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."

Protect your home (and finances) from disaster

This article was originally published in the August 2011 issue of Money Magazine.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

(MONEY Magazine) -- The season for natural disasters, it seems, is now year-round. Floods and a record number of tornadoes have already caused billions of dollars of property damage across the nation in 2011. Come fall, forecasters expect an unusually active hurricane season. Moreover, experts believe crazy weather is here to stay.

"Climate change is intensifying the extremes of rain and snow as well as drought," says Robert Henson of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Think homeowners insurance will cover your tab if your property is walloped by Mother Nature? Think again.

A 2008 study found almost two-thirds of homes were under-insured for disasters. Worse, about a third of homeowners have recently lowered their home or auto coverage to save money, according to a 2011 survey by the Insurance Information Institute. Finally, even if your insurance is adequate it may not have the right coverage for the risks you face. Below, key steps to limit the damage.

Shore up your property

For earthquakes. The roof is a key vulnerability. You'll spend 2% to 3% of your home's value to firmly strap down the roof to the walls and foundation, says Timothy Reinhold, senior vice president of research for the Institute for Business and Home Safety.

For tornadoes. Again, your roof is at greatest risk of being damaged by high winds, says Robert Schneller, a risk-management expert at the University of Houston. Spend $50 to $100 per hour to have a roofer secure loose shingles or flashing that a gust of wind could pull loose. Also install roof clips to better attach your roof to the walls ($1 per clip, plus labor).

The garage door is another weak spot. An impact-rated pressurized door will run you $1,300, but you can also retrofit your existing door with pressurized equipment, which will cost just $450 and provide reasonable protection, says Reinhold.
Worried about your finances? Send the Help Desk your questions.

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.

When your spouse is also your coworker

Sometimes you're married to work; other times you are married at work. The ups and downs of working at the same office as -- or alongside -- your spouse.

This article was originally published by Fortune.com on Thursday, June 9, 2011.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor, Fortune

When Tom Corwin is done with his workday, he knocks on the wall. That signals his wife Carol -- who works in the neighboring office at the U.S. Education Department's budget office -- that he's ready to go home.

"We've been married 27 years now, and we've been working together longer than that. I can't imagine not working with her," says Corwin, 59, who met his wife on the job. "We always know what one another is going through professionally."

The couple enjoys talking out work challenges during their commute home, and often will brainstorm a solution to an assignment that seemed pointless at first blush. They contribute to each other's careers, and probably end up giving more time and energy to their employer than they would otherwise, he says.

With June kicking off the start of wedding season, newlyweds who work in the same office will embark on a delicate balancing act between their relationship at work and at home. Long-time married couples sharing an employer say it helps to have separate roles, respect your spouse's contributions at home and work, shift into professional mode when needed and zealously guard your personal time.

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.

Rough Unemployment Road for Men Could Be Ending

This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Thursday, Dec. 23, 2010.

While women fared much better than men throughout the recession, the gap in the unemployment rates between men and women is beginning to narrow as more and more men are going back to work.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

Nearly two years after being laid off from his information technology sales job, Alan Yellowitz of Fairfax, Va. finally landed a job. He's making less than half of the $200,000 to $300,000 a year he once earned, but it's enough to keep the lights on, pay the mortgage and feed his family of four. "After 22 months of unemployment, we feel like we can breathe again," said the 47-year-old Yellowitz. "It's still somewhat rough. We’re still digging out of a hole. But getting a regular paycheck every two weeks feels amazing."

Yellowitz was a casualty of what some call the “mancession", more than two years of rampant unemployment that disproportionately hurt men more than women. Men did so poorly because far more of them worked in industries hit hard by the economic downturn – particularly manufacturing, construction and financial services. Women, by contrast, are disproportionately represented in sectors that are more resistant to economic cycles, such as health care and education.

With the recession officially over and the job market slowly improving, long-time unemployed workers like Yellowitz are beginning to find work. While the unemployment rate for men dropped by nearly a full percentage point to 10.6 percent in November from its 11.4 percent high last October, the female unemployment rate is holding steady near its 8.8 percent high of October 2009. Even though the uptick in employment for men is still relatively small the data suggest that the jobs now opening up are going to men more than to women.

"Men's unemployment rose faster and further than women's, but it has since recovered somewhat. In contrast, women's unemployment, while having peaked lower, hasn't actually come down," Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Department of Labor, said in an interview with The Fiscal Times. "It does seem like the recovery has been more beneficial to men at this point. Some of this has to do with where the cuts [were] the deepest and where we [have] been able to add some jobs back."

One important question yet to be answered is whether males are merely bouncing back from the extreme job losses suffered during the Great Recession, or whether we are seeing the long-predicted turning point in the labor market in favor of women. Women hold an edge in the job market in part because they hold the majority of advanced degrees, and some experts believe that employers will hire and promote women to higher levels as a result. Thus far, the average woman still earns less than a comparable man, even when adjusted for hours worked and time out of the labor force.

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.