Main content start

4. Redesign Toolkit: Principles, Tools & Starting Points

About This Video

It’s no longer 'mother may I' but thinking of flexibility as a matter of course.

This video offers starting points for redesigning work. These frameworks will enable new thinking about ways to move beyond individual accomodations, to pilot at the team level and create a foundation for success.

View Redesign Toolkit Resources
View Redesign Toolkit Biographies

Beth Axelrod

FORMERLY SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, HUMAN RESOURCES, EBAY INC.

Beth Headshot

Beth is a global executive with deep expertise in business strategy, people management and organization development, particularly in the technology and professional services sectors.  Most recently, she spent a decade as eBay Inc.’s Senior Vice President, Human Resources. She was responsible for all aspects of the company's human resources capabilities designed to drive the performance of the business. These included HR strategy, data analytics, gender diversity, recruiting, learning and development, compensation, benefits and the continuing evolution of the company's culture. Beth also sat on the board of the eBay Foundation, which oversees eBay’s philanthropic and social innovation endeavors. 

Previously, Beth was Chief Talent Officer at WPP Group plc, one of the world's leading communications services groups, where she was also an Executive Director of the company’s Board.  She was responsible for all aspects of HR worldwide. Before WPP, Beth spent nearly 12 years at McKinsey & Company where she was a principal/partner serving clients’ strategy and organization needs.  She led the Firm’s second generation of research titled The War for Talent and is a co-author of the book The War for Talent.

Beth sits on the Advisory Board of Bulger Partners, an investment banking and strategy consulting firm. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, YaleWomen, the community of Yale University alumnae committed to advancing women’s voices and UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education. 

She holds a BSE degree with a concentration in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Master’s in Public and Private Management (MPPM) from the Yale School of Management where she was named a Donaldson Fellow in 2014/2015. 


Shelley J. Correll

Shelley J. Correll

BARBARA D. FINBERG DIRECTOR, CLAYMAN INSTITUTE

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

PROFESSOR, BY COURTESY, OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

VOICE & INFLUENCE EDUCATION MODULE PRESENTER

Shelley Correll is professor of sociology and organizational behavior at Stanford University and the Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Her expertise is in the areas of gender, workplace dynamics and organizational culture. She has received numerous national awards for her research on the “motherhood penalty,” research that demonstrates how motherhood influences the workplace evaluations, pay and job opportunities of mothers. Professor Correll recently led a nationwide, interdisciplinary project on “redesigning work” that evaluates how workplaces structures and practices can reconfigured to be simultaneously more inclusive and more innovative. She is also studying how gender stereotypes and organizational practices affect the entry and retention of women in technical professions and how the growth of the craft beer industry affects the founding and success of women brewers.  She is currently writing a book called Delivering on Diversity: Eliminating Bias and Spurring Innovation


Erin Kelly

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 

Kelly Headshot

Erin L. Kelly is Professor and the Martindale Chair of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, director of the Life Course Center, and an affiliate of the Minnesota Population Center. She studies the adoption and implementation of new workplace policies and the consequences of these innovations for employees, families, and work organizations. Her research on flexibility initiatives, family leaves, childcare benefits, sexual harassment policies, and diversity programs has been published in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Law & Society Review, and other venues. Kelly’s research integrates quantitative and qualitative methods, including group-randomized trials, quasi-experimental designs, multilevel models, event history analysis as well as semi-structured interviews and ethnographic methods. Kelly is part of the Work, Family and Health Network, supported by the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control. 

 


Lori Nishiura Mackenzie

Lori Nishiura Mackenzie

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

FOUNDER, ONLINE VOICE & INFLUENCE PROGRAM

EXECUTIVE EDITOR, UPRISING AND GENDER NEWS

As Executive Director, Lori Nishiura Mackenzie leads the strategic direction and operations of the Institute, including finance, community relations, marketing, and program development. She is co-founder of the Institute's latest initiative, the Center for Women's Leadership. Mackenzie is creator of the workshops the Language of Leadership and the Dyanmics of Hyper-Effective Teams. She is founder of the online Voice & Influence program aimed at providing people with the skills, information and inspiration to be as effective as possible. This curriculum has been widely viewed through the Clayman Institute's partnership with LeanIn.org, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Darden Graduate School of Business and INSEAD.

Mackenzie frequently speaks about Women's Leadership and Seeing | Blocking Bias at leading companies and organizations. Conference presentations include Mt. St. Mary's Women's Leadership Conference, Girls Alliance Keynote, the MAKERS Conference, Professional Business Women of California, eBay WIN Summit, Cisco CTSO Women's Conference, Amelia Earhart Society, VMWorld, the Latina Coalition, HR People & Strategy Global Conference, and the Grace Hopper Celebration Technical Executive Forum. Company presentations include CA Technologies,Cisco, Deloitte, eBay, Genentech, General Mills, LinkedIn, Mozilla, RedHat, Schwab, Shearman & Sterling, State Street, and VMware.


Phyllis Moen

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA 

Phyllis Headshot

Phyllis Moen holds a McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair and is Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, arriving there in 2003 after twenty-five years as a professor at Cornell University where she held the Ferris Family Chair in Life Course Studies.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1978.  Professor Moen co-directs (with Erin Kelly) the Flexible Work and Well-Being Center (located in the Minnesota Population Center), part of a larger research network initiative supported by the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control to investigate workplace policy initiatives aimed at promoting individual and family health and life quality as well as positive business outcomes. 

Moen has published numerous books and articles on careers, retirement, health, gender, policy and families as they intersect and as they play out over the life course. Her two most recent books are It’s About Time: Couples and Careers (2003) and The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream (2005, with Pat Roehling), which won the 2005 Award for Excellence in Sociology from the Association of American Publishers’ Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division.  Dr. Moen’s recent research is examining the effects of promoting flexibility and control over time on both older and younger women and men workers. 

Professor Moen is currently on the board of SHiFT, a small non-profit in the Twin Cities focused on adults in transition. She has previously served on the board of Civic Ventures, a national non-for profit organization that generates ideas and programs to reframe and redefine the second half of life.  Dr. Moen has also served as a member of the Conference Board’s Work-Life Leadership Council.  She currently serves on the research advisory committee for the Center on Aging and Workplace Flexibility at Boston College.  She has been elected as a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Gerontological Society of America, and the National Council of Family Relations.  Dr. Moen is currently writing another book, Boomers on the Edge: Navigating the Risks and Promise of Encore Adulthood, to be published by Oxford University Press.


Leslie Perlow

PROFESSOR OF LEADERSHIP, HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL 

Perlow Headshot

Leslie Perlow is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership in the Organizational Behavior area at the Harvard Business School. She currently teaches Authentic Leadership Development in the MBA program and runs a doctoral seminar on the craft of qualitative inductive research. She recently published a new book, Sleeping with your smartphone: How to break the 24-7 habit and change the way you work. 

Professor Perlow’s research focuses on the micro-dynamics of work. She seeks to understand what really happens at work – i.e., what do people do all day, how do they spend their time, with whom do they interact – and with what consequences for organizations and individuals. She documents individuals’ work practices and explores the implications of these practices for organization productivity, individuals’ careers and family life. Through her work, she identifies ways organizations can change their practices to the benefit of both the organization’s productivity and the individuals’ personal lives. She also engages with organizations trying to make these changes and studies the change process itself.

Professor Perlow is trained as an ethnographer, which means she spends long periods of time observing people as they go about their daily work, trying to better understand their world, from their perspectives. Her field studies range from software engineers in high tech companies to entrepreneurial ventures to management consulting teams to project teams in a pharmaceutical company. 

Before joining the Harvard faculty, Professor Perlow was on the faculty of the University of Michigan Business School. She received her B.A. in Economics from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Organization Studies from MIT. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a management consultant.


Eric Severson

SVP GLOBAL TALENT SOLUTIONS, GAP INC.

Severson Headshot

Eric Severson is Senior Vice President of Global Talent Solutions, responsible for enterprise talent management for Gap Inc.’s 135,000 employees, including strategy, total rewards, technology, performance, engagement, development, organizational effectiveness, and recruitment. He also oversees HR for Gap Inc.’s business in China and the Growth, Innovation and Digital Division.

Before entering his current position in 2013, Eric was Senior Vice President of Talent for Gap North America, with headquarters in San Francisco and stores in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico -- as well as Outlet stores across Europe and Asia. 

During his tenure at Gap North America, Eric was responsible for developing Gap brand’s Talent Strategy and leading its Talent team.  Eric and his team were accountable for driving Gap’s efforts to attract, develop, engage, and retain the best talent in the retail industry—and to make Gap the hottest place in retail to work and build a career for its 35,000 employees. Eric fostered talent innovation, most notably via Gap’s Performance for Life program, which drives employee performance by promoting individual and organizational wellbeing.  Profiles of Gap’s talent management story have been featured in the books Pull: The Power of Magnetic Leadership, The True Happiness Recipe: How to Stop Your Job From Killing You and Create Work-Life Harmony Everyday, and Why Managing Sucks and What to Do About It.

Previously, during seven years as head of HR for the Outlet Division, Eric and his team focused on differentiating Outlet’s position in the talent marketplace through cutting edge employment practices that set the business apart from its competition.  For example, Gap Inc. Outlet was the first apparel retailer to implement a Results Only Work Environment (or ROWE), in which employees can work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as their work gets done.  Outlet’s success in engaging and retaining its workforce through its people strategies has been documented in HR Magazine, Business Week, and the Corporate Leadership Council Best Practices­ as well as in the books Why Work Sucks and What to Do About It and Future Work.  A cover story on Outlet’s ROWE experiment was published in HR Executive Magazine in August 2010.   

Eric’s other contributions since joining Gap Inc. in 2000 include starting the Gap Inc. Diversity Council, launching the Gap Inc. Diversity department, and leading the re-development of the company’s Flexible Work Arrangement policy. 

Before joining Gap Inc., Eric spent eight years at Macy’s in various leadership roles.

Eric’s “other job” is Chair of the Board of Directors of Family Service Agency of San Francisco (FSA), San Francisco’s oldest and largest non-sectarian non-profit.  In his 10 years on the Board, Eric has held the positions of Board Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary, and HR Committee Chair.  In his leadership roles at FSA, Eric has partnered with the Agency in the development and implementation of a robust people strategy that includes an annual employee engagement survey, leadership competencies, a talent review and succession planning process, 360 degree evaluations, and management training.  In 2008, Eric and Board colleagues Amy Solliday and Paul Adams won the Gap Inc. Founder’s Award  for their work with FSA’s breakthrough early psychosis prevention and recovery program, PREP.

Eric, who resides in San Francisco, holds a B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University and an M.A. in English from Arizona State University. 


Hannah Valantine, MD 

SENIOR ASSOCIATE DEAN, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

PROFESSOR, CARDIOVASCULAR MEDICINE

CLAYMAN INSTITUTE FACULTY RESEARCH FELLOW, 2009-2010

SUPPORTED BY THE IRIS F. LITT, M.D FUND

Valantine Headshot

Hannah Valantine is the senior associate dean for diversity and leadership at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a former Clayman Research Fellow.

Dr. Hannah Valantine was born in the Gambia, West Africa, and grew up in England. She is a graduate of St. George's Hospital, London University and completed her residency at St. George's Hospital, Brompton Hospital and Guys Hospital London. Her cardiology fellowship training was at Royal Postgraduate Medical School in Hammersmith London. For her post-doctoral research fellowship training she came to Stanford University, and undertook research focused on Echocardiography for the diagnosis of acute reaction. During this time she also conducted clinical research to determine the role of conventional risk factors in transplant coronary artery disease (CAD) and the application of intravascular ultrasound for detection and monitoring of the disease process.

Currently, Dr. Valantine is a Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Stanford University. She is also the Director of Clinical Transplant Research. Her current research interests include pathophysiology of transplant related atherosclerosis, with a focus on the role of infection and lipids; heart disease in women; and conduct of clinical trials. She has been the recipient of several research grants from the AHA and NIH, for which she was Co-Principal Investigator for an NIH - funded Program Project Grant in transplant arteriosclerosis.

In November 2004 Dr. Valantine was appointed as Senior Associate Dean for Diversity and Leadership in the Stanford University School of Medicine. In this role, Dr. Valantine is responsible for development and implementation of new strategies to expand faculty diversity, and provide opportunities for leadership development.

Dr. Valantine has served on many editorial boards including Urban Cardiology, Journal of Heart & Lung Transplant, Transplant Proceedings, and Transplantation and Circulation. She is Past-president of the American Heart Association Western States Affiliate Board of Directors.

Dr. Valantine is author of 160 peer-reviewed publications, 10 book chapters, and has been invited to be a presenter at over 200 lectures.


Joan C. Williams

Joan C. Williams

DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF LAW, UC HASTINGS

FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF CENTER FOR WORKLIFE LAW 

AUTHOR, WHAT WORKS FOR WOMEN AT WORK

Joan C. Williams has played a central role in reshaping the debates over women’s advancement for the past quarter-century. Described as having "something approaching rock star status” by The New York Times, Williams was awarded the American Bar Foundation's Outstanding Scholar Award (2012), the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award (2012),   the ABA’s Margaret Brent Award for Women Lawyers of Achievement (2006), and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It (Oxford University Press, 2000). In recognition of her interdisciplinary work, Williams gave the 2008 Massey Lectures in American Civilization at Harvard University, delivered in prior years by (among others) Eudora Welty, Gore Vidal and Toni Morrison.

Williams, who is Distinguished Professor of Law and Hastings Foundation Chair at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, has authored or co-authored seven books. She has written over seventy law review articles, including one listed in 1996 as one of the most cited law review articles ever written. Her work has been excerpted in casebooks on six different topics.

As Founding Director of WorkLife Law (WLL), Williams has played a leading role in documenting workplace bias against mothers, leadng to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s 2007 Guidance on Caregiver Discrimination.  Her article “Beyond the Maternal Wall: Relief for Family Caregivers Who Are Discriminated Against on the Job,” 26 Harvard Women’s Law Review 77 (2003)(co-authored with Nancy Segal), was prominently cited in the landmark case, Back v. Hastings on Hudson Union Free School District, 365 F.3d 107  (2d Cir. 2004). Williams has organized social scientists to document workplace bias against mothers, notably in a 2004 special issue of the Journal of Social Issues titled “The Maternal Wall” (co-edited with Monica Biernat and Faye Crosby), which received the Distinguished Publication Award of the Association for Women in Psychology.

Williams also has played a central role in documenting how work-family conflict affects working-class families, through reports such as “One Sick Child Away From Being Fired” (2006), “Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict” (2010) (co-authored by Heather Boushey of the Center for American Progress), and “Improving Work-Life Fit in Hourly Jobs” (2011). Williams’ current research focuses on how work-family conflict differs at different class locations; on the "culture wars" as class conflict; on how gender bias differs by race; and on the role of gender pressures on men in creating work-family conflict and gender inequality. 

View Redesign Toolkit References

Management Practices, Work Life Balance and Productivity: A Review of Some Recent Evidence

Bloom, Nick and John van Reenen. 2006. "Management Practices, Work Life Balance and Productivity: A Review of Some Recent Evidence." Oxford Review of Economic Policy 22(4): 1-26

Does Diversity Pay? Race, Gender, and the Business Case for Diversity

Herring, Cedric. 2009. "Does Diversity Pay? Race, Gender, and the Business Case for Diversity." American Sociological Review 74(2): 208-224.

Innovative Ideas on How Work-Family Research Can Have More Impact

Kossek, Ellen Ernst, Boris B. Baltes, Russell A. Mathews. 2011. "Innovative Ideas on How Work-Family Research Can Have More Impact." Industrial and Organizational Psychology 4: 1–7.

Managing the Work-Family Interface to the Benefit of Both Subordinates and Supervisors: Looking Beyond Supervisor Support and Focusing on Leadership Behaviors

Matthews, Russell A., Carrie A. Bulger, Suzanne M. Booth. 2013. "Managing the Work-Family Interface to the Benefit of Both Subordinates and Supervisors: Looking Beyond Supervisor Support and Focusing on Leadership Behaviors." Psychology for Business Success

Toward a Model of Work Redesign for Better Work and Better Life.

Perlow, Leslie A. and Erin L. Kelly. 2014. "Toward a Model of Work Redesign for Better Work and Better Life." Work and Occupations 41(1): 111-134.

Sleeping with Your Smartphone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You Work

Perlow, Leslie A. 2012. Sleeping with Your Smartphone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You Work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.