Kyra Cavanaugh
Blog Post List
July 10, 2012
Excerpted from full piece at The Huffington Post Anne-Marie Slaughter's article " Why Women Still Can't Have it All" published in The Atlantic has struck a collective nerve, breaking readership records on the magazine's website and generating all manner of buzz. I admire her courage to speak out on the subject, given that she was once director of policy planning at the State Department. And I appreciate her acknowledgement that high-achieving women in places of power in our country have been complicit in contributing to the prevailing sentiment that women who don't have it all must not want...
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February 17, 2011
This is excerpted from a longer blog post at Corporate Voices . For the last 15 years, the Sloan Foundation has invested $120 million in more than 350 projects focused on work/life issues. And that investment paid dividends in elevating visibility of workplace flexibility issues--all the way to the White House. It brought us sound research that framed flex as a critical business strategy. It moved us beyond gender and family stereotypes. It funded critical partnerships, highlighted best practices, and on and on and on... But it's not enough. Despite sound data, companies are slow to adopt...
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January 10, 2011
Kyra Cavanaugh, president of Life Meets Work , responds to Flex Time Flourishes in the Accounting Industry , published January 7, 2011 in the New York Times. She challenges the piece which seems to hold forth the notion that major accounting firms have mastered work/life issues, and the idea that these firms have successfully transitioned women to the leadership track. Not so fast! Using the numbers for flex employees from the article, only 15% of Ernst & Young’s employees are working flexibly. So, as the article points out, certainly they’ve made strides, but you’d be hard-pressed to...
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December 21, 2010
Twenty-seven states support telework through legislation that encourages tax incentives, expansion of broadband coverage, or use by state employees. Illinois does not. On December 7, 2010, we held a summit in Chicago. Business, public sector, and government leaders gathered to discuss the role of telecommuting in Illinois’ economic future. At question was the state’s lack of telecommuting legislation, lagging behind official incentives in metro areas in states such as Minnesota, Oregon, Virginia and Georgia. At that meeting, State Senator Pamela Althoff announced that a telework proclamation...
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December 15, 2010
My mother relocated with nearly every job she took. From Lansing to Glen Ellyn to Chicago, she went through all the effort and expense of moving house to make her commute less stressful. But trends are changing—particularly for young professionals. Companies that want to take advantage of top talent are looking for other ways to ease the strain of commuting. One top tactic: telecommuting. A daily 60-minute commute sounds awful to most. But a 60-minute commute two or three times a week is a lot more doable. Here are 3 current trends in where we live: Spatial Mismatch People don’t really live...
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October 22, 2010
I’m just back from the Telework Summit in Philadelphia. The conference was rather focused on the technical requirements for telework—issues of hardware, space and policy. All necessary stuff. But… With all the technical set-up, training and coordination required (HR, finance, facilities, IT), it’s easy to get swallowed up by those issues and not fully address the cultural and change management aspects of implementation. So while there were some great telework leaders in the group, I heard my share of red flags: Are you ashamed of your telework program? One organization that presented its...
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