HPH NOWLiaison Guides HSPH on Work/Life Balance
The deadline for writing a grant is looming, and you need someone to take care of your elderly mother so that you may finish it over the weekend. Or, your baby wakes up sick and can’t go to his regular childcare provider. Harvard has services and resources to help HSPH faculty, staff, and students maintain the sometimes precarious balance between demands at home and demands at work.
Ronnie Mae Weiss
“There is a comprehensive menu of work/life benefits at Harvard that many people aren’t aware of,” said Ronnie Mae Weiss, MSW, HSPH’s new work/life liaison. “My office is a place where faculty, staff, and students can come and talk to me one-on-one about their personal work/life balance needs,” said Weiss, who started at HSPH on June 1.
She can then help create a plan to address those needs and connect people from the HSPH community with the available Harvard resources. There are child-care, elder-care, and back-up-care services through the Harvard Medical Center Office of Work and Family, and support for financial issues, legal issues, and personal problems through Harvard’s Employee Assistance Program.
Weiss can help women plan a maternity leave so that they have a successful transition out of and back to work. Her counseling is confidential and free.
“Creating this new position is part of an HSPH goal to create among our staff a high level of employee engagement and job satisfaction,” said Associate Dean for Human Resources Chris Ciotti. “It is also a response to a recognition that women faculty in particular often face the tenure process at the same time they are starting a family and need support to be successful at both.”
The idea of creating an HSPH work/life liaison position was first discussed by the Committee on the Concerns of Women Faculty, chaired by Professor Marianne Wessling-Resnick, and then was formally recommended by the HSPH Child Care Task Force in November 2007. With the support of Dean Barry Bloom and leadership from Task Force Chair Meredith Rosenthal, the work/life liaison role was created.
“I am thrilled that Ronnie Mae has joined the team of people who are working to help improve the quality of life for everyone at the School,” said Bernita Anderson, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs. “Her expertise in work/life issues and her high-energy, creative approach to problem solving will be invaluable to our community as we all grapple with competing demands in life.”
Balance doesn’t mean that work and family require the same amount of time every day, pointed out Weiss: “Balance means not having to choose one area of life over another. There has to be a give and take — support for family at work and support for work from those at home.”
Weiss — whose own two children are now in their 20s — has focused her entire career on developing ways to respond to a growing need in the workplace to help employees with this work and home balance. In 1984 she co-founded Parents in a Pinch and later helped launch a parent education and support organization called Families First, a collaboration of the Boston Children’s Museum and Wheelock College.
By the late 1980s she was ahead of the wave again, developing innovative services at a consulting firm called Work/Family Directions, which created human resources programs and resources for Fortune 500 companies. As Director of the Harvard After-School Initiative Bridging Project, she implemented a University-wide program to engage both students and faculty in community outreach programs for Boston youth.
Weiss serves as the HSPH bridge to the University Office of Work/Life Resources and the Harvard Medical Center Office of Work and Family. “Nancy Costikyan, her team, and Barbara Wolf have advocated for resources and services that make it more feasible for faculty and staff members to blend their careers and personal lives successfully,” said Weiss. One indicator of their success: Working Mother magazine has ranked Harvard one of the 100 best places to work in the country for several years in a row.
Weiss is collaborating with the Harvard Medical Center Office of Work and Family to plan family support and educational seminars and workshops in the Longwood area. Topics will run the gamut from issues of interest to new parents, parents of teens, people with aging parents, the college application process, finding college loans, pet loss, creating wills, budgeting and handling credit, and holiday stress.
“Balance in your life is getting the support you need — not so you can do it all,” said Weiss, “but so you can have someone stay with your child while you go to a two-day conference or so you can make it in at 9 a.m. for work or to teach a class even when that child is sick.”
Balance may also mean wellness, daily exercise, professional development, developing skills to grow on the job. and creating a career roadmap. “All of these resources exist at Harvard in their separate worlds, and I’m trying to bring them together so everyone understands what’s available to them,” said Weiss.
Contact Weiss for work/life assistance at 617-432-7448 or worklife@hsph.harvard.edu.
-Ellen Barlow. Photo by Suzanne Camarata.
