By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

A recent report by A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center, a national legal advocacy organization, revealed that nearly 85 percent of fathers feel pressure to be both a financial provider and an engaged parent, and three out of four fathers worry that their jobs do not allow them to be the kind of dads that want to be.

The report, entitled Beyond the Breadwinner: Professional Dads Speak Out on Work and Family, also found that more than half of the 250 working fathers surveyed identify work-family balance as a source of frequent stress. A larger study by The Boston College Center for Work & Family surveyed 1,000 white collar fathers from large corporations and came to similar findings: Dads are struggling to juggle their dual roles as caregiver and breadwinner.

Now we must ask ourselves: will companies be more receptive to offering flexible work options now that working fathers are struggling to balance it all? And if so, why did it take men feeling the pinch to get the attention of corporate America when women have been struggling with the same issue for years?

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

In June, PwC hosted its Diversity Leadership Forum, entitled “Business works when life works: Flexibility in a hyper-connected world,” in Washington DC. The Forum was a day-long conference intended to amount to a graduate course in diversity leadership, remarked Reggie Butler, Managing Director, PwC’s US Office of National HR Operations – Transformation.

Jennifer Allyn, Managing Director, Office of Diversity, PwC, asked, “How can we as leaders support the needs of our people and really get that competitive edge?”

One of the biggest ways workplaces are changing is to better support the needs of today’s families. Not only is the definition of family evolving, but as more women enter the workforce and achieve top roles, so are the responsibilities of family members. PwC’s panel on “Meeting the Needs of Modern Families” set out to determine how today’s employees’ needs are changing as more voices come to the work/life conversation.

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By Laura Steele

Lisa James used to dread tax season. As a CPA for a large accounting firm in the early 1990s, she put in 60 hour work weeks between January and May, and then settled back into a 45-50 hour per week routine with very little downtime, except for a three week vacation. “It was challenging, and sometimes even grueling, but my company had no concept of flex time,” says James, who kept this schedule for 5 years until she married and had children. “I managed pretty well by putting my first child in infant care, but when the second baby arrived, I found I could not keep up with either my company’s or the client’s expectations. Since I am a perfectionist, I felt I had no options but to quit for awhile.”

In the past twenty years, however, the nation’s top accounting firms have made steady progress instituting new flex time and work/life policies. The largest driver turned out to be the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which set new standards for corporate accountability and dramatically increased the need for skilled accounting and financial reporting employees at the big four accounting firms, including Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projected a 22 percent growth rate between 2008 and 2018, for accountant and auditors, adding 279,400 more positions to the 1.29 million already-existing jobs. Despite the recession, the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the number of accountants to grow faster than the national average. One way the big four began competing for a limited talent pool, was to offer their employees a more flexible schedule.

A recent article in the New York Times highlights this trend. The article, “Flex Time Flourishes in Accounting Industry,” reports that “when it comes to respecting the work-life balance of employees, the accounting industry far outshines the rest of corporate America.” Though not everyone agrees that the big four are models of flexibility, it is clear that the situation has improved and the big four accounting firms are now offering a much wider array of flex time options, including sabbaticals with partial salary, shortened work weeks, and personal time off to take care of family matters.

Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, notes that “The nation’s accounting firms excel at this for a boring, accounting reason – they’ve looked at the numbers, and they see it helps.” Some firms estimate that increased flex time options have helped them cut turnover from 24% annually to just 15%, a dramatic decrease that can save a company millions in hiring and retraining costs. “This is really about retaining our top talent,” says Michael Fenlon, People Strategies Leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

James couldn’t agree more and is now back working for one of the big four in Denver. But last fall, she faced a new work/life challenge. “My father passed away years ago, and my mom had been living independently in Wisconsin for the past decade. Last year, she came down with severe pneumonia, and was hospitalized for two weeks. She was so weak afterwards that she had to be placed in a rehabilitation hospital. It was clear to me that she could no longer live alone, and I needed to take a month off to help her recover and then move her to an assisted living facility in Boulder, Colorado, where I live. Fortunately, my company was very supportive, and I was able to take 6 weeks off, with little advance notice, to help my mom.”

According to the Journal of Accounting, James’ story is far from unusual. “Successful (work/life balance) programs address elder-care as wells as child-care. The growing demand for attending to parents is one of today’s most significant trends.” In fact, the National Council on Aging estimated that between 30 percent and 40 percent of all employees will assist their elderly parents in 2020, compared with 12 percent today.

Professional accounting organizations are also trying to provide their members with better information to help guide them through their work/life balance issues. For example, the Missouri Society of Certified Public Accountants (MSCPA) has a Work/Life Balance Committee. The MSCPA website offers a list of resources, articles and contacts with the goal of “influencing the accounting profession to affect the necessary changes to develop and retain a more competitive work force and to permit men and women to achieve balance among personal, family and professional responsibilities.”

James says, “The accounting industry has come a long way during the course of my career. I intend to keep working for at least another 5-10 years, provided that my employer can respond appropriately when my family needs me the most. I leave work by 3pm most Fridays so I can have an early dinner with my mother, and relax with her as the weekend begins. I’m more confident than ever that flex time is here to stay.”

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“The Project for Attorney Retention’s mission is to reduce unwanted attrition of lawyers,” explained Manar Morales, PAR‘s Executive Director. One particularly sore spot for attorneys (male and female), she explained, is the issue of work/life balance. PAR was founded by Cynthia Calvert and Joan Williams to address these issues. “One of our hallmarks is to create best practices for law firms around research,” she said.

“Women are graduating law school in record numbers, but they’re not making it into the partnership ranks,” Morales explained. “It’s not a pipeline issue, but a retention issue.”

“Work/life flexibility is important for women and men, and as long as this is solely a women’s issue progress is going to be slow,” she added. According to Morales, flexibility is a key issue for retaining diverse attorneys – and as the business case for diversity becomes more well-known, firms will have to respond with more flex opportunities.

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By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

In her 2007 book Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success, Sylvia Ann Hewlett explores the often “non linear” career paths women take because of the still constant tug of domestic responsibilities. According to Hewlett, women typically provide 75 percent of the housework and childcare, which makes it harder for them to cope with today’s extreme jobs.

“Thirty seven percent take an ‘off ramp’ at some point in their careers, voluntarily quitting their jobs for a short period of time. Another 30-plus percent take scenic routes and the consequences aren’t pretty: 50 percent of those seeking to return to mainstream jobs fail to find them and those taking an off-ramp lose 18 percent of their earnings power,” Hewlett wrote.

Presumably, these off-ramps are an attempt to raise children or manage other family responsibilities, with the goal of returning to the workplace. But as statistics show [PDF], there is often no workplace to return to. And for those who manage to return to their previous employer, many suffer what’s been called the mommy penalty. It is assumed their head is no longer in the game and they no longer care about their career as much as they did pre-child.

According to a new survey by the SFN Group, over half of working moms aren’t satisfied with their careers. Fifty-six percent of the 600 working mothers surveyed said they are not satisfied with their career and 62 percent said work/life balance is the most crucial aspect to their career happiness. The problem is that work/life balance is difficult to attain, so it comes as no surprise that 70 percent of the survey respondents report not having a flexible work arrangement.

Yet so many continue moving forward, hoping to successfully balance an exceptional career and a healthy family. Can ambition and motherhood go hand-in-hand; will one always suffer as the result of the other? Essentially it comes down to the one question that has been haunting working mothers since day one: Is it possible to have it all?

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