November 30, 2003
Rigid Region
With small workforces and demanding customers,
many metro employers resist flexible hours
by Patricia Kitchen
STAFF WRITER
Judy Raichek thought long and hard before she asked her employer,
a Japanese-owned office imaging equipment company, whether she could work
part-time.
The mother of 8-year-old twin daughters, she had been feeling discord between
her work life and her family life for some time, but she says “it crystallized”
last December. This public relations manager found herself heading back to
work the day after Christmas while her husband and daughters got to stay home.
“They're home and I'm not,” she remembers thinking. “There's
something wrong with this.”
After much internal debate, she put in a request in mid-March to work part-time.
By the end of the month, the answer came back: “No.”
That may be a familiar response to other area employees looking for altered
hours or part-time arrangements — whether they want to spend more time
with children, care for older relatives or pursue personal interests. Indeed,
at a time when workers increasingly say they want to spend more time with
families, the most basic of all family-friendly benefits — flextime —
is offered less frequently in the metropolitan area than nationally. So says
a telephone poll conducted in April for the Rauch Foundation, a family-and-children
organization in Garden City.
That research shows 37% of respondents on Long Island and 35% in New York
City say their employers offer flexible working hours. Compare that with the
67% of workers nationwide who said in a 2000 poll for the National Parenting
Association that flextime was offered in their workplaces.
This is a “face-time culture,” says Dana Friedman, a work/life consultant
from Port Washington. So even when flexibility is officially offered, workers
sometimes get the message from managers that they'd better not use it. That's
a dilemma for professionals, certainly, but for another class of workers -
those who punch time clocks - the option isn't even on the radar screen.
One reason this region lags the nation, experts say, is its preponderance
of small businesses. According to the state labor department, about 98% of
employers on Long Island and in New York City have staffs of 100 or fewer,
meaning fewer workers to cover for one another. The employees at those small
companies account for roughly half the workforce: 48% of city workers and
61% of LI workers.
This region, too, is known for “hard-charging industries,” says
Jim Brown, labor market analyst in New York City with the state Labor Department.
Who thinks of advertising, media, law, big finance as being particularly family-
friendly? he asks. People come to work here out of school and "are expected
to put their nose to the grindstone."
The weak economy, surely, has taken a toll on the wiggle time that many workers
— now loaded down with the duties of laid-off colleagues — may have
gotten in the past. Indeed, employers nationally have pulled back on flextime,
job sharing and telecommuting in the last couple of years, according to the
Society for Human Resource Management. And work/life experts warn that this
will come back to haunt them as hiring needs increase — and recruitment
and retention once again become big headaches for bosses.
As for Raichek, who lives in Syosset, it was with reluctance that she decided
in April to leave her public relations job. “I've been working over 20
years and I didn't want to stop,” she says. “It wasn't the wrong
decision for me. But I would have preferred it if I didn't have to make it
so drastically.” She's since gone back to school for a master's degree
in education.
Reflecting what employees say, just one in three of 271 tristate-area employers
who responded to an April survey said they offer flextime, according to C&B
Consulting, an employee-benefits firm in Syosset that conducted the poll.
Compare that with national figures that find between 55% and 60% of employers
offering flexible hours. These national numbers come from the Society for
Human Resource Management and consultant Hewitt Associates, both of which
included small businesses in their samples.
But bosses say it's no easy matter to mesh worker needs and business needs.
Fred Cardi has seen it from both sides. A former manager himself, he works
as a production coordinator for Spectragraphic Inc., a graphic-design and
printing company in Commack, and in the last three years has had to take a
couple of hours here and there to tend to the medical needs of his 93-year-old
mother.
He says his boss is giving him the same consideration he gave to his own good
workers. Cardi, 59, generally comes in 45 minutes early anyway, but on days
when he needs to take time off, he comes in even earlier - and stops in to
work on a Saturday, if need be, to make sure he's met his responsibilities.
“In smaller companies, there's no backup,” he says. “You only
have one person doing the job — otherwise, the boss has to do it.”
When it comes to allowing for flexibility, “we're not successful all
the time,” says Jim Hanley, director of human resources at Henry Schein
Inc., a Melville-based dental and medical products distributor.
What's important for Schein's business? Dependable customer service and telephone
sales, as well as quick order-turnaround, he says, and “it's hard to
operate a business like ours unless we're properly staffed.”
While he encourages managers to be accommodating, he also says, “we never
want a customer to call and get directed to voice mail.”
Earlier this month, Henry Schein was honored for family-friendly practices
by the National Association of Mothers Centers. But when told of the award,
one hourly employee (she asked not to be named) said, “I'm shocked.”
The mother of a child with medical issues, she works for a company Schein
acquired - one she found far more understanding than Schein. But now, “the
grip is tightening.”
She says she's allowed to alter her start and stop times just once in a two-month
period. She has to put in for vacation days three months in advance and “floater”
days one month in advance, leaving seven sick days for emergencies. “I
feel like it's a card game — maybe poker — and I have to play each
card strategically.”
In response, Hanley, Schein's human resources director, says: “Supervisors
are encouraged to accommodate as best they can and still meet business goals.”
While flextime may be offered less in this region than in others, those who
may use it are making use of it in greater numbers. Nationally, flextime is
used by about one in four who are offered it, but the Rauch study, conducted
by Charney Research of Manhattan, shows 43% of Long Islanders and 62% of city
residents who are offered flexibility have taken advantage of it.
Nancy R. Douzinas, President of the Rauch Foundation, points to the area's
transportation stresses as one strong motivator for using flextime. And Sharon
O'Malley, editor and publisher of the newsletter Work/Life Today, says many
people apparently got over reservations about flexible scheduling after Sept.
11, 2001, when the use of work/life programs “went though the ceiling.”
Still, some working parents are hesitant to jump on the flextime bandwagon.
A survey in August among members of Executive Moms, a Manhattan-based support
group, found that more than half of the 125 respondents had flexibility, but
43% said they've held back from seeking it for fear of being taken less seriously,
says the group's founder-president, Marisa Thalberg. They worry that “lack
of face time can compromise their career status, advancement and salary levels.”
The group also found that some professions allowed for more wiggle room than
others.
Chandra Maharaj of Kew Gardens realized several years ago that her 12-hour-a-day
marketing manager's job with a Manhattan-based financial-services giant was
not compatible with spending the quality time with family that she wanted.
“When I was a single person that was OK,” says Maharaj, who married
in 2000, shortly after resigning from that job. Now the mother of 2-year-old
Mathieu, she has been taking on project work, including her present gig with
the Queens County Overall Economic Development Corp.
“I don't know how a person in a marketing division can get flexible hours,”
says Maharaj, who advises younger women in her family to develop more portable
careers.
While professionals like her may have fallback positions, those on the labor
market's lower rungs lack flexibility and options. Workers earning less than
$60,000 a year are the most severely squeezed for time, says Craig Charney,
who conducted the Rauch study. Among Long Island respondents in that salary
category, 46% (mostly fathers) reported having fewer than 15 hours a week
to spend with their families.
As for hourly workers at places such as hospitals, laundries, fast-food restaurants
– “for the most part there is no flexibility for these folks,”
says Jack O'Connell, director of the Health and Welfare Council, a coalition
of health and human services organizations on Long Island.
Still, Manhattan boasts 16 employers that made Working Mother magazine's annual
list of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers, all of which offer flextime.
Among them are Avon, JPMorgan Chase, Ernst & Young and American Express.
The only Long Island-based employer listed is Computer Associates. Over the
years, Working Mother has seen a rise of 25% in the number of employers looking
to be named to its list.
Meanwhile, there is no crowd waiting to get the Long Island Family Friendly
Employer Award from the Family and Children's Association in Mineola. The
whole idea back in 1994 was to “create a momentum” for more work/life
initiatives, says Richard P.Dina, the group's president. With the number of
applicants decreasing to about 15 or 20 a year, he says, “we don't get
a sense there has been a strong momentum in that direction.” The group
is now soliciting applications at www.familyandchildren.org.
And a recent work/life survey of employers conducted by the Long Island United
Way yielded just 106 respondents, though 7,500 copies of a comprehensive checklist
were distributed through various business associations. “I was surprised
so few employers filled it in,” says Sherry Radowitz, senior vice president
of community and agency services. Results will be released early next year.
Those whose employers cut them some slack do sing their praises. Lisa Marino,
43, a single mother of two boys, says of Melville-based Vytra Health Plans,
her employer of two years, “they wrap their arms around their employees.”
Before starting there, Marino, a financial analyst, had spent seven months
working for a family-owned food-services firm, and she says, “It was
so horrible I couldn't wait to leave.” She recalls building up courage
just to ask if she could leave early one day when one son had to see a dentist.
Shortly afterward, she found her present job, where she's altered her start
and stop times to fit her bus schedule, and on days when she wants to leave
a little early during soccer season, she is told, “Go.”
On those days when her colleagues engage in typical workplace grousing, she
says, “I let them know that we have it pretty good here.”
Tips on Securing Flexible Hours
Why should I have to ask? Shouldn't the boss see that I need it?
It's up to you to take the initiative, says Cali Williams Yost, a work/life
coach in Madison, N.J. Start by suggesting a well-thought-out solution.
How Should I Phrase It?
In business terms, she says. Create a plan for how you
can alter your schedule yet still work effectively. What duties do you have
that could be streamlined? At what other times of day could you get things
done? With whom could you share responsibilities?
What If the Boss Says No?
Depending on his or her reasons, you can ask to initiate your plan on a trial
basis. When “faced with the possibility you are going to walk,”
Yost says, a boss who wants to keep you may relent.
Clock Management
What workers in the New York metro area say the get and use in terms of flexible
work arrangements.
Long Island New York City
(683 respondents) (319 respondents)
Those offered flextime: 37% 35%
Of those, percentage who have used it: 43% 62%
Those offered part time status: 42% 43%
Of those, percentage who have used it: 27% 42%
SOURCE: Charney Research in April for the Rauch Foundation
Copyright © 2003, Newsday,
Inc.
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/business/local/newyork/ny-
bzcov303564444nov30,0,5549973.story
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