Focus on Workplace Flexibility

Solutions to improve lives, support business and strengthen the economy

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Workplace Flexibility 2010 and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation convened a national meeting to encourage families, businesses and government to strengthen partnerships and accelerate the process of making workplace flexibility a standard of the American workplace.  Focus on Workplace Flexibility, held in Washington, DC, November 29-30, 2010, explored the demographic and economic changes transforming work and family, as well as effective business practices and practical public policy solutions to support workplace flexibility.

"Fifteen years of research has proven that the widespread adoption of workplace flexibility practices will be crucial to the continued strength of American families and American businesses now and in the future," said Kathleen Christensen, Program Director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "The foundation's approach was to build a body of evidence documenting and defining what was happening both at home and at work; increase public understanding of the issues facing working families and their employers; and identify opportunities for change that would benefit these employers and employees alike."

Thanks in part to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's early commitment, unique funding model, and pragmatic strategy, there is a growing consensus that workplace flexibility offers an effective solution to the time famine caused by competing work and family demands.

"There is increasing agreement – among policymakers, employers, advocates, labor representatives, and many others – that increasing access to flexibility in the workplace has become both a social and economic imperative," said Katie Corrigan, Director, Workplace Flexibility 2010. "It's not one person or one family or one industry's problem.  It's a national issue that compels a national response."

Eight new research reports were presented at Focus on Workplace Flexibility:

• Workplace Flexibility and Daily Stress Processes in Hotel Employees and their Children

David M. Almeida & Kelly D. Davis, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University

• Family Change and Time Allocation in American Families

Suzanne M. Bianchi, UCLA

• The Career Cost of Family

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, Department of Economics, Harvard University

• Phased Retirement and Workplace Flexibility for Older Adults: Opportunities and Challenges

Richard W. Johnson, Senior Fellow, The Urban Institute

• Keeping Women in the Science Pipeline

Mary Ann Mason, Marc Goulden, Karie Frasch, University of California, Berkeley

• Workplace Flexibility and Worker Agency

Lawrence S. Root, Professor, School of Social Work, University of Michigan; Alford A. Young Jr., Professor, Department of Sociology and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan

• The Human Face of Workplace Flexibility

Barbara Schneider, John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor, Michigan State University and Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago with the assistance of Elizabeth Keating at NORC at the University of Chicago

• Military Families: Extreme Work and Extreme 'Work-Family'

Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, Kenona Southwell, Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit, grant-making institution. Its Workplace, Work Force & Working Families program has funded a 15-year strategic initiative integrating empirical research on the challenges facing today's working families with effective business practices and practical public policy solutions. Its National Workplace Flexibility Initiative is a collaborative effort to make workplace flexibility a compelling national issue and a standard of the American workplace.

Workplace Flexibility 2010 is a public policy initiative based at Georgetown Law. It is part of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's National Initiative on Workplace Flexibility.

SOURCE Workplace Flexibility 2010