The Southern California Job Market : Making It Work : The Part-Time Work Force Takes On a Professional Look
Mix together a tight economy, a demanding career, a hobby long neglected, a new spouse, a baby. It can be a recipe for frustration--or a revamped career.
Enter the world of the “part-time professional,” a recent incarnation that owes its genesis to recessionary cuts in the full-time work force and a growing feeling among graying baby boomers that life has passed them by.
Among American workers in managerial, executive or professional positions, 11.6% worked part time last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure is up from 10.7% in 1986, and many labor experts expect the increase of part-time professional careers to match the rising numbers of part-timers throughout the entire labor force.
Until only recently, the conventional wisdom held that a part-time professional was a contradiction in terms. Professionals who were committed to their jobs and wanted to get ahead were required to work full time--and then some.
But over the last several years, employers have begun to “recognize that part-time work can be a legitimate goal of the employee and a benefit to the employer,” said Richard Flye, chairman of the management committee for the Washington-based law firm McKenna & Cuneo.
“If you do not allow part-time schedules, it definitely increases turnover. It is a major benefit for a firm not to lose highly skilled legal personnel that we’ve spent so much money training,” he said.
“This does not appear to be a passing phenomenon,” said Bill Charland of the Center for the New West, a Denver-based think tank on economic development. Charland sees part-time careers as evidence of a general, economy-wide “lessened commitment by employers to long-term full-time employees.”
Rather than retaining full-timers reluctant to adopt new technology, Charland said, companies are creating leaner work forces composed, in part, of highly skilled part-time employees.
That leanness, however, may benefit the corporate balance sheet more than the employee, since part-timers generally do not receive benefits such as life and health insurance, pensions or paid vacations. And career professionals who choose part-time status often find themselves cut off from promotions or the partnership track.
Still, Maria Laqueur, executive director of the Assn. of Part-Time Professionals--comprising lawyers, administrators, engineers, social workers and physicians--expects to see more part-time careers. “In the past, part-time schedules were seen as an employee benefit; now they are becoming a workplace strategy. It makes good business sense,” she said.
Several years ago, McKenna & Cuneo adopted a policy allowing part-time schedules for all levels of personnel, from corner-office partners to mail room workers; it even provides full benefits for people who work at least 30 hours a week.
The situation couldn’t differ more from the legal profession Flye entered more than 20 years ago, when the prevailing view was that “it was impossible to practice law unless you worked at least 26 hours a day,” he said.
Career professionals have come a long way from that mind-set, but the reason may be less humanitarian than employers would have us believe. “It is a mistake to think that the workplace has become family-friendly,” said Marilyn Moats Kennedy, managing partner of Career Strategies in Wilmette, Ill., and publisher of a monthly career-planning newsletter.
“The goal of all organizations in the ‘90s with more than two people is flexible staffing. CEOs have been traumatized by having to implement massive layoffs. Going lean with part-timers spares them that agony,” she said.
It benefits the employer to “cut a private peace” with the employee who wants part-time status, said Kennedy, because such workers tend to be “more cheerful and willing. There is no question that satisfaction and productivity are in bed together. The employer gets more bang for his buck.”
Robin Thurman, who works three days a week as manager of community affairs for TRW in Fairfax, Va., agrees. She sees part-time professional work as a win-win situation for both parties. The employee “wants it to work out so badly that we work extra hard to get the job done,” she said. “On my days in the office, I don’t chitchat and I generally don’t take lunch breaks.”
Karen Miller of Anaheim Hills, a government contracts attorney in the Los Angeles office of McKenna & Cuneo, switched from full time to three days a week after she and her husband, also an attorney, had their first child in October. “By the time I go back to the office, I’m ready to focus on law again,” she said. “The change of pace makes me more productive.”
Like Thurman, Miller drafted a specific part-time proposal for a 60% plan--she would meet 60% of the annual billable hours required of a full-time associate, for 60% of her full-time salary. Neither of the women opted for health benefits, since they are covered by their husbands’ employers, but they do receive prorated vacation and sick days.
But some employers, like that of Celia Whitley, remain unconvinced. Whitley, for 17 years a chemist at a large Boston teaching hospital, drafted her resignation in December when her supervisor refused to consider allowing her to work part time. Whitley’s reasons were a medical condition that required her to commute less often and a growing desire for more time to enjoy her hobbies and friends.
On Whitley’s shift, three of nine full-time professionals have recently asked--unsuccessfully--to switch to part time. “By the end of the year, one-third of the shift will have quit because they don’t want to work full time,” she said.
In the final analysis, the needs of the employer generally carry the day. And as those needs change, so may the balance of part-timers.
The banking industry, for example, has been replacing full-time workers with permanent part-timers. The only way to efficiently operate branches during peak banking hours was with part-timers, said Kathleen Shilkret, a Wells Fargo Bank spokeswoman.
However, she said she expects that as branch functions change, banks will have less need for part-timers and will once again rely more heavily on full-time career positions.
