Interview with Susan Seitel: A Historical Perspective On Work-Family
[Susan Seitel is WFC Resources president and founder. One of the nation's leading pioneers in the field, she has been helping companies, organizations and governments transform their culture since 1984.]
Casey: When did you first become involved with the work-family or work-life field? At that time, what was the work-family landscape? How about the predominant work-family issues?
Seitel: I started back in 1990 tracking work-life on paper every month for our Work-Life Newsbrief. We’ve saved online every article I’ve ever written, so to get ready for this interview, I went back into our archives to check out a little history. The review reminded me that in the beginning, there was only one work-family issue then, and that was child care. The country was in shock that so many women were going to work, and people were just starting to wake up to what that meant: Mothers were working, and there was no one home to care for the kids. And if workplaces wanted mothers to be focused workers, they began to see they’d better do something about it. In those early days, about 100 companies opened day-care centers, and every time one opened, we wrote about it.
I’d say it was the mid- to late 1980s when companies started thinking about providing for their workers who had other family issues. There was a consortium in 1989 in New York that included HBO, Colgate, Con Edison, Time, and Ernst & Young—they started an emergency backup care service for employees. That year, IBM also started the Fund for Dependent Care Initiatives, which included elder care (IBM has always been a leader in this field, and still is.) Hallmark started a family resource center in 1989 and even began to talk about flexible hours, but that was very rare.
Another issue that just began to be important in those early days was health care. The average cost of health care in 1990 was $3,217 per employee. It sounds pretty good to us now, but companies were horrified; costs had gone up 45% in just 2 years.
Casey: What direction do you see that the work-life field has taken as it has evolved?
Seitel: Looking back, there’s no doubt that for the first few years, the focus was all on women. It wasn’t until the mid-90s that the evolution occurred and we started writing about men and fathering. By the late 90s, we started to see articles on alternative work arrangements, telecommuting—and even virtual offices—and news about expatriates and the global workplace, which is now a huge issue.
Merck was another big leader in work-life. In 1989, we got the news that they were actually looking at employees’ workloads. They assigned teams of employees to analyze, dissect, and reorganize work and come up with solutions to give people a sense of control over their workloads and schedules.
Casey: Do you know what precipitated these efforts?
Seitel: Workers’ complaints that they had too much work to do.
I was interested in who first the used the word “engagement” in terms of a workplace concern. We first wrote about it in 2000; Ray Baumruk from Hewitt Associates was out in front on this issue. He did some studies and found that the top performing 25% of organizations showed a significantly stronger tendency to engage employees. I think he was the first to use that word. He found that leading companies gave employees more control over their time and additional training to manage what they had to do.
So it went like this: We moved from a focus on women to include men, then to flexibility, then to new ways to work. That was the path. Interestingly, the direction has always seemed to follow the economy. During boom times, the news is all about recruiting and retaining skilled workers. In recessions, like now, we hear about downsizing, layoffs and how to avoid them, what to do with survivors, how to keep them engaged, and how to cut the costs of benefits. It’s certainly economically driven.
Speaking of the evolution of work-life, we should mention that since the late 1980s, the field itself has been evolving, growing, spreading, and becoming more integrated with other areas of employee relations. As someone whose constituency is made up of people who are interested in work-life, I can tell you they’re there, but they’re getting harder to find! They’re in diversity, technology, even facilities management, and with names like talent or human capital management, culture and inclusion, people services…on and on. So that seems like the last step in the progression: Work-life is being integrated into other areas of the company...
... Casey: What, in your opinion, have been the greatest accomplishments?
Seitel: I’ve always felt we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Working Mother Media. Their Best Companies competition has tapped that deep desire to compete and has really made a difference in the lives of thousands of people.
In terms of studies, I have to mention the 1996 Ford Foundation study by Lotte Bailyn, Barbara Miller, and others that revealed a payoff for sitting down as a team and asking the question, “How can we make your lives more livable and still get the job done?” That study gave birth to work redesign—the ability to look at your tasks through a work-life lens and figure out how to do them in a way that also allows you to live your life.
Another important study was the 2005 study by WFD Consulting for Corporate Voices for Working Families. They found that in every company in the study, flexibility was a driver of financial performance and productivity. That was groundbreaking; it linked flexibility to increased revenue, positive impacts on cycle time, client services, talent management, and savings of millions of dollars by preventing turnover.
There have been tremendous accomplishments by individual employers as well. Some organizations have demonstrated that you can treat people as valuable assets and, by doing so, impact performance. Marquette Electronics, for instance, treated their “concrete walkers” and “carpet walkers” the same back in the 1990s, when that wasn’t done by many companies. Sun Microsystems is reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% with a full range of steps, including having more than half their workforce working from home. Patagonia was one of the first companies with a child-care center, just because it was the right thing to do for its employees. These companies have been out in front, doing the right thing and saving money because of it...
Read entire article at Sloan Work and Family Research Network
Casey: When did you first become involved with the work-family or work-life field? At that time, what was the work-family landscape? How about the predominant work-family issues?
Seitel: I started back in 1990 tracking work-life on paper every month for our Work-Life Newsbrief. We’ve saved online every article I’ve ever written, so to get ready for this interview, I went back into our archives to check out a little history. The review reminded me that in the beginning, there was only one work-family issue then, and that was child care. The country was in shock that so many women were going to work, and people were just starting to wake up to what that meant: Mothers were working, and there was no one home to care for the kids. And if workplaces wanted mothers to be focused workers, they began to see they’d better do something about it. In those early days, about 100 companies opened day-care centers, and every time one opened, we wrote about it.
I’d say it was the mid- to late 1980s when companies started thinking about providing for their workers who had other family issues. There was a consortium in 1989 in New York that included HBO, Colgate, Con Edison, Time, and Ernst & Young—they started an emergency backup care service for employees. That year, IBM also started the Fund for Dependent Care Initiatives, which included elder care (IBM has always been a leader in this field, and still is.) Hallmark started a family resource center in 1989 and even began to talk about flexible hours, but that was very rare.
Another issue that just began to be important in those early days was health care. The average cost of health care in 1990 was $3,217 per employee. It sounds pretty good to us now, but companies were horrified; costs had gone up 45% in just 2 years.
Casey: What direction do you see that the work-life field has taken as it has evolved?
Seitel: Looking back, there’s no doubt that for the first few years, the focus was all on women. It wasn’t until the mid-90s that the evolution occurred and we started writing about men and fathering. By the late 90s, we started to see articles on alternative work arrangements, telecommuting—and even virtual offices—and news about expatriates and the global workplace, which is now a huge issue.
Merck was another big leader in work-life. In 1989, we got the news that they were actually looking at employees’ workloads. They assigned teams of employees to analyze, dissect, and reorganize work and come up with solutions to give people a sense of control over their workloads and schedules.
Casey: Do you know what precipitated these efforts?
Seitel: Workers’ complaints that they had too much work to do.
I was interested in who first the used the word “engagement” in terms of a workplace concern. We first wrote about it in 2000; Ray Baumruk from Hewitt Associates was out in front on this issue. He did some studies and found that the top performing 25% of organizations showed a significantly stronger tendency to engage employees. I think he was the first to use that word. He found that leading companies gave employees more control over their time and additional training to manage what they had to do.
So it went like this: We moved from a focus on women to include men, then to flexibility, then to new ways to work. That was the path. Interestingly, the direction has always seemed to follow the economy. During boom times, the news is all about recruiting and retaining skilled workers. In recessions, like now, we hear about downsizing, layoffs and how to avoid them, what to do with survivors, how to keep them engaged, and how to cut the costs of benefits. It’s certainly economically driven.
Speaking of the evolution of work-life, we should mention that since the late 1980s, the field itself has been evolving, growing, spreading, and becoming more integrated with other areas of employee relations. As someone whose constituency is made up of people who are interested in work-life, I can tell you they’re there, but they’re getting harder to find! They’re in diversity, technology, even facilities management, and with names like talent or human capital management, culture and inclusion, people services…on and on. So that seems like the last step in the progression: Work-life is being integrated into other areas of the company...
... Casey: What, in your opinion, have been the greatest accomplishments?
Seitel: I’ve always felt we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Working Mother Media. Their Best Companies competition has tapped that deep desire to compete and has really made a difference in the lives of thousands of people.
In terms of studies, I have to mention the 1996 Ford Foundation study by Lotte Bailyn, Barbara Miller, and others that revealed a payoff for sitting down as a team and asking the question, “How can we make your lives more livable and still get the job done?” That study gave birth to work redesign—the ability to look at your tasks through a work-life lens and figure out how to do them in a way that also allows you to live your life.
Another important study was the 2005 study by WFD Consulting for Corporate Voices for Working Families. They found that in every company in the study, flexibility was a driver of financial performance and productivity. That was groundbreaking; it linked flexibility to increased revenue, positive impacts on cycle time, client services, talent management, and savings of millions of dollars by preventing turnover.
There have been tremendous accomplishments by individual employers as well. Some organizations have demonstrated that you can treat people as valuable assets and, by doing so, impact performance. Marquette Electronics, for instance, treated their “concrete walkers” and “carpet walkers” the same back in the 1990s, when that wasn’t done by many companies. Sun Microsystems is reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% with a full range of steps, including having more than half their workforce working from home. Patagonia was one of the first companies with a child-care center, just because it was the right thing to do for its employees. These companies have been out in front, doing the right thing and saving money because of it...