We're changing the narrative for women in the workplace. Do we have your attention?
At Werk, we’re on a mission to ensure that every person has access to the flexibility they need to achieve both their personal and professional goals. By taking our new FlexType quiz, you’ll not only learn which types of flexibility you need to achieve optimal work-life compatibility, but you’ll also be arming yourself with the right tools to effectively advocate for yourself at work—no matter where your company is on its flexibility journey. So, what's your FlexType?
Werk's research data shows structured flexibility responds to employees’ needs around caregiving, health and wellness, and productivity—while making it easier for employers to attract, engage, and retain employees who are, in turn, more loyal and more likely to promote their employer. But structured flexibility affords another advantage to companies: a saving in real estate costs.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on how we should structure our time. (High-intensity intervals of work in the morning! Lunchtime power hours! Post-dinner work marathons!) But as it turns out, when you work is probably less important than how you work, and figuring that out requires some self-assessment. Are you a maker? Are you a manager? Are you a little of both? And in those roles, what working conditions make you most productive? These are important considerations, and structured flexibility can optimize working conditions for makers, managers, and anyone who identifies as both.
It seems like night owls have been stigmatized ever since Ben Franklin popularized that little "Early to bed, early to rise" adage. But if they’re anything less than “healthy, wealthy, and wise,” it's only because they're forced to start working early in the morning along with the rest of the world, scientists say. And these new assertions provide even more proof that the stereotypical 9-to-5 workday doesn't, in fact, work for everyone—and that time-based flexibility can help workers optimize their productivity.
We at Werk often talk about structured flexibility as a moral imperative. We also like to point out it can be a financial boon. But could flexibility actually help the environment? Could access to flexibility—the flex types Remote, DeskPlus, and TravelLite, in particular—help combat the "inconvenient truth" that is climate change?
Brooke Jones-Chinetti never had any intention of leaving the military. After graduating from West Point, she served in the Army for six years and completed two deployments to the Middle East. During her service, she was selected for a premier pilot program called Women in Combat Arms, and then she was hand-selected to lead human resources for an organization of 4,500 people. “I loved it,” she says. “I didn’t think that I was going to get out.” But life—or, more specifically, corporate America—had other ideas...
As corporate culture and employee needs evolve, companies are expanding their people function to keep up with the times. Airbnb has a Director of Belonging, Zappos hired a Culture Evangelist, and more than a handful of companies have enlisted Chief Happiness Officers. The proliferation of these types of roles signals an important new reality about the workplace: in an environment of heightened competition for people, the companies with the most employee-centric cultures will win. Now, we’re proposing another role: Chief Compatibility Officer.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, wants his book Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance and What We Can Do About It to be "the Silent Spring of workplace health"—because it's time we started valuing and prioritizing the health and wellness of our workforce. And flexibility is a powerful way to start.
Women have a proven track record of business acumen. A recent study of 22,000 publicly traded companies, for example, showed that an increase of female leadership from 0 percent to 30 percent is associated with a 15 percent spike in profitability. Additionally, female tech entrepreneurs generate a 35 percent higher return on investment than their male counterparts, on average. So why is it that between 2011 and 2013, companies led by female CEOs received 34 times less venture capital than those with male CEOs?
"Millennial" and "baby boom" often appear in the same sentence, but usually to describe two generational cohorts that find themselves at odds over workplace norms and expectations. But what about the other kind of baby boom—the millennial one?
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