How to Make Better Use of Reduced Hours to Retain Knowledge Workers: Personal, Organizational, and S

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How to Make Better Use of Reduced Hours to Retain
Knowledge WorkersPersonal, Organizational, and
Societal Strategies

• Rosalind Chait Barnett, Ph.D.
• Womens Studies Research Center
• Brandeis University

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Salutary Environment
The need for creating a more salutary environment
for reduced-hours knowledge workers is made more
urgent by current demographics.
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Work-Family Findings

• Working men today experience as much work-family
  conflict as do women (Bond, Galinsky Swanberg,
  1998).
  
• Married employed men are doing roughly 45 of the
  household tasks (Barnett Shen, 1997 Bond et
  al., 1998).

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Work-Family Findings

• 3. Young men are for the first time reporting
  that family is at least as important to them as
  work (Radcliffe Public Policy Center, 2000).
  
• 4. Professionally trained women and men want to
  be both challenged at work and engaged at home
  (Facing the Grail, 1999).

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Work-Family Findings

• 5. Increasing percentages of young men and women
  18 years of age and older are endorsing the idea
  that it is preferable for both partners in a
  marriage to share the economic and childrearing
  duties (Moen, 1999 Twenge, 1997).

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Highly Educated Workers
43.8
33.8
Men
Women
Employed 50 hours/week
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Preference to Curtail Work Hours
80
63
Working 50 hours/week
Working 60 hours/week
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How have organizations responded to these new
demands?
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Organizational Consequences
What are the organizational consequences of
dissatisfaction over long work hours?
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Maximize
How can we maximize the success of reduced-hours
options?
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Difficulty of Tradeoffs
Difficulty of tradeoffs is the distress
experienced due to the discrepancy between the
professional activities employees would like to
perform and their current work arrangement.
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Reduced-Hours Job-Role Quality
The balance between the rewards and the concerns
employees experience in their current job.
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Schedule Fit

• The degree to which employees and their
  partners work arrangements (the number and
  distribution of work hours) meet their own needs
  and those of their family.

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Sample Alternative Careers in Medicine
N 141
Study funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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Relationships between Difficulty of Tradeoffs
and Three QOL Indices
N 141. p Barnett Gareis
(2000), Work O
ccupations.
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Relationships between Reduced-Hours Job-Role
Quality and Four QOL Indices
N 141. p Barnett Gareis (2000),
Psychology of Women Quarterly.

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Relationships between Schedule Fitand Four QOL
Indices
N 141. p 18
Summary
Reduced-hours work schedules predict higher
quality of life when employees perceive

• schedule fit as better,
• professional tradeoffs as easier, and
• reduced-hours job-role quality as higher.

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Organizational Constraints
What constraints do organizations experience in
creating successful alternative career paths?