Whether you’re an accomplished business
leader like the women inside these pages,
or a newly minted entrepreneur, every careerminded
person must manage that delicate balance
between professional and personal life.
Work-life issues run the gamut, from
telecommuting and flexible hours to family
leave and child care (see accompanying box).
It’s a very different world today,” says
Susan Ascher, president and CEO of The Ascher
Group, a career-coaching firm in Roseland. “I
do kid the younger folks that work for me and
say, ‘You’d really better think about it before
you have a child. And if you have one, you’d
really better think about it if you have two.’ I
really believe that because of the stresses and
strains that working mothers have.”
Ascher, who has a 17-year-old daughter,
says she’s been lucky as a business owner
because she can come and go as she needs to. “But while that sounds fantastic, I still have
responsibilities to my clients and the philanthropic
duties that I have, and my social life in
addition to my No. 1 priority: my child.”
Ascher expects small and medium-sized
companies, rather than corporate America, to
be the leaders in establishing work-life issues
as standard practice. “I personally think that
smaller companies are more capable of it
because, even though we may do more with
less, we know how to do it. I know that in our
company alone, there’s a lot of pinch hitting”
when there are family emergencies or other
significant issues.
Carl Van Horn, founding director of the
Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at
Rutgers University, says it
may be tougher for big
companies to be trendsetters
on this issue.
“Large organizations
tend toward rulemaking
and bureaucracy,”
says Van Horn. “They start setting rules
and it’s hard to get
exceptions to the rules,
whereas in small firms
you can customize the
way you deal with people
much more easily.”
The biggest obstacle to instituting worklife
policies, Van Horn says, is among managers
who either lack understanding or the willingness
to change.
“What I would advise them to do is think
about work/family flexibility as something
that contributes to productivity, satisfaction,
better quality service and better quality products
for your company,” Van Horn says. “Then
the question is, ‘How do you design the
human resource policies that are going to suit the individuals that work in your firm, and the
type of work you do?’”
Jo Ann Burk, chief executive officer at
Cuyler Burk in Parsippany, says the law firm
uses communications technology to provide
flexibility to its employees. “Our firm has cre-ated the ability for anyone to work on their
home computer and get into the firm’s network
as if they are sitting at their desk in the
office,” she says.
Burk says her two biggest challenges are
keeping exceptional women after they have
children, and helping parents manage off-siteobligations like marketing, client entertainment
and travel. She says Cuyler Burk’s attorneys
work well as a team, pitching in to help
one another on inflexible aspects of the job
like court and client schedules. “The bottom
line is, companies must be flexible with theiremployees—with or without families.”
Van Horn says he has heard managers say
things like, “‘Everybody has to show up at 7:30
and leave at 4:30 because the next person is
going to be upset if that rule isn’t applied to
them.’ Wrong. People do understand if it’s
explained to them.” Moreover, he says, it
makes sense to allow staffers with long commutes
to start work a little earlier or later to
shave off time in traffic—as long as it doesn’t
impact the company.
He adds that work-life policies should be
offered as a privilege and not a right. “You can
say, ‘I’m going to give you the opportunity to
work at home one day a week, but if your productivity
changes, we’re going to repeal that
because evidently that’s not working for you
and us.’ Some people do need to be supervised
and other people don’t.”
For Angela Crincoli Harrington, who owns
Harrington Communications, a public relations
firm with offices in Springfield and New York
City, integrating business with family life has
come naturally. “I grew up in a business environment,”
says the married mother of two
young daughters. “When I was 9 years old, I was
answering my father’s phone: ‘Good morning,
Crincoli Woodworking Company, may I help
you?’ He would teach me how to take messages,
how to respond to the clients.”
Now she’s passing down her dad’s philosophy. “What I’m doing is giving my own family onthe-
job training about best practices and customer
service. I think this is a great experience for them to
see their mom and father working as a team, supporting
each other in their careers,” she says.
Harrington says she has found that the key
to juggling work and family is “being able to tap
into a strong, trusted network of family and
friends. That has been invaluable in helping me
with my business.”
Van Horn says companies that institute
work-life policies are much more likely to
retain valuable people. “If the work-family
balance is really pinching your best employees,
then they’re going to go look for a place
that gives them flexibility,” he says. “So you
have a real vested interest in [this issue] from
a variety of perspectives.”
E-Mail to Cheryl Sarfaty
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