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Single Advantage

Fostering a Singles-Friendly Workplace Can Mean Increased Employee Retention-and More
Outcomes, Jul/Aug 2007

It's 7:00 p.m. and your department's well-meaning manager walks past a row of cubicles. "Go home to your family, call it a day!" she tells a husband with two kids. Then, without thinking, she glances over at another manager, a middle-aged bachelor, and asks "Hey, working late again?"

Is it any wonder that in Christian ministry and the marketplace at large, many singles feel stigmatized, taken advantage of, or simply overlooked? The positive alternative is creating a singles-friendly office that produces an upside for the entire organization. The eye-opening demographics, alone, are cause to pause. More than 40 percent of the adults in the U.S. are either divorced, widowed, or have always been single.

One overworked myth

According to a Christian Science Monitor article about family-friendly workplaces, there's tension between employees with families and single employees. "People assume that if you're single, you don't have a life," Bella DePaulo, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, told the Monitor. "You don't have anything to do with your time, or you don't have anything that qualifies as being as important as what married people have to do. It's just assumed that you'll do whatever the rest of the workforce doesn't want to do. Their excuses can be totally flimsy, and on that excuse you have to work late."

Drs. Lyn and Ron Caley,* missionary team leaders in South Asia with Christar, oversee both single and married couples. While marital status may differ, singles and married employees experience many of the same demands. Ron explains: "Both singles and couples have to deal with issues of discipline and time management. Both have only24 hours in a day, have to eat, minister and thrive in a community. The myth that singles have more time is just that, a myth.

"They may not have the responsibilities of a family, but they do have other responsibilities that use up those 24 hours. Singles must be more self-sufficient, in that they're the only ones who will have to make their own crucial decisions, go shopping, pay bills and wait for repairmen to show up. While couples often have the responsibility ofchildren, they also have each other with their different gifts and abilities and can lean on one another."

Change is good

Singles are becoming more vocal about the inequities of policies and a work culture that favors families. Employers are taking notice of this discontent and for good reason. Fostering a family-friendly environment, to the exclusion of singles, can result in poor morale, burnout and low-employee retention.