SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CAREERS / PART-TIME CAREERS : Stepping Off the Full-Time Track : Flexible Work Schedules Allow Workers to Balance Their Lives While Thriving at Work : Rosemary Mans: Bank of America
Most part-time professional women cite family responsibilities in explaining why they scaled back their hours. But for Rosemary Mans, who is single with no children, it was a matter of regaining balance.
“In 1988, I was finishing up on one of the biggest projects I had in my work career,” said Mans, now vice president of flexibility programs at Bank of America in San Francisco. “It was great, but it took a great personal toll. I had this sense of being in a tunnel. There was a lot going on in the tunnel, but I knew it was surrounded by the rest of the world.”
Mans said the answer was clear. She needed to work less.
“I needed to get out of the pressure cooker,” she said. “Create a little more white space so there was something beyond work and sleep.”
Now the only problems to solve were financial--figuring out whether she could make the mortgage on a part-time salary--and practical--finding a way to persuade her employer to go along.
She began creating a proposal for a new job focus and a new job description: manager of work and family programs. She approached her boss with the idea, along with the news that she wanted to head the project in an abbreviated week. Her boss didn’t even put up a fight.
“I’ve thought a lot about that particular experience and how I was able to work out something that met the needs I had at the time,” Mans said. “It’s hard to broad-brush and generalize about industries or companies in them. It comes down to who is involved in a particular situation.”
Both the employer and the employee have to be the right people to make a part-time position fly, she said. The employer must be willing to accept a non-traditional arrangement and cope with the managerial complications of part-time attendance. The worker has to be valuable enough to have options.
“Even though I may not have gone in thinking that if I get a no, I’m going to walk out the door, that may have been their perception,” Mans said. “The other thing was I had proposed a work focus that seemed to be an important emerging area. My boss thought that this was work that we probably should do, and I was probably the right person to do it.”
Companies are increasingly willing to work around the outside interests and responsibilities of their workers, Mans said. But often the worker must demonstrate that what he or she wants is reasonable and possible. And the initial plans might have to be revised.
“Even if your first best choice is turned down, it may not be the end of the conversation,” she said. “I think that managers know that if they just shut the door on a sincere, thoughtful request, they jeopardize what comes from goodwill. I knew I was going to be really disappointed if I didn’t work out some kind of adjustment, but I didn’t know if I was going to get it right when I was asking.”
