Spring 2020 Newsletter

Revisioning the 2020 WFRN Conference
Susan Lambert, WFRN President

Dear WFRN members and colleagues,

I am delighted to provide you with additional details of the WFRN’s virtual forums and opportunities for your involvement. Although the world has changed, WFRN’s commitment to furthering knowledge on pressing work-family issues, policies, and practices has not. Our guiding principle has been to design forums that members will find valuable and meaningful, rather than just checking-the-box that WFRN held a conference in 2020. Our virtual forums are intended to offer opportunities for WFRN members to engage with and learn from one another and to increase the impact of members’ research on work-family policy and practice.

The original theme for the 2020 conference, Advancing Equality at Work and Home: Strengthening Science and Collaboration, will continue to serve as an organizing principle for our virtual events. WFRN will host three types of on-line forums in 2020-2021. With the intent of fostering exchanges across the globe, times for events will vary, with some forums occurring midday in the Americas, and other events occurring midday in Europe/Africa and Asia/Australia. Recordings of all three types of forums will be available to members on the WFRN website and highlighted on the WFRN Research Feed.

(1) WFRN Plenaries. Plenaries are live events that focus specifically on issues central to the conference theme. Panelists will present research, as well as engage each other and attendees in virtual discussions. WFRN Plenaries will be held quarterly.

The inaugural WFRN plenary will be held Friday, July 17, 2020, 2 to 4 pm GMT (10am – 12pm New York, 3-5pm London, 11pm-1am Tokyo). The plenary panel will highlight research being conducted on the work-family ramifications of COVID-19 for workers and families who vary in income and occupational conditions. Scholars from different nations will be part of the plenary panel and will help lead discussion.

 (2) WFRN Sessions. Sessions are live presentations of symposia, author-meets-readers encounters and workshops that were accepted for the June NYC conference, as well as individual paper submissions that will be grouped together specifically for the virtual conference format. WFRN sessions will occur once a month with multiple sessions staggered over two or three-hour windows so that participants can choose to attend more than one session at a virtual event.

(3) WFRN Showcases. Showcases are pre-recorded presentations of individual submissions that were accepted for the 2020 NYC conference as papers, posters or for roundtables. Participants of symposia/author-meets-readers/workshops can also choose to pre-record their contribution rather than presenting it live during a WFRN session. As with WFRN plenaries and sessions, pre-recorded WFRN showcases will be available to members on the WFRN website and highlighted on the WFRN Research Feed. 

We hope that these new forums will serve as models for future years. On the membership survey conducted earlier this year, WFRN members suggested that WFRN create additional venues for interacting with one another, especially during non-conference years. As a pilot initiative, rather than just a temporary fix for the conference, we will be seeking your input and feedback throughout the year, and we are open to making adjustments as we go!

So, what do you need to do to have your previously accepted submission integrated in the virtual forums?  If you have not done so already, simply transfer your registration for the NYC conference to a registration for this series by re-registering here.

You have until June 24th to re-register and have your submission included in a session or showcase. We will begin scheduling WFRN sessions and showcases in late June and these events will begin in August 2020. Once you re-register, we will contact you, seeking your preference for when and how your research will be featured.

Thank you for your patience as we developed an alternative plan for the 2020 WFRN Conference. Please don’t hesitate to contact me (slambert@uchicago.edu) or Stephen Sweet (Executive Officer; wfrnet@gmail.com) if you have questions.

Sincerely,
Susan Lambert, President
 

Phyllis Moen Receives the 2020
WFRN Lifetime Achievement Award

The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes extraordinary scholars who have made enduring contributions to the work-family community. The award is selected by the Executive Board of the WFRN.

Phyllis Moen holds a McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair and is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Prior to this, Dr. Moen was the Ferris Family Professor of Life Course Studies at Cornell University. She earned her doctorate at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Moen is the recipient of numerous awards and has generated over $20 million of research funding for her studies of working families and organizations. 

Her nominators (Erin Kelly, Wen Fan, and Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth) provided a rich summary of Dr. Moen’s research, far too lengthy to publish here.  A few highlights (quoted from her nomination) help illuminate the impact she has had on understandings of family dynamics, organizational practices, and social policy.

“Phyllis excels – and indeed is downright amazing – with regard to the volume of her contributions, the impact of her contributions to work-family scholarship and beyond, and her enduring commitment to the work-family community….. She has published over 200 articles or chapters, has been cited over 23,000 times, and has an h-index of 75 and an i10-index of 197. Furthermore, she published 10 books covering the topics of workplace policies and practices to address overload and the work-life interface, retirement and working for pay and in the community in later life, couples’ negotiations of their work and family responsibilities over the life course, the institutional and historical contexts that affect work-family strategies and decisions, and more. All of these figures and numerical rankings are impressive but those who have interacted with Phyllis Moen know she is not only concerned with getting more publications or citations; her primary goal is fostering a vigorous and welcoming intellectual community of work-family scholars. She is a habitual ‘institution builder.’ She has repeatedly created fun and fulfilling projects and centers that involve junior scholars (from undergraduate students through junior faculty) and train future generations of work-family scholars and practitioners. She’s also a master of pulling seasoned scholars into the field, helping them see that whether they identify as scholars of unemployment, social policy, demography, stress and health, or aging, there are exciting ways that they can both learn from and contribute to the work-family community.”
 

Leslie Hammer and Ellen Ernst Kossek, Research Team,
Receive the 2020 Ellen Galinsky Generative Researchers Award

This award recognizes a work-family researcher or research team who have/has contributed break-through thinking to the work-family field via theory, measures, and/or data sets that led to expansive application, innovation, and diffusion, including the sharing of research opportunity in the spirit of open science. The award recipients were selected by the review committee Aixa Cintron-Velez, Ryan Johnson, Ujvala Rajadhyaksha, and Amy Wharton (Chair).

Leslie Hammer is a Professor at the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences at the Oregon Health & Science University, where she is Co-Director of the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center. Dr. Hammer is also a Professor at Portland State University in the Department of Psychology where she is Associate Director of the Occupational Health Psychology Program. Dr. Hammer is an Elected Fellow in SIOP, the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, and APA. She received her doctorate from Bowling Green State University.

Ellen Ernst Kossek is the Basil S. Turner Professor of Management (Chaired Professor in OB/HR) and Research Director of the Butler Center for Leadership Excellence at Purdue University Krannert School of Management. Dr. Kossek is an Elected Fellow in the Academy of Management, SIOP and APA. She received her doctorate from Yale University.

Their nominators (Nicholas Smith and Shaun Pichler) focused on Dr. Hammer’s and Dr. Kossek’s combined efforts as related to the NIH funded Work, Family and Health Network and the impact of identifying and measuring family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB). In summarizing the contributions of this incredibly productive research team, they write:

“Leslie and Ellen’s work in the area of work-family research is theoretically and practically far-reaching and impactful. Their areas of research are expansive and include work-family, work-life, flexibility, supervisor supportiveness, diversity and inclusion, among others. In the work-family space, Leslie and Ellen’s work is great in magnitude and has enhanced theoretical and practical understandings of how organizations can improve positive work and family outcomes by facilitating formal and informal supports. In particular, their expertise and interdisciplinary efforts led to the NIH funding the Work, Family, and Health Network in which the measurement of specific family-supportive supervisory behaviors (FSSB) was developed (Phase I) which led to multiple experimental field intervention studies in which supervisors were trained on how to engage in FSSBs (Phase II).They have also shown that family supportive supervision is related to many other positive outcomes such as improved performance, sleep quality, safety performance, health outcomes, and mental health. This work has positively impacted thousands of employees and shows the importance of drawing upon interdisciplinary research teams, engaging with organizational partners and practitioners, and utilizing multi-method multi-source longitudinal designs, along with the important role that supervisors play in the well-being of employees’ work and family lives.”

Hak Yoon Kim Receives 2020
Kathleen Christensen Dissertation Award

This award recognizes a recent graduate of a doctoral program who has already made a significant contribution to the work and family knowledge base. The Kathleen Christensen Dissertation Award has been created to encourage doctoral candidates and early career scholars to reach for/achieve high and rigorous standards of research relevant to the work and family area of study. It provides financial support to help a promising work-family scholar to initiate post-dissertation research. This award is co-sponsored and co-selected by the Work and Family Researchers Network and the Society for Human Resource Management. This award is made possible by generous support from the Northrop Grumman Corporation, the Families and Work Institute, the SHRM Foundation, SHRM’s National Study of the Changing Workforce, and the Work and Family Researchers Network members. The award recipient was selected by the review committee Alexander Alonso, Clare Kelliher, Gary Latham, and Christina Matz (Chair).

Dr. Hak Yoon Kim is currently an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior/Human Resource Management at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. She received her PhD at Case Western Reserve University (USA) in 2019 in Organizational Behavior. Her dissertation is: “The Working Mom’s Tug of War: Trajectories of Work-Family Conflict and the Buffering Roles of Job and Family Satisfaction”.

Dr. Kim’s research focuses on the dynamic nature of work-family conflict among working mothers by exploring trajectories of work-family and family-work interference and the buffering roles of personal resources such as job and family satisfaction. Her ambitious research project investigated the experiences of South Korean women over a six year period. Important findings of the study are the buffering role of job satisfaction and how linkages between interference and satisfaction can be explained by conservation of resources theory. Dr. Kim’s dissertation suggests that organizations can benefit by attending to the long-term effects of work-family conflict among employees, particularly for working mothers. She concludes that unless organizations (and societies) find ways to buffer against the negative effects of work-family conflict, birth rates among dual-earner couples may continue to decline. Her research directly relates to organizational practice, demonstrating how the creation of satisfying work can mitigate the adverse effects of work-family conflict. Dr. Kim plans to extend this research by focusing on working fathers’ experiences and on social class dynamics. 

From the Executive Office - Stephen Sweet

The WFRN team has worked incredibly hard during the past year. I express profound gratitude for all the members who contributed to WFRN initiatives, and especially to our Network Coordinator, Megan Wisniewski, for her diligent efforts and to President Susan Lambert for her vision and guidance. 

One of the responsibilities of the Executive Officer is to provide a report that can be presented to the membership at the biennial conference. Because the membership will not be gathering as planned in June 2020, I take this opportunity to highlight key observations that relate to short and long term strategies that the WFRN is developing.

Member Engagement, Recruitment and Retention

Currently, the WFRN has more than 500 members. In the past year, through their participation in committees and content development initiatives, more than 50 members helped the WFRN clarify its priorities/strategies and move forward. The WFRN has continued to enhance its visibility and resource provision to members and wider communities of interest. In the past year, the WFRN appointed a teaching content development leader (Caryn Medved), an editor for the Work-Family Encyclopedia (Samantha Ammons), an international content development leader (Clarice Santos), and a new director of the Early Career Fellowship Program (Lindsey Trimble-O’Connor). We have an active presence on all of the major social media platforms, led by Judi Casey and our social media team. The WFRN is also recognizing scholarship with awards that highlight research performed at all career stages. Special thanks is extended to Amy Wharton, Christina Matz, and Shelley MacDermid-Wadsworth who chaired our awards committees.

In 2019 and 2020, the WFRN focused considerable effort on membership recruitment/retention, developing understandings of ways to meet member interests. Special thanks is extended to members of the Membership Committee, chaired by Matthew Piszczek, and the International Committee, chaired by Clarice Santos and Bianca Stumbitz. Thanks also to WFRN members who responded to our membership survey. It is clear that the WFRN is serving vital functions to enhance the interests of our members, with nearly half of our members reporting that the WFRN is their primary professional organization. The results of that survey helped the Executive Board prioritize expenditures, as well as identified the ideal timing and location of future conferences. 

There are two important observations that I draw attention to in the membership trends presented below. First, membership remains strong. This is especially gratifying, understanding that many professional organizations are seeing downward trends. Nonetheless, the WFRN needs to keep existing members engaged and effectively guide scholars to renew their memberships. Second, membership dips in non-conference years. The latter observation is guiding the WFRN to further illuminate the value of membership during those non-conference years, which we anticipate will involve new virtual events that provide exclusive benefits to members.

Finances 

With the guidance of treasurers Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth (2019) and Lonnie Golden (2020-2022), the WFRN has developed a financial strategy focused on long-term sustainability. Toward that end, major budgeting decisions are brought to the Executive Board for approval and a financial reserve has been established to protect the WFRN from unanticipated events.

The WFRN is committed to keeping memberships and conference registrations as affordable as possible, in addition to providing support to members in economically disadvantaged situations. This includes travel awards for scholars in our global community and reduced memberships/registrations for students. The Executive Board examined other comparable professional organizations to affirm that the WFRN’s registration/membership fees compare favorably.

The Executive Board determined that hosting conferences at large hotel centers, beyond 2022, may be cost prohibitive. The Executive Board is now examining alternative venues, such as at universities, which can potentially reduce conference registration costs.

The WFRN is in a reasonably secure financial position so long as memberships and conference registrations remain robust. It is important that members renew their memberships annually and that the WFRN continues to retain and ideally expand its membership base. 

Increasing the Visibility of Work-Family Scholarship

In 2019, the WFRN completed the creation of our new website. Now, we are working to add more content and update information that is edging on being out of date. Current priorities include developing teaching content, international content, and translation of scholarship in the Work-Family Encyclopedia. On a typical day, there are more than 130 viewer sessions and more than 250 page views on our website, wfrn.org. 

We are working to expand the visibility of individual members by featuring their research in the Experts Panel. There are nearly 70 WFRN members currently listed in the Experts Panel (see instructions below on how to add your profile).

The WFRN continues to provide a News Feed and in 2019, we instituted a Research Feed that summarizes the newest research in leading journals that publish work-family studies.  Members can post information on their own scholarship to both the News Feed and the Research Feed, which is available to anyone who visits the WFRN website and is delivered directly to member emails. We are currently working with the journal Community, Work and Family to further increase visibility of members’ scholarship.

The WFRN is also in contact with leading journalists who cover work-family issues.  We anticipate these reporters will find interest in our virtual events series, providing additional visibility to the research performed by our members.

   Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Membership?

Have You Joined the Experts Panel?

The goal of the WFRN Experts Panel is to help WFRN members receive recognition for their research and to help them secure opportunities as consultants, collaborators, and as experts for media interviews. Currently 70 WFRN members are on the panel; are you? This new resource provides visibility to current WFRN members, showcasing research foci, areas of expertise, contact information, and links to personal webpages.  Whenever the WFRN staff receive media inquiries, this is our go-to resource. To view the Experts Panel, please click here.

Any current WFRN member can request being listed on the Experts Panel by logging into their WFRN account or by contacting the Executive Office at wfrnet@gmail.com.  The WFRN Executive Office staff is identifying and contacting journalists who cover work-family concerns, making them aware of this resource. We have also contacted nearly 5,000 stakeholders with interest in work-family issues, alerting them to the contributions expert panelists can potentially provide.

Are You Receiving the Research Feed and News Feed?

Interested in knowing the newest research publications? Are you receiving the WFRN Research Feed? Every week, the Executive Office monitors leading academic journals that cover work-family issues and posts new citations and abstracts to the WFRN website. Any visitor to the WFRN website can view new posts to the Research Feed, but only WFRN members will receive these feeds directly to their email as a weekly digest. Information on how to subscribe to the Research Feed, as well as the latest publications, can be found here.

The News Feed makes members of the work-family community aware of recent publications in popular media (such as newspapers, magazines, web postings). The items posted on the News Feed are presented on the WFRN website and members receive a weekly email with feed information. Latest postings can be found here.

Any website visitor can view the News Feed, but only WFRN members can post to it.  To expand the reach of the News Feed, your post is auto-shared with the WFRN Twitter and Facebook accounts.

To post to the News Feed, the Research Feed, or to have your profile posted to the Experts Panel, log into your member portal on WFRN.org. Note: if you are a WFRN member but have not yet used the website resources, you will need to create a new account name and password.

Calls for Officer Nominations and Award Nominations:
Nominations Sought for President, Vice President,
Secretary, and Executive Board

Are you interested in serving on the WFRN’s leadership team or know someone who would be a good fit? The WFRN is currently seeking nominations for the President, Vice President, Secretary and Executive Board (2 positions). Please submit suggestions to Stephen Sweet, Executive Officer (wfrnet@gmail.com) by October 15, 2020.

Alternatively, as previously announced, members can guarantee someone a slot on the slate by gathering the signatures of 30 or more WFRN members and submitting the petition to the Executive Officer (wfrnet@gmail.com) also by October 15, 2020. 

Publication Opportunities

Teaching Publications

The WFRN has been a leader in developing and disseminating innovative pedagogies and curricula that help students in multiple disciplines learn about work-family concerns.  Teaching activities, curriculum designs and syllabi can be submitted to the WFRN’s Teaching Resources Specialist, Caryn Medved.

Work and Family Encyclopedia

The Work and Family Encyclopedia is an online, peer-reviewed publication. Encyclopedia entries are authored by scholars with expertise in the work and family area of study. The Encyclopedia is intended to serve as a resource to educators, students, workplace practitioners and policy makers. Scholars interested in writing an entry for the Encyclopedia should contact the WFRN’s Encyclopedia Editor, Samantha Ammons.

Thank you for your support of WFRN during this troubling and
unprecedented time. We hope to virtually see you soon!