Helen Signy, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 23 2007

Hours before the school lunchboxes are packed and the kids dressed for school, Tracy Edwards heads for her computer to clear her emails or fine-tune a report. Logging on at four or five in the morning and again in the evening is a small price to pay, she says, for finding the elusive work and family balance that so many working mothers crave.

Two years ago, Edwards became the first part-time worker to be promoted to an associate at her firm, Connell Wagner engineers. Now 41, the Frenchs Forest chartered civil engineer and mother of Matthew, 8, and Christopher, 6, is forging ahead with her career – despite the fact she works just three days a week.

“I have a remote connection at home; that’s a life-saver,” she says. “I think women are very willing to work odd hours because it means they can still do the things they want to do for their family.

“My contracted working week is 22 ½ hours, but I usually do 30, depending on what I have on. I take on way more than I should. It’s something about being a mum – you don’t wait to be asked.”

About 70 per cent of first-time mothers who return to work after the birth of their first baby do so part-time, most of them choosing a three or four-day week. Unlike the US or Asia, where you work either full-time or not at all, the one-and-a-half breadwinner model – with one parent working full-time and the other part-time – is becoming the norm in Australia.

And part-time work is no longer the domain of casual or blue-collar jobs. Low unemployment, the trend for women to delay having babies until their careers are established and retiring baby boomers have combined to create an acute talent shortage, meaning many organisations now provide more flexible working arrangements to attract and retain women.

That appears to be great news for women who want to keep their hand in professionally while involving themselves in their children’s lives. But the picture that’s emerging of Australia’s shift towards flexible working hours is less than rosy.

Research by Dr Jenny Chalmers and Trish Hill, published this month in the Australian Bulletin of Labour, shows women who work part-time for more than three years could damage their careers.

The study of women’s earnings growth – a good indicator of their professional development – has found part-time women are less likely to be promoted than their full-time counterparts. In fact, their earning potential goes backwards the longer they work part-time.

If they work for one year part-time they’ll earn 5 per cent less when they return to full-time work than someone who has worked full-time continuously. But if they work part-time for 10 years, they end up earning 26 per cent less than a full-time counterpart.

“Not only are women not rewarded for experience accumulated, they are punished for working part-time,” says Chalmers, who undertook the research for RMIT. “There are part-time jobs out there but women are being cheated. If they’re working part-time just to hold on to their careers, women should think again.”

At home, too, part-time workers lose out. Research by University of NSW academic Dr Lyn Craig shows that mothers who work part-time work longer hours than full-time workers if domestic duties such as child care, cleaning and cooking are counted.

Particularly if their children are under five, mothers are run ragged combining paid work with running the home, working on average nearly 15 hours a day. If they work full-time, they’re more likely to delegate the domestic duties and work a total of less than 14 hours a day, the research shows.

“Full-time work is also demanding but it doesn’t make life any easier to work part-time,” says Craig, of the university’s Social Policy Research Centre.

It’s a pressure to which many working mothers can relate. Edwards loves working because it gives her structure and focus, but she acknowledges that she rarely stands still.

“A bloke doesn’t realise what you do on the days you don’t work. The days you don’t work you work more,” she says.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is also concerned that part-time work may not give women the flexibility and career advancement they’d like. In its recent report, It’s About Time, it calls for government intervention to ensure pay equity, job security, better training opportunities and the right to request flexible hours for part-time workers.

It’s about changing attitudes, says Marian Baird, associate professor in work and organisational studies at the University of Sydney. Part-time work needs to be normalised so that workers are offered the same career development opportunities as everyone else.

“They should be regarded as legitimate employees,” she says. “It should be accepted that they are working the same as everybody else. It’s just they are not in the office all the time – they are not being paid full-time, either.”

Some companies clearly pay lip service to the idea of work flexibility while others manage it well and reap the benefits. Kylie Smith, manager of corporate communications for BT Financial Group, says her three-day-a-week role would never work were the company not committed to flexibility. “I see it in action at nearly every level,” she says.

After taking 15 months off to have her now two-year-old twins, Anna and Julia, Smith says her career is on track and she’s enjoying the working challenge. “It all depends if the company values you for what you achieve rather than the hours you do,” she says.

Smith acknowledges she couldn’t do it without the support of her husband, her extended family and a nanny “who’s a legend”. And that’s crucial. Studies consistently show that the happiness of women who work part-time depends as much on how they manage their home lives as well as their careers.

“Start with what you really value in life – that’s what true life satisfaction comes from,” says Kerry Fallon Horgan, managing partner of Flexibility At Work. “Keep your goal to the forefront and keep asking questions around that. Is it spending time with the children? Are you getting enough rest or are so stressed that no one is enjoying anything?”

The assumption that working part-time will affect your career adversely is not always true, she says. “The organisation has to create an enabling environment but individuals must take the responsibility to make the practices work for them personally.”

If part-time work is managed properly – and Fallon Horgan says that may mean retraining managers who have no idea what work-life balance means for themselves, let alone their staff – it’s not just part-time workers who stand to profit.

A major bank did research on who was the most committed and loyal of its staff. The bank was surprised when it wasn’t the senior management, as was expected, but the part-time workers.

Overseas research also shows significant increases in productivity when professionals are allowed to work part-time. Not only is their morale higher but they’re less likely to be absent or involve themselves in office politics.

Law firm Blake Dawson Waldron had to get serious about enabling part-time work when four of the lawyers in its legal technology group – half the staff – fell pregnant within days of each other. Partner Liz Broderick was one of them.

“Instead of going in with the problem of me having a baby, I went with a solution. I said that for a trial period I would work on a flexible arrangement and they would still have access to me if necessary via mobile. It was a very low-risk option for them.”

Eleven years later Broderick still works part-time, doing 70 per cent of a full-time workload each week so she can be heavily involved in the lives of Tom, 11, and Lucy, 9. These days, partly because of Broderick’s endeavours, about 20 per cent of the firm’s staff works under a flexible arrangement.

“In the future, part-time or flexible work will be as prevalent as full-time work,” Broderick says. “It’s about reshaping work so that women can contribute in a way that works for them and works for the business.”

Earlier this month, Broderick was appointed the new Sex Discrimination Commissioner. Looking at the issue of flexible work for women will definitely be on her agenda, she says.

It’s not just about changing the scene for women but about encouraging men and senior managers, too, to rethink the way they work. “The ultimate would be to have a lot of our senior people working in flexible working arrangements,” she says.

But there’s a way to go. When she takes up her role on September 10, it will be, ironically, full-time.

For advise on how to implement and manage job-sharing and other flexible work arrangements contact Kerry Fallon Horgan on telephone (02) 9402 4741

Our leading edge workshop "Creating Flexible Workplaces & Getting Balanced" will be held in Sydney on 25 October 2007

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