Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Flexible Work Options: Share Your Story
Comment on this post and share a story of how flexible work options at Duke helped you balance work and family. Others might get ideas for creative solutions to their work-life balance problems, and ideas that could help persuade managers that flexible work options can work for them.
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2 comments:
I work in Perkins Library in a non-exempt (biweekly paid) position. I had my son in July 2006 and thanks to my boss and Library HR was able to develop a flexible work plan that allowed me to 1. return to work gradually and 2. work from home part-time for several months.
1. Even with the 3 weeks paid parental leave offered by Duke, because of my shortage of sick and vacation time I was faced with either taking 4 weeks of unpaid leave if I took the entire 12 week FMLA, or returning to work when my son was only 8 weeks old. I chose the latter, but eased in - I spent two weeks working 8-10 in the office and 2 hours a day at home, then the next 2 weeks working 8-12 in the office and 2 hours a day at home, and then finally I worked 7:30-1:30 with 2 hours a day of work at home.
2. I continued this pattern of working 30 hours a week at the office and 10 hours a week at home through the fall semester. Library Systems helped me log in to my work desktop remotely (even though I had only a Macinstosh at home!). I was able to do email, financial paperwork, and web-based projects from my home computer. Sometimes the work happened from 5-7am, but it did get done, and I was available by email in the afternoons for emergencies.
Because of my flexible work plan, I could wait until my son was more than 5 months old before putting him in full-time daycare.
Being a graduate student at Duke makes things both easier and more complicated than being employed by Duke. My experience is within the medical school, but it may have some overlap with other graduate programs. I had my daughter on Christmas Day during my last year of medical school.
The great thing about being one of the paying graduate students (as opposed to some PhD's and others that are on stipend or have grant funding), is that we PAY to be there, and not the other way around. I decided that rather than struggling to fit all my clinical rotations in, I would take extra time to graduate. The trade-off was pushing back my graduation date by a whole year, since medicine really works on the scholastic year time frame. But no matter how long it takes you to finish, the medical school only charges you for four years of tuition. And once I did go back, I focused on making the most of my education. So when I could spend more time in the hospital, but it would not benefit my patients or my education, I always remembered that I was paying them and not the other way around.
Once I decided to prolong my graduation, I found that the administration was very supportive. I spent a good amount of time with my daughter in the first weeks, then scheduled easy rotations, and harder ones once she was older. But I also got to choose random months to take off to be with her, since I had more time in the schedule.
The hard thing about doing this type of schedule was that it did not make sense to pay for full-time day care when I did not need it. But it was hard to find in-home day care who was willing to work such irregular hours depending on the rotation/months. I found that a young woman with no family of her own was the most flexible type of person. Our nanny is pursuing a teaching degree on-line, so when she has light weeks, she focuses on studying. It works out great for us, but she was not easy to find, and I sometimes worry that we will have trouble keeping her.
Having a kid during graduate school was a great choice for me. While it may seem impossible, there is a lot of flexibility when you are in school, and less accountability to others (bosses). That way, when I am ready to ramp up my career, my daughter will be more independent.
And PS: The Duke North lactation room is a great resource!
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