April 21, 2006 10:59 AM

Work-life balance: what future workers think
Posted by Douglas Eisenhartat 10:59 AM

OK, I'll get the disclaimer out of the way first, that this is an indirect plug for my alma mater. But the newsworthy item of note for Job Blog readers is that the article in question provides some interesting insights into the attitudes of the future workforce.

A current Princeton University senior's thesis - a major capstone research project that is a graduation requirement - reports the results of a survey of her classmates on work-life balance issues. Specifically, Amy Sennett asked her fellow seniors to envision themselves in the workplace several years down the line:

Sennett found that most students understood issues of work-life balance to be important, if not currently pressing. “A lot of the women felt realistic about what the challenges would be, and saw childrearing as their primary responsibility,” she said, noting that there was no indication that they would explicitly opt to leave the workplace permanently for the domestic setting.

She did find a significant difference between the responses of women and men. Her data show that 62 percent of women and only 33 percent of men foresaw a conflict between career and family plans. In dealing with this conflict, 57 percent of women said they would work part time in order to raise children, in contrast to 13 percent of men. Women also seemed intent on having a career early and building a resume before leaving for childcare and then returning to work later on. For men, this was not an issue.

For further insight into the minds and habits of this Millennial generation in the workplace, see Maureen Crawford's post today over in BostonWorks' HR Blog.