Hi Annie,

I have reason to believe I will be losing my job in the next 30 to 60 days. We are currently being acquired and the acquiring company will not keep me on due to a C felony I plead to at the age of 17. I’ve been here since inception as a V. P. of the company. I was employed by the original founding partners at a different company from 93′ to 98′ at which time they approached me to help them start this company. We sold a few years ago and that company kept me on; however the rumor is not this time. I have been contemplating going in to the President and offering my resignation contingent on a suitable severance package. My question is, should I do this or not. I’ve heard this is very difficult for the president and my continued employment is being discussed and not given up on without a fight. I’m not sure how to proceed or what type of package to ask for giving these circumstances. Please help!!!

Best regards,

Walking the tight rope.

Managers must find a way to apply the flexibility equally — shouldn’t matter that you want to take off Tuesday-Thursday mornings to take an underwater basketweaving course at at the local community college, or because your kid has speech therapy, as long as appropriate measure have been taken to make up the work and deal with meetings that may conflict.

And Pam, from Wayland, MA — check your parental high horse at the gate. Just as many parents abuse flexible time as singles.

1] Companies have a hang over from the industrial era, not turning when your ’shift’ starts brands you guilty, whatever the reason may be

2] Companies and managers claim to be flexible — but feel they should not be too free, as it compromises ‘discipline’ – My question is: are they hiring adults or children who need policing?

3] Too many people judge of face time in the office in addition to results delivered — unless this changes, the debate will continue.

People need time for themselves and their families, till such time we have a humane society.

So the mind shift is to get work done in real and measurable quantities, and for those who want to ’show’ a full and hard at work office to their superiors, your numbers are going to decline rapidly.

Urban life in any part of the world today requires flexibility – as the traditional boundaries of work and home are blurred, and a happy continuum creates balance and most importantly, the self belief that we can get everything done!

I have a 1-year-old at home, and yes, I have had to take time off to take care of her when she’s sick, take her to doctor’s appointments, etc. However, I am very sensitive to the fact that my problems shouldn’t become everyone else’s problems, and I make up the time by working from home when I need to, not taking long lunch breaks to make sure I make deadlines, etc. I work 8-hour days (I’d say most people here work 9-10 hour days), but I make the most of my hours in the office.

I’ve found this to be true with all the parents I work with — we’re just used to multi-tasking and getting things done, no matter whether it’s from the office or home.

So who are the slackers in my office? The single people who have never had much responsibility or had to think about how their actions impact others. They’re the ones who are continually abusing the flexibility options that my office provides and are constantly missing deadlines and asking others to pick up their work.

Sure, it’s easy to point the finger at parents when they need more flexibility, but if you were to examine actual productivity, I’d bet that parents are by and large the better workers out there.

I’d recommend actually taking the alternative approach to the blame game. “is it fair to the organization and the team to give someone time off because their baby, … as opposed to giving a single person time off because s/he had a long night …?
Regardless of the details involved, I think you can’t look at each case individually. Better to cover all the bases with a simple rule. The person needed some time off, don’t be nosy. These details really don’t matter. Getting into details like “They had a long night with a friend,” and “They had a long night with their kid” shouldn’t even be discussed. You should instruct all of your employees to say nothing more than “I’m calling in a sick day” and nothing more. If you want to say, “Is it anything we can help with from here?” is more than enough to show you care, if you really in fact do care. Otherwise, stay out of their business. A lot of companies want to be like families, and that’s fine, but even some families are entitled to their secrets from the Uncles, Aunts and Grandfathers. Let it go, it’ll make your heart a lot lighter and give you and your employees the freedom to feel more supported and pressured by guilt over something as simple a mental day which they may in fact need (and is none of your business if they do) to something as complex as their entire family down with a fever, or they want to be there for their husband or kid at the doctor.

Treat everyone equally in terms of reasons for time off. Keep it simple. Keep it consistent. If the time off is excessive, then do as Annie recommends, talk to them about it, asking if there is anything the company community can do to help, and how they intend to make up the time. Personally I think we would all be better off to think of the vacation time we bargain for (if you’re lucky enough to get to bargain for it) as the accepted minimum, not the maximum one can take if they’re doing their jobs. Time off is time off, if someone needs it, great. If someone needs it too often, then I’ll address it. If I have to, I’ll hire the people I need to do to the job, pick up the slack, whatever. It’s not like my people don’t need to have time to learn new things and if we end up with extra people and the bandwidth to improve my workforce, so much the better. The profit will come.

* Air Force Jack is absolutely right. Face time is irrelevant if you make the effort as a team to connect to your employees using email or whatever method of communication, telephone, etc. that makes the team most productive. Don’t put so much stock in face to face meetings folks. You may think you get more results out of them, but half the time you could distill the entire experience to a well written email discussion, or use a company intranet to collaborate. Believe in teleworking. It really does work. This doesn’t mean you won’t have meetings or face time. Just have the right kind of face time and the right kind of meetings where everyone is actually needed and useful, not so someone’s ego is stroked or you got that feel-good feeling that ’someone got the message’.

As for Russel and the Lance the Nurse, you two seriously need to chill out and realize a few things. * It’s the responsibility of your organizations to make sure you have enough coverage, regardless of what goes on in people’s lives. For example: US businesses tend to have a tremendously out of date mindset about what productivity actually is, and how to get more of it, and this expectation that a ‘lean and mean’ workforce is actually better for everyone. It’s not. When the company doesn’t have the ability to support the community you’ve gathered around you to accomplish your goals, rather than ‘maximizing profit’ they should be concentrating on protecting their resources, because without resources as you’ve been so concerned about — there is no profit at all. None. You end up losing people to burnout, you end up terrified that bills can’t be paid (on both sides, the worker and the company) and you end up having to endlessly train yet more people to replace those you’ve lost. Your workplace community is a living, breathing organism. It’s your team. Even the folks who you might believe shouldn’t be doing X job because of the remote possibility they might make a choice to have children.

You simple have to accept that people other than you make decisions to suit them, not to suit you. They are not the ones being arrogant. Their priorities are their own, not you and yours. The best thing you can do to get people to work together is support them. They in turn will give back, in one way or another. You just have to realize how they are giving back, and not presume they’ll give back in the way you expect. Have some patience, have some compassion, have some understanding. The profit will come, don’t worry. Nobody’s asking you to give away the store here. Losen up on the bat a bit.

I also found this to be the case at my prior job, where people with children, or any kind of family issues, wre cut slack to deal with them. My solution – the policies for time off should be the same for those with or without families. End of story.

it should be an all or none policy, as a DINK, I don’t have “little ones” in the traditional sense. However, I do have two cats that mean the world to my wife and I, as well as parents that occasionally have needs. An employer shouldn’t decided if these are more or less important than children.

At the end of the day, I prefer working with people who make being a parent transparent to me as a co-worker. That means, I don’t want to hear about Joey getting sick at 2 AM. I don’t want to be forced to hold your baby when you feel it necessary to bring it into the office. And, after months working together, if the star performer let’s it out that he/she has kids, I’ll have even more respect for them, not because they kept it quite, but because they are able to manage a good work / home balance without brining the drama into the office.