Are Flexible Work Schedules in Our Future?

I just finished reading the book Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success, by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay. The content outlined the revolution of career women who are, one by one, changing their workplace schedules to be more flexible, without giving up their career status or hard-earned positions.

This book expressed the details of the exact same work / life balance that I have been wishing for ever since I had children. I am in awe of the technological advances made in the workplace over the last ten years. We now have laptop computers, and wireless email devices such as iPhones and Blackberries. Video and web based conferencing are used my most large companies. All of these tools should enable us to lead more flexible work lives.

In spite of these advances in the efficiency of how, where and when work gets done, it's still not a widely accepted practice to ask for non-traditional schedule. This desire for a more flexible workplace does not only belong to working mothers. Fathers and those without children also have commitments and interests outside of work and wish to live more balances lives, just like mothers.

If more companies embrace the practices if allowing shortened workdays, say 8:30am to 3:00pm, or working full time three days a week (8:30 to 5:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, for example), many working mothers would find more joy and less angst in their lives. Both large and small companies still value the old fashioned notion of face time in the office.

I worked for a wireless company in the late 1990's. I remember that two mothers who had the same position worked out the very first job-sharing position in the company. They were both account managers, so there was a portfolio of clients to work with on a daily basis. With the new job-sharing arrangement, they would both manage the same set of clients.

It was a monumental effort to convince management to allow them to share one position. Each woman would work three days a week. They told me that in the beginning, they would work on their days off just to make sure that all of the details were attended to and that the clients stayed satisfied.

Eventually, it worked out so that both mothers could fully embrace their days off with their kids without feeling as though they had to work during those precious hours. Both women stayed on for over a year, until one of them became pregnant with her third child and stopped working completely after the birth.

Unfortunately, for the other woman who participated in the job share, no one else in the department wanted to step in to keep up the program. So, the choice for the mother who was left was to come back to work full-time or leave the company. The fact that no part time work could be found for the remaining job share partner shows a lack of forward thinking on the part of the company.

One by one, women in business are working out individual flexible schedules. Many times, the company as a whole doesn't embrace flexible schedules, but a manager or director believes in this type of management style and trusts their employees to engage their time management skills in order to get the work done.

As with any social revolution, it takes many years for a new idea to become the normal practice. We re still waiting for a woman Vice-President or President, but look how far society came in 2008!