At 65, I Still Want to Have It All...

Why work/life balance isn’t just for young people Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose July 2012 Atlantic magazine piece, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,  ricocheted around social media, just wrote a buzzy New York Times piece (A Toxic Work World) on how innovation around work and caregiving would be good for women, men and business. Taking a page from her new book, Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, she wrote: “The problem is with the workplace, or more precisely, with a workplace designed for the Mad Men  era, for Leave It to Beaver families in which one partner does all the work of earning an income and the other partner does all the work of turning that income into care — the care that is indispensable for our children, our sick and disabled, our elderly.” Work/Life Balance for All Ages That divide between working and caring Slaughter highlights is, I believe, plaguing the way employers approach the need for work/life balance for people at all life stages. According to our latest research at Encore.org, people at the tail end of the career path need work/life balance, too. Like younger families, they also need to balance caregiving with work or volunteering outside of the family. But in this case, the caregiving is about elder care and a commitment to grandchildren. When the places they want to work, however, are only keen to hire and keep people who can work full-time, year-round, they turn away an incredibly valuable resource. My Work/Life Needs at 65 What a difference a little more creativity in how we fashion work could make. Case in point: I’m a white 65-year-old man and a living example of the need to balance work and family. A few years ago,...

Grief in The Workplace

When employees view death differently As an employee, what happens when we experience a personal loss, yet life necessitates us to go to work everyday even when we are still in shock, need to take care of personal affairs and are not emotionally stable? And to complicate the situation even further, what happens when your co-workers and management team view death differently than you do? As grievers and employers unite on the subject of grief entering the workplace, an ultimate tug-of-war occurs: addressing the grievers needs while the employer ultimately struggles to create a fair environment for all employees and maintain business as usual for clients. As employees we are drawn together in the workplace by our career choice, talents and work ethic. For the most part, our family allegiances, ethnic and religious beliefs are generally left in the parking lot or at the front door. Nevertheless, when a family death occurs, these beliefs permeate the workplace as the employee begins the healing process and the co-workers try to provide comfort. An entirely different scenario arises when the death is that of an employee – the reaction of co-workers, management team and Human Resources personnel are confronted emotionally in an environment that is all too often ill-prepared. The notion of creating compassionate workplaces that support loss of life goes well beyond companies’ bereavement leave policies, which typically include providing personal time off and supporting an employee returning to work after a loss. A compassionate workplace must also take into account 1) an employee’s unique way of grieving; 2) his/her religious/cultural affiliation; and 3) the nature of the relationship with the deceased. Recently a company asked me to provide support to employees who experienced a sudden loss of a co-worker. Apparently,...