Join a community of people who care about making work and life fit together. Learn how you, your employees, managers, and business can benefit from the custom-fit workplace. Sign-up and we'll send you updates about news, resources, articles, blogs, and events.

did you know?

Nearly 60 percent of workers believe that telecommuting at least part-time is the ideal work situation.

IBM saves $700 million in real estate costs by allowing 25% of its worldwide employees to work from home.

wise words we heard

Businesses that ignore the possibilities offered by emerging technologies risk becoming dinosaurs.

virtual work

Virtual workers are defined as people who work from home, from the road, from anywhere that isn't a traditional office. The common denominator for all virtual workers is that they communicate and perform work duties almost entirely through electronic technology. Going virtual makes sense for many workers, not just the people you see plugging in at coffee shops around the globe: Gen Yers just starting out, older workers phasing into retirement, people who need a custom-fit because they have restricted physical abilities or live in remote geographic locations, or two-job families where being close to both jobs is impossible. High- and low-wage employers have found moving to virtual work productive and profitable. Call centers, sales teams, individual consultants - even entire organizations - have all found this new way of working to be virtually perfect.

Virtual work can create a more robust business overall, as it has been shown to cut workplace costs and produce more satisfied, productive employees.

Advice for Employers

Adopt a performance-based management philosophy. Look more at results and less and whose car is in the parking lot.

Use technology in innovative ways to promote team building. Consider going beyond the basics of phone and email in order to help create a close group and help workers connect. Set up a community home space featuring pictures and profiles of team members, a discussion board, a team calendar, or a chat room.

Show respect. This might mean being sensitive to members who speak English as a second language, or paying attention to language and cultural differences, business protocols - even time zones.

Design fair and consistent guidelines for who can take advantage of virtual work.

Meet in person, too. Many companies that adopt virtual work also have regular retreats or in-person check-ins. This promotes team cohesion.

Remember that workers cannot be available 24/7 and will need boundaries to make virtual working successful for both themselves and the business.

Advice for Workers

When making a case for a flexible work arrangement, cite the business benefits of higher productivity, less time lost commuting, worker loyalty, decreased absenteeism, improved health and sometimes reduced real estate costs. (See Studies and Research)

Create an expectation of clear work/life boundaries. Just because you are now connected to work at home or on vacation doesn't mean you should be online 24/7. Clarify what will work well for you and your employer.

Be realistic but open-minded about virtual work's plusses and minuses. While it fits well with some jobs, virtual work isn't a good fit for others.

Consider stepping up the frequency of communication. This can mean checking the team's calendar or sending an email after every phone conference to document and confirm the action plan. Find out what will make this work well for everyone.

WOMEN in Management: Why Progress Has Stalled

Submitted by Nanette Fondas on Wed, 2010-10-27 04:00

A recent Government Accounting Office report found that the number of women managers increased only 1 percent between 2000 and 2007, from 39 to 40 percent. Women’s progress into management has stalled despite their equal representation in the workforce and their majority in colleges and universities.

Why such a small increase? As we observe National Work & Family Month, the acronym WOMEN reminds us of the barriers still to overcome.

W – Work-family spillover. In big jobs such as management, often work spills over into family. Family time is crowded out for male and female executives alike. Some research has shown that managers who have someone at home to “catch” the spillover of work into home hours have more successful careers. To the extent that women still do the majority of childcare and home management, they are more likely to be in the role of “catcher” and less likely to be climbing the management ladder.

O – Lack of open, flexible work options. Recent studies, including many cited in my book, The Custom-Fit Workplace, show that access to flexible work options—such as telecommuting, compressed work weeks, results-only work environments, and even bringing infants-to-work—are desired and needed by working women who have children (and 80 percent of all women will become mothers by age 44). Without flexible work options, it is difficult to sustain a career trajectory that might last, unabated, for 40 or more years and include promotions into management.

M – The male model of the “ideal” worker means women with children are not taken as seriously as men or as seriously as women without children. Masculine norms in the workplace (think hours worked, after-hours networking, weekends on the golf course) create additional burdens on parents. Further, women hide caregiving responsibilities so as not to engender bias . This is hard to sustain for long. As we learned from the 2010 Nobel Laureates in Economics, such “friction” in employee-employer relationships leads to breakups.

E – Evaluations of Performance are not flex-neutral. A recent study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that just a quarter of companies have performance evaluation systems that neutralize the effects of taking a parental leave or using other flexible work options. Performance evaluations tend to predict promotions in general, as well as promotions into management.

N – No time for activism. With work, family, and health demands (not to mention sleep!), most working women have no time left for activism. Women I’ve interviewed who do manage to keep many plates in the air, particularly without letting an important one break, report that they have little time left to advocate for themselves or others.

The first and second waves of the Women’s Movement made advances for women in the areas of work, voting, athletics, educational opportunity and more. The next wave of progress for women into management and all other walks of life will require an understanding of what’s holding us back and a renewed push for change at work and at home.