Bridging the Work-Family Divide: What the Best U.S. Employers Are Doing to Help Working Families

…and Why We Also Need Public Policies to Support Families Raising the Next Generation of Americans

When I became a parent 11 years ago, I faced the same dilemmas as every new working mom in America. How could I nurture one—and then two—young children and a career at the same time? Should I quit work or scale back while they were young, and would I be able to find interesting work again if I did leave the job market or work part-time? What to do about child care? Preschool? And later afterschool?

At the same time as I was beginning my family, I started a new job at the French-American Foundation as Director of Policy Programs, promoting the exchange of best practices between France and the U.S. I was struck by the stark contrasts between French and American policy approaches to children, families, and work. French policies support families through universal health care, paid sick leave, generous parental leave policies, part-time work options for parents with young children, subsidized child care, and free, high-quality preschool for all kids starting at age three. As for the United States? We have none of these policies. In my work and at home, I found myself wondering why it is that American families are left on their own to struggle and fend for themselves.

Of course, some people think of France as a nanny state that overreaches into family life and pays for its generosity with high taxes, high unemployment, and rigid policy mandates that hamper employers. Many of these arguments can be debunked (and at the moment, the unemployment rate is actually lower in France than in the U.S.), but that would be the subject of another article. For now, let’s just point out that the contrast is in fact not just between the U.S. and France, but between the U.S. and the rest of the world. Out of 173 countries surveyed in a report by the Project on Global Working Families, only four don’t offer paid maternity leave. The U.S. is one of them. The others are Swaziland, Liberia and Papua New Guinea. 145 countries out of 173 offer paid sick days to employees; the U.S. does not. I think you get the picture. Somehow all these other countries, rich and poor alike, have figured out how to help families raise the next generation of citizens well without falling apart at the seams.

The good news is that, in the absence of public policies that help working families everywhere else, many American employers are—indeed they have to be—tremendously creative in response to the needs of today’s workforce, including the need for employees to meet responsibilities at work and at home. This is essential when four out of five American couples today have both adults working outside of the home, and when 45% of men and 39% of women say they experience some or a lot of work-family conflict. [See Times are Changing: Generation and Gender at Work and at Home, FWI, 2009.]

As project manager of Families and Work Institute’s When Work Works initiative on workplace flexibility for the past two years, and as a co-editor of the 2008 and 2009 Guide to Bold New Ideas for Making Work Work I had a front row view of this employer ingenuity among winners of the Alfred P. Sloan Awards for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility. These great organizations of all sizes and types across the U.S. are helping their employees manage their work and family lives by letting them work from home occasionally or work flexibly, work part-time, or take time off to be with a new baby or tend to an ailing parent. They are allowing employees to ease back into work after taking parental leave or phase into retirement gradually. They are harnessing new technologies and thinking out of the box about how, when and where to get work done in ways that work best for their employees—and for their organization.

Yes, these employers understand the business case for flexibility. They know from first-hand experience that having a flexible and effective workplace helps them attract and retain the best workers, boosts employee engagement and productivity, and improves the physical and mental health of their employees. It even reduces business expenses (think of the money saved on office space when some folks work at home) and increases profits by cultivating a committed staff that keeps customers satisfied.

Beyond the business case, many of these award-winning employers also say they believe it’s just “the right thing to do.” They see their employees as individuals who want to do well on their job and also want time to bond with their new babies and participate in the lives of their children, who want to be there when an aging parent falls ill or needs help getting to a doctor appointment. And they understand that even employees without pressing family obligations might want to reduce their hours or take some time off to train for a sports competition or volunteer in their community or take a short sabbatical.

Yet these employers remain exceptional. And despite all this great employer innovation, too many people in America today are still caught in a bind between their dual obligations at work and at home. Working a flexible schedule or working from home occasionally is still a luxury most workers don’t have. What’s more, studies by the National Partnership for Women & Families suggest that nearly half of all employees—and three fourths of low-wage earners—don’t have a single paid sick day and have to choose between going to work sick or staying home and seeing their pay docked or even risking their job. Many more—94 million working Americans—aren’t entitled to take a paid sick day to care for an ill child, even if the school says the child must stay home because she has a flu or fever. 40% of workers are still not eligible for unpaid family leave through the Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and two thirds of workers who need, but don’t take, family leave say it’s because they can‘t afford to take the time off unpaid.

Despite their best efforts, employers alone can’t solve the complex work-family puzzle for American families, just like they can’t fix the health care system alone. Employers can’t be expected to address on their own all the pressures that changing workforce trends and the rising number of dual-earner families, an aging population, increasing financial pressures, rising stress, and a 24/7 globalizing economy and new technologies place on businesses and on their employees and families.

We need to move beyond the old debates about whether the solutions lie in either employer initiative or in public policy. Innovative employer practices are necessary in today’s economy, but they aren’t sufficient: they can’t substitute for the public policies that other countries have and that we desperately need here. Paid sick days to care for oneself or for a sick family member. Paid family leave to care for a new baby or for a critically ill dependent. Affordable health insurance for everyone. Policy measures to support more flexibility at work.

As a parent, I sure do want these things so I can take care of my own family. But we need these basic rights for all our fellow citizens, and not just the ones who are lucky enough to work for an enlightened employer.

The U.S. leads the world in so many ways, but when it comes to providing the policies we need to help working families raise the next generation of Americans, we have a lot of catching up to do. We can do it. Americans are competitive and we don’t like being left behind. We’re an innovative, pragmatic and forward-thinking people. We have a strong sense of decency and fair-mindedness and rock-solid family values. Besides, in our hearts we know: it’s just the right thing to do.

Shanny Peer was the Director of Policy Programs at the French-American Foundation from 2000 to 2007 and Project Manager of the national When Work Works initiative at Families and Work Institute for two years through August 2009. In September 2009, she became the Director of the French House at Columbia University.