Here's a scene you might see in any office on any day in the UK. The pressure's on to finish the big project before the deadline at end of play that evening. Things have been difficult and the team's running late but, with effort, they might just make it. John, a rising star in the company, looks up from his 20-minute power nap on the desk. The boss smiles at him. He knows that sleep will make John a more effective performer for the rest of the day. The boss looks at his watch. Four hours before the crunch. “Right,” he says, “Wednesdays are my half day. I'm off to take the kids to the zoo. I'll look forward to seeing how it's gone when I come in tomorrow morning.”
The staff don't really need to be told that he won't want to know details of their progress until the next day. Work cannot be allowed to intrude on family time and none of them would dream of calling him, even if there's a disaster. Not very likely is it? And yet this seems to be the world in which the Government is living.
Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equalities, wants to see more men pushing for flexible work. Fathers, she says, have a full part to play in childcare and employers should understand if they want to arrange their working lives around their families.
This spring the government will decide how far the right to request flexible working should be extended. Presently, parents of children up to the age of 6 can ask for part-time or irregular hours, and the law says that employers should not unreasonably deny them the request. Now parents of kids up to 16 might get the same right.
All the parties have jumped on the flexible-working bandwagon in such a way that no one can remember who originally set it rolling. Flexible working generally means two things: the ability to go part-time, or to shape your hours to your convenience, so if you want to work ten hours for four days and have the Friday off, then you can.
The idea sounds great in theory but all the evidence suggests that it would be a disaster for men in most professional careers to take it up. The main reason for this is that, by and large, it has been a failure for women. Harman almost admits this herself. “Mothers often tear their hair out trying to balance earning a living with bringing up their children, and need more flexibility at work,” she says. Now, she'd like to see men tearing their hair out too. “Fathers want to be able to play a bigger part in bringing up their children. Families are the framework of our lives.”
Well, another framework of our lives is a solid economy. Mind you, economic growth has, for years, been supported by one sort of flexible working - the sort in which five million people in this country put in unpaid overtime last year at an average of 7 hrs 6 mins a week, according to a TUC survey. It points out that if you put in all this free work at the start of the year, then you wouldn't get paid until February 22. We work an average of an extra 50 days a year for nothing and no one thinks it unusual. That's just the climate in which British business is conducted.
No wonder that the Government's own attempts to introduce flexible working have been such a flop. Take the NHS. Only 8 per cent of doctors work part-time, despite a government commitment to flexible working in the health service. Other efforts to make the NHS more appealing to people with children have been an equal failure. In 2000 the Government committed to making things easier for healthworker parents. But still only one NHS nursery in 20 is open at the weekend - a time when patients have the inconvenient habit of being ill - and the waiting lists for them are enormous.
Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, said in his annual report last year that women doctors were losing out because the NHS commitment to flexible working had waned. If you want to get to the top as a doctor it's always been understood that you're not going to make it unless it's the consuming focus of your life.
The report also said that there is faint enthusiasm for helping flexible working and other child-friendly arrangements. Sir Liam said the problem is that managers siphon off the childcare budgets when they feel a financial squeeze. In other words, their commitment to changing working arrangements to help with childcare is slight. This is in the touchy-feely NHS. How much bigger a cultural shift would it require from a City law firm to allow people to knock off halfway through the day? Is anyone, male or female, going to part-time their way to partner, or say “I worked 40 hours Monday to Thursday, I'm afraid Friday is for me and the kids”?
If men choose flexitime then they will find what women have always had to contend with in the enforced break of pregnancy - that they're seen as less committed at a crucial time in their career. Late twenties and early thirties are when many people achieve their first big break. It's no time to go Awol if you're professionally ambitious. The truth might be uncomfortable, but it's a truth nevertheless.
It's easy to see the effect childcare has had on women's careers. There are only three women at the top of UK advertising agencies. Two of them don't have kids and the other one sees hers only at the weekend. A report by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising found that only 9 per cent of senior management at ad firms are female and that women were “under-represented in the extreme” in creative departments. Only 17 per cent of copy writers and 14 per cent of art directors are women. It seems that the industry shares the opinion of Neil French, a top advertising executive, that women are apt to “wimp out and go and suckle something”. His view is repulsive but it seems deeply held. Would French and his like see the difference between a woman suckling something and a man going flexitime to help with the kids?
It's the same in many other professions too where a long-hours culture means part-timers and flexitimers will be seen as slackers. According to the Female FTSE report by the Cranfield School of Management, only 3.6 per cent of executive directors are female at FTSE 100 companies. Women are at a huge disadvantage if they choose to have children. In the current climate men who opt to share the burden of kids will be at a disadvantage too. A study by the BMA found that only one clinical professor in ten is female and only two heads of 33 medical schools are women.
Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the consultants' committee of the BMA, says that in the prevailing culture in many professions it is very difficult to reach the top working flexible hours. In medicine, flexible training places have had their budgets cut, despite a commitment to achieving a better work/life balance. Another problem is that the demands of the job just don't support flexible working.
“You can't knock off halfway through an operation or clinic. The hours are long and so potentially less attractive to those who want flexible working. It's not just the hours in the hospital or surgery. There's a huge amount of work in preparing for exams, keeping up to date and expanding your specialty. You don't just stop when you come home.”
A poll of 21,000 organisations by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions found that 20 per cent of UK personnel managers reported worse career prospects for part-timers. Are you sure your manager isn't in that 20 per cent? That might be a very conservative estimate, too. The pollsters were for part-time work and most personnel managers would want to portray themselves as progressive in a survey. There are other issues here. Even if you could stop flexible working harming career prospects, would it be right to bring it in only for parents?
I remember my resentment when, as a sub-editor on one newspaper, I was told that I was on a permanent late-shift five-nights a week because I was single and had no family life to disrupt. I did, however, have a cracking social life but I was forced to give it up so one of the other chaps could spend ten minutes kissing his kid goodnight before slumping unconscious in front of the TV.
Why should children be the sole reason for allowing flexitime? In the summer a single person might want some tanning time; across the party season at Christmas late starts might be welcome. Some might want to arrange their hours to spend as little time as possible under the eye of the boss. If you can pick up your kids from school, why can't I spend an afternoon in the pub? What makes a childless person's rights inferior to those with a family? Families are the framework of our society? Well underpaid, slaving single twentysomethings put in their shift, too.
Then there is the issue of whether men want this flexibility at all. I called a friend of mine last Boxing Day and was surprised to hear that he was in the office. I phoned there and asked if there had been an emergency. He said: “To tell the truth, it's nice to get away from the kids.”
Anyone who has kids will confirm that even the most stressful positions in industry don't compare with the demands of childcare.
Flexible working may be taken to mean allowing people to work from home. As anyone with children will avow, working from home while looking after children is the same as not working. It is impossible.
The final argument against flexible working is that it doesn't actually deliver what it sets out to. A survey of 1,400 workers for Orange Business Services found that 40 per cent of people working flexibly don't have any more time to themselves than they did working full-time. Also 45 per cent said that they ended up working more because the job started to intrude more on their leisure time. Flexible working meant people ended up working longer for less money. If someone doesn't know when you're working, they may assume you're working all the time. The world doesn't stop when you leave the office and urgent business can't wait until Pingu is over. If the office needs you, you can be sure youwill get a call.
Tellingly, survey respondents said that they feared being left “out of the loop” if they departed from conventional working practices. So you'll end up doing just as much but not getting the credit for it. It doesn't sound like much of a deal does it?
