This grant to the BOLD Initiative (Business Opportunities for Leadership Diversity) supports a project to enhance performance and productivity by increasing workplace flexibility in ten companies. The project requires demonstrable measures of increased utilization of flexible arrangements and improved performance measures, with performance defined in the context of each work unit in each participating company. BOLD initiated this project with a 2003 grant, but difficulties arose that limited its demonstration projects to two companies and required modifications in the project design. This new grant will allow for the completion of the demonstration projects in eight additional companies already identified and for the collection of data on flexibility utilization and performance in all ten companies. Project results, if they show that introducing more flexible work arrangements generally has positive effects on employee performance and productivity, can be expected to improve the likelihood that business people will embrace the business case for workplace flexibility. Project Director: Beatrice A. Fitzpatrick, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Corporate Voices is a nonpartisan, nonprofit corporate partnership organization created to improve corporate practices on issues affecting working families. With this grant and working with the consumer brand companies among its partner firms, Corporate Voices will develop a series of corporate examples and case studies by which they can identify and document the costs and benefits accruing to employers and their employees as a result of implementing various flexible work arrangements. As part of this project, the relevant direct costs incurred by employers in providing flexibility will be identified and, where possible, measured. Specific cost savings to the employer will also be identified. These include those savings resulting from reduced turnover or absenteeism, as well as cost avoidances, for example, those due to lesser use of recruitment firms resulting from lower employee turnover. Both tangible and intangible benefits to the firm and to its employees will be specified. This collection of case studies will be disseminated widely so other employers can determine whether the relative costs and benefits presented in the cases are applicable to their situations and can serve as a guide to their decisions about offering more flexible work arrangements. Project Director: Donna Klein, President and Chief Executive Officer.

The Employment Policy Foundation (EPF) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research and educational foundation supported in large part by corporate members. Its research has demonstrated that work and family balance is regarded by corporate employees as one of their top three priority issues. Yet, corporate human resources practitioners at the most senior levels are not sufficiently informed on a regular basis about work and family research and employment practices. As a result, EPF developed a newsletter, The Balancing Act, the first four issues of which were supported by a Foundation officer grant. This is a 4-5 page electronic publication for the busy senior executive. Issues feature Sloan-funded as well as EPF research on such topics as phased retirement, workplace flexibility, part-time work, and telework. The newsletter is sent electronically to nearly 3000 recipients in over 570 companies. A recent survey of readers revealed that information in The Balancing Act was leading 76 of the companies to consider new or modified policies on phased retirement or caregiver arrangements. This grant supports continued publication of The Balancing Act. Project Director: Edward Potter, President.

This grant funds continued efforts by Georgetown University to create a Workplace Flexibility Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C. in a bipartisan manner focused on consensus building. Attempts to bring together leaders from different constituent groups, including business, labor, and advocacy will be continued without advancing any specific policy proposals. The project will complete a full analysis of existing federal laws and the ways they either impede or facilitate flexibility. Some progress has been made in making workplace flexibility a compelling, bipartisan issue in Washington. A Congressional hearing has been held in which the need for workplace flexibility was a major issue. Also, discussions have been held about enactment of a bipartisan bill modeled in part on Congressional action in 1987 creating the award program named after Malcolm Baldrige, Secretary of Commerce from 1981 to 1987. Criteria for the Baldrige Awards were designed to help U.S. organizations enhance their competitiveness by focusing on two goals: delivering ever improving value to customers and improving overall organizational performance.  The new bill under discussion would create a new award for business excellence in workplace flexibility. Project Director: Professor Chai Feldblum, Law Center.

The MIT Workplace Center was established in 2001. Its research, education and outreach efforts have been aimed at contributing to a better alignment between workplace practices and the needs of the workforce. Employers, professional associations, unions, and family advocates were all engaged at three different levels: the workplace level; the associational/institutional level; and the state level. At the workplace level, Center faculty and graduate students partnered with Boston hospitals to conduct research on many topics, including the self-scheduling of nurses to provide greater autonomy and work-family balance; recalibrating workloads for surgical residents; and developing models of career flexibility for physicians in health maintenance organizations. In each research project, existing assumptions underlying work practices were examined and the possibility of crafting new and more flexible workplace policies explored. At the associational level, the Center has brought the empirically grounded data from their workplace research into discussions with unions, professional associations, industry and trade associations, and other organizations representing workers, employers, and community groups. Center aims are to create a greater understanding of work-family issues in these groups and the larger public, and to engage the support of these associations and institutions in diffusing flexible work practices across the occupations and industries in which they work. At the state level, the Center started a Work-Family Council to promote collaborative public-private efforts to achieve the workplace policies and practices needed to support the modern workforce and economy in the State of Massachusetts. About 100 people associated with a variety of organizations have become actively engaged in the initiative and have formed specific working groups. The Flexibility Working Group is conducting a survey of hiring, promotion, and turnover rates of male and female attorneys in major Massachusetts firms. The Family Care Working Group has explored with public relations professionals a public education campaign on supports necessary for family care. The current grant renews support of the Center for a final period of three years. Workplace research and intervention projects in health care, legal services, and high technology firms in Massachusetts will be expanded. Education and outreach to associations will be deepened and broadened so as to make flexible workplace policies and practices better known. Dialogue and innovation among private and public sector senior leaders will be supported by the Work-Family Council. Project Directors: Lotte Bailyn and Tom Kochan, Professors of Management.

With this grant, Penn State researchers will study the quality of work life for hotel managers and will disseminate results to the hotel industry. Strategic changes will be identified that can strengthen hotel companies, managers, and their families. They will examine how managers perceive, react to, and manage the requirements and challenges of their jobs and how these occupational characteristics are associated with positive and negative psychological and performance outcomes at work and at home. Workplace conditions will be identified that mitigate or exacerbate negative outcomes. Tangible ways will be identified by which hotel companies can tailor workplace policies and practices to optimize flexibility for hotel managers. Findings and recommendations will be disseminated throughout the industry in trade publications and by presentations at meetings and conferences. The research project involves an initial survey of 500 hotel managers in some 20 hotels across the country and, where relevant, their spouses. This will be followed by an in-depth, daily diary study of 120 of the managers and their spouses to gain a more detailed picture of day-to-day stresses and satisfactions characteristic of this work, of conditions giving rise to negative stresses, of implications of stress for managers’ productivity, job satisfaction, and for both managers’ and spouses’ well-being and perceptions of work-family conflict. An Advisory Council, with members who are leading executives from the hotel industry, will participate in all stages of the project, from surveys to dissemination of results and recommendations to the industry. Project Directors: Professor Ann C. Crouter, Department of Human Development and Family Studies; Assistant Professor John W. O’Neill, School of Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management.

With this grant, an interdisciplinary team will undertake an international comparative study on working time patterns in eight countries. The project will focus on two groups: working parents and older workers. It will study hours spent working for pay in the United States and seven comparison countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The aim is to understand how work hours vary across these countries and have changed over the last decade. The study will also aim to identify patterns of variation in work hours, both within and across countries, with respect to key demographic and employment factors, such as marital status, age, educational level, and employment status. The relationship between preferred hours and actual hours and how that relationship varies from country to country will be assessed. Another project goal is to understand the consequences for workers and their families of the amount of time spent in paid work and how that varies across countries. Two types of consequences will be emphasized: effects of paid work hours on how time is used during non-work hours, including time spent in care giving, leisure, and personal care; and effects of hours worked on the economic well-being of workers and their families. Finally, the project aims to understand how working time regulations vary across countries in order to assess where and for which workers the institutional context provides employees with the most genuine choice and control related to their work hours. Project Directors: Janet Gornick, Associate Professor of Political Science; Tim Smeeding, Professor of Economics and Public Administration; Gary Burtless, Senior Fellow in Economic Studies; Liana Sayer, Professor of Sociology.

Many employees resist working flexible schedules for fear of incurring penalties in wages and promotions. A 1998 grant to the University of Iowa supported a project to assess the effects of flexible employment on working mothers’ wage growth over time. The research demonstrated that managerial and professional mothers pay a steep price for using flexible employment practices in the workplace. This new grant funds research to determine whether all employees, not just working mothers, who utilize flexible employment practices, including full time and part time, are subject to wage penalties. The research will assess if wage penalties differ depending on characteristics of the worker (gender, parental status) or characteristics of the employing firm (government, private for-profit, self-employment) or other organizational variables (firm size, standard versus nonstandard employment, gender composition of the work group). Project Director: Professor Jennifer L. Glass, Department of Sociology.

The following five grants are funded from an appropriation approved in 2002 by the Board of Trustees to support the Dual Ladder Program, an action program to provide incentives for colleges and universities to add to the existing tenure ladder a second, or dual, ladder for career advancement of those currently in the secondary labor pool, e.g., adjuncts and part-time instructional staff. The dual ladder will provide opportunities for promotion, equitable compensation, and consideration for tenure-track appointments for these employees. The Program also aims to rethink the current rigid tenure track by promoting part-time tenure track and tenured career paths in order to increase the probability of women advancing to senior faculty positions. (Grants from this appropriation were also made in 2002 and 2003.)

Support for a special issue of Change magazine on the work lives of faculty. Project Director: Clara Lovett, President

To conduct a literature review of gender differences among non-tenure faculty in science and engineering. Project Director: Catherine Didion, Executive Director.

For support of research on barriers and opportunities for women’s advancement in academic medical careers. Project Director: Linda Pololi, Visiting Scholar, Women’s Studies Research Center.

For support of research on the institutional barriers and facilitators to family-friendly policies for faculty members. Project Directors: Lisa Wolf-Wendel, Associate Professor, Department of Teaching and Leadership, School of Education, University of Kansas; Kelly Ward, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling Psychology, College of Education, Washington State University.

Support of research on family formation and professional advancement in academia. Project Director: Nicholas H. Wolfinger, Assistant Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies.

The following three grants are funded from an appropriation approved by the Board of Trustees for small grants to raise the visibility of the issue of workplace flexibility.

To produce a report on “Opt Out or Pushed Out.” Project Director: Joan Williams, Professor of Law.

For support of research on overemployment and potential consequences for workplace flexibility. Project Director: Lonnie Golden, Associate Professor, Department of Economics.

Support for a book on professional women and their decisions to leave the workforce for family reasons. Project Director: Professor Pamela Stone, Department of Sociology.

Support for the 2005 College and University Work Family Association conference. Project Director: Robert Drago, Professor of Labor Studies and Women’s Studies.

Support for a pilot program for national leadership development workshops for science, engineering, and mathematics department chairs. Project Director: Eve A. Riskin, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director, ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change.