Working Part Time Article

"Workin' 9 to 2: Taking Steps to Make Part-Time Job Setups More Palatable"
Wall Street Journal- February 17, 2005

It sneaks up on you like a virus, surfacing first in small symptoms -- an extra hour at work here, a weekend worked there. Then suddenly you've got it bad:

Schedule creep.

Schedule creep is the nasty tendency of work to expand beyond allotted hours and fill all available time, with no corresponding increase in your paycheck. It's a big problem for people on part-time schedules in particular, who often find themselves working 100% time for 75% or 80% pay. Worse yet, part-timers are often sidetracked in their careers, on the assumption they aren't dedicated to their jobs.

Now, some creative remedies are coming from an unlikely front: law and accounting firms. Battling above-average attrition rates, firms are using new tools to ensure fair treatment of part-timers, such as appointing in-house monitors to make sure that they aren't overworked. More employees are working part-time in these firms and getting promoted while they do so.

Signs that your employer's part-time policy is flawed
- Only 3% or fewer of all employees work part- time
- Only women work part-time
- Part-timers work full-time for part-time pay
- Part-timers get assignments full-timers don't want
- Part-timers quit at higher rates
Source: The Project for Attorney Retention

The tactics bear lessons for all employers. More U.S. workers would like to work part-time than actually do. Among full-time wage and salary employees, 18% would prefer to work part-time; of those, 44% say their employers wouldn't let them, says a 2002 study of 2,810 workers by the Families and Work Institute, New York.

To make part-time setups work better, some law firms are taking tips inspired by an unlikely source: teen magazines. Attorney Joan Williams modeled a "usability test" after the rate-your-boyfriend quizzes in her daughter's magazines. "We refer to it as 'the boyfriend test,' " says Ms. Williams of the Project for Attorney Retention at American University, Washington, D.C., which researches ways to improve work schedules. One issue the test measures is "schedule creep," a term she borrowed from the construction industry, where it denotes contractors' tendency to work past deadlines. Among other criteria: How do part-timers' assignments, promotion rates and attrition compare with full-timers'?

Dozens of law firms have used the test to help guide their policies, including McNees Wallace & Nurick, Harrisburg, Pa., whose improved part-time policy took effect in 2003. Previously, lawyers who wanted to reduce their hours had to cut case-by-case deals, and part-timers sometimes didn't get as good assignments as full-timers, says Helen Gemmill, an attorney with the 105-lawyer firm. Dismayed that a half-dozen attorneys who quit the firm one year were all women, McNees Wallace suspected that lack of flexibility may have contributed to the brain drain and vowed to improve its policy.

McNees Wallace turned the schedule-creep problem upside down. Instead of paying part-time attorneys less, the firm pays them more per hour. Part-timers with two or more years with the firm receive three-quarters pay for working two-thirds of normal hours. If working part-time helps keep them with the firm and avoid the cost of replacing them, "you're still making money for the firm," says Steve Weingarten, managing attorney. The firm also allows part-timers to progress on the partnership track at the same rate as full-timers. The quit rate among women attorneys has plunged, he says.

In another move, some accounting firms are assigning coordinators to monitor the welfare of part-timers and others on nontraditional schedules. PricewaterhouseCoopers, New York, named a "flexible work arrangements coordinator" 18 months ago.

"We don't want people getting sucked into working a 95% schedule and being paid for 80%," says Jennifer Allyn, a human-resource manager with the firm. The coordinator's quarterly audit of employees' time sheets helped Ms. Allyn diagnose schedule creep in a part-timer on her own staff, who was working five days a week for four days' pay. At the employee's request, Ms. Allyn returned her to full-time pay.

Ernst & Young, New York, has employed a flexibility director since 2001, and has an in-house consultant who tracks part-timers' pay and assignments.

The legal and accounting professions are useful workplace laboratories because they tend to be pressure cookers of stress, fueled by ever-rising billable-hours expectations. Nearly half, or 48%, of law-school graduates, and 62% of college accounting grads, are women, who tend to want flexibility after having babies. Also, law and accounting firms track billable hours, making it easy to evaluate productivity.

A few firms are chalking up marked increases in part-timers: 8.1% of the 1,007 attorneys at Hogan & Hartson, Washington, D.C., work part-time, compared with a national average among law firms of 3.9%, according to the National Association of Law Placement, an organization of law schools and employers. Hogan & Hartson heeds criteria similar to those in the usability test, with an unwritten but firm policy that makes sure part-timers have a chance at becoming partners, says the firm's Linda Oliver, herself a part-time partner.

At Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, 4.2% of its 1,000 attorneys work part-time, including 10 of its 290 partners, and attrition among part-timers is low. Matt Chambers, Washington, D.C., is among them; he works reduced hours as a partner so he can help his 8- and 10-year-old children with homework and coach their soccer teams. "To know that I can be there" for them, he says, means a lot.