Do you (or any of your wise and worldly readers) have any advice about looking for or finding clues to a college's culture, before you actually work there? For example, everyone says they are "family friendly", but the idea of work/life balance means different things to different people (and Gen X seems to be part of the turning of the tide- go Gen X!) I am a mid/high level administrator, and just getting a chance to start my family (one little one, another on the way) and have already, in the past few weeks, encountered both direct and indirect comments about wanting balance (apparently not a good thing), how I will get my work done (which was just fine last time I was out), and even the idea that one must aways say yes at work- no matter the effect on any other aspect of your work or home life (this last one was said to a group of people- rather demoralizing).
My good friend is on the job market right now as well, and we struggle with how to identify a good, communal, family-oriented culture, and we are both all about cc's. The closest we have come is taking into account the interactions with general staff. My friend has called a number of HR offices asking questions about application procedures, and has received quite a variety of responses, both in terms of helpfulness as well as just general courtesy. Any suggestions you might have would be appreciated!
First, congratulations on the impending little one!
This is a great question, because it’s both important and difficult.
I’d start by narrowing it down. Within a single college or organization, there can be dozens of microclimates in various offices. What you care about most is the microclimate where you’ll be working. For example, it wouldn’t be at all weird to discover that the unwritten rules in, say, Admissions, are different from the unwritten rules in Biology. Outside of really small colleges, you’ll often find very different climates in different corners of a single place.
That’s why I wouldn’t necessarily focus on HR as a source. It can give you the official policies and forms, but it won’t often tell you that, say, the boss you’d work for has a habit of calling you at home at 9:00 p.m. and expecting you to drop everything. Some places work by the book, and others vaguely recall that there’s a book somewhere.
I’d start with focusing on what you can control, which is your self-awareness. What aspects of “work-life balance” mean the most to you? I mean that in the most concrete, banal sense possible. Is it being home at the same time every day? Is it being allowed to not answer the phone at home? Is it the ability to work from home, as needed? Job-sharing? Unusual hours? Avoiding travel? Try to be as specific as you can in your own mind. Some places that are perfectly fine with, say, having a consistent time to leave, may not be fine with working at home. If you ask a general question about “family friendliness” thinking that it refers to flextime, but they hear it as referring to leaving by 5:00, you may get a truthful but misleading answer.
(For example, given the kids’ schedule, it’s fine for me to arrive at work at the crack of dawn, but I need to be home for dinner. That means that I arrive before almost everybody, but I leave at a consistent time. In my bachelor days, I preferred the polar opposite. Parenthood has forced me to impersonate a morning person, of all things.)
Then I’d look at what is actually practiced, to the extent possible. During interviews, ask the people at the table the questions that matter the most to you, in the most concrete terms possible. If you care about leaving at a set time, ask the people there if they do. If you care about not getting calls at home, ask the people there how often that happens. People know the “right” answer to most abstractions, but often get more truthful when you get more specific. If they recoil in horror or disbelief at your question, then you know what you need to know.
In my more optimistic moments, I like to believe that Gen X types, as they move into management, will be better about these things. As the generation that watched its parents divorce and lived the reality of “joint custody” from a kid’s point of view, I hope that we’ll be more mindful of the three-dimensional realities of people’s lives. Besides, from a management perspective, burning out employees is a stupid waste of resources; over time, you can get better performance from people who aren’t having work-induced personal crises.
Good luck!
Wise and worldly readers, I hope and believe that some of you have found or figured out other ways to suss out the true family-friendliness of a workplace before joining it. Is there a reliable indicator that an outsider could use?
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