How We Have Failed Working Families, And What We Can Do About It
When Michelle Obama attended the Corporate Voices for Working Families Annual Meeting in early May, she talked about the importance of work-life programs to working families and to the competitiveness of American business.
As we celebrate Work & Family Month during October, one of the points that Mrs. Obama made remains all too evident: There is an imbalance that exists for working families that allows people to fulfill their roles as employees, but not as parents.
And this is particularly true for hourly employees.
In conjunction with Mrs. Obama's talk, Corporate Voices released a comprehensive study that looks at workplace flexibility options and programs involving hourly employees, Innovative Workplace Flexibility Options for Hourly Workers.
Recent research about the value of workplace flexibility has focused primarily on management and professional workers. This study finds that workplace flexibility initiatives, when available for hourly employees, are as successful as those designed for professional staff.
And it demonstrates that businesses offering hourly employees flexible work options benefit through enhanced recruitment, retention, engagement, cost control, productivity and financial performance.
Equally important, we find that it is not only formal flexible arrangements that produce these impressive results but progressive personnel policies and a work culture supportive of occasional flexibility that give workers access to a variety of time-off options and control over their work schedules.
When companies provide employees with an array of flexibility and time-off options and an environment in which it is possible to access flexibility opportunities without barriers, employees develop their own strategies to use the options that best meet their individual needs and satisfy business requirements.
Highlights of the key findings of the report include:
- Managers and employees agree that flexibility has positive benefits and adds value for the business and for the individual employee in key areas involving productivity, customer service, employee work-life effectiveness, stress and well-being.
- For businesses, flexible schedules are an effective means of managing personnel costs, in particular overtime costs, which is a win-win for employees and employers.
- More than 80 percent of employers and employees surveyed say flexibility is important to recruitment and retention.
- In childcare, where there is a shortage of qualified early childhood teachers, flexible work options represents a key management strategy to recruit and retain individuals who are committed to their profession and to tap a wider labor pool than might be possible if the business offered a more limited work schedule.
- Companies have found that offering flexible schedules and innovative time-off policies contribute to being an "employer of choice" for younger workers in their competitive labor market.
- For positions in customer service and sales with typically high turnover, companies find that flexibility is a way to keep high-performing employees both in the short term and the long term. These companies use flexibility to respond to the changing needs of their workers at various stages of their lives and careers--going back to school, raising a family, or to retain mature workers.
- Flexible work options are being used in businesses with continuous operations that need weekend coverage or whose business hours extend beyond a 9 to 5 eight-hour day. This includes voluntary part-time positions as well as flextime and compressed work schedules.
Working families -- from all socio-economic classes -- are the keystone of our nation's economic prosperity and competitiveness. Yet as a nation we have failed working families because public and corporate policy have not mirrored their needs or the world in which they now live and work.
Work & Family Month presents a opportunity for all of us to consider the need for a new ethic of shared responsibility -- between the public and private sectors -- and launch a bold, new vision for supporting the lives of all working families so that they can continue to drive the competitiveness of American businesses in the 21st century.
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Giving employees the option of choosing flexible work schedules is precisely what businesses need. Federal workers already enjoy the benefit of choosing between overtime pay or comp time, so why not give the private sector employees the same option? Strict labor laws impede private sector workers from having these alternatives. We need to adjust these laws so that employees are able to exchange taxable wages for non-taxed benefits.
We are working hard at the NCPA on free market solutions for Americans www.ncpa.org
I think encouraging flextime is not only a great help to two-income families, but doesn't unfairly penalize families with one parent at home. Most other advocates for working parents just want us to help pay for daycare we don't want to use! Not only that, but pushing parents into spending less time with kids is market-friendly, not family friendly. Letting workers try different schedules or encouraging part-time options is the truly family friendly idea. I hope that some good will come out of this awful economy and employers will see the value of flexible or shorter work hours.
"working class families" cast their lot with ronald reagan. they fought progressive taxation, unionization, one earner families, credit limitations, sanity in home equity borrowing, and limiting the work week. they bought that putting mothers to work was some kind of liberation.
they did an excellent job making their dreams a reality. now the very rich own the government and "working class families" will pay disproportionate taxes, go without healthcare (they prefer the right to guns to the right to healthcare), go broke educating their kids, and struggle without decent jobs while the rich earn millions on futures options that the middle class will have to make good on.- again. they also have forsaken the democratic party. but, hey! i'm always up for another attempt to contort capitalism into a family-friendly american cocoon no matter who gets left out.
here's the deal: FDR pointed the way to a secure middle-class society. but the middle class wanted to be capitalists- and so they are... they are the capitalists that lost out for good in the '08 shake out. too bad... they didn't tell them that capitalism invoves small timers getting taken . rush said everyone would be rich if it weren't for the government... he'd better be right, because the FDR middle class is gone forever and each of us is now food in the jungle of fake insurance, cannibalistic credit, walmart junk, and disintegrating familial bonds. you are now a "consumer"- until you are consumed.
You are exactly right. When i walk into a clearly "white trash" trailer and see them defending the very people who stole everything they had and everything they are ever gonna have, VOCIFEROUSLY!!!!!! I lie back against the door stunned. It is amazing. What do they have to do literally defecate on them on front of a crowd. I meann what level of theft and humiliation before they say when. There's a famous story abut this in Jesse Livermore's book abut stock trading.You'll know the one I mean.About the tips.
Wonderful ideas but far from the reality that most of us middle class workers live. When both partners have to leave the home to pay the bills, and put food on the table it does become very hard to manage family life, personal life. We have lost our identities, we are no longer families, we are working units to the corporate world. We are looked at by our contribution to the bottom line rather than our impact on the companies as a whole. When companies are forced, that is forced, by the federal goverment to pay a wage increase, notice I did not say living wage, then something is inherently wrong in our society. Companies would rather leave the country and hire low paid workers, ie 1-2 dollars an hour, than cut their bottom line and take care of their employees which in turn strengthens our economy and country. Who can we blame for downfall of American economy.........corporate greed........
exactly. it's now all aboutr the "economy" and "jobs". we are ants slaving for an abstract called the "economy". little ants each putting our little peice of leaf in the global scale wall we call the economy. it used to be the tribe, then the temple, then the kingdom, then the state. now the rational for subjugation is the "economy" . the economy is our enemy. it's time to junk all the american superstitions, phoney principles, one way allegiances, fears, and precedents and establish economic liberty and justice for all.
Well, it's a nice thought but I don't see much coming of it. One can hope for the noblesse oblige of corporate America but we can't even get decent insurance, affordable housing, and in some cases a living wage.
The demands of corporate greed in a global economy where American labor is devalued by outsourcing or importing workers who will work for less doesn't bode well for a long term solution. Families will suffer as long as bottom line is money. Nice of you to think about it though.
I hear you. The antiquated 8-9-hour day is a joy for the employer who loves to wield power of the subordinates. Don't be late! But stay late! Do more! Get paid less!!!
With the overriding threat of being replaced by an H1B visa worker or a child out of college who has been brainwashed by the MSM...
Work and Family month will amount to a big Zero if President Obama doesn't get serious about saving the Middle Class, rather than the ruling Wall Street Class, and start creating JOBS.
Without jobs, there is no work, no family left to speak of, and no recovery. Have Mrs. Obama talk with him about that.
and do you really think the young people who cannot find a job, let alone afford a home are going to take on raising children when we as a culture do not find children worth a damn...
IF WE CARED ABOUT FAMILIES, children would ALL HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE and we would be doing the real data work to resolve Autism instead of turning the research over to the Drug Company/ Universities to profit off some other damn drug....
You are right about autism--and a host of other childhood diseases--now, imagine one of those children in a household without jobs, home, money.
That would be a living he//.
We need a reindustrialization of this country--Now. We need to work to feed and care for our families.
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