Work-Life Archives - Page 4 of 10

Donated Sick Days

In 2019 David Green, a high school football coach in Huntsville, Alabama, learned that his baby daughter had cancer. His colleagues donated more than 100 of their own sick days so that he could be with her during chemotherapy. One teacher, who had cancer herself, gave two. “If I had more to give, I would give him more.”

The federal government has a formal version. Under its Voluntary Leave Transfer Program, employees give annual leave to another employee with a personal or family medical emergency who has used up their own.

Leaving at 5:30

In 2012 Sheryl Sandberg, then the chief operating officer of Facebook, said in a video interview: “I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I’m home for dinner with my kids at 6:00.” She said that only in the last year or two had she been brave enough to talk about it publicly.

According to reports of the interview, she sent emails early in the morning and late at night to show she was still working.

The Nursery

In February 2013 Yahoo told employees who worked from home that they would have to come to the office from June. The memo said, “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.” It added, “We need to be working side-by-side.”

At the same time it was reported that the chief executive, Marissa Mayer, had paid to have a nursery built in her office when she joined Yahoo. She had a baby a few months later.

Remote Work Exception

On September 16, 2024, Amazon’s chief executive Andy Jassy told employees that from January 2, 2025, they would be in the office five days a week, “outside of extenuating circumstances.” He gave examples such as “if you or your child were sick” or “if you had some sort of house emergency.”

The exceptions included employees who “already have a Remote Work Exception approved through your s-team leader.”

Paid Family Leave by Pay

In March 2023, 27 percent of American civilian workers had access to paid family leave from their employer. Ninety percent had access to unpaid family leave.

Access follows pay. In March 2021, 6 percent of private industry workers in the lowest-paid tenth had paid family leave. In the highest-paid tenth it was 43 percent.

Two Classes of Employees

In August 2015 Netflix announced that new parents could “take off as much time as they want during the first year after a child’s birth or adoption.” The policy covered salaried employees in its streaming business. Workers in its DVD distribution centers were not included.

A Netflix customer started a petition. “It’s wrong for Netflix to create two classes of employees.”

I-Deals

In 2005 Denise Rousseau, a professor of organizational behavior, published I-Deals: Idiosyncratic Deals Employees Bargain for Themselves. The book describes personal arrangements that an employee negotiates one by one, such as working from home or flexible hours, which differ from what coworkers have. The publisher says it “challenges traditional notions that standardization is the way to create workplace justice.”

Ask and Ye Shall Receive?

In 2013 Victoria Brescoll of Yale, Jennifer Glass and Alexandra Sedlovskaya asked managers to respond to employees who requested a change in their work hours. The scenarios varied the employee’s sex, job status and reason for the request.

Managers were most likely to grant flexible hours to high-status men who wanted them for career development. “All women workers, regardless of their status or the reason for their request, face a gendered wall of resistance to their requests for flextime, while men face status-specific resistance,” Brescoll said.

Flexible, Not Formal

In 2017 and 2018, 57 percent of American wage and salary workers had a flexible work schedule. Only 16 percent had a formal arrangement with their employer that permitted this flexibility. These figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In the private sector, schedule flexibility without a formal arrangement was more common than in government jobs: 44 percent compared with 24 percent.

Connected on the Weekend

In 2013 the American Psychological Association surveyed 1,084 employed adults. Fifty-three percent checked work messages at least once a day over the weekend. Fifty-four percent did so while home sick, and 44 percent on vacation.

The same survey found that 71 percent felt they had control over whether they worked outside normal hours. “We’re learning that not everyone wants to power down, and that’s OK,” said David Ballard of the APA.