Part-Time Professionals Find Balance Without Sacrificing Career, Study Says
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Charlotte Hawthorne advanced her high-powered career with Eli Lilly & Co. by working fewer hours and spending more time with her family.
Sound like a pipe dream? Researchers at Indiana’s Purdue University and Montreal’s McGill University say that in many large North American corporations, that dream has become reality.
In fact, some corporations predict that customized work arrangements--which help employees balance careers and family life--will be the key to managing the modern work force.
“I was able to keep my career on track,†said Hawthorne, who reduced her schedule with the drug company in 1993 when she had her first child. “It was a more relaxed environment, and I wasn’t feeling guilty about not spending enough time with my children.â€
Hawthorne had a second child, continued her work as an industrial engineer and won a promotion to a managerial position before returning to full-time work in 1998.
Her success is not uncommon.
The universities performed a two-year study of 87 corporate professionals and managers who by choice work less than full time and have their wages reduced proportionately.
The results show that the scaled-back workweeks slowed employees’ careers but didn’t stop them. About 35% had been promoted since they started working less.
The adjusted schedules made about 90% of the respondents happier with the way they balanced work and home life. Only 10% of the people interviewed planned to return to full-time work within the next three years.
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Shelley MacDermid, director of the Purdue Center for Families and an associate professor of child development and family studies, said some of the respondents were women starting families and that others were men seeking more time with their children or greater community involvement. The average age was around 39.
“We had a substantial number of cases where both the boss and the worker thought that performance had improved,†MacDermid said. “Certainly performance per unit time, but sometimes even overall performance was better. They were actually getting as much or more done working fewer hours.â€
The evolution of customized work arrangements is consistent with the changing makeup of the work force, according to Mary Dean Lee, associate professor of organizational behavior and human resource management at McGill University and director of the joint project.
“My view is that the way jobs got set up, the way careers got structured decades ago, was based on the old sort of society where men were the ones who had the professional and managerial jobs, and they had wives who took care of the family work,†Lee said. “Even though the traditional family structure has more or less disappeared, there really hasn’t been any reexamination of how we think about professional work and careers.â€
Not every company offers flexibility for part-time workers. In addition, employees on nontraditional schedules still bump up against systems in which success is judged by the number of hours workers are in the office, according to a November 1997 study by New York-based Catalyst research group.
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Still, there are indications that companies are beginning to change.
Candi Lange, director of work force partnering initiatives for Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly, said 200 of her company’s 14,000 U.S. employees have schedules adjusted to fit their needs.
“For the manager to say, ‘Do this, and everything else has to take second place’ is no longer realistic, given the needs of the current work force,†Lange said. “I think to be able to meet these real needs of the workplace, companies will have to become flexible.â€
Hawthorne says Eli Lilly’s flexibility helped her improve time management skills. “I think I was probably most efficient when I was working three days a week,†she said.
Susan Thomas, director of employment policies and programs for Philadelphia-based Cigna Corp., said flexibility is key if competitive companies are to retain high-quality workers.
“I think it’s absolutely terrific because it enables us to retain people who we otherwise might lose,†Thomas said.
MacDermid said the study did find some negative outcomes. Some people found it hard to set boundaries between home life and work, and used their free time to keep working.
But both researchers agree that the positive findings of their study foreshadow the future of successful labor management.
“Any sort of work arrangement that makes it possible for people to afford to put bread on the table and to spend time with their family members I would think is a good thing,†MacDermid said.
Rex W. Huppke writes for Associated Press.
