DOCUMEAT RESUME ED 363 794 AUTHOR TITLE REPORT NO … · 2014-05-05 · DOCUMEAT RESUME ED 363 794 CE 065 117 AUTHOR Peters, James L., Ed.; And Others TITLE Work and Family Policies:

DOCUMEAT RESUME

ED 363 794 CE 065 117

AUTHOR Peters, James L., Ed.; And OthersTITLE Work and Family Policies: The New Strategic Plan.

Research Report Number 949.INSTITUTION Conference Board, Inc., New York, N.Y.REPORT NO ISBN-0-8237-0395-9PUB DATE 90NOTE 45p.

PUB TYPE Collected Works Conference Proceedings (021)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS Adult Education; *Cost Effectiveness; *Employment;

*Employment Practices; *Organizational Climate;Personnel Policy; Program Development; Quality ofWorking Life; *Strategic Planning

IDENTIFIERS *Family Work Relationship

ABSTRACTThese 38 presentations are the highlights of the

Conference Board's Work and Family Conference. An "Introduction"(Dana Friedman) is followed by "The Future Is Not What It Was, andWhy Companies Care" (William Lee, Reuben Mark), which consists ofintroductory remarks and responses to an interview. "The Diversity ofWork-Family Issues" (David Machlowitz et al.) consists of briefprofiles and selected responses to questions of a panel of fiveemployees representing different generations and family models."Innovative but Replicable--Corporate Responses to Family Needs"(Rosemary Mans et al.) offers descriptions of programs offered by thefollowing companies: Bank of America, IBM Corporation, John HancockMutual Life Insurance Company, American Association for RetiredPersons, Aetna Life and Casualty, Stride Rite Children's Centers,National Project on Home-Based Work, US Sprint/United CommunicationsCompany, Northeast Utilities Service Company, Families and WorkInstitute, Eastman Kodak Company, and Time Inc. Magazines. "PuttingIdeas into Practice" (Julie Holder) presents remarks of 10individuals from a session on develDping work-family programs withinthe framework of a company's culture. "Redefining Expectations,Responsibilities, and Commitments" (Fran Rodgers et al.) offers threeperspectives on work-family issues in the context of an evolvingmajor redefinition of how Americans will work. "Government Efforts:Carrots or Sticks for Business" (Dallas Salisbury et al.) providesfour viewpoints. The final presentation is "The Cost Benefits of a'Family-Friendly' Workplace" (James Renier). (YLB)

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The Conference Board

Research Report Number1349

Work and FamilyPolicies: The NewStrategic Plan

Executives and Leading Experts Discuss:

innovations in corporate programs

creating a family supportive company culture

the impact of globalization and demographics

costs and benefits of work and family policies

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BEST COPY AVAILABLE

About The Conference Board

Founded in 1916, The Conference Board's twofoldpurpose is to improve the business enterprise systemand to enhance the contribution of business to society.

To accomplish this, The Conference Board strives to bethe leading global business membership organizationthat enables senior executives from all industries to ex-plore and exchange ideas of impact on business policyand practices. To support this activity, The ConferenceBoard provides a variety of forums and a professionallymanaged research program that identifies and reportsobjectively on key areas of changing management con-cern, opportunity and action.

The Conference Board845 Third AvenueNew York, NY 10022-6601Telephone 212 759-0900Fax 212 980-7014

The Conference Board EuropeAvenue Louise207 Bte 5, B-1050Brussels, BelgiumTelephone 02 640 6240Fax 02 640 6735

The Conference Board of Canada255 Smyth RoadOttawa, Ontario, KIH-8M7Telephone 613 526-3280Fax 613 926-4857

© 1990 by The Conference Board, Inc.Printed in the U.S.A.ISBN No. 0-8237-0395-9

3

Work and Family Policies: The New Strategic Plan

Edited by James L. PetersBarbara H. Petersand Frank Caropreso

Contents5 FROM THE PRESIDENT

INTRODUCTION7 Dana E. Friedman

Families and Work Institute

THE FUTURE IS NOT WHAT IT WAS, AND WHY COMPANIES CARE9 William S. Lee

Duke Power Company9 Reuben Mark

Colgate-Palmolive Company

THE DIVERSITY OF WORK-FAMILY ISSUES13 David S. Machlowitz

General Instrument Corp.13 Claire Lifshitz

OCAW Local 814914 Robyn Person

Home Box Office14 Henry Baird

Bell Labs14 Betty Hudson

Corporation Communication, NBC, Inc.

INNOVATIVE BUT REPLICABLECORPORATE RESPONSES TO FAMILY NEEDS15 Rosemary Mans

Programs, Bank of America16 J. T. Childs, Jr.

IBM Corporation17 Sandra M. Colley

John Hancock Mutual Le Insurance Company18 Angela Heath

American Association for Retired Persons18 Donald E. Hillier

Aetna Life and Casualty19 Karen Liebold

Stride Rite Children's Centers19 Kathleen E. Christensen

National Project on Home-Based Work

4 Work and Family Policies: The New Strategic Plan 3

20 Deborah L. HoltUS Sprint/United Communications Company

21 Michael E. BrownNortheast Utilities Service Company

21 Michelle R. LordFamilies and Work Institute

22 Allen W. BergersonEastman Kodak Company

23 Susan F. GeisenheimerTime Inc. Magazines

PUTTING IDEAS INTO PRACTICE25 Julie Fasone Holder

Dow Chemical Co.26 Ellen Galinsky

Families and Work Institute27 Martha Montag Brown

Levi Strauss & Co.29 Michael A. Snipes

Allstate Insurance Company30 Arlene A. Johnson

The Conference Board, Inc.30 Deborah Stahl

AT&T31 Gerald F. Murray

United States Air Force32 Karen A. Geiger

NCNB Corporation33 Thomas E. Blumer

Corning Inc.34 Michael J. Carey

Johnson & Johnson Personal Products Company

REDEFINING EXPECTATIONS, RESPONSIBILITIES AND COMMITMENTS37 Fran S. Rogers

Work/Family Directors38 Derek F. Harvey

Mobil Corporation39 Harris Sussman

Work Ways

GOVERNMENT EFFORTS: CARROTS OR STICKS FOR BUSINESS41 Dallas L. Salisbury

Employee Benefit Research Institute41 Mary Wendy Roberts

State of Oregon43 Judith L. Lichtman

Women's Legal Defense Fund44 James D. Burge

Motorola, Inc.

THE COST-BENEFITS OF A "FAMILY-FRIENDLY" WORKPLACE45 James J. Renier

Honeywell Inc.

54 The Conference Board

From the PresidentAn overflow audience at The Conference Board'sWork and Family Conference this year provedto be a strong testament to the fresh urgency and

concern for work-family issues in the business com-munity. Time and again company representatives at theconference proved eager to explore innovative ways toattract and retain a talented workforce. Paid leave forfamily illness, parental leave plus elder care benefitsall major concerns for today's worker are now ap-pearing at the top of the corporate agenda. Reshaping

the corporate environment to make it more family-friendly is not seen as a "good work," hut rather as asound strategy for doing good business.

The presentations in this volume are the highlightsfrom that conference. On behalf of the Board. I wouldlike to thank the speakers and attendees for making thisconference such a resounding success.

6

PRESTON TOWNLEYPresident and CEO

Work and Family Policies: The New Strategic Plan 5

IntroductionDana E. FriedmanCo-Founder and Co-PresidentFamilies and Work InstituteConference Chair

Icoordinated The Conference Board's first con-ference on work and family in 1986. Looking backat the agenda. one can see how far this issue has

come. Most of that one-day event was spent reviewingdemographics and making the case for work and familyas a legitimate business issue. At this conference, wewill again distuss the rationale for corporate involve-ment, but most of the time will be spent exploring howto implement effective programs and policies.

Significant changes have occurred in recent years. In1986 there were about 2,500 companies providing childcare support; today there are about 5,400. Elder carewas a footnote at the 1986 conference; today there aremore than 300 companies offering a wide array of eldercare benefits.

Until recently. corporate people who were sym-pathetic to the work-family movement were quiet about

their commitment, lest they be seen as radicals. Butincreasingly work-family champions see their advocacyof work-family issues as a stepping-stone to morecredibility within their companies, more contact withthe CEO and more visibility in the public arena.

A final distinction is that during the 1980s, we ex-pected employees to do most of the accommodatingwhether it was redefining their own relationships.working out new arrangements with communityservices, or revising their career expectations. In the1990s, changes will occur in organizations. They willnot only look at work-family issues but they will try toconnect them to other strategic concerns. Most impor-tant, organizations will need to basic prin-ciplesperhaps how we view work itself.

We are here today to explore and encourage thisprocess.

7


The Future Is Not What It Was,And Why Companies Care/Preston Thwnlev, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Conference Board, interviewed William S. Lee and

Reuben Mark after they made introthwtory remarks.1

William S. LeeChairman and President

Duke Power Company

Duke Power serves 1.5 million homes in the twoCarolinas with a team of 19,000 people. Ourinterest in family issues directly relates to the

bottom line. Family issues in the workplace impactproductivity and affect our ability to attract and retainhighly capable people. This, as well as our compassion.drives our interest in the family.

The one word that characterizes Our human resour-ces policy is flexibility. In the last year, for example.we have discarded about half our human resources pro-cedures. More and more we trust management. super-visors and employees throughout the organization tomake HR decisions without the book. We think this ap-proach best serves the workplace of the future. We havebeen through an era of affirmative action. We are nowmature enough to trust one another not to discriminate,and we dont need complicated procedural manuals.Flexibility increasingly permeates our organization andprovides more freedom to decide at the local level.

Reuben MarkPresident and Chief Executive Officer

Colgate-Palmolive Company

Colgate-Palmolive is a global company. Two-thirdsof our $5 billion revenue comes from outside theUnited States. We have operations in 60 countries andsell products in 160 nations. Most of Colgate's manage-ment are either foreign-born or have spent a good dealof their careers overseas. This is important for the cor-

porate culture because these executives have firsthandexperience with the value of cultural and ethnic diver-sity.

At thc beginning of the last decade, we started aneight-year plan to revitalize the company. Theobjectives were to focus the company and increaseshareholder value and profitability. The mechanism todo this was largely people-oriented: increase motiva-tion, push decision making down, empower employees.We cut out management levels, divested 40 companies,and reconfigured factorie:i.

Human resources played an important role in thedevelopment of this plan. The most profound changeswere in HR. For the first time, we recruited top-flightprofessionals to do the job. And they helped us changeour culture. First we completed a conversion to pay-for-performance in our business. But we also did manythings to make the 27,000 employeesdownsized fromabout 50,000know that thcy were contributingsignificantly to the company's success. This approachcentered on human issues and drove us into the work-family sphere.

Developing a family-friendly workplace is the rightthing to do and must be done from both a social andmoral viewpoint. Beyond this, it is good business andone of the mechanisms needed to attract. motivate andretain quality people. The best decision maker in thisarea is the individual employee. Over the next decade.Colgate will flcus on work-family issues. Unless com-pany leadership deals with this daily and emphasizes it

Wall, and 1 amtly Policies: The New Strategic Plan 9

in words and policies, it won't happen. II must be ledfrom the top.

Townley: You cite the bottom line/as a strong reasonfor pursuing action in this area. Is Were a single fact orconcept that brings this home? /

Lee: Today management's roie/ is to create an oppor-/tunity for employees to become excited about theircontribution to the workplace/You can't get excitedabout your work if you are y,i,orried about a sick child athonie. So the sick child atiome is a concern tomanagement. We want tg do something about this issuespecifically and many/ther family-related issues.

/Mark: This is on/element of an overall view that the

way a business reGiains successful is by developingemployees whoifre motivated, loyal and satisfied withthe work they ai-e. doing.

Townley: There are critics who view some of thisactivity as a response to external social concerns ratherthan the bottom line. Would you comment?

Lee: These concerns arc motivated by the bottomline. I don't think we should undertake a social programthat is somehow not connected to the bottom line. Ourobligation to our customers and shareholders andemployees is that we be a competitive, profitableenterprise.

Mark: I think we diverge a bit here. In a democraticsociety, all institutionsin addition to their primaryresponsibilitieshave an obligation to put their effortsto socially appropriate activity. Colgate, for example, isdeeply involved in education in New York City,because we have focused our non-profit work as wehave focused our business. We would be hard-pressedto find a direct link to the bottom line as a result of thisfocus on New York's education. But we are residentsand enjoy the benefits of New York. From the perspec-tive of a social contract, we must pay something back.

Lee: I see a direct connection between the quality ofoducat ion in New York City and the success of Colgatehere. Your.employees live here: the quality of life isaffected by the quality of education: therefore the suc-cess of your company is affected by it. I see a directconnection to our future bottom line in the Carolinasand the quality of education in the territory we serve.

Mark: In addition to my belief that it is the ryhtthing to do, there is no doubt that it is the mission ofmanagement to get the most dedicated, loyal, motivatedworkforce possible to embrace the company's vision.

I() The Confr owe Board

Clearly this is One of the important mechanisms toachieve this mission. Without it, you will not reach thebottom line.

Townley: How do you measure the bottom line andthe P&L impact? Or do you?

Lee: An example of a family issue that relates to ourbottom line is that we have 500 alcoholics on payroll.They are -iober. About an equal number of employeefamily members have an alcohol problem. And they aresober. Through our employee assistance program, wehave worked to rehabilitate a population of about 1.000.I know how many counselors we have and what ourannual budget is for the program.

We include treatment for alcoholism as part of ourmedical expense. Those 500 employees have 5,000years of experience. If we had not rehabilitated them.we would have had to recruit 500 new employees, trainthem, and build up an equivalent 5,000 years of ex-perience. You can imagine the cost of recruiting andtraining 500 employees. The cost of our employeeassistance program has been returned to us many times.It is improving the bottom line.

Mark: You don't need specific cost justification forthis. The first course in psychology tells you the effectof employees' problems on their productivity. if we canreduce external pressures and improve the way peoplethink about themselves, productivity will increase. Youcan construct a huge research project to divine thesavings or incremental profits here, but we know theanswer going in: if you are motivated, you do better.Work-family flexibility is one of the mechanisms tomotivate.

Townley: Even though a CEO supports the work andfamily concept. how do you deal with the seniormanager who is running a profitable division despitethe fact he or she is only paying lip service to work-family issues?

Alark: It is the role of the CEO to set a company'sstrategic vision, get the right people in the right jobsand then make sure they are motivated. The things weare talking about today are integral to that process.

So this becomes one of the most difficult jobstopush top-level commitment down through theorganization. Managers must he reminded, sometimesheavy handedly. that they are being evaluated on threecriteria: volume, profit and meeting company objec-tives. At the end of the year, they will be rated in termsof meeting objectives such as work-family. You mustuse this kind of evaluation tool and use it hard.

Lee: I agree. If you use performance-based pay andencounter a senior manager whose feet are in concrete,you can establish a performance goal in the area ofweakness. The manager will understand this. Perfor-mance-based pay can help achieve many goals.

Townley: What kind of support do you expect or getfrom your human resources function?

Mark: The integration of human resources into themanagement function is a vital component of Colgate'sstrategy. It is a two-way partnership. I am here todaybecause human resources knew this would be an impor-tant forum and that it would be a way to further in-fluence our management group. If I feel strongly aboutbeing hey.% managers will take note.

Lee: Our human resources department has helpeddrive a cultural change at Duke Power toward greaterflexibility. And I am here because of their urging.

Townley: A so-called "mandated benefits debate-exists in Washington and among certain business

groups. What are your views on the role of governmentin these kinds of issues?

Lee: Government social programs have been adriving force in this country. We wouldn't have comethis far in non-discrimination were it not for govern-ment impetus. At the same time, we have governmentprograms that are highly structured, restrictive andoverly complicated. This hampers the flexibility that isoften the key to success in human resources 'natters. Itend to prefer fewer government programs and morefreedom to initiate.

Mark: I agree in principle. But if we are to spreadthese practices throughout the country broadly anddeeply, inevitably government pressures will be neces-sary. The civil rights legislation of the 1960s wascritical to that movement. Similar legislation in thework-family arca is required. Operating in manyforeign countries, we at Colgate find that you canalways count on certain nations to make things happen.The job before us is to get the bottom half of companiesup to standard. To do this, there must be pressure.

1 0

lt at A aml hannly PoluleA: lite New So ategu Plan 11

The Diversity ofWork-Family Issues(Judy Woodruff, Chief Washington Correspondent for the MacNeillLehrer Newshour. introduced a panel of employeesrepresenting different generations and family models. They presented brief profiles of themselves and answered ques-tions from Ms. Woodruff and the audience. Their profiles and selected responses follow.]

David S. MachlowitzAssistant General CounselGeneral Instrument Corp.

At work, I am involved in environmental, employ-ment and product liability law. At home, I amthe father of a two-year-old daughter. My wife

works full-time. I left private practice and entered thecorporate world, in part, to get more control over mylife so that I could spend more time with my family.Our daughter is cared for by someone who comes to ourhome for the day. It still leaves us subject to the 6:00a.m. or even the 2:00 a.m. call when the babysitter has acrisis in her own life. Then we have to decide who cantake the morning off and who can take the afternoon offor who can take the baby to the office and for how long.

Young children need quantity time. From myperspective, the notion that quality time is enough is notvalid. My wife and I have made sacrifices in ourcareers so that we can spend more time with ourdaughter. We both work more predictable schedulesnow.

The downside of professional life is that the obliga-tions can be extreme. When I punch out, the obligatienscome with me. Many friends tell me that theircompanies are not receptive to the idea of fathers whowant to take time off to go to the school appointedpediatrician. The "that's women's work" attitudepersists. Viewpoints are beginning to change slowly.Wc have already seen, for example, husbands who willnot relocate without considering how it will impacttheir wives' career.

11

Claire Lifshitz,Office ManagerOCAW Local 8149

I am married, my husband works full-time, and Ihave four children. I have one at home full-time, theothers I share with their colleges. I best represent yourblue-collar workerthe production worker on theassembly line or most of your clerical staff. Workingfull-time with children creates continual problems. Forpeople who work in factories and lower-level officejobs, financial flexibility usually isn't available.Companies therefore must provide work flexibility andunderstanding.

When you punch a time clock, your children don'texist. You don't go to the supervisor and tell him thatyou must go home to care for a sick or injured child.You punch out in the face of many complaints; you willnot be paid for the time; and if you do this too often,you will be looking for another job. Things are chang-ing slowly. But when you get down into mostcalumnies' production lines, the script still says, "Ifyou want to work, be here and you will get paid."

If you work in a factory and it has put your childrenin the attic, why would you expect your elders to betreated any bmer? I worked with a woman who wasfired for taking time off to care for a semi-senilemother; she was the only person who was available to

Work and Fanzily Policies: The New Strategic Plan 1 3

care for her mother. The company's attitude was thatthe mother was an adult and didn't require thedaughter's help. This is an irresponsible position.

People who are distracted are not good employees. Ifthey are worried about elderly parents or sick children,they are not giving you their best work. And replacingthem means hiring untrained employees. Each time atrained person walks out the door you lose her or histechnique and speed: You lose production.

Robyn PersonAssistant in Human ResourcesHome Box Office

I am in charge of the in-house temporary employ-ment program at HBO. I am the single mother of a17-month-old daughter who is asthmatic. It is importantthat I work for a company that is flexible about depend-ent care needs. Before my employment at HBO. it wasNeil, difficult for me. I had to be at home with mydaughter a lot: I worried about her when I was at work;I felt guilty about my work and my child.

HBO has an emergency child care service. If mydaughter is too sick to go to the babysitter's, if she ismildly ill, the service sends someone to my home tocare for herat the company's expense. It is a wonder-ful benefit. If my former employer could see me nowwithout the child care stressif they could see myperformance at HBO, they would know that this kind ofbenefit makes a world of difference.

Henry BairdResearcherAT&T Bell Labs

T. carry out basic research in computer science. Irepresent a wide variety of non-traditional familyrelationships, those not defined by blood, marriage oradoption. For the last eight years I have lived withClark Mazuick, my domestic partner. Our familyincludes my elderly parents whom we are helpingthrough their final illnesses and related difficulties. Ialso help Clark raise his 11-year-old child from aformer marriage. He doesn't benefit from AT&T'sgenerous survivor pension annuities, health plan andother important benefits. We have had to strain with anextraordinary rate of pre-tax savings in order to preparefor the possibility that I should die before he does.

An essential component to being comfortable aboutclaiming benefits is feeling free to explain your family


relationship to your bosses. Many families know thattheir particular circumstances aren't recognizednotby their bosses and not by the formal company policies.About 10 percent of your employees are gay or lesbian.Yet we are in the earliest stages of these employeesstepping forward, identifying themselves, explainingtheir particular arrangements and asking for the benefitsthat the;r circumstances require. In the future,employers will meet many more people from the les-bian and gay population who are prepared to do this.

When my mother Llad a serious stroke and myparents' home became untenable, I had to move them toan apartment near me in New Jersey. We virtually setup a small nursing home there. My work productivitydeclined 25 percent. Fortunately there was timeflexibility at work, and I have a computer terminal athome. But there was tremendous pressure.

Betty HudsonSenior Vice PresidentCorporate Communications. NBC. Inc.

I am 41-years-old and the mother of a 2.5-year-oldand a five-month-old. At work I supervise a staff of130. We have had eight babies born within our divisionin the last year and one child was adopted. My husbandis a television correspondent whose show was canceledin January. We have live-in child care. I recognize thatI am in a privileged situation because I have the resour-ces to make child care in my home a reality. But I don'thave a blood relative within 2000 miles of New York.So we are dealing with the issue of what a nuclear fami-ly really means.

My job is being the company's chief spokesperson.The company is helpful: I have fax machines and com-pany phone lines at home. But if I have to look at thewhole landscape of what my family responsibilitiesarcincluding running the houseit is daunting,especially if I look at it as a 20-year issue. I must lookat it in small bites.

To a certain extent, what is going on in the lives ofthe people who are the company's policy makers drivesmuch of the corporate attitude. The message from thetop may be subtle but it ripples out to the troops, andthis can mean positive change.

NBC is coming into an increased cons, iousnessabout work-family issues. But we need supervisors whoarc able to talk more openly and honestly withemployees when they sense family-related problems.Things are slowly changing.

1 2

Innovative but Replicable CorporateResponses to Family NeedsCHILD CARE

Rosemary MansVice President and Manager, Work-FamilyPrograms, Bank of America

In the last decade many companies responded towork-family issues. Today, about 5400 major U.S.employers offer some form of child care. The most

popular choices are:(1) Dependent care assistance programs. About

2,500 companies have selected this option and it is byfar the most common response. It allows pre-tax salarydeductions for employees who set aside dollars fordependent care.

(2) Resource and referral assistance. About 1,200companies try to help their employees find quality childcare through R&R programs.

(3) Child care centers near or on-site. About 1,200employers provide this option: 800 hospitals, 200non-hospital corporations and 200 government agencies.

(4) Specialized forms of financing, such as vouchersor discount arrangements. This factors in affordabilityfor employees. About 100 companies offer this assis-tance.

(5) Other responses, in about 100 companies, includefamily day care strategies in communities near the com-pany; after-school programs for latchkey children; andsick child care assistance.

Future TrndsIn the future, you can expect companies that now

have some form of child care assistance to offer avariety of options. Companies with multiple locationswill expand from one pilot site to other locations. One

13

important trend is that companies are starting to useresource and referral agencies more imaginatively.Resource and referral agencies are the source for multi-ple kinds of child care responses. They can, forexample, manage voucher programs or share theirexpertise in workplace seminars. These agencies can bemuch more than the source of referrals.

Increasingly, companies acknowledge the sick childcare issue and are working toward a solution. We havealready seen efforts to develop external services torespond to this need. One is the provision of in-homecaregiversan expensive but effective alternative. Wewill also see growth in corporate flexibility toward sickchild care leave time, whether it is allowing employeesto use their own sick days or some combination of emer-gency or personal time off. About 60 percent of majorcorporations are experimenting with the time off issuebut over half are doing it on an unpaid basis. Unpaidversus paid time off is a critical question, especially forlower level employees.

There will be more growth in dependent care assis-tance plans although companies are beginning to seelimitations here. The lower level employees, thosemaking under $25,000, do not benefit as much using adependent care assistance plan as they might from a taxcredit.

We are starting to see more collaboration betweencompanies to build a stable supply of care. After all,resource and referral can only be effective when thereis something we can refer people to. Companies can

Work and Family Policies: The New Strategic Plan IS

pool resources to expand supply. This is what theCalifornia Child Care Initiative is all about. Some com-panies are now developing their own funds to help com-munity-based organizations create more care.

J.T. Childs, Jr.Manager, WorkILife ProgramsIBM Corporation

IBM's child care initiative emerged in 1984. Weannounced a national child care referral service to bemanaged for us by Work/Family Directions. We didn'ttake this step in response to a ground swell of expressedemployee concern. Rather, we moved in this directionbecause demographic data told us that this was wherebusiness leaders must move if they are to be responsiveto employees' needs. Our employees had yet to seechild care as an issue that required their company'sinvolvement. They thought of child care as a familymatter and that they should manage it.

In 1986 we distributed a random work/life survey to4,000 people at IBM. Seventy-eight percent responded.And we learned many interesting things about theseIBM employees. We already knew that the populationwas about 70 percent male. Projecting from 1965 to2000, however, our male population will decline 25percent and the female population will triple. We willbe between 36-38 percent female by the year 2000. Thisfact alone prompts a strong business interest in familyissues.

We learned that 58 percent of our employees weremembers of a dual-income family. About 30 percentreported they had children who required supervision.Among people under 40 years of age, 55 percent of thedual-professional families and 38 percent of the dual-earners said they planned to have or adopt a childwithin the next five years.

We asked employees if they had missed a day ofwork during the past year due to an ill child at home.And 60 percent said they had missed at least one daywhile 30 percent said they had missed three or moredays. We converted this to a productivity hit of $30million based on the lost productivity. We thought thisfactor alone justified the development of our programfor mildly ill children.

Child Care Objective

Our child care objective is simply stated: to assistour employees regardless of their location, income,children's ages, or the type of care required. We hopedto address the full range of family needs. These needswere defined as:

Finding care


Knowing how to se,ect among the various optionsFinding care consistmt with the ability to payIdentifying care options that don't currently exist

IBM has one contract with Work/Family Directionsand they have 250 local contracts. Wherever ouremployees live, they have access to a local resource andreferral agency. IBM decided not to initiate on-sitechild care. We don't know how to do it equitably. Ourplan is to focus on resource and referral and supply; tomaximize parental choice; and to deliver the serviceconsistently and equitably. The five-year results areimpressive. We have served 39,000 families and 45,000children through the service. Of the children, 70 percentare under three-years-old and 40 percent are under ageone.

Dependent Care Initiative

In November 1989, we announced the IBM Fundsfor Dependent Care Initiatives- -$25 million over fiveyears$22 million for child care, $3 million for eldercare. When we considered this investment, we focusedon communities where IBM had significant populations.

The initiative's focus will include day care centers,family day care recruitment; programs for school-agedchildren; and programs for mildly ill children. Prior tothis initiative, IBM had not aggressively addressed thesubject of day care centers. Our investment in day carecenters will aim at securing limited priority enrollmentfor the children of IBM parents. Regarding programs.for mildly ill children, we want to provide alternativesfor parents when a child is ill. Of course, we wantemployees to come to work. But we have emphasized tomanagers that the decision to come to work or not whena child is ill should be made by the parent. We don'twant managers inhibiting this process.

Flexibility for Caregivers

A series of flexibility measures was announced atIBM in 1988. We increased personal leave from one tothree years. During a three-year leave, full benefitsremain in effect. In the second and third years, youmust be available for part-time work, up to 20 hours aweek. Before this policy went into effect, about 2,000employees were on leave at any given time; now about2,500 are on leave. We have noted a small number ofmen taking leaves in conjunction with the birth ofchildren.

A work-at-home pilot is underway in 10 locations.We aren't migrating work to the home. Rather this isdesigned for employees on personal leave who cannotcome to the workplace. Participants must perform thetype of work that can be accomplished at home andmust report to their regular work for four consecutive

14

hours each week. If the job requires a computer ter-minal, IBM will install one in the home. We think thismay be an attractive and manageable alternative, espe-cially for those with caregiving responsibilities.

We also expanded our individualized work schedulesto a two-hour window. If your work day normally runs8:30 to 4:30, you can now begin as early as 7:30 or aslate as 9:30 and end at 3:30 or 5:30. At two pilot sites.we have a mid-day flex. This allows employees to addup to two hours to their lunch hour. You must make thistime up in the same calendar day. An employee on thesecond shift told us that her baby normally went to bedat the time of her lunch hour. With mid-day flex, shecan now go home and help put her baby to bed.

In 1989 IBM implemented a management develop-ment module that all 30,000 U.S. managers willparticipate in. The module builds the business case forwork/life programs. IBM wants to make it clear that weare implementing work/life programs to help employeesbalance work demands and family pressures. We willstill demand excellence but the work will be donedifferently. The varied programs are tools for managersto use in building partnerships with their employees sothat IBM can remain a globally competitive company.

Sandra M. ColleyDirector. E.E.O.John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company

At John Hancock we began looking at family care inthe traditional waywith a task force. Our goal was todefine employees' family care needs and theappropriate employer response to those needs. In ourresearch we attended seminars, made on-site visits tochild care centers, surveyed other employers, inter-viewed John Hancock managers. surveyed ouremployees and consulted with leading work-familyexperts. We struggled with these issues for manymonths, recognizing that .re wasn't one solution forall employees.

Corporate Family Care Policy

Our initiatives included a statement on family carethat is part of our corporate policy guide. It says:

"The John Hancock believes its employees are one ofits greatest strengths. In recent years, the life style andneeds of our employees have been changing. The in-crease in dual wage earners and working parents in ourworkforce is a trend that we believe %sill continue intothe future and represents a portion of our workforce thatis vital to our continued success as a corporation. Recog-ni/ing that employees have responsibilities to theirfamilies as \kelt as to their jobs, thc John Hancock %sillendeavor to provide an environment and policies that

15

are supportive to our employees' achieving their ov.nnecessary balance between work and family issues."

To assist our managers and supervisors in the day-to-day operation of the programs, we have expandedmanagerial training to include family care sensitivitytraining. We want to help managers be more supportivein dealing with employees and family care issues. Wehave also created a human resources staff position to bean advocate for family care issues and to do ongoingresearch on family care.

John Hancock recognizes that employees needflexibility when they are caring for others. We thereforeimplemented three enhancements to our time and leavepolicies:

(1) Employees may use up to three of their availablesick days for an illness in the family.

(2) Flextime hours have been expanded so thatemployees may better balance child or elder care needs.

(3) Unpaid leave of absence has been extended to amaximum of one year wiih full company benefits.

Family policies include a benefit that allowsemployees to call home to check on family members.For those people who don't normally have access to awork phone, one call home to a latchkey child providesgreat relief and a more productive employee. A flexiblespending account has also been established that allowspre-tax dollars to pay for child or elder care expenses.An adoption benefit provides 100 percent reimburse-ment for the first S2.000 of related expenses. And JohnHancock's child care referral service operatesthroughout Massachusetts, providing employees with in-formation on child care providers in their communities.

Child Care Initiatives

An exciting new initiative is called Kids to Go. Thisis an effort to provide child care during school holidaysand vacations when the company is open. Frequentlyemployees take vacation time to cover the home frontin these periods. Kids to Go. a collaboration betweenJohn Hancock and Ellis Memorial, a non-profit Bostonchild care agency. provides activities for employees'children, ages six to thirteen, during specified holidaysand vacation weeks. Parents can bring their children tothe company as ea; ly as 7:30 a.m. and pick them up by4:30 p.m. Ellis Memorial groups the children by ageand schedules movies, museum visits. bowling, rollerskating and other activities. Over 70 children attendedour first week-long program in February and it was agreat success.

Another new program is Summer Care Fair. a tradefair, where information about summer programs ismade available to employees. The fair is a way formany summer camp managers and programmers to he

Work and Family Pon( le. The New Strategic Plan 1 7

available for employeesall under John Hancock'sroof.

John Hancock's most exciting family care initiativeis the development of an on-site child care center begin-ning later this year. Employees have responded en-thusiastically to this announcement. Initially the centerwill serve 100 children and then increase to a capacityof 200.

Though each of us may not share the responsibilityof child care, we work daily with people who do. Wewant to work with the best qualified and most produc-tive people. To the extent that we can put policies andprograms in place that help our employees be moreproductive, we are all winners.

Elder Care

Angela HeathProgram SpecialistAmerican Association for Retired Persons

AARP and the Travelers Company Foundation con-ducted a national survey of caregivers in 1988. Theyfound that seven million households face elder careissues. Most pertinent. perhaps, they reported that 55percent of the caregivers work outside the home. TheNew York Business Group on Health completedresearch earlier, in 1985, that revealed how corporatedecision makers viewed elder care and its effects ontheir companies. The consensus was that elder careproblems led to decreased productivity, overuse ofcompany telephones for personal needs, and increasedabsenteeism.

Corporate response to elder care is a recentphenomenon. Pioneers in the mid-1980s includedTravelers with its landmark research; the University ofBridgeport, which looked at different kinds of supportsfor Pepsico, Remington Steel and People's Bank; andAerospace Corporation in California which developedwork and family clubs.

Since the mid-80s, hundreds of U.S. companies havebegun implementing elder care programs: Pepsico andother firms set up an elder care hotline in the Connec-ticut area; Champion International developed literatureon elder care issues; American Express and HallmarkCards offer educational seminars in the woikplace; IBMand Johnson & Johnson signed referral and consultationcontracts; and AT&T provides seed money tocommunities to develop caregiver supports.

It is said that elder care may be the benefit issue ofthe 1990s. In a rapidly aging world, elder issues do holdout the promise to revolutionize work and familypolicies.


Donald E. HillierAssistant Vice President. Corporate HumanResources

Aetna Life and Casualty

Aetna began its elder care services in September1988 in conjunction with its child care initiatives. Wedidn't conduct an employee survey or spend an extraor-dinary amount of time studying this issue. We revieweda number of other companies' studies, discussed altenia-tive services with providers and other companies, anddecided to add elder care services to balance our childcare initiatives and thus appeal to a greater number ofemployees.

Aetna's elder care service includes three major parts:Consultation and referralWork time seminarsSupport groups

Consultation and Referral Network

The goals of our consultation and referral serviceare: (1) to help employees understand the communityand state care options; (2) to help employees find ser-vices they need; (3) to provide employees and theirfamilies with literature to better deal with elder issuesand make informed decisions; (4) and to provide ongo-ing emotional support during and after the search forservices. Employees may call as frequently as they wishfor support or to discuss issues as they arise.

Aetna has contracted with Work/Family Directionsto deliver this service. Work/Family has identifiedhundreds of agencies across the U.S. that are experts inelder care services. These local community-based agen-cies actually provide the services to our employees. Toaccess these services, employees call a toll-free numberin the location where the elder resides or needs service.After consultation, local referrals are made and ap-propriate reading materials are provided to assist theemployee.

Local elder care agencies also develop additionalcommunity services as part of their contracts withAetna and other companies. The agencies identify areasof shortage, and corporations jointly fund the develop-ment of services to fill the gaps. About 10 percent ofour annual fee to Work/Family Directions is earmarkedfor this development of services.

Elder care topics are one component of Aetna'sseminar program. Employee seminars are free and heldduring the work day for two-and-a-half hours. Wc fre-quently repeat a topic several times to meet a largedemand. We also offer employee support groups thatmcct during lunch hours for eight weeks. A profes-sional social worker leads the support group. One group

1 6

expressed a need to continue the support after eightweeks, and they now meet monthly on their own time.

At Aetna we have learned that employees aren't asassertive about elder care issues as they are about ckildcare needs. Few employees, however, know how toidentify and locate the services they may need. Peoplefeel they should be able to handle their aging parents or"significant others." It is a very emotional issue. In addi-tion, there is a real concern about privacy.

Most important, we know that by being tlexible andsupportive with families, Aetna gains an advantage inattracting and retaining a loyal and productiveworkforce in today's tight labor market.

Karen Leib() ldDirector, Work and Family ProgramsStride Rite Children's Centers

Stride Rite's 20-year vision and commitment tochild care led us quite naturally to thinking about eldercare. The corporate elder care movement has grownrapidlypartly because most decision makers haveaging parents and few of them have young childrenanymore. Other well known factors are: the over-85population is the fastest growing segment in oursociety; women, who are the traditional caregivers havegone to work; and the workforce is shrinking and aging.

Stride Rite's response to the elder care crisis is multi-faceted. We have resource and referral for elder care;several free series of lunchtime seminars: and on-site,individual counseling for employees with elder caregiv-ing responsibilities.

Intergenerational Day Care Center

The most innovative thing we have done is expandone of our on-site child care facilities to include adultday care. It is now the Intergenerational Day Care Cen-ter. We have worked on this project for three years andthe center just opened in February. Stride Rite gave us8,500 square feet of space in our corporate headquartersin Cambridge, which was renovated into a new inter-generational center. Our capacity is 55 children, age 15months through kindergarten, and 24 elders over 60 inneed of adult day care.

Our initiative has three major goals:(1) To provide the service for employees and

families who live or work in the community. About halfthe spaces in our centers have always been reserved forcommunity people; we have continued this with theelder program. Some people are from low-incomefamilies and the state subsidizes their care.

(2) To produce a replicable model. Stride Rite iscreating an intergenerational model. We don't see manyprograms today mixing thc very young and very old.

17

We are also creating a model for employer sponsorship,and public/private collaborations.

(3) To create baseline research on what happens tochildren and elders in this kind of care setting and whathappens to the workplace and the community.

This idea came from Stride Rite's chairman. He reada Wall Street Journal article about a New York Cityfamily who had a young child and an elderly motherliving with them. We spent one year determiningwhether it made sense to bring the two generationstogether and whether there was a need for a corporateresponse to elder care. In the second year, we did anemployee needs assessment and found that one-fourthof our employees had elder care responsibilities. Anadditional 13 percent expected to assume such care inthe next five years. This matches the national average.In the third year, we got into the nuts and bolts of theprojectbudget, program, space.

Adult day care is relatively new and we must edu-cate people about what it is and who it is for. These arenot surrogate grandparents for the children. Rather theyare people who require care for themselves during theday. However, the children and elders at the Stride RiteCenter are enjoying each other already.

We thought it would be wise to bring them togetherslowly with many staff-directed activities; we thoughtrelationships would take some time to develop. But be-cause the press wanted pictures of the two groupstogether, we staged a photo session that lasted over anhour, and we learned that the two groups truly do enjoyeach other. We were perhaps being too conservativeabout the issue. In the years ahead, we hope you will behearing a great deal about the remarkable success we allbelieve this Intergenerational Center will be.

Alternative Work Schedules

Kathleen E. ChristensenDirectorNational Project on Home-Based Work

We have come a long way in a short time. There isno better example than alternative work schedulesthose schedules that vary from the routine 9-5, Monday-Friday. 12-month-a-year job. In 1984 I surveyed 7,000American women who worked at home, almost 80 per-cent of them self-employed. When asked why they wereself-employed, the nearly universal responseif theyhad childrenwas to better balance work and family.They all reported trying to set up alternative scheduleswhen they had their first child.

Because of the lack of workplace alternativesthrough the mid-1980s, many women quit the corporateworld and built their own businesses. This represented agreat loss to U.S. corporations since they had invested

Work and Family Policies: The New Strategic Plan 1 9

heavily in the women, and the women had gained con-siderable experience and skills. By the late 1980s, wesee a different scenario. American companies realizethat alternative schedules are a good way to do busi-ness, that there are bottom-line interests to be served byproviding alternatives.

Scheduling: Options and Progress

Recently, I finished a report, Flexible Staffing andScheduling in U.S. Corporations, for The ConferenceBoard in which I reported that companies have madereal progress in this area. In a survey of 521 of thelargest U.S. corporations, we found that over 90 percentof the firms were providing some kind of alternativeschedule. The most common type of arrangement waspart-time work and the second most popular was flex-time. Almost one-fifth of the firms offered job sharing;about 7 percent offered work at home. Over one-thirdof the companies granted compressed work weeksa40-hour work week worked in less than five days.

Many companies implemented compressed workweeks for the traditional reasonproduction needs.Others, however, increasingly used this schedule as analternative scheduling strategy for work-family needs.Companies report anticipated growth in their use offlexible schedules in the coming years. Many areconsidering job sharing. Flextime and work at hometelecommutingare other arrangements where they seefuture growth. In the last six years. I have seen realgrowth in the number of companies either implement-ing work at home in privately negotiated deals or begin-ning to explore company-wide work-at-home policies.

Challenges remain for implementing and managingalternative schedules. They include:

(1) A need to manage the program optimally--byobjectives and bottom-line interests; satisfaction withthe ease of supervision is not high.

(2) A need to create a culture in which men feel freeto choose flexible schedules; with the exception oftelecommuting, women preponderantly choose alterna-tive arrangements.

(3) A need to expand schedule options beyond theclerical ranks; alternatives are mainly pursued by cleri-cal administrative support or sales personnel.

(4) A need to expand usage of these options withincompanies: relatively few employees pursue alternativeoptions.

Deborah L. HoltManager, Human Resource.% Polwies and ProgramsUS SprintlUnited Communications Company

US Sprint is 3.5-years-old, and in that time, lessthan half of one percent of its 16,0(y) member

20 The ('onferem C Board

workforce has left due to family-related issues. Sprinthas also had no problem with recruitment, boastinginstead steady staff growth of 15 percent per year. Whywould an infant company like Sprint, which hasn't ex-perienced turnover, recruitment or productivityproblems, invest heavily in family support programs tomeet future workforce needs? Because we know itmakes good business sense.

After we assessed Sprint's employee needs, wedesigned our comprehensive Family Care program. It of-fers multiple-support resources, such as workplaceflexibility, to help employees manage career and familyneeds. Through employee-involvement groups, action-planning teams and individual interviews,wedeveloped the program's blueprint. It is designed tohelp every employeeregardless of levelresolvefamily-related issues. And we did this in just fivemonths.

Flexibility Measures

Sprint's workplace flexibility program, an importantcomponent of the Family Care initiatives, allows forschedule flexibility that meets the needs of both thebusiness and the employee. This component grew out ofalternative work schedules already in place at Sprint.By participating as task force members, managementendorsed flexibility development efforts.

In general, any alternative schedule that meets bothbusiness and individual needs is encouraged. However,four basic arrangements have been designed. About 35percent of our workforce uses some form of alternativescheduling now, and this figure is expected to continueto rise throughout the year.

(1) Flexible schedules allow employees to varyarrival, departure and lunch times undcr a flextour orflextime schedule. About 40 percent of all departmentscompanywide have designed alternative schedules tosatisfy business needs and employee accommodation.

(2) Compressed schedules allow employees to worklonger daily hours, to a maximum of 12-hour days, toachieve a shorter work week. A popular version ofcompressed time is Friday half-days to extendweekends. Almost 20 percent of the workforce usescompressed schedules, and this figure is expected togrow within the year.

(3) Regular part-time and job sharing are schedulesin which employees work between 20 and 40 hours aweek. Applicable company benefits are pro-ratedaccordingly. About 5 percent of our workforce is part-time and this includes professional exempt employees.Growth in job sharing is expected in departments wheremultiple job incumbents and larger female populationsexist. Local human resources units assist with job shar-ing arrangements.

18

(4) Fiexday is designed to provide non-exemptemployees with flexibility and pay to handle family-re-lated emergencies. Throughout the year, two or morehours may be taken on short notice, to a maximum ofone regularly scheduled day, to deal with family issues.

The flexibility program establishes guidelines andaccountabilities, not rigid rules. This contributes to theprogram's success. Departments are able to pursue non-traditional scheduling as long as it makes sense for theirbusiness units. Managers and employees together assessoptions on a case-by-case basis. The only managementrequirement is to demonstrate flexibility and sensitivityto individual needs.

Michael E. BrownDirector Employee Relations

Northeast Utilities Service Company

During the early 1980s, Northeast Utilities began toreceive an increasing number of employee inquiriesabout alternative ways to schedule work. We receivedrequests for job sharing, part-time, flexible dailyschedules and compressed work weeks. We decidedthat we had to develop options to meet the needs of achanging workforce.

To get started, we formed a project team from thehuman resources group and we consulted with an out-side agency--Family and Career Togetherabout jobsharing. The task force developed preliminaryguidelines for a job sharing program and communicatedthe guidelines through supervisors to identify interestedemployees.

Job Sharing Teams

We identified 32 people who wanted to job share; sowe established 16 teams to be part of a one-year pilotprogram from September, 1984 to September. 1985. Wematched teams for the best fit. We surveyed job sharersand their supervisors to assess attitudes about the jobsharing pilot. The response to the program was veryfavorable. We obtained final management approval andofficially launched the program on December 1. 1986.

We limit job sharing to non-union employees, ofwhich there are about 6.000. Supervisors are not in-cluded. The program requires the development of a jobsharing agreement signed by the job sharers and thesupervisor. We use a full-time equivalency ratio todetermine vacation, sick pay, or any benefits linked tolength of service. We prohibited personal time off,believing that job sharers had adequate time to managesuch matters. This has proven to be a fair judgment. Weprovide health coverage for the job sharer only; how-ever. insurance is available for purchase by theemployee for family dependents.

We use a 50-question, true-false, self-scoring docu-ment to determine whether an employee has theflexibility, organizational, communication and col-laborative skills needed to be an effective job sharer.Employees also receive a worksheet before they makethe final decision to job share. They must look at thefinancial realities and decide if they can afford it.

At last count, we had 108 job sharers or 54 teams.The largest number by far, 80 percent, share for childcare reasons; 10 percent for elder care; 5 percent foreducation; and 5 percent for the need or desire to worka reduced schedule. Among the 108 are 100 women and8 men. Their ages range from those in their 20s topeople in their 50s. Most people share a full five days,working half-days. Others work 2.5 days a week.Among the participants in job sharing are accountants,analysts, buyers, cashiers, clerks, computer scientists,engineers, secretaries, technicians, and text processors.

Cost vs. Benefits

Our experience is that the only additional cost is theincrease in federal and state unemployment insurancetaxes. Now we must pay for two employees instead ofone. When we added it up, we found it cost $200 moreper team in unemployment insurance taxes which isoffset by the increases in productivity. In addition, wesee marked reductions in the following areas: absen-teeism rates compared to full-time people; the need forvendor labor, because job sharers cover for each otherduring vacations and illness; the turnover rate; and thework error rate, because job sharers tend to superviseeach other and pick up mistakes. They generallycompensate for each other's skill deficiencies as well.We have found that we have come close to 100 percentproductivity through job sharing, and supervisors agreethat job sharers are probably more productive than oneperson working a full day.

To start a program, it is key to find supportive super-visors. Try pilot programs. Be flexible. If one scheduledoesn't work, rethink it. Make sure that supervisorscommunicate with both job sharers. If this is a problem,get the three together to figure out some way to com-municate. To succeed, you must nurture these programsand continually fine tune them.

Time Off

Michele R. LordSenior Research Associate


Time off includes maternity, parental and familyleave as well as time off policies that don't fall under

1 9Work and fannly Polwies The New Strategic Plan 21

the leave umbrellasuch as alternate work schedules.During the 1950s and 1960s. when people referred toleave, they were talking about leave for mothers' mater-nity leave. Several assumptions were made byemployees at that time. There was an expectation thatmost women wouldn't work late into their pregnancies.Many professions, in fact, asked women to leave theworkforce after the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy.And women were not expected to return from maternityleave because the traditional one-earner family was thenorm. There were few' families headed up by singlewomen. If women returned to work, they did so in adifferent waypart-time or choosing other options.

In the 1970s, women entered the workforce in slow-ly increasing numbers, and several things happened tochange the way we viewed maternity leave. In 1973 thefirst EEOC guidelines about pregnancy appeared. Thiscreated a considerable stir among American employers.In 1978 the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, whichamended Title VIE of the Civil Rights Act, was signedinto law. Again, this took pregnancy and women in adifferent direction.

Leave Concept Broadens

Large numbers of women entered the workforce inthe 1980s and people first began to look at leave policyin broader terms. We also began to hear talk about jobsharing, part-time work and flextime. It is not surpris-ing that these concepts were being discussed becausedemographics were rapidly changing.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, many companiesstarted to take a serious look at leave. And in 1985 Con-gresswoman Patricia Schroeder introduced legislationcalled the Family and Medical Leave Act. (The federalbill is still pending.) This was the first time manypeople began thinking about leave for individuals otherthan pregnant women. With the introduction of this bill,there was a flurry of private sector activity, includingthe revelation of time off policies. Employers wantedto beat the legislation by developing their own options.

At the same time, there was state governmentactivity. Many states closely followed the course of thefederal bill. Several states introduced their own ver-sions of family or parental leave statutes in 1986. Andin 1987 Rhode Island was the first state to pass such astatute. Thirteen states have passed legislation sincethen. The state statutes have created a complex situa-tion for companies with employees in more thai. onejurisdiction; now they must deal with a varied menu ofstate rules. On May 14, 1990, the House passed itsversion of the Family and Medical Leave Act. Itprovides up to 12 weeks of job-guaranteed unpaid leavefor: the birth or adoption of children; care for sick fami-ly menthers; or for the workers own medical illness.

22 The Conference Hoard

This bill would apply to companies with 50 or moreworkers at one site and would affect employees whohave worked at least 10(X) hours in the 12 months priorto taking the leave. Today, June 14, the bill is beingdebated in the Senate.

Allen W. BergersonDirector, Personnel Policy DevelopmentEastman Kodak Company

During the last two years, Kodak has been activelyimplementing family-friendly programs, two of whichaddress the need for parents to be away from workboth for short and long periods of time. Kodak's seniormanagement established a task force in November 1986to examine work-family issues and to make policyrecommendations. Like other companies, this was abusiness decision driven by changing demographics, adiverse workforce and increasing competition forquality employees.

Family Leave Program

Our family leave program provides up to 17 weeksof unpaid leave for the birth or adoption of a child. Itcan also be used for the serious illness of a child.spouse, parents or spouse's parents. In some cases it hasbeen extended to include care of a grandparent or sur-rogate parent. Health benefits continue during the leaveperiod provided that the employee maintains theco-share portion of premium costs. This is not a discre-tionary program, but an entitlement. We guarantee a jobon the employee's return.

As for utilization, through December 1989, 658employees of a total population of 83,000 had takenleave. About half are in the age group represented bythe childbearing and rearing years. This is not an over-whelming number. But it meets a critical need for thepeople who took the option. Almost 40 men chose totake leave, about 6 percent of the total. Women took anaverage leave of 13.8 weeks and men took 12 weeks.Not everyone returns. Over 80 people terminatedemployment while on family leave, 79 women andthree men. So there is some risk. You must be a risk-taker, however, to insure the program's flexibility.

Altrnat Work SchedulesWe began our alternate work schedule in November

1988. It is the centerpiece of our flexible, away-from-work programs. The program is not an entitlement butwe made it as flexible as possible. Supervisors havecomplete flexibility to accommodate family needs aslong as the arrangement does not impact adversely ontheir business.

20

The program offers flexibility in four ways:(1) The employee's current work hours can be ad-

justed to a more satisfactory permanent schedule.(2) If it is a short-term care situation, we can be

flexible on a day-to-day basis.(3) Part-time schedules and job sharing are major

options in the program.(4) All the programs are interlinked and a large num-

ber of leave configurations are possible.A typical configuration is that the parent of a new-

born uses the paid medical disability leave portion first.It is part of our short-term disability package. Thisusually runs eight to ten weeks. For approved medicalreasons, we can grant up to 26 weeks with full pay andbenefits for an employee with fewer than 15 yearsservice and 52 weeks for employees with 15 years ormore service. Generally the mother returns to herregular job at the end of the paid short-term disabilityperiod.

Susan F. GeisenheimerVice President, Human ResourcesTime Inc. Magazines

Time Inc. Magazines has a long tradition of beingfamily supportive. Our time off policy is but one of abroad range of work-family programs initiated by thecompany. As early as 1963, Time offered a six-monthunpaid leave for new mothers. At that time, however,women were expected to begin their leave three monthsbefore the baby was due.

Parental Leave

In 1971 maternity leave was extended to 12 months;in 1973 leave for adoption was granted; and in 1986maternity leave changed to parental leave, which meantfathers could use leave. Women giving birth receivebetween 8-12 weeks paid disability. Women or men cantake 12 months of unpaid leave. In unpaid leave,employees receive full medical benefits and return tothe same or comparable job. In almost all cases, it is themother who takes parental leave. Most women returnwithin six months. Fathers tend to use their vacationtime, which runs three to four weeks for all employees.

We encourage managers to work with employeeswho request parental leave. We want them to talk frank-ly about the length of time employees think they will beon leave, who will do the work while they are gone,whether they will be available for phone calls at home,and how the responsibilities will be transferred. Wethink it is appropriate to ask these questions because webelieve the company has a right to know what theemployee wants to do just as the employee has a rightto the leave.

I encourage my HR staff to explore alternate workschedules: job sharing; part-time work; four-day workv,eeks; three days at the office, one day at home; twoweeks out of three weeks, and so on. With the arrival ofthe PC and fax, it has become much easier to work athome. We are therefore experimenting more and morewith alternate schedules. For many employees, par-ticularly women, a flexible schedule for the first threeor four months after returning from parental leave in-sures a successful transition.

21Work and Family Policies: The New Strategic Plan 23

Putting Ideas Into PracticeMaking The Case For A Work-Family Response[Moderator Ilene R. Gochman, Vice President and General Manager. Organi:ational Research Practice. Opinion Re-

search Corporation, opened the session by underlining the need to develop work-family programs within the

framework of a company's culture.]

Julie Fasone HolderGroup Marketing Manager for Formulation Products

Dow Chemical Co.

Dow's effort to address work-family issues hasbeen a six-year process. We are headquarteredin Midland. Michigan and our culture reflects a

Midwestern, conservative tradition.Line management drives our organization. Human

resources is a support function and has gained impactonly in the last five years. We are white maledominated. Women comprise 26 percent of theemployees: of the exempt workforce, 18 percent arewomen and 10 percent minorities. Each division andfunction has much autonomy. On the one hand, thismakes it easier to get things done on a local level, but itmakes corporate-wide initiatives difficult to sell and im-plement. Resistance at the local level can impedeprogress.

Our work-family policies evolve from Dow's inter-est in valuing diversity as a way to attract top people.Family issues are one part of the valuing-diversity pie.Other issues we are dealing with include care& devel-opment for women and minorities and K-12 education.We hope to stimulate interest in math and scienceparticularly so there will be future engineers andchemists for Dow to recruit.

Starting From tho BottomDow's work-family efforts trickled up from the

bottom, probably the only way it could happen in our

22

culture. Individual efforts were responsible for thebeginnings; different people sold the program in smallpieces at a time. They were able to persuade the rightpeople that change was neededbut in small incre-ments. Momentum grew as the issue was validated andbecame a significant business issue. Our progress isslow but steady. Those of us involved have beenimpatient at times. Looking back, however, we have cer-tainly progressed and a shift has occurred.

We began in 1984. After Workforce 2000 appeared,our top management expressed interest in child care andemployee assistance issues. After a presentation on therelevance of work-family issues to the company'sfuture, the Dow board's Public Interest Committee ap-proved the formation of a child care task force. Thefirst step involved employee research. We ran focusgroups by function and location to examine employeeneeds; once the data was gathered, we began lookingfor solutions. Because we are a major player in our com-munities, it was critical to have community support.And we got it. We implemented our first effort at cor-porate headquarters, a pilot resource and referral systemcalled Child Care Concepts.

In 1986 and early 1987, we focused on anotherissue. Our retention rates for women and minoritieswere low: we were not succeeding in moving them upthe corporate ladder. A number of functions and loca-tions began doing their own employee research as well.As a result, local efforts began to address these con-cerns. Women formed networking groups in local salesotTices and manufacturing sites, as well as at corporateheadquarters, to deal with internal communications and


mentoring issues. Presentations were made to middlemanagement to heighten their awareness of sexual biasand the lack of value on diversity.

Engaging Top Management

At the same time, top management sanctioned for-mal activity for the first time by setting up an EEOsteering committee. It was made up of line managersfrom different functions and manufacturing divisions.The group made recommendations in five key areas:trainingstarting with managers and eventually allemployees; internal communication; organizationalresources, including our structure for managing diver-sity; incorporating mentoring and accountability forpeople managers; and establishing goals and measures.One of our key recommendations was that diversitytraining begin at the top. The U.S. area operating boardand other members of our executive committee werethe first to participate in a one-day training program.

In January 1990, our executive management articu-lated a new company vision: Dow U.S.A. is a team ofexceptional, diverse, and highly motivated people whocontinuously improve and innovate for customer suc-cess. Because our vision addresses the need for adiverse workforce, we can now tie our activities to thecorporate vision. Work-family issues have become alegitimate business issue.

We have learned these lessons:Take small steps; be patient about significant

change.Sell diversity as you would any business issue

by doing employee research and highlighting such is-sues as turnover, retention, recruiting and trainine, andthe loss of return on investment.

Limit emotional pleas: be rational and logical;persistence and consistency is key.

Get top management support so you can work thetop and bottom against the middle; expect to stumble atmiddle management levels.

Expect backlash; men are concerned becausethey fear minorities and women will get promoted overthem; some women feel the increased attention is not totheir benefit.

If you don't act until everyone is on board, you willprobably never act. For Dow, the best way to addresswork-family issues is to take incremental steps. stay thecourse, and let the momentum build.

Ellen GalinskyCo-Founder and Co-President


Our research shows that companies go through dif-ferent stages of evolution in the development of work-

26 1 he C'onlerence Hoard

family programs. In stage one, someone raises the issueof work-family within the company. It isn't a popularissue: the immediate response is resistance. At first it isassumed to be a child care issue, a women's issue,which creates equity problems. The company assumesyou are talking about an on-site care center, andmanagement doesn't want to face the cost and liabilityfactors. This is the beginning of stage one. A championthen arises in the company; either top-down or bottom-up champions may surface. The champion begins tomake a business case.

Productivity and Work-Family Issues

The first question asked is. How do child careproblems affect productivity? Our research findingsaddress a number of different factors. The first is Find-ing out about available care in the community. In ourstudy for Fortune magazine, we found that one in everyfive parents had a difficult time getting adequate childcare information; with infants, it was one in fourparents. In ail our research, having difficulty eitherlocating quality care or getting into the program is themost significant predictor of absenteeism. There is alink between problems with finding child care andbeing at work.

The second significant predictor of productivityrelates to the fact that some child care arrangements aremore satisfactory than others. The National Child CareStaffing study found that the average care childrenreceive in this country is barely adequate. We looked atwhether the quality of care affects parents on the job.We found a non-significant link for infants. But forparents of preschoolers. there was a signi.;cant relation-ship between parents of children in poor qualityprograms and the amount of stress they had. Ourmeasure for stress also assesses stress-related healthproblems.

We also know that the type of care affects produc-tivity. particularly with latchkey children. We found agroup of qualitiescenter location, how flexible it is,whether the parents had input into decision makingtobe predictive of parents' stress and stress-relatedproblems.

The next issue is that parents make multiple selec-tions for child care. They put together patchwork arran-gements. The more arrangements parents have, themore likely they arc to fall apart. In our study for For-tune, 40 percent of the parents had at least one break-down in child care arrangements within the last threemonths, and one out of four parents had two to fivebreakdowns within the last three months. We havefound that having to cope with more frequent child carebreakdowns is correlated with missing work altogether,arriving late, leaving early, spending unproductive time

23

at work, more stress and stress-related health problems,more tension and less companionship in marriage andfeeling less effective as parents.

The second question in stage one is. Isn't this awomen's issue? Women do have higher levels of absen-teeism: but when the kids get older, men's levels ofabsenteeism rise. Men also are participating more in thecare of sick children. In a needs assessment, we foundthat 27 percent of the men and 49 percent of the womenmissed work at least once. Women have more stressrelated to child care: this is because they take thegreatest responsibility. We are beginning to see a shifthere. Research shows that when men take an equalamount of responsibility for caring, they aren't immuneto stress.

Evolution of Work-Family Programs

In stage onebased on our findingscompaniestypically establish resource and referral services.flexible spending accounts or parent seminars. Does thesolution affect productivity? There are now 17 empiri-cal studies about the productivity effectsparticularlyrelated to on-site child careand they find that themajor benefit is the ability to recruit and retainemployees.

In stage two, companies move away from theexclusive issue of child care and become interested inelder care as well. They begin to frame these issues asdependent care. Elder care responsibilities increasestress. decrease leisure time, increase conflict betweenwork and family responsibilities, and this all impactsproductivity. Elder caregivers often cut hack on theirhours. The New York Business Group on Health foundthat almost 40 percent cut hack: 33 percent came in lateor left early.

Companies also tackle the issue of time in stagetwo. Most people don't work a 40-hour week. Accord-ing to our Fortune survey, 61 percent of men and 27percent of women work more than 45 hours a week.The number of hours is a particular problem for men,the scheduling of hours is more problematical forwomen. Studies have shown that flexibility ensuresmore time for the family, but this depends largely onthe degree of flexibility. Flexibility can reduce stress,reduces absenteeism and tardiness, and improve morale.

Another issue at stage two is training the super-visors and educating middle management. Our researchshows four descriptors of a supportive supervisor:

( 1 ) Knowing the work-family policies.(2) Applying the policies without favoritism.(3) Showing flexibility when work-family problems

arise.(4) Believing work-family is a legitimate part of thc

workplace.

24

The boss's attitude about whether or not womenshould work is one of the most important predictors ofhow men and women handle work-family problems andhow employees are treated. One study found thathaving a supportive supervisor when you haye just hada baby is as important as having a supportive husbandin terms of managing the transition.

In a nutshell, companies are taking a more holisticapproach, tackling the tougher issues in stage two. Themotivation here relates to recruitment and retention.

In stage three, companies begin to see work-familyas a continuous process. And they begin to integratework-family with other areas of the company. Theyinclude Career development or affirmative action, foi ex-ample. They also begin to improve the quality of childcare within their community.

Examples of stage three companies include AT&T,Johnson & Johnson, and IBM. AT&T's $10 millionnegotiated fund allows employees to work with com-munity organizations to jointly apply for funds. Theyfund efforts to increase the supply and improve thequality of local child care. Johnson & Johnson has justannounced a pilot study that tries to serve under-servedchildren. IBM has a $22 million fund dedicated toexpanding and improving child care. The motivation forthese efforts is the future workforce. Companies realizethat the baby bust generation is here and that they mustdo something to improve the quality of its earlyexperiences in order to be competitive in the 21stcentury.

We have much to learn. Many questions about thecomplex issue of work and family remain unanswered.

Fitting Programs to Workforce Needs

IModerator Jean A. Eraser. Vice President.Employee Relations. American Express Company. intro-duced the session with brief comni:mts about the mostdifficult concept to implementflexibilitybecause itrequires a culture shift.]

Martha Montag BrownDirector, Community AffairsLevi Strauss di Co.

Levi Strauss is the world's largest apparel manufac-turer. Women are the majority of its workforce. Ourcompany mission is to sustain profitable and respon-sible commercial success with responsible being thekey word in terms of work-family.

Our work-family program now includes: a child careinformation and referral program: the development ofan on-site child care center in a Canadian facility: childcare leave for men or women for birth or adoption: sickleave for dependent care: flextime, job sharing and part-

Work and Family Policie.s: The Mew Strategic Plan 27

time. And the Levi Strauss Foundation supports a fund-ing program for child and elder care in Levi's plantcommunities worldwide.

We are now making a renewed effort because ofchanging demographics, labor shortages and competi-tiveness. We call it "baby boom II" partly because wehave increasing numbers of women in key managementpositions who are taking maternity leave. This hasheightened the issue among management because wedon't want to lose these women.

Changing production cycles have also broughtpressures on management. In our industry we don'thave factories where people necessarily come to workat eight and leave at five. There are times during theyear when people work 12 hours a day and times whenthey don't work at all. This wreaks havoc with personallife. Employees have been telling management that thisis increasingly difficult in the face of child and eldercare needs. In many of our communities, there are nochild or elder care services for people on the night shiftor for those who come to work at 6 a.m.

A Company-Wide Program

To fit the program to our workforce needs, we real-ized that we had to do a wholesale review, a company-wide program. We wanted to be sure that we didn'tproduce another home office program and roll it out tothe field. We wanted to ensure that we had the participa-tion, support and ownership of people company-wide.Our renewed effort is a collaboration between thehuman resources department, the community affairs andfoundation departments, the employee assistance andbenefits departments. operations and marketing.

We agreed on a task force approach. We decidedthat the best way for us to proceed would he to form agroup representative of the workforce and charge thisgroup to lead, construct, review, critique and roll outthe work-family program.

Senior management support and participation arecritical for change. Wc knew we needed their involve-ment. And we have it. Bob Haas. the chairman of thehoard and CEO, participates on our work-family taskforce and has made the program one of his key 1990objectives. As co-chair of the work-family task force. Imeet quarterly with each of the members of our execu-tive management committee to keep them involved andinformed and to provide them an opportunity for input.

A Diverse Task Force

We W ere strongly committed to an effective taskforce. We carefully selected a group of people to workwith us, an ethnically and racially diverse group thatalso represents family diversitysingle parents. work-

28 Tlw Conlerenee Board

ing mothers and fathers, a gay person, a single person, apregnant person and people with elder care concerns. Inaddition, we selected people with different job func-tionsa sewing machine operator, the chairman of theboard, a sales rep, a line manager, a-middle manager inthe home office, a secretary etc. We wanted people whowould speak up to represent their colleagues and enrichthe process.

To make a difference, our corporate culture mustchange to support this program. Employees should notfeel that they must work seven days a week to be suc-cessful or that to go home to care for a dependent isinappropriate. Changing corporate culture challengesassumptions like those of some production managerswho might tell us that there is no place in a factory forflexibility. They are beginning to see that this is nottrue.

Our task force mission is to create an environmentcompany-wide where employees can better balancetheir work and personal lives. Our specific objectivesare to assess the needs of our employees, to articulate avision for the company based on these needs, and toreview and recommend appropriate program and policystrategies.

A Customized Survey

Information gathering is a key part of fitting theprogram to workforce needs. We are conducting abroad survey that is being field tested now. We havequestions on child and elder care, managementattitudes, company culture. From this, we will collectdata from each site and determine what specificworkforce needs exist. We are pulling people off thefloor to conduct the survey. To get data as specific aspossible. we are doing a separate. customized surveyfor our sales force, our home office staff, our hourlyemployees, and for managers and non-managers. Wehave invested heavily in focus groups. We have run 18focus groups just to help us design the survey. We willconduct focus groups once the survey is completed tohelp clarify what employees have said.

For this program to succeed and ensure that it fitsworkplace needs, strong commitment and involvementfrom our senior management is critical. At the sametime. the task force is an effective check-and-balancemechanism that helps us stay on track. The task forceprovides us increased credibility in the company as awhole because it isn't simply corporate staff dreamingup new plans. Rather it comes from all the employees.

We want to be sure we aren't misleading people orraising expectations unfairly. We won't have a childcare center at every site or subsidize each employee'schild or elder care program. We must communicate thekinds of programs we expect to develop. As a task

25

force, we want our recommendations to be approved. Ifwe recommend fancy, expensive programs. they won'tbe approved; a key company focus is on cost-contain-ment. The issue becomes existing resources of bothtime and money. We are asking that they be directeddifferently, in a way that gives each employee morecontrol.

'Michael A. SnipesCompensation and Benefits DirectorAllstate Insurance Company

Allstate, a company that is 49 percent women, intro-duced a national resource and referral service in 1986called Child Care Solutions. We shaped this programbased mainly on employee feedback sessions. It isdesigned to assist employees with child care needs.Solutions features a toll-free child care hotline staffedby trained counselors who answer questions or assistwith problems. Counselors provide information onlicensed and registered child caregivers in local com-munities. Solutions also disseminates resource materialon choosing, managing and paying for child care.Parenting workshops are conducted at Allstate locationsand present ideas for easing the role of working parents.Through this national referral s:n-vice. Allstate hasprovided financial assistance in developing and educat-ing child care providers in nationwide sites.

Conducting a Planning Survey

We conducted a major research and planning surveyof 2.300 employees in 1988 to determine their childcare needs. It was a telephone survey with interview susually running 30 minutes each. Among the selectedfindings were: 39 percent of the employees report thata spouse or other household member cares for thechildren; 26 percent usc an outside source; only 20 per-cent use day care centers; employees expressed concernabout latchkey children; 49 percent arrived late or leftearly due to child care problems; 63 percent said that afamily member would stay home in the event of a sickchild, using either a floating holiday or a vacation day.Employees indicated they want more workplaceflexibility as far as sick child care. These are all produc-tivity issues.

Allstate also conducted child care focus groupsthroughout the U.S. in 1988. We solicited feedbackfrom employees as well as management staff. With thisinformation. we conceptualized our first work and fami-ly model. We introduced the program (luring our firstquarter. We wanted to he sure management-- whowould supervise the program----understood, communi-cated and raised questions about how the programshould work.

26

This model. Work and Family Connections, has fivecomponents:

(1) Employment policies(2) Information and referral services(3) A flexible spending account program(4) Wellness and safety programs(5) Educational servicesIn phase one, we introduced an integrated family

leave. EAP, school match programs, child referral ser-vices, and emphasized flexible work schedules and jobsharing. As we implemented phase one in 1989. wealmost immediately began developing phase two. Wefelt it was important. for example, to do a survey ofchild careseferral users. We received favorable respon-ses from these users. We ran more focus groups inselected locations and developed our phase two model.

Planning a Work and Family Strategy

We are dealing with work and family strategy inphase two. This is a multi-step process in which plan-ning is key. It is important to have an ongoing dialogueand get the support of key constituencies. Data analysisis also critical because, as our initial survey revealed,there arc often mixed messages.

In trying to frame all this, a mission statement wasdeveloped. Our future goal is to build a competitiveadvantage by creating an environment that recognizesand suppo:ts work and family issues. This links toAllstate's other social commitments; we have spon-sored national forums. for example. on AIDS. publicee.ication and related issues. We want to be a premiere..iployer; we want to attract and retain the bestemployees and maximize productivity.

Top management is very supportive of theseprograms. Some middle managers, however. are havingdifficulty trying to manage some of it and still faceproductivity issues. We must help managers understandthe importance of work and family needs and learn howto deal with them sensitively and flexibly. A major find-ing in our surveys was that management flexibility is akey issue. We will continue to emphasize flexibility inthe workplace.

We also want to revisit our family illness policy.Many employees who take a family illness day feelpenalized for doing so. This is a cultural issue and wemust work with our managers. In the child care area, weare doing a needs analysis. Directly related to this, fiveAllstate sites have been selected to participate in astudy. We w ill explore the feasibility of establishingnear or on-site child care centets in these locations. Theassessment process will include employee focus groups.site analysis. and surveys and interviews with manage-ment at each location. We are forming a strategic taskforce. We must have all departments involved, especial-

Wfwk and Family Mph( icv 1 he Neti So afro( Plan 29

ly our claims and sales departments. to help define andrefine work and family strategies.

Work and family is a continuing process. It requiresthe effort and involvement of many employee groupsand top manatzement to ensure that it works and meetsspecific business needs.

After Implementation: Evaluating and Fine Tuning

Arlene A. JohnsonSenior Research Associaze

The Conkrence Board. Inc.

In the field of work and family policies, we seemarked changes in recent years. Not too long ago wespent most of the time "making the case.- We, ofcourse, remain involved in defining the business ration-ale, but increasingly time and effort is spent evaluatingthe programs in place and exploring how they play indifferent cultures. What happens when work and familyissues are no longer just a cause to fight for but aprocess to manage? Where is creativity and innovationpossible in the implementation process'?

Some of the developing issues are:Comunicating: helping managers and employees

understand what you are up to.Determining the role of consultants versus the

role of company staff: how much you want to internal-ize or externalire this process.

Deciding what is legitimate criteria for evaluat-ing success: how to assess and monitor programs.

Identifying the need for program modification.Managing expectations and frustrations: if the

program is oversold or if the implementation is slow orif the culture is reluctant to catch up with the program.

We know some things don't work. Even the bestpolicy cannot substitute for getting the details right.After you have done a needs assessment and developeda plan. it is a mistake to stick rigidly to the originalplan. And we know that it doesn't work to begin im-plementation without adequate training and support. b,:-cause these are complex problems and culture changeissues.

Deborah StahlDirector. Family Care Development FundAT&T

In January I 990. AT&T began to implementforthc first timea company-wide. comprehensive pack-age of family-supportive benefits. Since those initia-tives are so new, we arc actively involved in theprocess ol evaluation and fine tuning. AT&T's ork-family story. however, begins in the late 60s. Along

30 Cmilerence Blurrd

with other industries, we started to study the causes ofemployee losses. costs of high turnover and the difficul-ties involved in hiring qualified people. There was littlehard data available on the corporate benefits of workand family programs.

Experiment in the 1970s

Two experimental on-site child care centers werecreated in 1971: one in Washington. D.C. and the otherin Columbus. Ohio. Both centers failed by everymeasure you can imagine. Employee interest was mini-mal: enrollment was low: and research didn't reveal anycost savings in terms of retention or productivity tooffset the cost of the operation. The Washington centerclosed after three years and the Columbus center in lessthan two years.

The reasons for this failure seem to be that thecenters addressed the needs of only a small percentageof the company's parents. Both centers were in urbansettings and many parents who commuted from the sub-urbs didn't want to bring their children into the city. Inshort, these centers were a singular response to a com-plex problem. Because of this inauspicious start, therewas a long period at AT&T when the topic of child caretriggered the response, "We tried that once and it justdidn't work.-

Response in the 1980s

AT&T didn't begin to respond formally to work-family issues again until the mid-1980s. One of themain reasons was the divestiture of the Bell System in1984. AT&T spun off its 22 loca; telephone companiesand the largest corporate reorganization in Americanhistory was underway. Inevitably work-family issuestook a back seat to such concerns as job security andmarket-place survival. But as the corporate worldabsorbed the implications of Workforce 2000, pressuresto act on family care issues quickly began to build.

A corporate task force formed in 1986 as employeegroups expressed their concerns to top management.Since about two-thirds of AT&T employees are repre-sented by the CWA and IBEW unions, it became clearthat a wide-ranging set of initiatives would have to hecreated at the bargaining table. The goal was to developa viable package for the 1989 contract negotiations.

In its facilities across the U.S.. AT&T launched anumber of trial programs support of local child carecenters, development of resource and referral services,etc.and they enjoyed great success. A comprehensiveneeds assessment was also conducted. Both the pilotsand the needs assessment underscored the need for acomprehensive range of henefi,,. Based on this evalua-

27

tion and in partnership with their unions in a remarkab-ly smooth round of negotiations in May 1989. AT&Tshaped its package of family-supportive benefits.

Among the program's features are:

A nationwide child care resource and referralprogram

An elder care program of consultation andreferral

Unpaid leave, up to a full year with benefits paidfor six months and a job guarantee upon return, for careof a newborn or a seriously-ill family member

An expanded employee assistance program thatincludes immediate family members

Family Care Development Fund, a three-year$10 million grantmaking project aimed at increasing thesupply of improving the quality of community child andelder care for AT&T employees

The process of evaluation and fine tuning is ongo-ing. Today we have a good set of programs and strongtop-level commitment. AT&T's managers are increas-ingly aware of the business reasons for investing inwork-family programs. Today we find ourselves in farfewer discussions about why we are doing this andmore discussions about how we can do it better.

Gerald F. MurrayChief. Air Force Family PolicyResearch, Training and Long-Range PlansUnited States Air Force

Anxious to identify key factors in their retentionslide since the late 1970s, the U.S. Air Force contractednumerous studies to determine why people were leavingthe Air Force. Research documented three related find-ings:

(1) The Air Force had changed from a predominant-ly single force to one in which more than two-thirdshad family responsibilities.

(2) The families were not traditional nuclearfamilies.

(3) Family-member attitudes toward military life.especially the spouse's. were a major factor in theemployee's decision to remain or leave.

Family Support Centers

Responding to these findings, the Air Forcelaunched its initial efforts in the work-family area.Recommendations from conferences held in the early1980s led to the development of Family SupportCenters (FSC) worldwide. The FSCs are thecornerstone of the Air Force family support system andprovide a broad range of services, including inform -

28

ation and referral services: relocation, spouse employ-ment and crisis assistance: and services to families withspecial needs. FSCs have been a major success story forthe Air Force. They recorded over a million contactslast year. And research shows they are positively im-pacting retention and productivity.

After the initial implementation, however, therewere indications that the scope of our success waslimited. Surveys showed that issues such as spouseemployment and relocation continued to be problemsfor families. At the same time, FSC administration atthe division and local levels tended to focus exclusivelyon the employee rather than family members. Line .

other HR omanizations were not addressing worP -;

ly issues. Rather, they were simply sending people tothe FSC to get "fixed." Our effectiveness was in jeopar-dy because the corporation mainstream had not substan-tially changed its attitude toward families.

As a direct result of these pressures on the FSCs. theChief of Staffthe Air Force's CEOchartered apanel to evaluate the Air Force's family support system.The panel conducted an exhaustive review and, amongother recommendations, developed the following pro-gram criteria:

(1) The program should ensure a focus on families.(2) The program should be proactive and prevention-

oriented.(3) The program should aim at assisting manage-

ment in creating a more family-friendly work environ-ment.

The Air Force was moving its family support Ny steminto what Galinsky and Friedman call the second andthird stages of work-family program development. Thesecond stage is characterized by integration of servicesin the organization. By institutionalizing policy, plan-ning and coordination, we would enable all parts of thesystem to work together to provide integrated programsand services. The third stage is characterized by chang-ing the culture. Our cultural focus now is as much onhow the organization can change to accommodate fami-ly well-being as it is on what families can do to adjustto work environment stresses.

Although the program specifics didn't change much,how the programs are approached has changedsignificantly. Our new program views the family as theservice unit. It also recognizes the need to provide com-prehensive services to meet the needs of diverse familymodels in different stages of the life cycle. At first,there was considerable resistance to this evolution inthe Air Force family program.

Work-family program development is an evolution-ary process. Management will be quick, at a number ofcheckpoints along the way. to consider the job finished.It is essential to thc long-term success of work-familyinitiatives to build an evaluation component into every

Work and Family PolicieA: The New Strategn Plan 3 I

step of the process. We must clearly define what we in-tend to accomplish and continually evaluate whether weare succeeding or not. If not, why not? We must alwaysask ourselves. How can we do this better?

When You're Ready to Change the Culture

Karen A. GeigerDirector, Career DevelopmentNCNB Corporation

No matter what policies you have in place, the cor-porate culture will either make or break the success ofthese policies. Think about your own corporate culturebecause it is unique for each company. The first thingto do when considering work-family issues is to definewhere your company is, identify what policies arealready in place, and compare how these mesh withwhat your corporation says it needs.

Then implement some new policies. Once thesepolicies are in place. the culture is critical; it has muchto do with the successful integration of the newpolicies. If the culture doesn't support these policies,they will have no credibility for your employees. Anon-supportive culture can undermine all your bestintentions and efforts.

Your company culture already has values aboutbalancing work and family. whether or not they arestated. Values are operative that are clear to thecompany's employees. Culture can be visible and tan-gible. You may have a written ethical code, a missionstatement, a stated corporate vision, a credo. This is theofficial culture, the values of the corporation's founderor today's top management. These ideas may not bevalued, however, by the informal network. The unoffi-cial culture may contradict the mission statement. Fre-quently, there is a differentiation between the officialand operating culture.

Rethinking the Values

Social changes and shifting demographic patternsrequ'..e examination of the traditional values found inmost corporate cultures. Among these old values are:

Managers focus on time spent at the office ratherthan on results.

Extended time off is seen as lack of dedication tothe job rather than as assuming family responsibility.

Career development means moving up the hierar-chy rather than assuming more challenging and variedwork.

Personal and family issues are left at home.At the policy level, people are treated in the ag-

gregate rather than with flexibility.


Companies focus on short-term productivityrather than long-term employee retention.

If a man is a real man, he puts aside familyvalues and is at work rather than caring for his parentsor children.

How do you change old values to new? Cultures arealways evolving. No single set of solutions will apply.You may implement imaginative policies, but there willalways be managers who won't buy them and must bepersuaded.

Rewriting the Culture

You can change the culture explicitly. You canrewrite credos, mission statements, ethical codes,policies, or circulate statements and speeches by topmanagement that express the new values. Companynewsletters, press releases, annual reports and corporatehistories are all vehicles to put it in writing. Send it toeveryoneinternally and externally. These kinds ofmaterials get read and heard, particularly in companieswhere people "want to go by the book." Give them anew booka flexible one.

You can audit your culture to determine exactlywhat it is. This is very complicated but worth the effort.You can also mount a massive resocialization. Thisinvolves hiring, formal training, appraisal and rewardsystems, using certain employees as role models andreinforcing your stated values with field experiences. Ifyou hire good people, for example, into less than full-time schedules and point out how well they are doing,this in itself supports a culture statement that says youvalue results and not time spent at work. In existingmanagement training, you can insert information andapplications of the new work-family policies to createstructure around all the flexibility.

Rewarding the Flexible

Look at performance appraisals of people who leaveat five p.m. to pick up children or take leaves ofabsence. Determine if they are being appraised negative-ly for these practices. The reward systems need to bewatched carefully. Bonuses, incentives and salaryincreases can be managed and monitored. They shouldbe awarded to employees who manage flexibly. This isone of the best ways to affirm a particular value. Peoplecan't be knocked out of the incentive system becausethey work a flexible schedule. The schedule needs to bepro-rated. and we need to evaluate their results in lightof the incentive plans.

Expect resistance when you change the culture. Youare asking people to change their volues. and valuesarouse strong feelings. Beliefs about gender roles, forexample, are very powerful. It isn't enough to simply

29

state that men can take paternity leave. We are talkingmainly about middle management resistance here. Sup-port from the top is potent, but people in the middle cansubtly sabotage what top management is saying anddoing. Don't forget these people if you really want yourpolicies to work.

Thomas E. BlamerDirector. Human Resource Planning andDevelopmentCorning Inc

At Corning we do not talk about work and familyissues. We talk about valuing diversity. When we talkabout a subset of valuing diversity, we talk about careerand family. There is a subtle distinction between workand career. When I think about work, I think abouttasks; career makes me think of a long-term commit-ment and investment. So when we talk about work andfamily, we in fact talk about our career and familybalancing programs. And we put it in the context ofvaluing diversity.

Corning began developing its valuing-diversityfocus in 1986 for five reasons:

( I ) Our values statement, which is founded on thevalue of the individual; we want each employee to growto his or her fullest personal and professional potential.

(2) Our quality process; we introduced the totalquality concept to the corporation in 1983.

(3) The changing demographics; the shrinkingworkforce makes our recruiting efforts tougher eachyear.

(4) Our loss of women at twice the rate of whitemales; this represented an attrition loss costing 53.5-4million a year.

(5) Our inability to translate recruiting success intocareer development success: people were leavingbecause they felt there were no opportunities and theywere stagnating.

Conflict of Old Values and New Initiatives

A strong work ethic has always been one ofCorning's values. It encourages team work, organiza-tional pride and accomplishment. As we started digginginto this particular cultural value, we found that someelements conflicted with what we were trying to dowith diversity and career-family balancing. Before1986. for example, we measured how much time wasspent on the job. not on what was produced. As far asappropriate behavior and attitude, it was taboo to leavework and pick up children from school or the caregiver.Parents leaving at 5 p.m. to pick up a child were per-ceived as being more loyal to the family than to the

30

company. So certain areas of our corporate culture weregetting in our way.

Some other important values at Corning in 1986were: paying your dues (taking the lousy job in an un-desirable location); being a polite, conservativeorganization. Historically it has been a male company;before 1986 no women worked in management. Andfamily issues were equated with women's issues. Muchof our corporate behavior and social norms contradictedour diversity effort and our career and family balancinginitiatives.

Although the 1986 culture didn't support our diver-sity and career-family efforts, James Houghton, ourCEO. was and is strongly committed to the change. Hehas provided the necessary kinds of communications,financial support and management backing to ensurethat cultural change happened. The key word is support.

The solution was to change the culture. And westarted to do this in 1986. At the corporate level, weformed a quality improvement team. They met to verifywhat the culture issues were and to develop initiativesthat would make Corning a family-friendly place. Atthe local level, we created corrective action teams thatfocused on the same issues. Training was a key elementof our cultural change mechanism. In addition to thesupport programs we implemented, we made changes inour compensation system, our appraisal system and ourcommunications strategy. In each corporate communica-tion there is at least one reference to our career-familyand diversity programs.

Men and Women as Colleagues

Our valuing diversity training was the majorelement of our culture change. We developed a coursetitled Men and Women as Colleagues. It was taughttop-down. We started with the CEO and his staff. As aresult of this course, we had a story to tell. The CEO,his committee and other key members of senior manage-ment gave up their weekend to talk about these issues.Corning's managers don't teach the course: we feel itmust be facilitated externally.

The course is divided into four sections. The.firstlooks at gender issues from a global perspective. Thenwe talk about the myths; for example, only men gethired and promoted at Corning. only women take careof children. We then discuss socialization, look at howwe all grew up. We look at our own biases and at thedynamics of why we act as we do. We then look atorganizational normswhat are those things in the cul-ture that impact us'? We discuss how to recognize issuesand how to change behaviors.

A single course isn't going to change the culture.But the right course will start the cultural change. Mostmanagers entered the course thinking there was no prob-

It'ark and Family Policiei: The New Strategic Man 33

lem because they had never seen it. They leave thecourse realizing that they are part of the problem. Theimpact is powerful. Both men and women cry as theydiscover their own behaviors. It confirms the genderissues that we all believe have been there. The mostimportant point that emerges is that career and familyneeds more work. We must continue knocking downbarriers to balancing career and family.

We have seen behavior start to change. Organiza-tions are starting to identify their own issues. Each unitin every company has a subculture of the major or-ganizational culture. As you start impacting at the unitlevel, you really begin to change the organization andthe culture.

Since implementation in 1986, we have seen attri-tion cut in half. This is about a $2 million annualsavings. Most important is that we have put the issueson the table. It is now okay to talk about career andfamily. We are also experiencing flexibility. We useevery form of alternative work schedules at Corningtoday; two years ago we didn't. Another critical resultis that there has been a subtle perception change. Theissue of career and family is no longer seen as awomen's issue. Women championed it, but now menare supporting it so that they can help carry it along.

Michael J. CareyVice President. Human ResourcesJohnson & Johnson Personal Products Conipany

In Megatrends, John Naisbitt said that changeoccurs when there is a confluence of both changingvalues and economic necessity, not before. The workand family movement is in the process of proving hispoint again. The fact is that our sympathy as a people isnot enough to bring about social change in an economiccontext. Companies aren't founded or managed forsocial altruism. We are money-making enterprises.

We started looking at work-family issues in the late1980s. We understood that family conflicts affectproductivity; and we knew we had to build employeefeelings of ownership and commitment. We establisheda task force in October 1987 to examine work-family is-sues. Our mission was to achieve a better understandingof the changing relationship betweencorporations and families and to identify Johnson &Johnson's business objectives in addressing theseissues. We were to define the framework within whichto recommend initiatives.

We wanted to include our employees in this processso we conducted extensive research for one full year.Surveys focused on the need for a child care center butcovered a broad range of work and family issues. Weconducted a number of focus groups involving severalhundred employees. The research findings told us that


employees wanted more flexibility in the workplace,consistency in the application of policies, and help infulfilling child and elder care responsibilities. Welearned that our environment, supervisors, programsand policies weren't as family-sensitive as we wantedthem to be.

The task force identified elements needed to changethe environment and culture:

We must get top manage -tent support; they mustbelieve in the change.

We must respond to changing needs.We must establish a program that offers care for

all generationschildren, spouses, elders.We must provide benefits for individual needs

through a flexible plan.We considered these issues in the framework of our

employees' needs and our ability to pay versusemployees' ability to pay. Legal issues and our competi-tive position were also considered.

The task force submitted its program to Johnson &Johnson's executive committee and it was approved.Among other items, it includes manager and supervisortraining; employee assistance support; lifestyleseminars; flexible benefits; a nationwide resource andreferral system for child care and elder care; adoptionassistance program; one-year family care leave withbenefits; paid family care absences for emergencies;and finally, alternative work arrangements. Policy chan-ges had to be implemented, but first we had to trainmanagers in the new policies. The programs wereannounced and put in place. In March 1989, after therecommendations were approved, we announced thechange in Johnson and Johnson's Credoour valuesStatement. More than anything else, this was a signal tomanagement and employees that we meant business.

Our former chairman said that we wanted people toknow that this program was "real and forever." Wetaped him discussing these issues and interviewed theincoming chairman as wellso there would be nodoubts about continuity. These tapes were used in thedissemination of the management philosophy in a mail-ing to the homes of all 32,000 U.S.-based employees.The letter from chairman Jim Burke said in part:

It is becoming a growing challenge in our society tomanage a career while raising a family and perhapscaring for aging parents at the same time...We must sup-port these efforts. To provide support. we are initiating acomprehensive effort of new policies, programs andservices to help meet the -ballenges of balancing workand family...The Credo incorporates new language inwhich our commitment to helping employees meet theirfamily responsibility is clearly stated.

The new Credo says, "We must he mindful of waysto help our employees fulfill their family respon-

31

sibilities." The agenda to support this changeencourages a partnership between employee and super-visor. This was not to be a paternalistic approach.Rather, it was a practical partnering toward businesssolutions necessary for our future.

Working with the Families and Work Institute, wedeveloped a model called Balancing Work and Family.It prescribes an organization that provides a supportiveenvironment, managers with awareness, sensitivity andflexibility, and employees as an integral part of theequationunderstanding their role and responsibility.When we outlined our program, we detailed theemployee's responsibility. We held discussion groupsto talk about the need for people to accept a role in thebalancing process.

Before implementation in July 1989, our managersused too many crutchesblack and white answers from

32

the policy manual. Many of them deviated from themanual but most systems were rather formalized. Wewill see a change in culture over time, not overnight.We have the commitment, the leadership and thesupport systems in place. The work and family taskforce remains in tact.

We also developed an employee relations managers'council. With a network of 25 companies all managingthese issues, we decided to create a formal structure toimplement and support them. Now we are examiningflexibility issues and pay systems. A child care centeropens in May at our New Brunswick site. It is a 200-slot center; and we have just approved a 200-slot centerin Somerset County, New Jersey. We will continuemoving aheadthrough committee work, solving practi-cal problems, and exploring the culture we want forJohnson & Johnson.

Ww-I, and Family Po licies The New Strateyn. Plan 35

Redefining Expectations, Responsibilities andCommitmentsFran S. RodgersPresidentWorklFamily Directions

We will look at the big picture, look at work-family issues in the context of an evolvingmajor redefinition of how Americans will

work. America's work revolution is occurring for anumber of reasons. The rapidly changing businessclimate and our shifting demographics are two majorfacts. We want to step back and look at the big picturebecause it is critical to have a sense of where we aregoing in order to use the right building blocks to getthere.

Looking at the Big Picture

Responding to massive workforce changes meanstaking dozens of different actions each year. Each ofthese actionsdeciding what to do about child care,parental leave policy, elder careis a building blocktoward something bigger. But if we don't know whatthat something bigger is. how can we make the rightchoices along the way? The other reason for looking atthe big picture is that America is at a crossroads withregard to families. We aren't going to utilize our in-herent talents and resources unless we begin to under-stand how all these issues fit into the jugular businessconcerns of this country.

The nature of the big picture is that it is hard todefine. It raises ambiguities and more questions than itanswers. I will focus on women's labor force participa-tion. not because work-family issues are only women'sissues hut because it is women leaving the home overthe last 20 years that has galvanized the work-familymovement. Women used to be the support system thatallowed men to be productive. As women continue to

33

leave the home and make choices about what kinds ofwork they want, this will determine some of the moststrategic decisions business will make in the future.

About 20 years ago, a new generation of womenentered the labor force. Low-income and poor womenalways worked, generally in conditions and with payinferior to men's. But the new generation of womenentered the workforce with rather different expectationsthan previous generations. They entered careers andinstitutions previously dominated by men. Eventuallythey expected to reach parity with men at the workplace.

Women in the Workplace, the 1960s-1980sIn the late 1960s and through the 1970s, we grap-

pled with the issue of creating a level playing field forwomen in entry-level jobs in U.S. corporations. We dida good job. Men opened up jobs to women, and theytried to make the workplace fair. During this period,women were saying that they were more than mothers,that they had ambition and talent, that they wanted tocontribute more than their motherhood.

We all advised each other not to talk about family atthe workplace, and men complied. And here lies theroot of a well-intentioned conspiracy of silence thatcrept into the work environment about family issues.Not only did we not talk about the family hut also weadvised each other on how to he just like menhow todress like them, talk sports like them and so on. Thus,the first decade dealt with teaching women how to be-have more like men. Men and women did this together.

In the 1980s, we discovered that community resour-ces weren't adequate and that we had problems with our


children. We rediscovered the family. In the early1980s, we discovered the desperate child care needsthat weren't being filled. Toward the end of the decade.we started to notice that elder care needs weren't beingfilled eitherlargely because women were no longer inthe home. We therefore emphasized programs aboutdependent care during the 1980s. We looked at childcare as an issue and made progress promoting the ideathat dependent care issues were workplace issues. Wetalked about child care, struggled with parental leavepolicies, and looked at policies that might make itpossible for men and women to have parity.

It has become clear that providing programs fordependent care alone isn't enough to really address thefulfillment of female ambition and talent. Sweden, forexample, has strong family support but still doesn't seemany women in high corporate positions. We have beentinkering, grafting on programs to an unchangingcorporate culture and an unchanging core. Despite therevolution in the workforce, career structures are basi-cally the same as when this era began. Criteria for suc-cess in companies has changed very little, and the basicculture and work practices have changed little. Theywere all designed for men with wives at home. Thedesign fit the population of the time.

Stalled in Chaos, the 1990s

In the 1990s. it will be more difficult for women andmen who want to do things differently. We are stalled.There isn't an upward curve as we had anticipated. Atthe beginning of the 1980s. women made great stridesin middle management, but as we hit 1990. middlemanagement itself is being obliterated. The numbersaren't getting any better for women breaking throughmiddle management: there has been insignificantchange in the number of women moving from the mid-dle into top management.

What will it take to get unstalled? As a society, weunderstand that everyone must be as productive aspossible and we must take advantage of available talent.Since we have serious labor force shortages and aneducational gap, we need to employ women and menmore fully who must and should also nurture families.One fundamental issue is our career developmentsystem, which is dysfunctional for everyone. The hierar-chical structures are becoming increasingly difficult tomove through for everyone. For women and men whowant to care for dependents, it is totally dysfunctional.We cannot continue to behave as though we can trainpeople, wait until a slot is available for them toprogress. and then move them up the ladder or acrossthe country. On this point alone, we lose enormousnumbers of valuable employees.

We must tie the work-family issue to other business

38 The Coq-elm c Board

issues. American business is in a bit of chaos about howit should work anyway, so why not throw the work-family issue into the chaos? As companies reduce mid-dle management and give more responsibilities to teamsof people, for example, why not-give them more controlfor team scheduling? Companies are willing to delegateresponsibility for redesigning products to theiremployees but they still won't allow them to controltasks that would make their lives more reasonable. Thisis a missed opportunity.

The greatest challenge is competitiveness. But thefirst response to competitiveness always is to workpeople harder and longer. The American family can'ttake this anymore. People with family responsibilitysay their families have taken all the hits they can. Wehave already marginalized family life so much thatthere is nothing else to giveif we care about our fu-ture. We must figure out ways to work people better,not longer.

Derek F. HarveyM an a ger . Planning and Administration

Mobil Corporation

Mobil began the 1980s with over 200,000 peopleand ended the decade with 70,000. We sold non-oil busi-nesses and concentrated and upgraded our mainstreamoil divisions. There has been tremendous turbulence.How do we make sense of an issue like work-familywithin this framework? We have come to work-familyissues by examining how they fit in with other strategichuman resource issues. We have not had a work-familycommittee or department.

We started a serious reappraisal of Mobil's humanresources policies and programs in 1986. There weretwo issues at the time. The price of crude had droppedfrom $28 to $10, which led to a fundamental reassess-ment of how to make money. And we questionedwhether our core human resource programs and policieswere relevant for the 90s.

One of the major human resource concerns wascareer development for women and minorities. We hadstarted our upward mobility programs in the early 70s.Were they relevant? We ran a series of focus groupsamong Mobil employees: in the groups, women werestrongly against making this a women's issue. As weprobed, we began to see that what started as an explora-tion of hindrances became a more fundamental studyof career development. productivity and utilization ingeneral.

Examining Career Development

To expand from the feedback which came from thefocus groups we designed a survey instrument that

34

deliberately linked relocation, gender and family issuesto Mobil's core career development process. This wasmore than a work-family survey. Career developmentwas one of Mobil's key strengths; we Wanted to look atpolicies in relation to this strength, not at any singlecomponent. We also wrestled with asking family ques-tions. This had never been part of our culture. We wereencouraged that IBM had conducted a survey contain-ing family questions. We debated the issue and it wasfinally decided that we could ask family questions.

We weren't doing this survey in isolation. We werealso carrying out studies trying to link managementstyle with workplace productivity and climate. In addi-tion, we were reassessing the validity of our compensa-tion and benefit programs. particularly the issue of payfor performance. We were looking at office locations.Why have offices in so many cities; what does this doto career development, particularly for women? Couldwe centralize offices? Would there be good financialreasons to do this as well as helping career develop-ment?

We thought we had a good career developtnentsystem. But our employees thought differently. When itcame to coaching, communication and individualdevelopment, employees said the company was notdoing well. This was universalboth sexes, high-poten-tial employees, average people. senior level staff. In thefeedback, we also learned attitudes about relocation andrelated issues. We also discovered concerns about childcare, elder care. flextimebut they were secondary is-sues except for small sectors of the population. The keyissues were career development and contribution.People tzenerally felt they were being under-utilized.

Changing Management Style

What have we done? We have invested considerabletimc in management and supervisory training. We aretrying to change the style of managementfrom con-

\ tro:-oriented to leadership-oriented. Leadership isempowering people. motiviting people to take risks,encouraging employees to speak up, and sharingdecision-making. We have said that in the future wewill select managers who have leadership competencies.

We also redesigned our appraisal system. For thefirst time, managers are evaluated on their ability tomanage as well as on their results. Now we encouragesupervisors to talk about their employees' careerdevelopment. We also introduced child and elder careservices, a spouse employment assistance program. andexpanded our EAP program. We issued a Mobilrelationships statement that spelled out our beliefs. Andwe have focused on developing huh locations.

We believe the company culture has to change. Inaddressing the issues of leadership, flexibility and adap-

35

tability, we encourage all managers to work on thetough diversity issues, including tho'se of individualfamily problems.

Harris SussmanSenior ConsultantWorkWays

People have been living complicated lives for a longtime. We are just beginning to scratch the surface ofhow big this issue is. We seldom admit how big anissue work-family is. Essentially we are trying to builda different world filled with humanity and hope and adifferent sense of human capacity.

Here is a sketch of this world. For the first time inU.S. history. the average married couple has moreparents than children. The biggest issue of the U.S.workforce in the 1990s will be the death of our parents.We will be a workforce in mourning. The greatestchallenge in human resources will be the ability to pro-vide grief counseling and recovery. We haven't begunto tap into this. This isn't to mention the death ofpeople from AIDS. which has just begun to affect us.

For the first time in U.S. history. there is no replace-ment workforce for the present workforce. In absolutenumbers, there aren't enough people to replace ustomorrow. Given the school dropout rate, there aregrave concerns about the readiness of young people todo the work we have been preparing for them. Eachyear 700.000 students don't graduate from high schooland another 700.000 who do graduate can't read orwrite. Over 90 percent of the workforce in the year2001 is already in the workforce. The big question is.How productive will we be and what do we know aboutthe conditions required in order to be productive? Mostpeople work at about 30-40 percent of their capacity.People don't bring the full range of themselves to work.

Work and Family as a Movement

What is work-family really about? In less than 20years. we have created a body of knowledge and prac-tice that didn't exist before. Work-family is a code. aeuphemism. a metaphor for a movement for major so-cial change. We don't often discuss it in these terms.All roads lead to work-family whether you come at itfrom EEO. policy, compensation. wellness programs,community relations, legislative compliance issues,benefits, or employee relations.

Work-family is the environment for productivity inthe U.S.. not a side issue to be put on a back burner. Weare constructing a new social order. We are negotiatingand redrawing the terms under which we will do workin our lives. Companies make social policy by omissionor commission. We have not always recognized the

Work and Family Policies: The New Strategic. Plan 39

ramifications of this. At the same time, companies func-tion within a larger world so they should not besurprised that the work-family movement draws inspira-tion and concrete lessons from other movements ofsocial change, including the civil rights movement, thewomen's movement and the environmental movement.These are integral underpinnings.

It used to be taboo to discuss personal things atwork. Home was the place for personal life. This ruleno longer applies. Work is not a separate country.

The single best thing our society can do to improvethe future workplace is to provide prenatal care. Prena-tal care needs to be high on the agenda of anyone deal-ing with human resource planning. It has taken businessa long time to realize it should be involved in K-12education; the Business Roundtable and Business Coun-cil have agreed to cooperate with the governors and thePresident in making education a priority.

Work and Family Frontiers

The next frontier for work-family is understandingmore about the conditions under which people workbest. Managers know little about making a work en-vironment a learning environmentin which peoplecan learn, grow and change. Most managers have givenno thought about the conditions people require. Many

40 The Conference Roan!

years of work have already been done, but we must seework-family as the beginning of a new interdisciplinaryfield that cuts across every other function.

The basic assumptions of most organizational lifeare based on men's experiences. If you see a corpora-tion in which few women are in high levels, you shouldask about the nature of the corporation. Is there some-thing in the inherent nature of American businesses thatis inimical to women achieving success? Most com-panies don't think about how biased and arbitrary theirpolicies and procedures are and how they are based onerroneous assumptions.

The key questions are:

What are your models of change?What do you believe about human nature and its

improvability?What is your experience with significant change

in life, and do you think it is possible?What do you know about coaching people

through a transformative process?We are taking part in a historic movement to

negotiate the terms of a new society, and we need allthe anthropology and organizational ecology we canbring to bear on this task.

36

Government Efforts: Carrots Or Sticks For BusinessDallas L. SalisburyPresidentEmployee Benefit Research Institute

Wmhave just tabulated the results of a survey ofbenefit professionals and government policy

akers on what they viewed as the likelytrends in economic security programs and employeebenefits between now and 2000. Two trends easilyranked at top and were viewed not only as changes thatwill occur but also should occur.

Polls: Choice vs. Paternalism

First is the notion that by 2000, paternalism will bedead as a value among corporations and as a value inemployment. And along with this, employees will exer-cise choice. People will begin to define the compensa-tion package they prefer within given limitations. Thisis where the future is headed.

It is an interesting juxtaposition in a time of debatescentering on Pepper Commission proposals for man-dates in health insurance, and for state actions andmandates in health insurance, child care and parentalleave. In surveys of members of Congress. congres-sional staff, and the private sector, a uniform messageemerges that paternalism is bad and choice is good.

A recent EBRI/Gallup survey looked at individualattitudes toward health care. Of the surveyed populationin a national random sample. 54 percent said govern-ment should provide all people access to health care.When asked how much they were willing to pay to getthis from the government, the average response was$600 a year. Only 2 percent were willing to pay asmuch money as the program would actually cost. Eventaxing the wealthiest 2 percent would not provide the$89 billion cost of the Pepper Commission proposals.

37

Polls: Choice vs. Mandates

Looking at employer mandates, 82 percent of thesurvey group said they wanted employers mandated tooffer health insurance. Yet, when asked if given thechoiceunder a mandateto receive an additional$1,500 in taxable compensation or health insurance, 54percent said they would take the compensation. Theirview of the mandate, when one surveys further, isn'tthat they are mandated to take it, but that somebody ismandated to offer it.

If we look at the same trend surveys, we findfavorable views toward cafeteria plans, corporate andgovernment focus on parental leave, referral services,on-site day careparticularly emergency on-site daycareand other child care and elder care options.

We asked a national random sample about theirviews on child care and parental leave issues, designingit so they could consider some of the state initiatives aswell as the federal policy debate. These are key surveyfindings:

53 percent think that employers, rather thangovernment, should be the primary players in dealingwith family issues.

71 percent think that employers should show aninterest in and promote flexibility: 67 percent felt thegovernment had a role.

60 percent preferred on-site child care on anemergency basis: 26 percent preferred financial assis-tance; 12 percent opted for information and referralservices.

62 percent favored employer involvement.In follow-up questions. however. respondents say

that employer involvement should provide options andmechanisms, not dictate how it will be sorted out. As


for parental leave, 81 percent feel that employersshould be required to allow individuals to take timewithout pay to care for their families. There seems to besome understanding of the difficulties that parentalleave causes a company, but there is still a desire forchoice and flexibility.

In the mandate debate, we frequently end up focus-ing on the issue of whether it is right for the govern-ment to tell people what to do. Our surveys indicateindividuals want a mandate but they don't want to losechoice. They want government to force others to givethem choice.

Mary Wendy RobertsCommissioner of Labor

Bureau of Labor and Industries

State of Oregon

Oregon believes in choice and in parental leave.There has been great interest in developing policies andpassing such legislation. I would like to see a moreholistic approach but, as a politician and a pragmatist, Irealize that we must fall back on incremental responseseven though they sometimes create problems later on.

In Oregon we started with parental leave as the firstpart of an approach to family leave. Government has alegitimate role in this area. Mandates have a legitimateplace, are inevitable, are necessary. When they are putin place, they work in many ways. They work in thesense that they respond to public concerns and needs.This is what government is aboutto recognize whatpublic concerns are, the social policies that are neces-sary as well as what is good for the economy.

Public Favors Family Leav Law

It is obvious that the public is interested in this sub-ject. One national poll reported that four out of fiveregistered voters said they favored a family leave billthat would provide 10 weeks of unpaid leave to newparents, adoptive parents, and for the care of sickchildren. Among these voters, the ratio is five to one forthose who would be less favorable to a member of Con-gress who opposed such a bill. This legislation isinevitable. If the private sector had been able to imple-ment this kind of leave, government wouldn't beplaying a role. It did not happen, so here we are.

The debate on whether mandates should develop ornot is past. We are already in the midst of them. Eightstates have adopted legislation that affects new parentsin the private sector. Oregon's 1987 law passed thehouse by 50 votes to 8 and the senate 22 to 6.


Oregon's Law

The law covers all employers in Oregon with 25 ormore employees part-or full-time. The leave is 12weeks and can be taken by one parent at a time. It maybe split between the parents. Public employees are alsocovered. This covers just over 10 percent of the privateemployers in Oregon and represents 7,000 employers.When you consider the number of employees coveredin the private sector, it is about 65 percent of theworkforce.

Companies with cafeteria plans are exempt. Webelieve in flexibility and want to promote creativeefforts by companies. An employee must give 30 dayswritten notice before taking leave unless specified cir-cumstances make this impossible. The leave is unpaid,but the employee may use accrued, paid vacation leave,sick leave, or other personal compensatory leave. Thus,more employees can afford to take the leave. In our ini-tial surveys, we found that most employees who hadtaken leaveabout one percent of the potentialemployees coveredutilized some form of paid leaveduring the time off.

Following expiration of the leave, the employeemust be restored to her or his former position, or if thatjob has been eliminated for legitimate business reasons,an equivalent position. If this is not possible, they haveto use an available and suitable positionone withcomparable duties and pay at the same or nearby worksite. There is no loss of seniority, vacation, sick leave,or other accrued benefits. Benefits do not accrue duringthe unpaid leave.

The Law's Success

The law is working. Since it went into effect, wehave had a number of complaintsusually focused onthe failure of management to allow an employee to usethe paid sick leave they have accumulated. But the num-ber of complaints have been small. Not a single com-pany has said that they cut benefits because of this lawor contemplated reducing benefits in other areas. This isa myththat other benefits will be cut. Nearly all com-panies reported that there were no significant problemsin adjusting to the law.

Subsequently, there has been a Ford Foundationstudy and survey. The very early results show that theformal, scientific study confirms the findings of our ear-lier surveys. There has not been any reduction inbenefits. In fact, 88 percent of the employers surveyedsaid that implementation was not difficult; 27.4 percentsaid that it was extremely easy.

When we talk about the carrot and stick, we mustrecognize that many of the carrots are already in themarketplace if an employer has the vision to see them.Government's role is to provide encouragementsome-

38

times in the form of a mandatewhich is not a reflec-tion on the great work many corporations have done.Laws are not passed to change the behavior of the bestcorporate citizens but that of the worst corporatecitizens. Government has a stake in it. I am proud ofwhat we have done in Oregon.

Judith L. LichtmanPresidentWomen's Legal Defense Fund

The Family and Medical Leave Act, (FMLA) readyfor floor action in Congress, offers job security but notincome security because it provides an unpaid leave. Iam embarrassed to be advocating an unpaid leave, but Ido so because of economic and political realities. Alarge coalition of over 160 organizations has come tosupport job security, a very important provision forwomen and men who work and have family respon-sibilities.

FMLA: A National Family and Medical Leave Act

FMLA has two major parts: a medical leave of up to15 weeks a year (13 weeks in the Senate version) preg-nancy, child birth, and related medical conditions: and aseparate family leave of 10 weeks that can be usedwithin a two-year period for the birth, adoption, andserious illness of a child or parent of an employee. Inthe House, the bill covets employers with 50 or moreemployees and after three years, phases down to 35 ormore employees. In the Senate, the bill providescoverage for employers with 20 or more employees.The leaves are unpaid, guarantee the same or equivalentjob and the continuation of health insurance.

There are many state FMLAs: 25 states and PuertoRico have some protection for some form of family andmedical leave. They are often gender neutral, men orwomen may take the leave. The trend is toward gender-neutral family and medical.leave. None of the states haspaid leave.

FMLA: State Options

These are options promulgated in various states:Four states have family and medical leave laws

Connecticut, Maine, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.Fours states have family leave but not medical

leave lawsNew Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma andWest Virginia. All are for state employees only, exceptNew Jersey.

Four states have parental leave laws to care fornewborns, newly adopted or seriously ill childrenMin-nesota, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington.

Twelve states and Puerto Rico have pregnancy

39

disability leave or "mommies only" lawsCalifornia,Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mas-sachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina,Tennessee and Vermont.

Kentucky has an adoption leave law.

FMLA: Costs

Why is it important for the U.S. to have family andmedical leave? The benefits of the policy far outweighthe costs. Today it costs society hundreds of millions ofdollars a year because we don't have a policy guarantee-ing people their jobs after a medical or family leave.The annual loss to working women and their familieshas been estimated at over $600 million. The annualloss to taxpayers from unemployment insurance andother government benefa programs is estimated to beover $100 million. These aggregate costs have a humandimension too.

The costs to business of implementing FMLA, onthe other hand, would be low. The GAO estimates thatthe House of Representatives version of the bill willcost employers only $188 million a year, or $5.50 percovered worker. This figure is less than one-third ofwhat it now costs workers not to have the leave. In addi-tion minimum standard of family and medical leavewill help American business compete for a betterworkforce.

A national minimum standard is necessary to guaran-tee family and medical leave for all employees.Without such a standard, not all businesses will providethe leave voluntarily. For some companies, the short-term hassle will appear to outweigh the long-term gainof workforce productivity and loyalty. We don't rely oncompanies to voluntarily pay the minimum wage, over-time or to refrain from exploiting children. For these im-portant social values, we have a minimum laborstandard. Accommodation for family caretaking oughtto be in this same category.

If companies were providing family and medicalleave voluntarily, we would expect an increase in suchbenefits in recent years. However, the most recentBureau of Labor Statistics study shows that the in-cidence of job-guaranteed leave for birth has remainedsteady at about 33 percent over the past several years.The family and medical leave standard is both genderneutral and age neutral and thus discourages discrimina-tion against women or parents with young children.Since people of all ages may take the leave, it doesn'tpit one group of workers against another. And becausethe leave is available not just for birth and adoption butfor serious illness of family members, the family andmedical leave responds to the ongoing needs ofemployees who have children or other family respon-sibilities throughout their work lives.

Work and Family Policies: Thr New Strategu Plan 43

The bill obviously helps working people and theirfamilies but, more important, it is a proposal to rebuildAmerica not only by supporting American families butalso by helping America be the best nation it can be.Smart employers want to accommodate the needs ofworking families because it means attracting and retain-ing experienced, trained, dedicated and hard workingemployees who will continue to make contributions totheir companies.

James D. BurgeCorporate Vice President and Motorola Director ofGovernment Affairs-Personnel

Motorola, Inc.

There are many thoroughbred companies addressingwork-family issues today because it is a prudent, com-petitive, rational business decision. Most businessesface fierce competition in the global marketplace. Mostof us fight for a fraction of a percent improvement inour margins just to survive to invest in tomorrow's tech-nology or to invest in R&D that will create the jobs fortomorrow.

At Motorola, our total customer satisfaction pro-gram earned us the first Malcolm Baldrige QualityAward. We spread this quality message among ourcustomers, our suppliers and our employees. This hasmoved us toward our goal of six sigma quality in thenext few years. Six sigma means near perfect quality. Itcan be achieved only through a staff of competent, welltrained, quality people. Quality people will producequality products. Enlightened, thoroughbred companiesare leading the way to eliminate or reduce work-familyconflicts to attract, motivate and retain the qualityworkforce it needs to compete.

Mandates: Competitiveness and Choice Issues

The wage and benefit pot is finite. Business canexpend only so much for total labor costs and remaincompetitive in the global marketplace. As mandates areconsidered, there is an associated cost with them. I mustraise the question of whether this cost places the U.S. ata competitive disadvantage as we address the labor costissue.

I am also concerned about mandates limiting choice.Motorola has been a strong advocate of dealing withour employees on the terms and conditions of employ-ment that best suit their needs. If you accept the idea ofthe finite wage and benefit pot, the more mandates youput in place the fewer choices and options you can af-ford in dealing with employees. At Motorola we thinkthat good benefit management is providing the greatest

44 The ConferemT Board

benefit per dollar cost for the most employees.

Work-Family: Cost Effectiveness Issues

While we see demographics changing and know thatwe must address the work-family issue, it is not a verycost-effective program as far as benefit management isconcerned. In our dependent care account, for example,only 700 of our 60,000 U.S. employees choose to par-ticipate in this tax-advantaged program. With parentaland illness leave, we grant up to 13 weeks for illness,maternity, adoption or illness of parentsand this isjob-guaranteed. Of 60,000 employees, only 147 are par-ticipating in the maternity leave program. In ourresource and referral program, we received 180 in-quiries per month at first; this declined to 50 per month:and now it has leveled off to 40 per month. Even withthis low participation, we think it is a prudent businessdecision to address work-family with these programs.

Management: Diversity Issues

We are working hard to help our female workersbreak through the glass ceiling with mentors, rolemodels and networking. We are accelerating the gesta-tion period for women and minorities moving throughour management programs. We have done a good job offilling the pipeline in the bottom half. Now we mustwork to move people through the middle and uppermanagement ranks.

Flexibility is the buzzword in our supervisory train-ing for managing work and family issues. We havecreated a number of cottage industries with computersin the home as well as using flexible hours, part-timejobs and job sharing. At Motorola it is okay to be amom or dad first. We are also sensitive to the dual-career relocation issue. We make sure that we don't cre-ate a dead-end career path for an individual simplybecause he or she has turned down a move because of aspouse's job. Career tracks at different stages and dif-ferent ages are okay. Our employee assistance planprovides counseling in various areas of work and fami-ly. It is only those companies that voluntarily step up tothese issues that will be able to attract and retain thecompetent employees they will need in the global future.

We are all addressing the issue of moving from EEOcompliance to managing workforce diversity. In 1950,33 percent of women were in the workforce: now thisnumber is moving toward 80 percent. With our invest-ments in training, there is no way we want to losequalified workers who can manufacture products thatarc on the leading edge of technology. There is no waywe want to lose a quality workforce because of workand family conflict.

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The Cost-Benefits of a "Family-Friendly" WorkplaceJames J. RenierChairman and Chicf Executive Officer

Honeywell Inc.

Business needs specific, targeted work-familyprograms because they will help alleviate imme-diate problems faced by our employees and their

families. The roots of these problems lie deep in thehome and business infrastructure. The permanent solu-tion must heal the cleavage that today divides work andthe family. If there is any kind of permanent solutionhere, it will involve restructuring work/family relationsaround our core values.

Work vs. Family

We are all more productive when we can give workand home their due time. This is becoming increasinglyharder to manage. What time we have is often of alesser quality. Today our jobs assume a far greaterimportance in our lives than ever before. Most peopleidentify themselves closely with their jobs and with thepersonal rewards work brings them.

Workers with families are torn by competing forcesbecause their family responsibilities are also demand-ing. Company culture traditionally tells them to leavetheir family troubles at home. This is frequently impos-sible today because there is seldom anyone at home.

I would ask how you spend your time, and whereyour interests lie. We must ask ourselves if we aredelegating work or delegating our children. We must allexamine our consciences about this.

Families in Crisis

Family crises are rapidly increasing as the tradition-al family structure breaks apart. Single parents are com-mon and mothers are rushing back to work to augment

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family income. In 1960 over one-third of women hadjobs; by 2000 it will be close to two-thirds. During :it,:past two decades, the fastest growing segment of thelabor force has been married women with youngchildren. More than half the mothers of children underone-year-old now work outside the home; 57 percenz ofmothers of children under six have jobs. By 1995 two-thirds of all preschool children and three-fourths ofschool-aged children will have mothers in theworkforce. This represents a huge societal change. I amnot, however, advocating al-, turn to the past.

Business and Education in Crisis

Today we need educated American mothers andfathers to maintain a competitive workforce. Tomorrowwe will need their children. Projections aren't reassur-ing. The growth of the workforce has been slowing.And the forecast is that by 2000 as many as 23 millionjobs may go unfilled due to educational deficiencies. In-dustry now spends millions annually to train and retrainemployees. But the effectiveness of training and educa-tion in general depends largely on the quality of earlylearning. We need people who are not only verbally andmathematically literate but who also have analyticalability and disciplined work habits. They must also beable to learn quickly. Today the median education re-quired in industry i 12.8 years; 10 years from now itwill be 13.5 years. The hurdles arc all getting higher.

About one-fourth of American youth drop out ofschool. We lose one million graduates a year; almost amillion who do graduate are functionally illiterate. It iscalculated that those who drop out each year cost thiscountry $240 billion over the course of their lifetimes

Wark and Family Policies: The New Straiegic Plan 45

in lost wages and taxes. An international study showedthat American 14-year-olds ranked 14th out of 17countries in basic science knowledge. In math,American 13-year-olds placed last. We can't return toour former productivity as long as educational require-ments rise and achievement decline. Without an edu-cated workforce, business cannot compete.

Children at Risk

The problems are usually blamed on the schools.But often parents have not done their jobs. We mustlook at ourselves and do our part to send kids to schoolready to learn. This is much tougher when parents arenot home. Most of our underachieving children are poorand, for them, we know that early intervention can behelpful. We need to see that their mothers receive prena-tal care and training. We must also see that newbornsreceive care and that their nutritional needs are met. Wemust insure that children have the basics so that theyare ready to learn when they reach kindergarten.

Then there are the children who are not poor butwhose parents work full time and are too busystretched by the tension between work and home.Children at risk don't just live in inner cities; they alsolive in wealthy suburbs. These, too, are children at risk.Without a family structure that provides attention,guidance and nurturing, children are deprived of theearly preparation that promises later success. With fami-ly structure diminished, a child's first source of em-powerment is gone; the child is not ready for the secondsource of empowermentthe school.

The Value of Early Education

Is this situation hopeless? No, but it requires sig-nificant changes in thinking. My company has tradition-ally made education an important part of our fundingactivity. Since the 1960s, we have worked closely witheducators to make life in the business world real to bothstudents and teachers. Our support has been aimed atthe college level because we recruit many technical andprofessional graduates. But it has become clear that thecolleges cannot help children who are not well preparedin earlier grades. We now realize that we must targetchildren as early as the prenatal stage.

I testified recently on this subject before the HouseCommittee on Education and Labor. I asserted that busi-ness people are convinced that if we fail to nurture andeducate all our children, we will close the doors of thefuture to growing numbers of young people. The cost ofthe failure will be enormous. The stakes are nothingless than the survival of the free enterprise economy,our democratic system and the American dream.

It is encouraging that the National Governors' As-


sociation endorsed President Bush's education pro-gramwith its specific objectives that all disad-vantaged children have access to high quality preschoolprograms and receive good nutrition and health care.The value of early intervention in the educationalprocess has been amply documented in research overthe years. On this issue, business must take a long-termapproach. We must look years ahead and we willprobably sacrifice some short-term results.

The Corporate Agenda

What can business do? We can analyze problems,identify needs, propose solutions, muster resources,organize support, develop strategies, execute plans,evaluate results and help the public sector reinstitution-alize a system that takes all the new family norms intoaccount.

A good example is a program we developed inMinneapolis. In 1988 I noted in my activities in theUnited Way that a growing number of groups were in-terested in the promise of early childhood education.Those interested included the mayor's office, businesspeople, the Community Development Alliance, the Min-neapolis Day Care Association, the MinneapolisCitizens' League and so on. I chaired a task force thatdecided early on that community collaboration was partof the answer.

We named our initiative Success by Six, with theconviction that children who are prepared for kindergar-ten have a good start on successful lives. Success bySix focused on the things we could accomplish best as acoordinating leadership group:

(1) Develop a community consensus on the beststrategic approaches to eliminate barriers. Our rolewasn't to replace public sector or private initiatives.Our role was to knock down barriers so these two sec-tors could work better.

(2) Build a community-wide commitment to coor-dinate action.

(3) Maintain a large, accurate information base forthe use of interested organizations.

(4) Provide funding in support of pilot efforts. Wenow have a prenatal program underway in a poor urbanneighborhood. And at Honeywell corporate head-quarters, we plan to open a school for pregnant teen-agers to help out the local school system.

Community groups are coming together to attackproblems cooperatively. The Dayton-Hudson Corpora-tion has tackled one of the most difficult jobsalertingeveryone in the Twin-Cities area that there is a crisisPresentations have been made to Minnesota's U.S.senators, representatives and governor, to the leaders ofthe state legislature and to appropriate committees. ThcMinneapolis Chamber of Commerce and the Minnesota

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Business Partnership, made up of seas of 200 Min-nesota companies, have added early childhood to theiragendas. We are stimulating the efforts of Minnesotacompanies, social organizations. government depart-ments, business associations and the media. Most impor-tant, we have strengthened the cooperation betweenbusiness, government and civic groups. Initiating thiscollaboration may be the most valuable contribution acompany can make.

Core Value

I am confident about the future. American industrystill leads the world. Today Japan has an economy of$2.8 trillion: America's is $5.2 trillion. We are still ex-porting more technology than we import. But the con-test is finding the best solution to the work-familyrelationship. We must return to a core of values.

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Many things human resources wants to do aredifficult because the average business person doesn'tsee where they fit in the framework of the whole prob-lem. If the business community is convinced that earlychildhood education must be resurrected in thiscountry, industry will support whatever is needed to getthereincluding day care and other family supportivemeasures.

No business person believes that we can succeedlong-term without educated children. Business badlyneeds the creative thinking that these programs cantrigger. We must remember that the old solutions won'twork. We must restructure our national educationalsystem to insure that all children get early education.And we must work diligently to force effective com-munity action. The future of American business and theAmerican family depends on it.

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DOCUMEAT RESUME ED 363 794 AUTHOR TITLE REPORT NO … · 2014-05-05 · DOCUMEAT RESUME ED 363 794 CE 065 117 AUTHOR Peters, James L., Ed.; And Others TITLE Work and Family Policies: