Bernadette Grey was home in bed with a nasty case of the stomach flu. When she returned to work Monday, she was greeted by concerned, clucking colleagues. “Everybody wanted to know how I was feeling,” says Grey, who is editor in chief of Working Woman magazine in New York. The next week, on Grey’s 38th birthday, her assistant surprised her with a dozen pink roses and co-workers took her out for drinks.
“The people I work with have become like family to me,” Grey says.
Indeed, for many women, colleagues offer friendship, support and socializing that used to come from family or the people who lived on our block. Our offices have become our neighborhoods. They’re where we spend most of our time.
But most of us don’t think much about our frequent interactions with fellow workers because they are a seamless part of the day. Diane murmurs sympathetically over your horrendous new project deadline while you grab lunch together. Nora shares the amusing details of her blind date when the two of you converge at the coffee machine. These snippets of socializing buoy us and validate us, and we don’t have to lift a finger to find them.
So what happens when comrades suddenly vanish? When a woman abandons her traditional workplace to start a home-based business, establish a virtual office, become a free agent or consultant, or stay home with her kids, the loss of regular contact with colleagues can be devastating.
“The level of isolation comes as a surprise for a lot of women who start working at home,” Grey says.
And sometimes it takes women a little while to figure out what’s missing, notes Chris Essex, a Rockville, Md.-based consultant on work-life issues for the Center for Work and the Family in Berkeley, Calif. They may experience a mild depression, Essex says.
“Women may feel like they are moving in slow motion, unmotivated and easily overwhelmed,” she says.
It took Jennifer Basye Sander exactly one day to recognize the big disadvantage of working at home. “It’s lonely . . . sometimes it’s hard to get motivated,” says Sander, who left her job as a publishing company acquisitions editor to start Big City Books, a book packaging business. Her northern California office in Granite Bay has a gorgeous view, looking out over a tranquil lake and pasture with the occasional hawk circling overhead. But Sander must make phone calls to find the camaraderie that used to be effortless. Although a deadline was pressing one recent morning, instead of working she called a writer friend in New York. “It was water cooler chat,” Sander explains.
Judith Lederman of Westchester County in New York knew the solitude was affecting her when “I started schmoozing with the Fed-Ex man and he couldn’t get on with his route.” Ditto with the postal carrier. “You really look forward to the mail,” she jokes. Like many women, she launched her home-based business–JSL Publicity and Marketing–so she could spend more time with her three children.
More than 3 million women operate home-based businesses, reflecting a burgeoning national trend, according to Joanne H. Pratt Associates, which tracks teleworking. But that doesn’t mean they’re sitting around having coffee together. Five of Sander’s neighbors have home offices, but they don’t hang out.
“When you’re not getting a paycheck, every minute counts,” she says. “You have to be much more efficient in the way that you use your time. If you are out gabbing with your neighbors, you are not finishing up your project and you’re not going to get paid.”
But experts stress you shouldn’t allow work to spill into your entire life and cut you off from friends–one common danger of setting up shop in your house.
“We need human contact like we need the sun,” Grey says. “At home you have to be very proactive about creating your own community.”
When she moved to Maryland from California two years ago, Essex estimates she asked 50 people to fitness-walk with her until she found three exercise companions.
When female workers from a New Jersey chemical company felt estranged after losing their brick office to a virtual setup, Essex helped them schedule regular morning and afternoon phone calls with one another. They also planned a weekly coffee.
Still, it’s not easy to maintain relationships with associates if you veer off on a new career or lifestyle path.
“The minute that door closes, that relationship is changed,” Sander says. “As much as you vow, `We’ll get together for lunch,’ you really don’t. It’s different. It’s weird. When you see them, you’re not one of them anymore.”
It’s especially thorny when women depart to stay home full-time with their children. Joanne Brundage felt the connection to former co-workers rapidly slip away after she left her job as a postal carrier in Elmhurst to care for her infant son. “They’d say `How’s the baby?’ (But) they didn’t want to hear that much. You couldn’t commiserate about the workplace. It became more and more difficult to have the same conversations we had had.”
Feeling frustrated, isolated and tethered to her house by the baby, in 1987 Brundage founded F.E.M.A.L.E. (Formerly Employed Mothers at the Leading Edge), a national support and advocacy group for mothers who have left full-time employment. Now with 7,500 members and 170 chapters, FEMALE offers adult-only night meetings, play groups for moms and kids, an active Web site and a bimonthly newsletter (www.FEMALEhome.org or 800-223-9399).
New at-home moms have to seek “colleagues”–women “doing the same thing you’re doing,” says Brundage, who is now executive director of FEMALE.
But while it was relatively simple to bond with people you saw eight or more hours a day at the office, it’s trickier to establish that familiarity at home, observes Christine Peterson, an attorney who recently left her job to be with her three children. Peterson wonders how to ratchet up her casual conversations with neighborhood moms in Glencoe to a level of friendship where she can call and say, “Let’s go to a movie or play tennis.”
“The relationships I have are almost exclusively through my children,” she says. “How do you develop an independent basis for relationships? I haven’t figured that out.”
Taking pity on the Fed-Ex man, Lederer took a route many experts recommend for professional women to find new cronies. She joined a raft of business groups and her local chamber of commerce.
“I got to know people,” she says, reaping social and business benefits such as tips on finding a new graphic designer. “Getting out is essential.”
And in an exploding outlet for women at home, Lederer developed friends and colleagues in cyberspace through Home-Based Working Moms (www.hbwm.com) and Work at Home Moms Group (www.wahm.com). Of her on-line companions, Lederer says, “They do their thing in their houses and I do my thing in my house, but we’re connected.”
“If you just got off the phone with a horrible person and you want to scream, there’s an outlet. When you’re working at home, who are you going to tell–the baby-sitter? The guy who’s blowing the leaves on your lawn? You’re sitting there going `Who am I going to talk to?’ “
Lederer also began working two days a week for a public relations agency in downtown New York City. “You remember how to dress up, how to look nice, how to interact,” she says. “Getting into the city sparks my creativity.”
Research shows “creativity requires social interaction,” confirms Joyce K. Fletcher, senior research scholar at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at Wellesley College. “You need a shared space where ideas can be influenced by each other.”
Karen Donoghue, who launched her own e-commerce strategy business, re-creates the synergy she used to enjoy with fellow employees by forging strong relationships with other women entrepreneurs. She mentors younger women who want to start their own businesses.
“It’s another way to stop the isolation,” says Donoghue, whose Arlington, Mass., firm, HumanLogic, helps companies make their e-commerce sites customer-friendly. Donoghue also organizes outings for women business owners and their kids. While the kids play, the moms munch pizza and swap business stories.
Winter is the toughest season to be home alone, says Anne Basye, Jennifer Sander’s sister, who works as a freelance writer and editor on Chicago’s North Side.
Still, the arrangement has its perks. Early one spring morning when Basye was out for a walk, she encountered a woman dressed in a suit, wheeling her luggage as she frantically searched for a cab to the airport. Without missing a step the woman called out to Basye, “How would you like to trade lives?” “No thanks,” Basye said, and walked another mile in the sunshine before she went home to her solitary work.
