Giving adoptive parents support is a way of life at Intuit Inc., a provider of business and financial management software. The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., has some 7,000 employees and 55 offices worldwide.
Through its adoption assistance program, Intuit gives employees $3,500 for each child adopted and two weeks paid time off for what the company calls an adjustment period. Another part of the program that makes an enormous difference: immediate medical benefits for newly adopted children.
A recent beneficiary of the program is Suzzanne Ippel of Tucson, Ariz., a human resource manager at the company. Ippel and her husband, Gary Williams, an artist, have three grown children. And they’ve just adopted a girl, age 7, and her brother, age 11. Intuit’s contribution: $7,000 and four paid weeks off. Plus that immediate health insurance.
FMLA watch: Are waivers of Family and Medical Leave Act claims secured from employees valid? Aaron R. Gelb, a management attorney with Vedder, Price, Kaufman & Kammholz, says in his company’s newsletter, Labor Law, that “employers. … should not assume a waiver of FMLA claims will be enforceable.”
I asked Gelb, who is based in Chicago, to explain just what’s at stake for employees who waive any of the rights protected by FMLA.
“It’s still up in the air, but I believe that the courts will not uphold the right of employees to waive their right to take leave under FMLA,” said Gelb.
“But if they’re fired while on leave or when they return, and then agree to waive their right not to sue by signing a separation agreement and receiving benefits–then, if employees decide to sue, employers certainly could use in their defense the fact the employee had signed a waiver agreement.”
My advice: Don’t sign away your hard-earned FMLA rights.
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The technology of balance: Information technology professionals–you know, the ones always glued to their computers–“need to achieve a work/life balance for themselves and their team members to maintain their personal sanity. The pressures in the field today are so heavy that it’s important for IT workers to understand that it can’t be all work and no play.”
That advice comes from Bart Bolton, a facilitator for the Society for Information Management. The national organization, headquartered in Chicago, is a professional association of information technology leaders.
“Many IT workers believe that work/life balance means half their lives is work and half is family,” said Bolton, who is based in Upton, Mass., and travels the U.S. giving leadership development programs. “But when I give talks, I point out that approach is unreal. Work/life balance has three legs: work, family and time for yourself–and it’s the latter that’s most pertinent.”
Bolton says that technology workers “need to figure out what’s important to them and then shed the things that are not. That way, they’ll be able to find the time they need. … The computer is not your life. It’s just your livelihood.”
Another ceiling: The glass ceiling, that barrier to top-ranking executive jobs, has been given a special name, according to Catalyst, a non-profit research and advisory organization in New York that works to expand opportunities for women in business.
The “concrete ceiling,” is not a new term, but it has a special meaning to African-American women who use it to describe the factors “blocking their career advancement,” reports Catalyst, publisher of a recent study titled, “Advancing African-American Women in the Workplace: What Managers Need to Know.”
Minority women say the ceiling is “difficult to shatter.” And the “top barriers to advancement” include negative stereotypes, heightened visibility and scrutiny, questioning of credibility and authority, “double outsider status,” lack of institutional support, and exclusion from informal networks.
That list is a concrete explanation for the “concrete ceiling.”
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Carol Kleiman’s columns also appear in the Monday and Thursday Business sections. Hear her on WBBM-AM 780 at 6:21 p.m. and 10:22 p.m. Mondays and at 11:20 a.m. Saturdays. Watch her “Career Coach” segments on CLTV. E-mail [email protected]. Carol Kleiman