When equality is a priority, a woman rises. And when she rises, the workplace is better for everyone.
She is 4 times more likely to rise in a company that values diversity.

Why are so many companies (i.e. so many top executives) embracing a strategy that’s so obviously unproductive and which employees almost universally dislike?
I originally assumed the continued growth of open plan offices (now around 70% of all offices in the U.S.) was a victory of biz-blab over science–the corporate equivalent of anti-vaccination and climate change denial. However, since open plan offices are so obviously stupid, I’ve concluded there must be something deeper at work here–a hidden agenda.

As the head of a large manufacturing plant at a multinational conglomerate, an executive I’ll call David had proved himself a competent, trustworthy manager. So when the presidency of one of the company’s key businesses unexpectedly became vacant, the CEO sat David down to share the good news that he had been chosen for the role. He had earned it.

Price Waterhouse Cooper has announced a flexible worker plan like no other - it allows workers to take months away at a time as opposed to doing 8am-5pm and half day Friday.
PwC is the massive multi professional services company that was hired by the government's Insolvency Service to dispose of what was left of Carillion. The company has formed a Flexible Talent Network as it looks to hire more flexible and contingent workers.

This is the second part of a three-part blog series that work-life integration: key concepts, facts, barriers and enablers. I’m focusing on what you need to know and to do as a leader to support different ways of working and reap the benefits of work-life integration for your team members and for your business.
THREE KEY FACTS ABOUT WORK-LIFE INTEGRATION

Bias against parents — and especially mothers — has been well documented. We call it the “Maternal Wall,” and we’ve been studying it for years, researching how women who have always been successful at work sometimes find their competence questioned when they take maternity leave or ask for a flexible work schedule.

Selon une enquête menée par Regus, environ un tiers des membres de la direction générale des entreprises refusent le travail flexible et n’offrent donc pas la possibilité à leurs collaborateurs de choisir leur lieu de travail. C’est le verre à ‘moitié vide’… Globalement, reconnaissons que la majorité des dirigeants intègrent désormais la diversité des implantations (en ce compris, le travail à domicile) dans l’organisation des équipes.

It seems that one day soon, flexible working could simply be known as ‘working’. We are reaching the tipping point.” - Mark Dixon, CEO and Founder, IWG

Flexible workers have been fighting an unfair public relations battle over the misconception that they are less committed, and slower to get things done for some time. The tables are finally turning and there is a huge amount of evidence to prove the opposite is true.

They call us “The Sandwich Generation”—the group of workforce-aged adults who are not only caring for their aging parents, but also balancing the needs of their own children.
It might be hard to understand the term until you experience it firsthand.
When my father-in-law had an unexpectedly difficult time recuperating from surgery last summer, I was stunned at just how upside-down it turned our lives.

If you work in the world of software development or for a business-to-business (B2B) organization, you probably already know about the “agile” approach. The basic idea of agile is to develop and deliver products as early and often as possible.

Following a troubling year, where geopolitical and social concerns gave rise to a new wave of business activism, millennials and Gen Z are sounding the alarm, according to Deloitte’s seventh annual Millennial Survey. Millennials’ opinions about business’ motivations and ethics, which had trended up the past two years, retreated dramatically this year, as did their sense of loyalty.

Is your organisation set up for flexible working? Do we understand the commercial imperative (including productivity, retention and engagement benefits) for flexible working in our organisation?

Family life is changing, and so, too, is the role mothers and fathers play at work and at home. As more mothers have entered the U.S. workforce in the past several decades, the share of two-parent households in which both parents work full time now stands at 46%, up from 31% in 1970.

Flexible workplace practices are often primarily designed to address employer needs in the production process, but they can also improve the work-life balance of employees in a manner which is consistent with enterprise needs.

BT is one of the UK’s biggest telecommunications and information technology companies. It has been developing flexible working policies for many years. In recent years, it has been promoting its package of measures more widely, both internally to employees and externally as best practice to other employers.

A positive relationship between flexible working practices and employee performance is a key finding of a significant new piece of research to be launched at “Measuring Up–The Impact of Flexible Working Practices on Performance,” a major conference taking place in London on 30 April 2008.