On Sept. 11 Sandi McGuire spent all day on the phone talking to her daughter, who lived in Florida. Time she would normally have spent looking for a job.
McGuire, who was a project manager at a dot-com in Chicago, was laid off last June and started freelancing. But she had been itching to get back into the corporate arena; that is until Sept. 11.
“For six months, I talked to [my daughter] every day,” she said.
McGuire, 40, said her perspective changed. So did her job search. She realized there were a lot more important things in her life than corporate success.
“I shifted priorities,” she said.
McGuire decided to work for herself. “I didn’t want to work according to someone else’s schedule,” she said.
Kenneth Trenton Timmons, a market manager for placement agency Ranstad North America, said he’s had clients turn down interviews for good jobs if the positions don’t offer them flexibility or a life/work balance.
“We’re seeing clients who want to work closer to home,” he said. “The emotional things matter. They also want flexibility, or at least the perception of flexibility.
“There’s a lot more dream chasing too,” Timmons said. McGuire would agree.
With the financial and emotional support of her husband, Patrick, McGuire is pursuing a long-held passion, photography. She has been working part-time at a studio learning the ropes for the last several months. Now she is forming her own company so she can open a studio. While she plans on shooting weddings and other special events, she wants to specialize in pet portraiture.
“I’m not making as much money,” she said. “But I’m having more fun. The money really doesn’t matter. I just want to do what makes me happy.”
In a survey conducted in December for American Demographics magazine by Arlington Heights-based Market Facts Inc., 77 percent of polled workers said family togetherness matters more now than it did before the terror attacks.
Ranstad’s own nationwide survey of workers, conducted by Roper & Starch in September and October, found 72 percent of workers wanted some freedom in setting work hours. The idea of a full-time job with extended time off appealed to 61 percent of the sample, and 58 percent said they’d like to be able to work from home.
“People appear to be `re-centering’–placing greater emphasis on non-material things like family and personal lives,” Timmons said.
The National Sleep Foundation advocates Americans get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. But the group’s publicist admits being a recent convert to that advice. Helga West once kept 60- to 70-hour workweeks.
Newlyweds, West and her husband Randy discovered how great it was to spend time together, and began planning to cut back on office hours. Before that could happen, however, West was laid off in September as clients cut back on marketing. She says it was a blessing.
West opened her own firm, Mission Works Communications Inc. in Bethesda, Md., taking on largely not-for-profit clients and billing one-third her former rate.
“I wanted to make truly professional services affordable for these agencies that have very limited budgets,” she said.
“I spend a great deal of the time advising them how they can do things with their existing staff, which helps them stretch their budgets even further.”
Not only is she finding the work more meaningful, she now gets that full measure of slumber. Her work schedule is cut to 30 hours per week and she is using her free time to start a national non-profit for victims of violent crime, called Witness Justice.
On a Florida vacation in 1993, West and her mother were victims of a smash-and-grab robbery. West was severely injured and both suffered from post-traumatic stress. Her attacker was sentenced to life in prison. The experience taught West hard lessons about the justice system, which she hopes to help others navigate.
Eventually her husband will join Mission Works. “We’re setting this up as a home-based business,” she said.
“It keeps down operating costs so we can charge less, and it’ll allow us to have time with each other and with our dogs. And when we have kids, we’ll have the time to watch them grow up.”
Steven Rothberg, president and founder of Minneapolis-based CollegeRecruiter.com, and his wife, Faith, had rearranged their lives after their second son was born five years ago. At that time, Faith, who had been working three days a week, decided to stay home full time. “We figured out we wouldn’t lose that much income after you figure out the savings in day care, transportation, lunches and nylons,” Rothberg said.
At the same time, Rothberg re-evaluated his firm. He decided to cut his staff of 10 in half, hire contract employees as needed, and spend less time traveling and more time with family.
The result, Rothberg says, was less stress and more flexibility.
“I work when I want to work and how much I want to work,” he said. “Also, if I hadn’t downsized my business we wouldn’t have had a third child. It would have been too difficult for my wife to raise three kids single-handedly. So my daughter owes her life to her parents having their priorities straight.”
Rothberg believes the time he spends with his children will pay off in the long run.
