Marissa Mayer's brief maternity leave: Progress or workaholism?

Could the Yahoo CEO be setting unrealistic expectations for young women hoping to follow in her footsteps?

This article was originally published by Fortune.com on Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor

FORTUNE -- Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will likely have the most scrutinized maternity leave and new motherhood in modern corporate history, which began on Sunday night with the birth of a healthy baby boy.

Mayer courted controversy by deciding to take just a week or two of leave and work from home throughout that time.

On one hand, it's a remarkable sign of gender progress that a new mother is now at the helm of a major corporation -- not to mention reassuring to Yahoo (YHOO) shareholders that the CEO's top priority is turning around the struggling Internet giant.

On the other hand, her decision seems emblematic of a workaholic culture that leaves too little time for family or even personal health, preventing either men or women from "having it all."

Could Mayer be setting unrealistic expectations for young women hoping to follow in her footsteps?

Maybe she's an outlier -- or making a mistake -- and shouldn't be held up as an example that mere mortals should emulate.

"She conveys the image of someone who's perfectly capable of combining her personal life and her public responsibilities without one derailing the other. That's a message we should applaud," says Kathleen Gerson, professor at New York University and author of The Unfinished Revolution: Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work and Family. "It also suggests that somehow it's illegitimate for women -- and by implication for men as well -- to take some time off at critical moments in their own lives and the lives of their children. To that extent, it's a backward-looking message."

It's difficult to judge whether Mayer's abbreviated maternity leave plan will make it harder or easier for the millions of executive women who will follow her, certainly at this early stage. But there are three indisputable lessons that can be drawn from her situation.

Read the full article at Fortune.com.

When working from home just doesn't work

There's no denying that working remotely provides tremendous benefits, but more organizations are finding that virtual collaboration also comes with significant limitations.

This article was originally published by Fortune.com on Monday, Dec. 19, 2011.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor

FORTUNE – Once a year, leaders of Community Options come together from its 35 locations for a retreat. The nonprofit organization runs a variety of entrepreneurial ventures that create job opportunities and provide housing for people with disabilities.

At the most recent summit, the chief financial officer was bemoaning the wasted flowers at the organization's New Brunswick, N.J. floral store, due to the inevitable difficulty in managing inventory to meet customer orders.

Listening in, a graphic designer from Community Options' Daily Plan It, which rents shared office space and provides support services such as document shredding, thought they could use the dead, unsold flowers to create potpourri. As a result, Community Options is now launching a line of potpourri, which will be packaged and sold by people with disabilities.

"It's all because a group of people got together and came up with this idea," says Robert Stack, founder and chief executive of Princeton, N.J.-based Community Options. "People play off each other."

How flexible work actually works

Imagine unlimited paid vacation and sick leave, with no mandated office hours. Chaos, right? Not according to a handful of award-winning employers profiled in a new report on effective workplaces.

This article was originally published by Fortune.com on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor

FORTUNE -- At MeetingMatrix International, a communications firm based in Portsmouth, N.H., employees have no defined work schedules, unlimited paid time off, and meetings are optional. How do they ever get any work done? That's actually the only thing that matters: results.

MeetingMatrix executives point to longer customer support hours, increased sales during a down economy, and 100% retention as evidence that their focus on the end results -- and not hours in the office -- works.

"When you start treating people like adults, they start acting like it," says the company's CEO Jmichaele Keller, who in 2008 shelved his company's employee monitoring systems in favor of a more flexible approach. Under the new regime, "people have a lot of ability to shape what is going on in their world and not a lot of micromanaging.... There really is no direct tie in an office environment between the amount of time spent and the productivity of that individual."

How short-staffed companies are saving vacation this summer

With thin staffs and a slowly improving job market, employers can't just let employees take vacation whenever they want, but they also can't risk damaging morale. This summer, a few firms are getting creative.

This article was originally published by Fortune.com on Thursday, July 21, 2011.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor

FORTUNE -- This summer, most of the outdoorsy employees at ski manufacturer Epic Planks will be getting their hands dirty in the shop, where they compress fiberglass and plastic into custom-made skis, with nary a vacation day.

But rather than cursing the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based company for their dearth of long-weekend camping trips, they're gleefully anticipating taking extra time off in the winter.

That's because founder Bill Wanrooy and his partner will double up to two weeks of vacation time that workers decide not to take in the summer, which is Epic Planks' busy time for building skis and snowboards to be sold in the fall.

Those who accepted the offer will instead enjoy up to four weeks of vacation in the winter. The idea stemmed from last summer's experience, when last-minute vacation requests left the small business so short-staffed that Wanrooy and his co-founder had to work 12-hour days, 6 or 7 days a week, to keep up with production demand.

"For all of our employees, skiing and snowboarding is their passion, so that allows them to maybe sacrifice a little bit now, but the rewards pay off later," says Wanrooy. "This is our first summer of doing it, but the reception has been great. Everybody loves it."

Epic Planks isn't the only company getting creative with summer staffing. Companies are asking employees to plan their own vacation coverage, requesting that vacationers send out memos to avoid any unwanted surprises, says Michael Erwin, senior career adviser for CareerBuilder.com. They're also cross-training employees to cover for their colleagues during time off, and bringing in temporary staff when needed.

The changing face of the American working dad

More American fathers are assuming an increasingly active role in raising their children, but many employers haven't adequately responded to their changing needs.

This article was originally published by Fortune.com on Friday, June 17, 2011.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor, Fortune

Who's going to pick the kids up from soccer practice? Or how about when junior is feeling sick and needs to be collected from the nurse's office? While the answer to these questions would have been obvious years ago, it certainly isn't today. But have employers actually kept up with this shift?

Take the flexible work policies that many employers have developed over the last few decades, as the flood of women entering the workforce demanded a departure from the standard 9-to-5 schedule, in order to handle children's emergencies. It turns out that men are five times as likely to work flexibly on an informal basis, rather than adopting a manager-approved flexible work plan, according to a new study of fathers and work by Boston College's Center for Work and Family.

Flexible jobs = happy worker bees?

While it's no magic bullet and comes with sacrifices from both sides, more offices across the country are offering flexible working arrangements to increase retention, productivity and morale.

This article was originally published by Fortune.com on Wednesday, April 20, 2011.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor

When John Parry, CEO at Solix, Inc., arrives at work at around 7 a.m., the office parking lot already has some 80 cars, a testament to his employees' desire to beat rush hour by shifting their work hours earlier than the typical 9-to-5.

But none of those workers had to apply for a flexible work arrangement or win supervisory approval for a schedule change.

"We don't really care when people come in," explains Parry. "We trust Solix staff with million-dollar funding decisions, so we should trust them to work flexibly."

The Parsippany, N.J.-based process outsourcer is among a growing wave of employers that have discovered how workplaces that accommodate employees' desires for flexibility enjoy superior business results, higher productivity and greater retention.

"You see company after company that says, 'We created a more flexible workplace because the turnover level was really high,'" says Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, a research and advocacy nonprofit that recently released a report on flexible workplaces in partnership with the Society for Human Resource Management.

Flexibility is almost mandatory in a 24-7 global economy, when people may be called on to work evenings in an emergency or to connect with international colleagues, says Galinsky.

Moreover, with 87% of people surveyed by FWI saying that flexibility would be important in their evaluation of a new job, it's a key element of any human resources package. That's not to say that flexibility is a magic bullet or is universally embraced in corporate America -- a whopping 60% of employees feel they don't have enough time for themselves, according to the institute's research.

Why Your Co-Workers May Hate You

This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Friday, Nov. 12, 2010.

It's parents vs. the childless at some workplaces as benefits geared to parents are seen as biased and unfair.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

With the holidays approaching, tension is mounting in some workplaces over which employees get time off — and which remain in the office while their co-workers enjoy turkey leftovers and long weekends out of town.

On one side: parents; on the other: childless people. Productivity demands have caused increased stress for all workers who feel they’re doing their job and two others; yet it’s often the child-free employees who pick up the slack because of a co-worker's flexible schedule, holiday plans or maternity leave. In this time of tight budgets and lean staffing the left-behinds are saying “enough.” They flock to online forums like The Childfree Life and STFU Parents to vent about being taken for granted because they have no children.

"You can work all the holidays, you can take the weekend trips, you can work late when your colleagues have to run home for the soccer practice or the recital," said Laura S. Scott, Roanoke, Va.-based author of "Two Is Enough" and founder of The Childless by Choice Project. "There's an assumption that the childfree don't have lives outside of work. There needs to be an acknowledgement that all employees, whether they have children or not, need work-life balance."

The work-life field was born in response to the flood of women entering the workforce in the 1970s, and in recent decades became mainstream as more employers recognized the value of flexible work benefits in attracting top talent. This summer, the Obama administration has spotlighted workplace flexibility through public statements, the first-ever White House summit on the topic and a pilot program giving federal workers greater flexibility.

But as employers compete to appear family friendly to both prospective employees and the government, they risk alienating child-free candidates who worry they will become second class citizens in the workplace. "The best employers provide flexibility equitably," said Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute. "Where the person with a kid might need to take off the day after Thanksgiving, the person without children may have a friend who is ill. None of us are without personal responsibilities."

With young people delaying marriage and child-rearing, and some never having children, there are more child-free people in the workplace. Nearly one-in-five American women will never bear children, double the percent in the 1970s, according to the Pew Research Center. But everyone has parents. In the last year, 42 percent of workers the Families and Work Institute surveyed have had elder care responsibilities, and 49 percent expect to in the future, Galinsky said.

Why Do Dads Lie?

This article was originally published by Slate on Thursday, June 17, 2010.

Why do dads lie on surveys about fatherhood? And why their lying is socially significant.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

A new Boston College study makes the modern American dad look positively Swedish in his dedication to his children and his zeal to participate equally in raising them. The yearlong qualitative study of 33 first-time fathers, released yesterday, found that they viewed themselves as sharing family responsibilities 50-50 with their wives and claimed to devote an average of 3.3 hours each workday to child care. The new dads openly gushed about the way parenthood had changed their priorities and career aspirations. "I love being a father so much more than I thought I would," said one study participant about his new baby girl. "The highlight of my day is in the morning when I hear her start to wake up and I can just go in there and pick her up."

Could that be true? Has the American father adapted so quickly to modern feminist demands? The researchers themselves were somewhat suspicious. After all, the most recent large-scale, benchmark studies on time use found that fathers spend significantly less time on child care than mothers. The Families and Work Institute, for instance, puts fathers at three hours and mothers at 3.8 hours with kids under 13, while Census Bureau time-use surveys found that married men spend about 1.2 hours per weekday caring for children under age 6, while married women spend 2.6 hours on the same activity. (For both benchmark surveys, the most recent year available is 2008.)

The answer, it turns out, is that the men in the Boston College study were probably lying about how they spend their time. But that's no reason to be disappointed. The Boston study relied upon in-depth interviews with men after the fact. Time-use studies involve questions about the previous day's behavior. With in-depth interviews, researchers expect subjects to have imperfect recall or exaggerate behaviors they perceive as being socially desirable—weight loss and breastfeeding are classic examples. But the direction in which they lie is socially significant. Thirty years ago, dads claimed to spend less time with their children than they actually did, since child-rearing was considered women's work. Now they are lying in the opposite direction, which suggests that they perceive doing half of the parenting to be a manly affair.

The Return

This story was originally published by the Washington Post Magazine on Sunday, April 4, 2010, in conjunction with an online discussion.

A stay at home mom attempts to go back to work after nearly two decades. Can she revive her career?

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

Amy Beckett put away her reading glasses and file folder and stood up.

It was time. It was almost past time.

She tossed the empty paper cup into the trash and swung open the door to leave the deli on Rhode Island Avenue NW. As Beckett walked into an upscale office lobby, her scarf slipped from around her neck and drifted to the ground. She scooped it up and shoved it into her shoulder bag. She didn't want to arrive late for the job interview.

She handed the security guard a photo ID. Once in the elevator, she looked up at the ceiling and exhaled noisily. "I'm never doing this again," she said, closing her jade-colored eyes for a moment. At the seventh floor, she opened the heavy wooden door to Suite 713, identified in gold lettering as the Law Offices of Stephen H. Marcus. The suite's unique double doors, parquet floor and crown molding signaled its former life as the ticket office for EL AL Airlines. The receptionist looked up from her desk with a smile. She took Beckett's business card and said it would be a few moments until Marcus finished with a client.

With her back straight in a modern brown chair by the door, Beckett folded her hands over the bag on her knees and waited. It was March of last year, three days after she had turned 52 and 17 years since she'd last held a job.

20% of U.S. Employers Violate Leave Act, Study Says

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2008 Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON -- One in five U.S. employers violates federal law by offering workers less than the required unpaid leave to care for a sick family member, new child or their own serious illness, according to a new report by the Families and Work Institute.

About 18 percent of large employers and 21 percent of smaller employers surveyed said they provide fewer than 12 weeks, the report said.

"There are so many reasons you could imagine an employer not complying," said Kate Kahan, director of work and family programs for the National Partnership for Women and Families. "The bottom line is the same, which is the employee loses out. This is such basic protection that it's horrible."

But the U.S. Labor Department questioned the report's conclusion.

"We know of no independent verification of their number," spokeswoman Dolline Hatchett said. "Compliance rates are hard to verify without sophisticated sampling techniques, and there is insufficient data in their analysis to allow one to assess an employer's compliance with the law."

When You Find Your Valentine On The Job

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2008 Newhouse News Service
Photo by Kraig Scattarella

Office romance often brings to mind an adulterous affair or supply-closet rendezvous a la "Grey's Anatomy."

But people who met a soulmate at work are fighting to change that rap, which discourages many from dating a colleague. They tout the workplace as the ideal venue to get to know possible partners.

"The office lends itself to these old-fashioned courting rituals of yore," said Stephanie Losee, San Francisco-based co-author of "Office Mate." "You get to know the substance of the person."

When All They Want for Christmas Is Time Off

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2007 Newhouse News Service

Since Ebenezer Scrooge, employers have struggled with holiday staffing.

Modern-day managers may wish they could grant every request for time off during Christmas and New Year's. Unfortunately, meeting business needs raises the touchy topic of which employees pull the unpopular shifts.

Solutions run the gamut from closing down operations for the holiday weeks to requiring every employee in a department to work.

Meditation on the Job Makes for Healthy, Productive Workers

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2007 Newhouse News Service

Imagine an executive who moves his telephone to the far side of his office. It takes an extra five seconds to answer every call. Must be an unproductive fellow, right?

Not according to Jonathan Foust, who teaches meditation at the World Bank and other Washington, D.C., venues.

Foust encourages his pupils to pause during the rush of daily life, to return to the calm place they find in meditation. With a renewed focus, they can actually be more productive better at prioritizing work and managing distractions.

When the executive rises from his chair to get the phone, he steals a sliver of time to clear his mind.

"When you slow down, what is most important will come to the surface," said Foust, warning that this takes time to master. "These practices are like swimming upstream, because you're encountering not only your own conditioning but the culture. This culture does not want to slow down."

The 40-Hour Workweek?

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2007 Newhouse News Service

Pop quiz: Since the 1950s, the length of the average American workweek has ... A) climbed. B) declined. C) stayed roughly flat.

If you picked A, you're wrong. The average employee worked 39.2 hours a week in 2006, nearly two hours less than the 40.9 the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded for 1956.

So why does it feel like we're working harder every year?

A third of those surveyed in July by Indianapolis-based business consultants Walker Information said they're forced to devote too much time to work, and 45 percent sacrifice personal balance for their jobs — increases from Walker's 2005 survey.

What's going on?

For starters, statistical averages can be misleading, lumping white-collar professionals with blue-collar and part-time workers.

While a growing chunk of the labor force regularly works 50- or 60-hour weeks, those in manufacturing have seen their hours dwindle to an average 34 per week this year. That's down from the nearly 39 the BLS reported for 1964.

"There's a bifurcation process going on where some people work excessively long hours, and there are other workers who can't get enough hours,'' said Vicky Lovell, director of employment and work/life programs at the Institute for Women's Policy Research.

Moreover, the labor force is now dominated by two-worker families, leaving less time for child rearing and housekeeping duties that haven't gone away. People report working almost 10 hours more per week than their ideal, said Arne Kalleberg, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina. Married employees "are working three jobs — two in the workplace and one at home,'' he said.

Modern Dads Balancing

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2007 Newhouse News Service
Photo by Kraig Scattarella

Today's dads are changing diapers, driving the carpool and cooking dinner — shouldering more child and household responsibilities than the previous generation of fathers.

The numbers tell the story: Fathers do 67 percent more housework and 50 percent more child care than 25 years ago, according to surveys by the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit organization based in New York.

Decades ago, men responded to fatherhood by honing their ability to support a family. Now, more are making career sacrifices and adjusting their work days as they try to reconcile the roles of provider and parent.

Yet they don't always find sympathy at their jobs. Bosses and colleagues who nod knowingly when a new mother scales back may react with surprise when a new father wants to do the same. And the biggest career-oriented rewards, many experts say, still go to those with few home duties, who can devote their full energy to work.

"The culture still remains one based on the whole breadwinner-homemaker model,'' said Ann Bookman, executive director of the MIT Workplace Center at the Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Mass.

The model of fatherhood is changing because wives expect a partnership and men want to be actively engaged with their kids.

"We ... have ratcheted up the expectations of what the father would do compared with previous generations,'' said Daniel Isaac, 38, of Yardley, Pa., a research scientist and teacher at Princeton University.

Negotiating Reduced Hours

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2005 Newhouse News Service
Photo by John Kuntz

Whether to care for children, assist aging parents, or ease into retirement, many American professionals are pushing back at employers' demands for longer workweeks and 24-7 accessibility.

They don't want to quit their jobs. Nor do they want to take scut work at low pay to get a part-time schedule. Instead, they're negotiating reduced hours compatible with their personal lives, often with a promise to live up to excellent track records.

"Working part time has let me feel I don't have to choose between two pieces of myself," said Diane E. Thompson, 38, an attorney with the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation in East St. Louis, Ill., who cut her hours when her first child was born. "I feel like a whole person."

The Society for Human Resource Management found in August that about 33 percent of employers have formal part-time positions for professional staff and 39 percent allow reduced hours case-by-case. Two-thirds of respondents said part-time options helped retain critical employees. The survey did not break down results by profession.

Job Sharing is Work Marriage

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2005 Newhouse News Service
Photo by Jane Therese

Mary Kay Ross and Sharon Snyder share a lot.

Together they fill a single full-time position of human resource manager at AT&T Corp. in Bedminster, N.J. They share a phone number, e-mail address, cubicle -- even a resume.

Each works about 25 hours over three days every week, overlapping in the office on Wednesdays. They've kept that schedule for a decade, through four different jobs and a joint promotion.

"We're able to hold challenging jobs together that as individual part-timers we might not be able to secure," Ross said. "I just feel very, very fortunate that we've had this opportunity for so long."

People who job-share say the arrangement lets them care for their children, attend school activities, volunteer in the community or ease into retirement while continuing to enjoy career success and earn a paycheck.

Yet only 19 percent of companies surveyed this year by the Society for Human Resource Management allow job sharing.

When business people started talking about work-life balance two decades ago, they envisioned job sharing as one of a range of new and exciting choices for workers, including flex-time, compressed workweeks and telecommuting. Job sharing has turned out to be the least utilized flexible option.

"Job sharing is the most foreign from the manager's perspective," said Pat Katepoo, founder of WorkOptions.com in Honolulu. "It's the laggard of the flexible work options. It's a tougher one to pitch and manage, but the benefits are really, really worth it and it should not be ignored."

Indeed, companies are taking a fresh look at job sharing as a way to retain valuable employees, boost productivity and prevent burnout in high-stress, demanding jobs.

Dad Unfriendly Work

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2005 Newhouse News Service
Photo by Bob Black

Daniel Malinski drove over a curb when his wife told him she was pregnant. After digesting the shock, he started planning for the monumental change of having a baby.

Knowing that a few mothers in his office worked part-time from home, he asked to telecommute an afternoon or two a week. To his surprise, the request was denied.

"It was frustrating," said Malinski, 29, a customer support specialist in Urbana, Ill.

Fathers on average are taking on dramatically more child care and household responsibilities. In 1977, they did about 35 percent as much household work and 58 percent as much child care as mothers, compared to 67 percent and 77 percent in 2002, according to the Families and Work Institute, a non-profit research organization in New York City.

Now, as more men try to tap family-friendly workplace policies, many discover the arrangements aren't as available to dads as to moms.

"In society in general, they feel that moms in the workplace need more and dads are supposed to just work and deal with it and fit in," Malinski said. "I don't think it's fair. I think dads need support too."

Just as women have struggled for equal opportunity at work, men are fighting for workplace accommodation of their bigger roles at home. Resistance ranges from snide comments and negative signals to outright discrimination.

"Fathers are just as susceptible as mothers to a backlash when they prioritize family over work," said Shelley Waters Boots, acting director of the Work and Family Program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute in Washington, D.C. "There can be some very significant consequences, including being fired."

Making Home Business Good

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2004 Newhouse News Service
Photo by Jane Therese

Troll the Internet for home-based businesses and it starts to feel like a graveyard tour.

The Web sites follow similar formats, with catchy names and professional appearances. You're urged to buy baby slings and clothes, hire a personal chef, sign up a virtual assistant, or send gift baskets to your best clients. But dig deeper and you find many of the links are broken, testimonials are "under construction," and e-mails bounce back, user unknown.

These are the remnants of many a parent's dream: an at-home business that minimizes your work day and maximizes your hours with young children.

In reality, creating a business takes more time, money and hard work than you might imagine. Even some who turn a profit concede that compensation borders on minimum wage.

"A lot of people who work outside the home perceive it to be very easy and very relaxed, and it's not," said Shelly Howard, 31, of Clinton Township, Mich., who sells kid-friendly recipes at www.munchkinmenus.com.

"I'm not ever done until I go to sleep," explained Howard, who has a 2-year-old son. "Trying to do that and raise a family and be a good wife is difficult."

Wanted: Opportunities for Part-Timers

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
c.2007 Newhouse News Service
Illustration by Monica Seaberry

Professionals seeking part-time opportunities generally look in vain for meaningful, well-paid positions. Jobs advertised as flexible tend to be scut work, entry level or work-at-home scams.

Take it from Jennifer Pultz: "The part-time jobs are not really career oriented."

An environmental educator from Portland, Ore., Pultz left the work force when her sons were toddlers, figuring to return part time when they were in kindergarten. She's been actively job hunting since hitting that milestone two years ago. "It's so frustrating," she says.

Enter the Internet. Several new Web sites all launched since August are matching talent with stimulating part-time, seasonal or project-based employment. The sites hope to serve older professionals who aren't ready to fully retire, parents scaling back or returning to work, and even young singles who want time to pursue a hobby or entrepreneurial venture.

"There are so many qualified people out there that want to work but need the flexibility," said Ilyse Shapiro of Wynnewood, Pa., who began MyPartTimePRO.com in February. Shapiro cites a June Gallup Poll finding that 51 percent of Americans would like to work part time before completely retiring.