
It’s not as if these life issues are new, they had all just been kept under cover, by everyone who differs from the “ideal worker”—that is, the guy who is full-time, fully-abled, with no “drag factor” on his total commitment to work in the paid labor force. Scholars had researched work-life-fit for over 50 years, but the 2008 recession slowed the interest in and pace of change. People became afraid to take advantage of company flexible working options, instead seeking to show undivided, uninterrupted commitment—even if that meant fake office face time—to hang on to a job.
Then with the economy rebounding, two publications appeared, igniting a national work-family-life conversation: Anne-Marie Slaughter’s 2012 article in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” and Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book, Lean In. They brought hundreds of people out to critique and add to the discussion. Economists, sociologists, journalists, bloggers, parents and non-parents, women and men weighed in via articles, tweets, conferences, symposia, and books. Most concluded that work-family-life challenges are not the sole domain of mothers but, rather, all workers; and that finding solutions was imperative for companies to remain competitive in a globalized world, for workers to stay healthy and productive, and for people to thrive—or at least keep their families intact, their mortgages above water, and their heads from exploding.
What is next? While the work-family problem has been documented extensively, some say little has changed. How might the conversation become more mainstream and progress toward change quickened? I would like to see more coverage and dissemination of evidence-based solutions, because promising new studies are appearing, pointing the way forward.
For example, Robin Ely of Harvard Business School studied a professional service firm to find out why 90 percent of the people at the top level are men. Most of her 107 interviewees attributed it to women’s family responsibilities, hence greater work-family conflict enticing them to slow down or quit. But when data showed similar drop out rates for men and women, the true culprit appeared: 70-hour workweeks required because over-selling and over-promising deliverables were normal operating procedures. Ely and her colleagues note that, rather than addressing the organization’s culture of overwork, the firm chose to depict it within a “work-family narrative” that comfortably placed blame outside its purview, outside its definition of “how work gets done around here.” Naming the true problem would require changing some work norms, including some supervisor, management, and promotion practices. That solution seemed off-the-table for this particular firm, but it need not be, as the next study shows.
A team of researchers, led by Erin Kelly of University of Minnesota, conducted a randomized trial—the first in this field—to see if they could reduce workers’ work-family conflict. Factors in the workplace were altered for the “treatment” group in the company, giving them greater control over where and when they worked, and more supervisor support for family commitments. After six months, the treatment group reported a significant reduction in the chronic stress of feeling pulled in two different directions, especially those who were more vulnerable to begin with: parents and those with less supportive supervisors initially. The upshot: implementing more schedule and location flexibility, and promoting family-supportive supervisor behaviors, meant system-wide change could be designed to relieve work-family pressure for those who needed it. A person did not have to take a “Mother, may I?” approach and negotiate a private accommodation with the boss. Furthermore, workers not utilizing the flexible work options did not shoulder additional burdens.
So organizations can change and workplace practices can alleviate work-family stress felt by employees. And there’s more. In a “best of the best” study, awarded the 2014 Kanter Award, researchers examined data from over 19,000 organizations in nineteen countries. They found that “institutional pressures such as state support for the combination of work and family life influence organizations’ propensity to provide work-life arrangements to their employees.” National policies accounted for 15% of the variability in companies’ adoption of flexible work arrangements. That is, when countries enacted public childcare and paid leave statutes, there was a tendency for companies to implement more work-life policies generally. The presence of a national context of family-friendliness mattered, particularly to large companies’ and public organizations’ adoption of work-life supportive programs. The authors say that not only does government legislation provide direct aid to families; public sector and large private sector organizations also model ways to become more family-friendly.
The positive effects of government commitment to, and company adoption of, work-family policies are amplified further by an organizational dynamic: organizations strive for social legitimacy, and to get it they often mimic one another, adopting the visible, popular, and successful practices of peer and rival organizations, sometimes enhancing them and sometimes regardless of the business case. Thus, the family-friendly programs and practices disseminate throughout the greater population of organizations.
Change is needed when 70 percent of working Americans feel stressed and 70-hour workweeks beckon. Change can happen inside organizations to ease work-life tension for all who need it, not just mothers. And change can happen across organizations, in response to public policy prodding companies toward family-friendly practices; as well as companies replicating one another’s programs. We want that type of virus to spread.
