Mumsnet members get a 10% discount from Boden (including free returns and free delivery), The White Company, sweaty Betty, Luxury Family Hotels, JoJo Maman Bebe, Siblu, Blooming Marvellous, GLTC, Bump to 3 (the official online shop for Grobags) and more. Click here for more info Join mumsnet here.
From
MEDIA: Squiffy placed on Thu 21-Feb-08 09:27:13
Perceptions regarding flexible working? Please can you help with my academic research?
Please note that this is not a journalism request - I am a common & garden mumsnet regular and I am posting here at the request of the Mumsnet team. So no piccies in the paper for anyone....
I am doing a part-time Masters at the LSE and I am basing my academic research around flexible working and the negative impact it has on some people's perceptions of others who choose this route.....and I need help from people at senior levels in legal/financial/bankign firms in the City. The research is focusing solely on people at the higher end of the earnings scale (simply because much current research focuses at the lower earnings end, and I think the negative perceptions increase the higher you go up - especially as you approcah partnerhsip/director level)
My research synopsis is as follows:- "In the City (and in Banking, Legal & Financial Service firms in particular), there is a perception that high salaries at the senior level compensate for a culture whereby you ‘sell your soul’ to the organisation, work long hours and put career ahead of personal interests. Flexible working legislation has driven a truck through this, and some senior staff are now able to demand flexible working rights. Whilst this has well documented benefits to them personally in terms of work-life balance, I believe there are hidden drawbacks, arising from perceptions of injustice felt by some of their colleagues, who feel that the ‘old rules’ have been broken. My research will explore this issue"
The above covers a multitude of variables and I am trying to look at it not just in terms of mumsnetters who have had good or bad experiences themselves, but also from the viewpoint of the people who don't do flexi working who end up being stuck in the office covering all the urgent work because everyone else has gone to pick up their kids from Nursery. And I am also ideally trying to find people who work in HR or who manage people who do flexi working (especially to find out what their perceptions were before flexi working, and whether their perceptions changed when they experienced managing flexi workers). The driver behind my interest is that I am at a reasonably senior level in Banking myself and have seen many viewpoints from many people over the years - I would love to be able to research in depth the levels of what is academically termed to be 'perceived injustice' with relation to flexi working.
If any of you are able to share your views/experiences with me I would be immensely grateful. It will entail my sending you a set of open ended questions and possibly a short questionnaire. Then, depending upon my results and the sample group that I have, I may ask some people to chat face to face about their experiences (in a bar of their choice, obviously!). I will keep everyone's identities (including the names of the companies involved) confidential in the research that I submit. I can provide all my LSE credentials to anyone and I can guarantee that I will not publish this research outside of the LSE (only my research manager - Jackie Coyle-Shapiro - and two or three other members of her department will see the finished result). I can’t afford to pay people (but I will stand them some chardonnay in the aforementioned pubs). I am hoping that those of you with experience will be able to spare me some time for this.
If you can help, please cat me, or email me on whiffy33@hotmail.com Thanks.
Ooops I should explain that MNet Towers have requested I use this Media thread to rope in people, rather than a normal thread like 'Employment issues' - I was just trying to explain that this isn't a media request in any way (not trying to imply that MN were so fascinated by my academic world as to insist I post all of this )
Flexible working can damage women as more of them ask for it than men thus leading employers to think all women want is to work fewer hours. Many of women, including women like me with 5 children enjoy working full time and do not want to reduce our hours. In fact if you love your work and excel at it you might surprise surprise find it more fun than changing nappies. Every article I see on women these days suggests we all want to go home and bake cakes and mess around a few hours a day rather than that in fact a lot of us want to work very hard, love the adrenalin of even working all night at times and do not want to work flexibly.
There is no right to work flexibly in the UK, just to request it and most requests are lawfully turned down. That is another issue. Also look at yesterday's papers I think it was - Government saying if we extend flexible working to other groups or to those with older children,aged relatives, sick cats etc then those who may be need it most (new fathers and mothers) will see their need diluted. I would rather it were abolished entirely but if we have it then to make it fairer let us extend it much more broadly so it's not just women who work full time who get damaged by it and blamed for it.
Squiffy I'd love to help you, lots of experience working with senior people in organisations working flexibly, but none in those sectors I'm afraid, which I tend to steer clear of!
Best of luck with it though, sounds very interesting!
I will see whether I can get a partner I know who works flexibly to be involved. Presume you're happy for me to cut and paste your message into an email?
squiff, I'm fairly in your catchment SAVE THAT my flexible working represents how these things were dealt with before the legal rights (such as they are, as Xenia points out) came in. As such, it is rather instructive, if that is within your scope.
PS: "scope" isn't quite the word I'm looking for - I am trying to recall the word that FSA (etc.) discussion papers use for the appendix telling you the formula for the discussion ("terms of reference" would do, but I think there's another word, and it's that other word I've wasted 10 minutes trying to get at - if you know what I mean please put me out of my misery and tell me what it is!)
Xenia - your final comment actually hits the nail on the head in terms of my own view - you either give it to all or to no-one, and until you iron out that inconsistency you are going to struggle to overcome people's prejudice... but I am hoping to see such views challenged by others...
And I also get very frustrated with the nappies assumption too, but it is not much different from what people think about the part-time chairmen - everyone assumes they are off to play golf (even more insulting IMO)
If you want large doses of not necessarily wholly digested but usually quite thought-provoking theory, based on actually very solid experience, of how this stuff gets looked at in principle (ie, not personal stories - more the management side) from the human-capital side, you could do worse than have a chat with dh too. He is quite fun on these subjects, though must be taken throughout with salt.
grr - bink you have just forced me to look through the great stack of FSA papers on my desk and they all refer to "scope" - now I am being driven mad as well!
My organisation's flexible working policy is open to everyone. We do have men working reduced hours as well as women who don't have young children. The majority are still working mums however. Agree this should be open to all by law, not just down to who you work for. I don't fit in to the sectors you are interested in so apologise for not being able to support your research.
I think if you work full time and there are slackers off all the time leaving early even if it's not officially flexible working yes you do end up doing stuff they should do but actually the benefits of staying behind and taking that new business call or networking with others (or even the benefit of avoiding bath time with 3 under 5s from time to time ) outweigh the disadvantage. The long term career satisfaction is higher. Of course some parents and others do work flexibly and the work well.
Some jobs are not really that cut out for flexible working - you couldn't see a surgeon say right I've done my 4 hours I'm going to leave the operating table now or if you're working on an all night deal and no one leaves the room until things are signed flexible working isn't possible either so it does depend on the work done.
The word I'm thinking of is sort of "parameters", and sort of "contours" - it may begin "con-" something. (If only you knew how much of my life is spent hunting down the perfect word.)
Bink - are you thinking of the compatability statement? Given that the purpose of this is to explain why the proposed course of action achieves the overall objective it might fit your potential contribution to squiffy's research.
"I think if you work full time and there are slackers off all the time leaving early even if it's not officially flexible working yes you do end up doing stuff they should do"
That depends.
I try to leave early (unofficial flexible working - leave before 5.30pm if i can) if I can do (but obviously meetings etc take precedence) but work harder than many colleagues who stay longer.
Surely the proof is in the performance of the individual not their individual arrangements?
As there are a lot of lawyers on this thread can I just say that, to my mind, its the perfect profession for flexible working PROVIDED THAT you can be "flexible with your flexibility" ie, your flexible working arrangments are not set in stone and you can adapt to client's needs.
It isn't. It depends what you do. If you've been in court all day you get back at 5 and then do a few hours' work. Or you're working on Norther Rock and you're awake for 48 hours doing the deal. But obviously it depends what bit of work you do I suppose.
I think flexibility in most jobs comes with age and seniority. I had 3 babies by the time I was 26 and I was working full time. I had little money and no power and not much status. I didn't ask for or want flexible working but when I had the twins in my mid 30s I could be as flexible as I liked... even taking business calls within 24 hours (my choice). Gives you flexibility to get back to work sooner than if you have an employer forcing you to stay away... let us be fair = some want flexibility to work longer hours.....
As I work in the public sector you'd not be interested in my opinions (for your research anyway) but flexible working is very widespread in my organisation, at all levels (and taekn up by both men and women). Maybe because it is not limited to those with dependant children, but a right to request for all - in fact as a manager I have to be able to show how the request would harm productivity in order to turn in down (conversely the requestor has to show that they have thought through how it would work for the organisation). I wonder whether you have to get a certain level of uptake befre it starts to be considered as a normal option? The most common option is compressed hours, so we're not talking slacking off here.
Hermione, thank you for helping ... I think I probably dreamt a word which doesn't exist - though again it may have been something as Dull And Obvious as "remit".
Squiff, sorry, forgot. Will email now. (Did you see the report today about down-skilling? I thought of you - specifically because it was a report which actually seemed to manage to say something distinct about what is as yet a very unformed kind of social development.)
It would be interesting to chart women's attitude to work depending on income and also qualifications too. If as I said on the other page some women earn say 40 x the minium wage they may accept a deal with they are on effective 24/7 call to those they serve for work purpose. I feel like that. Love the work and happy with the deal and you balance your children and work throughout 24 hour periods not just a narrow short traditional 9 - 5 working day. In other words it's the 6/7 day working week option for those in those types of "extreme jobs" which are hugely rewarding both intellectually and financially. When work and its adrenalin, the money you make from it and the lifestyle it enables you to buy make flexible working sound like some sort of loser's joke. It also enables you to buy power in terms of your own hours because you're so valuable to your employer anyway they're not likely to sack you for going to a school carol service and you're grown up enough about your decisions to know you won't leave a major operation or deal to attend the carol service because you're professional and you balance your own life. Perhaps we need a rise of the women who love work and don't want shorter hours.
I suppose women like that are quite happy so they don't have time or need to moan about working hours so never get any publicity although al ot of studies have been done showing a lot of British workers actually don't want shorter hours and happily escape to the office between Christmas and NY to have a bit of a break from demanding chidlren.
From
MEDIA: Squiffy placed on Thu 21-Feb-08 09:27:13
) 
