What are companies doing differently to address work-life issues today than they did ten years ago?
Ten years ago, if companies were putting a foot in the water at all, they were strictly into programs. In about 1994 we began to recognize that a good work-life program also included policies that treated people like responsible adults. In 1995, with the help of a study sponsored by the Ford Foundation, we caught on to the fact that work practices could be adjusted to make them more flexible, jobs could be split and tasks reassigned to make them more appropriate for telework or flextime. And finally we saw that without a supportive culture nothing we did would make any difference, and that most of that culture was in the space between employee and line manager. What’s the most important thing a company can do to help working mothers? First, if they don’t want backlash from child-free employees, they’d probably be better off not singling mothers out for special treatment. What they can do is create a commitment to treat all employees as whole people with important personal responsibilit
