FINDING A JOB

by ResumeEdge.com

You know exactly what kind of career you want. Your resume is perfect. You've forced your friends to spend hours asking you practice interview questions. Everything is in order - except you don't know how to go about finding the job openings.

The first step is to shift your networking skills into high gear. Start asking friends and family members to ask their co-workers, friends, hairdressers, optometrists, accountants, and other acquaintances if they've either heard of any available, relevant job openings, or if they know of someone to whom you ought to talk.

Another good way to make connections is to contact your college alumni office or career services center to see if either has a list of alumni who have volunteered to serve as mentors and contacts to young jobseekers.

Also, if you've held internships in the past, get in touch with your employers and co-workers from those experiences and ask if they can point you in the right direction.

While there's truth to the adage that the best jobs are never advertised, that doesn't mean you can't find a good job outside the networking realm:

* Check out Internet job listings.
* Go to trade websites for the career field in which you're interested. Often, occupations have professional associations with websites that include job listings. If you don't know the name of the association or trade organization that unifies your potential colleagues, do a search or ask someone in the field. Those websites are also an excellent way to cull contact names.
* Go to job fairs. You can usually find advertisements for job fairs in your local newspaper.
* Visit the websites of companies for which you would like to work. See if they have any job listings posted within the site.
* If you're interested in working for a medium- or large-sized company, call the human resources departments of potential employers and ask if they have any job openings.
* Read the classified section of the newspaper. If you want to relocate, find out what newspapers serve the places you'd like to live and then browse those papers' classified sections on the web.

The most important thing to remember is that the job search is often like a roller coaster ride. You might find some great opportunities, only to find that positions have been filled. And, in turn, you might investigate something you don't think you're interested in, only to strike a gold mine. The important thing is to keep you head up, and keep pushing forward. As long as you're persistent and patient, you will either find a good job, or you'll find a job that will serve as a transitional job that will open doors for you.

Determining Your Skills

by ResumeEdge.com -

Job listings rarely read, "Wanted: Philosophy majors specializing in Socrates," or "Calling all English majors for top jobs at high-profile firm," or "Were you a history major? Earn six-figures for performing intellectually fulfilling work."

If you are a liberal arts major, targeting potential employers and marketing yourself may seem a monumental, if not impossible, task. You should have majored in electrical engineering, right?

Wrong. Sure, your technically-trained friends generally don't have much trouble determining which employers to target and how to showcase their tangible skill sets. But, with a savvy approach to getting a job, you are just as likely as a computer science major to find meaningful work. And, best of all, your liberal arts degree generally isn't limiting: You have the freedom to do nearly anything they want.

The first step is not to think of yourself in terms of your specific degree. Companies often do not hire students because of their specific degrees - instead they use job applicants' skills as criteria for filling positions. So, instead of asking, "What are good jobs for Romance Languages majors?" ask, "What are my passions and strengths? What skills do I have? What do I want to be doing in my job?"

The first step in responding to these questions is to honestly address what you love to do. What fascinates you? What do you find compelling and fulfilling? Once you've answered these questions, address what skills you can bring to the work place.

Your first response may be that after four years of college, your skills amount to doing close readings of King Lear and analyzing the socioeconomic implications of the Kennedy administration. However, according to Phyllis R. Stein, a career coach in the Boston area, liberal arts majors tend to have a lot of skills they don't even know they have. "It's not just that you took a Shakespeare class," Stein says. Instead, she explains, in that Shakespeare class you honed your researching skills, you learned to make coherent presentations, and you refined your ability to organize your thoughts in writing.

Stein adds that liberal arts majors generally have excellent administrative and management skills. They write well, they can think critically, they can analyze problems, and they can communicate well with co-workers. Liberal arts majors can work simultaneously with big picture concepts, and with the small details that fit into these large visions. They are also, she says, adept at adapting to the vocabulary of different occupational fields. For example, the jargon of marketing, law, and accounting is such that different words in each field often have similar definitions. Liberal arts majors are good at achieving fluency in many different occupational languages, simply by virtue of spending their undergraduate careers using terminology specific to English, philosophy, and history. This versatility is helpful to liberal arts majors as they tailor their resumes and job applications to prospective employers.

Also, when you assess your skills, don't forget the skills you gained from doing volunteer and extra-curricular work.

Self Assessment

by ResumeEdge.com - The Net's Premier Resume Writing and Editing Service

To many recent college graduates, the most difficult part of finding a job does not involve formatting resumes, networking, and answering interview questions with panache. Instead, these tasks sound like a cakewalk compared to the seemingly monstrous exercise of figuring out what jobs to apply for in the first place.

However, according to Phyllis R. Stein, a Boston-area career coach, the process of figuring out the best career for you need not be overwhelming or mystical. "Trying to figure out where you're going is a very logical process," Stein says, likening it to following a cake recipe or methodically cleaning a car engine.

A common mistake Stein says she has noted in her clients is a tendency to assess the job market; pinpoint where the plentiful, lucrative jobs are; and then, without a second thought, direct their energies toward entering that field. The problem with that approach, however, is that a career in the hottest, trendiest field might be a terrible match for the jobseeker, and the choice to blindly enter a particular field can lead to unhappiness and a jarring career change later on.

Instead, Stein encourages her clients to devote themselves to figuring out their occupational callings before they even think about the job market. By divorcing the process of self-assessment from the reality of landing a job, Stein says her clients are better able to choose satisfying careers.

Stein's Recipe for Self-Assessment:

1. Accept that the self-assessment process is not instantaneous. Rather, Stein says one year is the average period her clients need to identify careers that match their personalities and desires. It's important not to get frustrated and to be patient! During the period of self-assessment, Stein says her clients often hold jobs that they don't want in the long-term so they can make money and meet their basic needs while they make important discoveries about what they ultimately want to do. Also, Stein warns he clients not to feel discouraged or overwhelmed by their peers who went straight from college to law school or medical school and who seem to have been born knowing they wanted to do with their lives. At any given point, Stein says the a quarter to a third of her clients are doctors and lawyers.

2. Decide what you want out of your job. Ask yourself what it is about a job that will make you excited to go to work every day. What do you want to get out of your work? Some answers might include prestige, power, control, money, a sense that you're helping others, and creative stimulation. Be sure to be honest with yourself instead of answering in terms of what you think you should say.

3. Make a list of the skills you will bring to your job. Think of everything you have to offer an employer. Are you a good writer? Can you make sound financial models? Do you have a good eye for design? Are you well-organized?

4. Make a list of skills you want gain from your job. What have you always wanted to learn how to do? Do you want a job that will hone your number-crunching skills? A job that will perfect your presentation and speaking skills? A job that will push you to learn a foreign a language?

5. Involve your friends and family in your brainstorming and list making. Share your lists with those close to you, and ask for feedback. The people around you who've heard you complain about your job and who've watched you do things you enjoy will likely have valuable insight into what you want out of a job, what skills you have, and what skills you want to gain.

6. Make a list of careers that match your discoveries thus far. Again, enlist your friends and family. Ask them what careers they think of when you mention your new-found criteria. Read job descriptions and see if you find occupations that either match your needs or that spur your thoughts about what careers you might like.

7. Read articles and books about the careers in which you're most interested. Through this process, you will eliminate some of the careers you thought were contenders. You will also gain a sense of why the remaining ones appeal to you. Usually, at this point, you would have three or four possible careers in mind. It is not a problem, Stein says, if those careers seem dissimilar or unrelated.

8. Conduct informational interviews . Use these meetings with seasoned professionals as an opportunity to further explore what it's like to work in a particular field.

9. Shadow others who have the kinds of jobs you think you might want. Stein says her clients often learn things about the day-to-day experience of certain careers that that they could not have learned anywhere but on the job. For example, Stein says she once had a client who thought she wanted to work in flower shop. However, after shadowing a local florist, the client crossed that job off her list because she didn't like that she would have to stand on cement floors all day and that the air temperature had to be uncomfortably chilly so that the flowers wouldn't wilt. Often, after shadowing a few different people in different careers, one career will rise to the surface as the best match.

10. Intern in the career field you think you've chosen. Through an internship, you will solidify your plans, and you will probably develop specific areas of interest within your career choice. Internships are also a great way to make contacts and meet potential employers.

Diversity

Few Organizations Define Diversity

While organizations tend to believe that diversity in the workplace is important, only 30% have an agreed definition of 'diversity', according to a recent Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) report.

The 2007 State of Workplace Diversity Management Report is based on a year-long study on the status of diversity in the workplace conducted in partnership with the American Institute for Managing Diversity Inc. The survey included 993 human resource professionals and 330 diversity practitioners from a range of organizations, including publicly and privately owned companies, non-profits, and the education sector:

While the report states that there is evidence of more awareness of diversity in a general sense, managing diversity continues to be a challenge. Specifically, among other hurdles to diversity management, survey respondents emphasized that the field:

is not well-defined or understood
focuses too much on compliance, and
places too much emphasis on ethnicity and/or gender.
Frank McCloskey, survey contributor and vice president of diversity at Georgia Power said:

"The field is stuck, with little innovation in how we are tracking diversity. There is lack of discipline and understanding of what diversity means beyond race and gender or how success is being defined, or not being defined, by most corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives."

A survey of more than 1,400 HR professionals and diversity practitioners within the project asked them to evaluate the role of diversity practices in accomplishing specific business objectives:

Around half (52%) felt that to a 'large extent,' diversity practices create a work environment or culture that allows everyone to contribute all that they can to the organization.
To the same extent, 49% considered that diversity practices achieve appropriate representation of racial and ethnic groups.
48% believed that diversity practices enhance, to a large extent, the ability of people from different backgrounds to work together effectively.
Other significant findings in the report include:

Small companies - those with 99 or fewer workers - are least likely to have an official definition of diversity
Public/government organizations are more likely to define diversity than private non-profit and for-profit organizations
About 75% of HR professionals said that making full use of the workforve's diverse talents was strategically important to their organization. This group wanted greater emphasis on the positive relationship between diversity and business results.
SHRM President and CEO Susan R. Meisinger commented:

"Our research confirms that most organizations currently have diversity policies and practices in place. But, while policies mark a significant step forward, challenges remain."

Previous Article - Communicating workplace diversity a top priority
September 13 2003 - Research earlier this year for the New York Times Job Market showed that top managers at organizations with established workplace diversity programs support these initiatives by communicating them as:

- top priorities to employees (91%)
- top priorities to to their customers or the business community (73%)
- by funding diversity recruitment and retention initiatives (65%)

These findings came from telephone interviews with 500 hiring managers across the nation conducted by Beta Research Corporation to identify trends in workplace diversity. 350 diverse job seekers (74% African-American, 21% Hispanic and 4% Asian) were also surveyed through minority-focused websites.

They also found that nearly all hiring managers (92%) in businesses with diversity programs said that their senior managers strongly supported workplace diversity as a company goal with 72% saying that diversity initiatives were included in their company's business strategy.


Defining Diversity
More than half of hiring managers (55%) and two-thirds of job seekers (67%) said they defined diversity as a mixture of people of different backgrounds, races and cultures. When asked what ideas they associated with workplace diversity, hiring managers said:

Equal opportunity
Fairness
Inclusive culture
Affirmative action 93%
92%
76%
72%

While job seekers said:

Equal opportunity
Fairness
Inclusive culture
Affirmative action 95%
88%
54%
77%

Recruiting Diverse People
Two-thirds (67%) of organizations surveyed said they were actively recruiting diverse job candidates. Just over a quarter (27%) of hiring managers said that the attrition rate for their minority employees was higher than that of non-minority employees. 14% of hiring managers (14%) said their organizations had introduced retention programs that were specifically designed to retain minority employees. Their hiring practices included the following tactics:

Use referrals by current diverse employees
Advertise to brand their organization as diverse
Place help-wanted ads in publications targeting diverse groups
Reach out to associations representing diverse groups
Place help-wanted ads on Web sites targeting diverse groups
Sponsor and promote mentor programs for diverse employees
Sponsor and promote affinity groups for diverse employees
Target historically African-American or Hispanic universities 78%
62%
59%
55%
51%
42%
24%
22%


Minority job seekers said the following factors were important to them and found them to be helpful criteria when evaluating potential employers:

Company's support of work-life balance
Company's hiring/cultivating of diverse employees
Company's ranking on a "Best Places to Work" list
Strong mentor program
Company's sponsorship of affinity groups
Company's ranking on a "Best Place for Diverse Employees" list
70%
65%
49%
43%
40%
29%

Diversity Retention
When asked to identify specific initiatives that were very valuable to their organization's diversity retention efforts, 55% of hiring managers cited affinity groups as being very valuable and almost all employers (92%) said they used affinity groups to reach workplace solutions that were acceptable to all employees.

In businesses that actively recruit diverse candidates, most hiring managers say that their company:

directs efforts toward building a culture that is more inclusive of all employees' needs (88%)
generally supports work-life balance and overall flexibility (93%)
uses a diversity program as the first step toward creating such a culture (93%)
To measure the progress of diversity initiatives, hiring managers said they looked at their company's percentage of diverse talent in non-management positions (51%), management positions (21%), highest paid positions (15%), on the company's board of directors (11%) and total purchases from minority owned businesses (9%).

Impressive Titles Are More Than Cheap Rewards

More and more organizations are doling out impressive-sounding job titles, many including superlatives such as 'chief'. One reason is to stop key executives from leaving, according to Michael Jalbert, president of MRINetwork, a major search and recruitment organization. But titles such as chief marketing officer, chief innovation officer, and chief risk officer also mark the extra responsibilities that CEOs are delegating to senior staff.

Michael Jalbert said:

"CEOs and presidents of companies realize that running a successful business requires an effective leadership team. Many top executives have more autonomy in the running of their departments than ever before. This results in a greater sense of ownership and fosters loyalty."

Jalbert considers that 'chief' titles are best used to signal strategically important issues in the organization. For example, banks often have a chief risk officer now to make sure that they are in compliance with laws governing accountability. And many businesses have a chief marketing officer to show the importance of customer acquisition. But organizations expect results in return for these titles.

"If the CMO can't deliver results fast enough - such as increase market share and improve brand awareness - they don't last long," said Jalbert.

Retaining top talent is a particular problem in organizations with flat structures. Inventing posts with prestige titles is one of the few options to keep employees happy in their careers. "Some of the more creative ‘chief' titles cater to the desire of up-and-coming managers to possess titles that reflect what they do. This generation of workers is unimpressed with traditional titles and impatient to get ahead. They're also willing to change jobs to get what they want," he said.

But 'title creep' can be counter-productive. Jobs that do not deliver on impressive titles repel rather than retain talent. "People can easily see through new titles that offer prestige in name only. If the job doesn't also bring added responsibility and recognition, employees can feel that they are being manipulated," said Jalbert, observing that the title "vice president" has become so common that it is almost meaningless.

"Meaningful recognition within the organization is critical," said Jalbert. "Mere titles won't suffice in the long term."

Celebrity CEOs
Executive titles, rewards and personal self-belief are inter-twined. Mathew Hayward of the University of Colorado at Boulder and co-authors Violina Rindova and Timothy Pollock of the R. H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland at College Park published an intriguing paper "Believing One's Own Press: The Causes and Consequences of CEO Celebrity,"in the July 2004 issue of Strategic Management Journal. In this paper they pointed to the unhealthy relationship between CEOs' belief in themselves and the way they were written up in the media. They argued that executives should not believe their own press bevcause it tended to become bad news for their organizations.

According to Mathew Hayward, who has since written a book on the same theme (Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris is Wrecking Companies and Careers and How to Avoid the Trap), journalists often create an inflated image of CEOs by attributing their organizations' positive performances solely to their CEOs' strategic actions. The trouble begins, said Hayward, when they start to believe the hype.

"What you have is journalists affecting the outcome of how businesses are run by affecting the CEO," Hayward said. "Once CEO celebrities are created, they tend to believe the hype and see themselves as invincible. I think this has greatly contributed to the CEO excesses we have seen over the past few years."

The public are fascinated by celebrities and perhaps the media is just giving the public what it wants, more celebrities. But Hayward says there's more to it than that:

"The public wants to believe that individuals are in control, so they happily accept these accounts as being true.

"When CEOs display idiosyncratic personal behavior in public, it becomes easier for journalists to provide accounts that bolster attributions of the firm's action to its CEO.

"By and large this is very dysfunctional for the company, because when CEOs buy into their own celebrity, they will tend to want to have the company revolve around them. Most notably they will want to continue the behavior and actions that got them on the magazine cover, which isn't necessarily good for the company."

Family Issues and Performance

Concern for Family Issues May Boost Performance

Employee support programs are vulnerable to elimination in times of economic downturn due to bottom-line-only decisions according to Susan Lambert, Associate Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago.

In a new book, Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural and Individual Perspectives, co-edited by Susan Lambert and Ellen Ernst Kossek, Lambert argues that the business case for providing workers with supports for their personal lives is currently outdated and needs to be changed. "The field's quest to make a business case may have come at a cost," Lambert said. "Many early, formal employee supports largely operate as employer supports. They were designed to help workers keep their personal responsibilities from interfering with their job involvement and performance. The more time you spend with your children, the less time you're likely to have for your work."

Lambert considers that this attitude is slowly changing. In particular, a group of not-for-profit organizations concerned with work and family issues has begun to argue that the business case should be addressed at the bigger picture and move from "a narrow focus on short-term profitability to a longer-term strategy of investing in employee and community well-being."

For example, programs such as on-site day care have been offered and promoted by some businesses as a means to improve profitability by reducing employee absenteeism and turnover, said Lambert, who, along with doctoral student Elaine Waxman, also reports on research conducted in Chicago-area corporations in the book.

Still, a business case needs to be made for accommodating family interests when dealing with employees. Employers must group work-life policies with other human resource strategies that invest in workers, Lambert said.

Contributors to the book contend that firms should be reminded that they gain a competitive advantage when they pursue their profits through quality enhancement, rather than cost containment. In doing that, they need to discuss ways employees add value to service and production.

"Part of making the case for the importance of workers' contributions to firm success would be to highlight how lower-level workers are on the front lines of customer service and technological innovation," Lambert said. That position would show that firms gain competitive advantages when they design jobs that allow employees to add value to firms through their work.

Those changes provide the basis of broader policy improvements discussed in the book. Current research also shows that laws to improve situations for workers seeking to deal with family responsibilities have been ineffective. The Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows workers unpaid leave to care for newborn children or other family members with serious health problems, is available to workers at about 11 percent of the nation's work places and covers 55 percent of the work force.

Lambert and Waxman found that workers in lower-level jobs often do not receive sick or vacation time or employer-sponsored health insurance. "Thus, an important step in a new business case would be to focus on barriers to distributing supports that are available in many work places today, at least on the books," she said.

Lambert said employers who implement work-life policies and researchers should work together to develop a new understanding of the role of work-life issues. "It has been our experience that few employers systematically collect data to quantitatively or qualitatively evaluate the effectiveness of their work-life policies."

Longitudinal studies would help employers define the links between work and family life, and multi-method studies also could contribute to understanding the causes and outcomes of frictions between workers and the workplace, Lambert said.

Lambert added that in general, research in the work-life field needs to become more rigorous, so, for example, definitions of various terms have more consistent meanings, and so researchers look beyond two-income, married couples and their problems to examine the issues that affect low-income, single heads-of-households. Researchers also have focused a great deal on individuals and their family needs and not enough on the nature of work itself, she said. Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural and Individual Perspectives is intended to overcome that problem.

"The book chapters help direct attention to the ways in which conditions of employment are critical to worker and family well-being, revealing multifaceted and reciprocal relationships," she said.

Lambert examined hospitality, transportation, retail and financial service jobs, and found a high degree of turnover and very limited opportunities for workers to organize their work life around family needs. She also found that in some workplaces, temporary workers fill lower-level jobs with low wages and few benefits. These temporary workers share the workload with regular employees who have job-related benefits. In general, employers often distinguish jobs by status rather than tasks, which is leading to increased stratification in the workplace, she said.

"Given the widening gap in well-being between citizens lodged at the top and the bottom of America's income distribution, it seems important to develop insights into how workplaces might play a role in diminishing inequality in those opportunities essential to balancing work and family life, and ultimately, to improving the well-being of workers, their families and communities," she said.

More FUN at Work

Is it another fringe benefit for highly paid employees?

The best paid employees get the highest material benefits from working, but it also seems that they have the richest social lives.

A study published in a recent issue of the journal Social Science Quarterly found that highly paid workers were more likely to participate in social activities with co-workers. The highly paid also reported greater cohesion and solidarity among their colleagues.

"The social attractions of the workplace are strongest for those who are already rewarded with the biggest paychecks," said Randy Hodson, author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State University.

According to Hodson, highly-paid employees tend to have jobs with more freedom and autonomy in which they can interact with their co-workers and develop friendships. They are also more likely to work in teams in which interaction with others is both necessary and encouraged.

On the other hand, lower-paid workers - for example, those in manufacturing - are likely to spend more time working with things, rather than people, and may not have the time to interact with their colleagues.

The research was based on a detailed analysis of 124 book-length studies of employees in a variety of workplace settings. Occupations included meat packers, taxi drivers, lawyers, doctors and people from a wide range of other jobs.

Hodson and three graduate students organized and coded information from all of these books to measure the degree and type of social interaction at a variety of workplaces from around the world. Hodson was then able to build a data set that allowed quantitative, statistical comparisons of different workplaces and different kinds of employees.

Results suggest that when people develop friendships at work, it is because they enjoy their work and co-workers, said Hodson.

"It is the carrot of having an enjoyable and well-paid job that leads to rich social lives at work, not the stick of worrying about job loss," Hodson said. "But of course, only some people are offered the carrot."

It appeared that women tended to report less rich social lives at work than men. The researchers found that this was because men tended to have jobs that made workplace friendships more likely. When women had jobs in which social interaction with co-workers was common, they tended to report similar on-the-job social lives to their male colleagues.

According to Hodson this research suggests that for many highly paid workers, there is not a conflict in which they feel forced to spend time away from their families in order to be at work.

"For people who have well-paying, interesting jobs, the workplace is a positive attraction that provides meaning and fulfillment in their lives," Hodson said.

"The friendships and camaraderie they have with their co-workers is part of the appeal of work. For these lucky employees, the workplace is a strong competitor for their time with home and home life."

Workaholism, then, may be partly the result of employees who truly enjoy their work and co-workers, and not necessarily a result of fearing for their jobs, Hodson said.

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation.

How when Work and Familiy Conflict ?

When Work and Family Conflict, Men Are More Likely Than Women to Leave Their Jobs

Male and female employees are confronted with conflicts between work and family but men who believe they have a heavy workload are more likely to leave their jobs than their female counterparts. This is the conclusion of a Texas A&M University study, conducted by Ann Huffman, a doctoral student in psychology; Dr. Stephanie Payne, a Texas A&M professor of psychology; and Carl Castro of Walter Reed Army Research Institute. Their study examined whether the time demands of a job and perception of workload affected male workers more than women - and if the differences were enough to make male, more than female employees, want to leave their jobs.

"The short answer is "yes," gender does make a difference," Huffman says.

Their finding was presented at the recent Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology's annual conference in Orlando.

"I think a lot of the time when people think about work-family conflict, they immediately think of female employees -- that they would be the ones to experience the conflict moreso than men, but that was not what we found," Payne says.

According to the researchers, men have significantly higher levels of 'work-family angst' than women. And men, more than women, believe that long working hours are detrimental to their personal time, are too time consuming and greater numbers would consider leaving their jobs, in comparison to women.

A partial explanation is that the two sexes have traditionally played different roles. Stephanie Payne says that women are traditionally committed to roles that support the family and although they may be expending a lot of time at work, they can still find the energy for family responsibilities.

Men, on the other hand, are more accustomed to the role of breadwinner and can find it difficult to adapt to increased demands of taking care of family and home, Payne explains.

Nevertheless, more men are being called upon to handle more family responsibilities, whether they are married with a working spouse and have children or they are single dads with child-care concerns, she notes.

"In terms of the way we think of men and women, and the roles they play, we're really not as far along as we would like to think we are when it comes to attitudes about gender," Huffman says.

"I think when women first started entering the workplace, they probably experienced work-family conflict during this transition, but now with things changing, men are going through this transition and experiencing the same type of conflict," she says.

Huffman notes that the workplace is changing in increasing magnitude, with men assuming more family responsibilities while women are taking a more active role in the workplace.

The potential impact of this one trend alone, she says, is something that more and more organizations are paying attention to. Forward-thinking organizations know employees facing serious work-family conflicts are likely to leave their jobs if the demands interfere too much with their family responsibilities.

Therefore, organizations are working to provide a healthy balance between work and personal life. In fact, one national study found 70 percent of workers are not satisfied with their work-family balance, and half of those people are considering looking for new jobs because of problems of coping with both personal life and work.

"It seems that organizations will have to take this changing demographic into consideration if they are going to keep their employees productive and happy," Huffman says.

"In this day and age, the boundaries between work and home are less defined," Payne says. "With beepers, cell phones and email people are expected to respond to work demands even when they are physically some place else. The boundaries of 'when am I at home and when am I at work' are less clear."

Senior Employees Worklife

Most Senior Employees Never Stop Working

A recent poll of executives and professionals by MRINetwork, a major international search and recruitment organization found that the majority rarely stop working. Typically, they worked evenings, weekends, and during their commute. Many believed that their employers were responsible for creating the situations that lead to overwork.
70% of 500+ people surveyed said the organizations they worked for did not do a good job at fostering a work/life balance. 65% of participants in the poll were frequently still working after normal office hours, a further 19% worked 'sometimes', 9% occasionally. Only 5% said they never did so.

Michael Jalbert, president of MRINetwork, commented:

"They often feel they have no choice but to work as much as it takes to meet management's expectations. More enlightened managers, however, are beginning to realize that the X and Y generations are much more committed to forging a balanced life than the retiring baby boomers. This will inevitably lead to a reevaluation of the performance requirements of individual positions within many companies, especially as the younger generation moves into higher management levels."

"A number of factors influence the rising number of people whose work day extends far beyond the traditional hours," Michael Jalbert said. "Obviously technology that makes staying connected almost anywhere in the world effortless is a significant contributor. And for many people that's led to an almost compulsive need for 24/7 interaction."

He noted that many organizations were understaffed. "Most people simply have more work to do than they can accomplish in eight or even ten-hour days . In some cases, working overtime has masked the need to hire more mid-to-upper-level employees. If the work is getting done satisfactorily, senior management may not be aware of gaps in their workforce."

But many employees love what they do. "The greater their interest and commitment to the work they do, the more they seem to work - even when it's not required of them. To these people, the ability to stay connected to their work via a variety of technological devices is an asset rather than a liability."

Michael Jalbert notes that, especially for telecommuters, there is a blurring of the distinction between being 'at work' and 'off work'. "As much as employees value flexible work schedules, this arrangement can also encourage working more and playing less."
Setting Boundaries Between Work and Home

E-mail, text messaging and cellphones make it so easy to keep control of your work from home. But a study by Michigan researchers in 2003 found that people who integrate their work and family life are not always happier.

Ellen Kossek, a professor of Labor and Industrial Relations at MSU, found that people who create boundaries between work and family are actually more connected to their families than those who integrate their jobs and personal lives.

"We need to realize that it is OK to shut work out of our personal lives," said Kossek. "It's counter intuitive, but spending more time specifically on work may actually help you spend more quality time with your family."

Kossek and her collaborators - Professors Susan Eaton of Harvard University and Brenda Lautsch of Simon Fraser University - surveyed 95 supervisors and over 300 of their employees. They studied how separating or integrating work with family obligations impacted workers' happiness, time at work and performance. The survey revealed that managers who integrate tend to have more work and family conflict than those who separate.

"Work can take over our personal lives," said Kossek. "If you're working from the family computer in the middle of the family room, your kids see you at work and don't understand why you're physically there, but mentally you're someplace else."

"An easy way to begin to tell if you are an integrator or a separator is to ask, do you have one calendar or two? Do you have one key chain or two? Your ability to put up boundaries to your work and family may be able to help improve your happiness."

"If you must integrate, the best way to help your family is to have a separate door to the office," said Kossek.

It seems that some people are naturally more integrated in their style than separated. "Women managers, on the whole, are more likely to be integrators than men," said Kossek.

Integration or separation may have an impact on the amount of time an employee spends at work.

"All these technological time savers really end up taking more time," said Kossek, who found that on average people who worked from one office spent 43 hours per week at work, those in two places spent 45 hours per week at work and those working in three places spend an average of 52 hours per week at work a week.

"Counter to the popular perception of flexibility allowing people to excel in both their work and personal lives, employees who used portable work were rated lower in performance evaluations by their supervisors," said Kossek.

"Lower performance evaluations may actually be because supervisors do not know how to manage distance workers."