On April 30, 2012, Ellen Galinsky -- president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute -- and Ken Matos, senior director of employment research and practice, spoke to reporters at a Society of Human Resource Management conference in suburban Washington D.C. about their survey of employers. Overall, the research found that employers were increasing their offerings of flextime and flexplace, while reducing support for long maternity leaves and career breaks.
Also addressing reporters were Shirley Davis, vice president for diversity and inclusion at SHRM, and Lisa Horn, senior government relations advisor at SHRM. Following are quotes from the presentation.
Remarks from Ellen Galinsky:
"The question I get asked most frequently is, 'Aren't employers cutting back?' " . . . Flexibility is not on a fast track, but it's on a steady track to becoming the new normal."
"When we ask employers in an open ended question why they're doing what they do, the largest percentage (37 percent) talk about retaining employees."
"This is all about, in a tough economy, keeping and having the people who are there doing the best they possibly can, both to make work work for themselves and for their employer."
"We know from studies we do of employees, that the most advantaged employees have more access. . . . In a sense we've always had the notion of an ideal image of the worker in the United States as being full-time, male and being able to work and family life is over to the side. . . . Organizations have created flexibility first for the image of the ideal employee."
"We're not at a saturation point in providing flexibility, but we're moving in that direction."
"We have a stereotype that larger companies are more family friendly. But smaller companies have the edge. Smaller companies are leading the way in this."
Remarks from Ken Matos:
"Forms of flexibility that allow employees to work longer hours, and adjust those hours on a daily basis, seem to be on the rise. . . . If it allows you to continue to get work done, employers are increasing their support for that."
"The types of flexibility that pull employees away from work for an extended period of time seem to be offered less often. . . . Those are the moments when a lot of employees can do professional development, it's when they deal with recovery from work and burnout and when they deal with longer-term family issues."
"Employers may be running some risks with their competitive advantage in the long term by cutting back on those."
Matos noted that 26 percent of employers are failing to comply with the FMLA leave laws and that includes 25 percent who fail to offer paternity leave.
"There seems to be a gap that we'll see again when we look at pay around supporting men being fathers."
Remarks from Ellen Galinsky:
"Where we had smaller companies taking the lead in flexibility, we have large companies taking the lead in the kind of benefits, programs and policies that cost money."
"They're doing more for elder care and I think that reflects our aging population. . . . Decision makers in companies are more often facing elder care issues themselves and this makes them more aware. . . . Even though child care led the way in companies being family friendly, elder care is up and running and speeding past child care. . . . It's going to be elder care that leads us into understanding these issues."
"Work these days is causing more stress, so (employers' position is) we're going to cause more stress but we'll help you deal with it."
Remarks from Ken Matos:
"One of the most important parts of providing flexibility is making sure the culture supports it."
"If the organization does not find a way to make sure that employees who use flexibility are viewed as valued employees who are contributing and valued, then flexibility becomes a trap."
"When we look at large and small employers, we find an interesting dichotomy. . . . Larger employers can do things that apply economies of scale. . . . Smaller employers may be better at the things where they can make an adjustment on the fly."
"It's important to think about how both large and small organizations operate to figure out where they can get the most opportunities."
