Parent Time

During a work-life balance workshop held earlier this year at one of Canada’s largest accounting firms, a woman we’ll call Susan bemoaned her inability to spend the summer with her children. The room immediately came alive with her colleagues’ voices: Haven’t you heard that Joe down the hall took three months off? Do you know Jane in marketing, who started working flexible hours? Susan had no idea such options were available at her company.

“We negotiate ourselves out of things before we even ask,” says Lisa Martin, the Vancouver consultant and career coach who led the seminar. That’s particularly true of women, she adds. “This happens a lot when we want to ask for a raise, but in this case it’s asking for time rather than money.” Once armed with the knowledge that other parents’ requests had been granted, Martin says, Susan approached her employer and, without trouble, arranged to take six weeks off the following summer.

If you’re thinking of making a similar pitch to your boss, this may be a good time to do it. Despite a slowing economy, many employers are finding it hard to recruit and keep qualified, talented staff, and are more willing than ever to consider alternative work arrangements — especially if it doesn’t cost them anything. And whether it’s dropping to part-time for a while, keeping full-time hours but on a different schedule, arranging a job-share or even taking a leave of absence, parents who want to adapt the demands of work to fit their individual family needs are a growing group — and that gives them power.

But if your company has no formal policies on flexible work arrangements, you’ll need to present a well-reasoned argument to the right person and in the right light. Here’s how.

Originally published in Today's Parent, December 2008