Office of Work/Life Helps Professors Keep It Together

Carol Hoffman, the new director of Columbia’s Office of Work/Life, is in charge of helping Columbia professors handle their real lives, providing ways to aid them in managing many of the challenges they face outside of the job.

According to Hoffman, Work/Life is in place to “enhance the experience of Columbia as a family-supportive or family friendly institution.”

The Office of Work/Life was created in February 2007 by then-vice provost for diversity initiatives, Jean Howard. It aims to improve upon the services that the University has in place to support its staff.

Work/Life controls the University parental leave policy for parents with newborn children; flexible spending accounts, which are pre-tax dollars used for paying for child care, schools, health care expenses, and transportation expenses; and the Primary Tuition Scholarship, which helps reimburse parents who send their children to private schools for kindergarten through eighth grade. Work/Life also offers up to $5,000 adoptive assistance to faculty members looking to adopt children and will provide assistance toward college tuition of a partner, spouse, or child of a University faculty member. Columbia is hoping to lure the best potential graduates, professors, administrators, and support staff into the school by creating a family-friendly environment in which they can manage their demanding workload.

Karen Hajdu, a mother whose husband is a full-time professor at the School of Journalism, has used the school search program to “navigate the treacherous world of school placement.” She expressed doubts about finding a preschool when her family moved here last June, but she said that the Office of Work/Life, full of people that were “immensely helpful and comforting,” helped her find “a lovely, competitive one in our neighborhood.”

Last June, Hoffman and the Office of Work/Life instituted a new backup care program, a national health care program designed to help faculty members care for their family or dependents during work hours. This program provides up to 100 hours of at-home care for any family member of Columbia faculty who is in need, from young children to the elderly.

According to Hoffman, employees have some trouble understanding how they can take advantage of it. “The challenge is that there are so many ways to use the program it is hard to think of what can be helpful,” she said.

Backup care is available to professors, researchers, administrators, librarians, non-union support staff, post-doctoral fellows, teaching fellows not in Ph.D. programs, and even full-time and part-time doctoral students.

“The backup care program has been a real blessing,” said Eleanor Templeton, a communications coordinator in the human resources department at the University.

Around the time the backup care program was announced, Templeton learned that her elderly mother in Michigan needed knee surgery, and that she would have to take off work and spend money to fly home to care for her. Instead, the backup care program was able to provide care for her mother, allowing her to save time and money. “It was easy,” she said. “Having that available at a low cost—it was really, really helpful. I don’t know what I would have done.”

Another of Hoffman’s projects is the implementation of more lactation rooms around campus for breast feeding women who may not have a private office. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that mothers breast feed for at least six months, and preferably up to a year after birth.

But according to Hoffman, “Women don’t get paid to stay off for a year, so if they want to return to work and continue pumping, they need rooms to pump in. I’m advocating for the development of more lactation rooms in more buildings.”

Because of the efforts of Hoffman, the next few years may see quite an increase in the number of rooms on campus specifically designed for this purpose.

Shane Ferro can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.