Message from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Welcome to the first international conference on Why Workplace Flexibility Matters, sponsored by The University of Chicago’s Center on Parents, Children and Work and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

This conference comes at a critical point in world history. Governments and employers across the industrial and post-industrial world are facing similar work force challenges the rise of dual earner parents, the marked increase in single working parents, and the rapid aging of the population. These work force changes challenge the traditional structure of full-time, full year, year in and year out work, as more and more workers seek greater control over how, and when and where they work. The resulting flexibility that the changing workforce seeks has yet, however, to fully materialize. This conference can make a critical difference in identifying new and groundbreaking research that addresses the needs of the changing workforce, as well as the best flexibility policies and practices of employers and governments across the world.

Since 1994, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has been committed to understanding how the workplace can be better structured to meet the needs of the changing domestic workforce. Through its Workplace, Work Force and Working Families grant making program, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation plays a vital role in developing work-family scholarship and in supporting effective workplaces that meet the needs of working parents and older workers.

In 2003, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation launched the National Workplace Flexibility Initiative. Based on more than 10 years of research detailing the benefits of flexibility for employers and employees alike, the initiative supports workplace flexibility as the standard way of working in America. This collaborative effort includes a variety of projects at the national, state and local levels that coordinate with business, labor, government and advocacy groups to promote workplace flexibility.

Kathleen Christensen, Ph.D.
Program Director
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation