Career Advice & News Center

In an appearance before the Department of Labor on Thursday, January 14, first lady Michelle Obama encouraged U.S. companies to more aggressively implement policies that will help their employees achieve a better work-life balance, so they may be attentive to familial obligations.

The first lady drew on her own experience as a successful Chicago lawyer and mother of two young girls, Sasha and Malia, to make her points, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

"When I was at work during these times, I always felt like I was shortchanging my girls," Obama said.

She added, "But then when I was at home, I was worried that I was letting people at work down. And with that kind of anxiety comes a lot of additional stress and a whole lot of guilt."

Obama suggested that improving policies like flextime, telecommuting and paid absence days would result in happier employees and more efficiently-run companies, according to the news source.

"Instead of spending all day at work worrying about what's happening at home, [employees with access to these policies] have the support that they need to concentrate on their jobs," she continued.

In her address to about 400 Labor Department employees, the first lady referenced the 40 percent of private-sector employees who work for companies that do not provide paid sick days, and endorsed the Healthy Families Act, which would guarantee up to seven salaried absence days per year for full-time employees.

Alison Earle, a research scientist at the Bouvé College of Health Sciences' Institute for Urban Health Research at Northeastern University, said that in many cases employees return to work more quickly, take less time off and are less likely to spread their illness to co-workers when given paid leave days, according to the Northeastern website.

"Staying home to care for a sick child or taking an elderly parent to a doctor's appointment shouldn't mean risking one's job," Obama said. "Things like paid family leave and sick days and affordable child care should be the norm, not the exception."

The Healthy Families Act was proposed in November by Democrat George Miller, who speaks for California in the U.S. House of Representatives and chairs the House Education and Labor Committee.

His proposal was unveiled in early November, at the peak of the H1N1 scare. Miller claimed that at least 50 million workers lack paid sick leave, an impediment to a sound work-life balance, and applied his bill to all companies with 15 or more employees, the Gaea Times reports.

Beyond sick days

A report released last week by researchers at the University of Toronto revealed that unpaid sick days may be the tip of the iceberg for employees disappointed with their work-life balance.

The study of about 1,800 American workers found that about 50 percent of people regularly bring their work home with them, contributing to stress and interference with planned personal activities.

Researchers specifically found several factors common to an unfavorable work-life balance, such as interpersonal conflict at work, job insecurity, high-pressure performance situations and unpleasant working environments.

Other studies have claimed that just 45 percent of workers are content with their jobs, stemming from declines in worker satisfaction over the last two decades spaning nearly every category, including interest in work, job security, organizational health, managerial quality and extrinsic rewards.

Until new legislation is passed or companies assume new policies, employees can maximize their personal time through job sharing arrangements, working from home and implementing flexible schedules such as the compressed work week, in which an employee works four 10-hour days.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2004, a total of 20.7 million workers did some work at home as part of their primary job.