We’ve been sitting on this story for two weeks now because we kept waiting for it to surface in other news outlets. But it hasn’t so we’re going to bust this whole thing wide open.

The gist of the story is that, according to Public Law 106-846, federal workers should be allowed to telecommute “to the maximum extent possible without diminished employee performance.” And yet it took a federal arbitration panel to get the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to allow some of its workers the chance to telework “on a pilot basis.”

Now we realize that there are all kinds of laws on the books that go unenforced. And we won’t nitpick to death the bit about “diminished employee performance” and telecommuting pilots and all that. Instead, we’d just like to note the fact that a better way of working and living isn’t going to happen from the top down. You cannot write a law that changes what people believe about work.

We’re glad that the arbitration panel ruled in the workers’ favor, and while we don’t have any of the details, we can imagine that it took somebody standing up for their legal rights and, more importantly, for what’s right. We’re glad you did.

Great post over at MomsRising about one of those little annoying quirks of the workplace that doesn’t seem so little when you think about it more deeply.

We’re talking about the white lies working women tell when they are late because of their kids. Most would rather blame bad traffic than a stubborn toddler for fear of not looking dedicated to their job. The author, PunditMom, has the diagnosis right, but we stopped nodding our heads when we got to the last sentence:

“And is it time for the government to step in to make sure no parent gets penalized for caring for their family?”

It’s not up to the government. It’s true that government regulations are going to have to change to address our mobile, global, wired society. But a government mandate that attempts to create an open and honest workplace that doesn’t penalize women (or men) with families is wishful thinking.

The reason is that no federal law can change the culture of the workplace. As we saw in our last post, the law allows people to take leave under the FMLA. But the unwritten rules of the workplace (in other words, work culture) say you better be careful about taking advantage of that law or you might hurt your career.

We’re all for good laws that protect and support families, but laws can only do so much. (The same is true about the policies in the employee handbook.) Real change is only going to happen if everyone agrees to a new set of assumptions about what work looks like. If we all change how we define work (something you do, not a place you go for a set period of time) then those laws will become more meaningful. If we change the culture of the workplace, then people can finally live honestly and freely.

And that’s no lie.

Too soft or too tough? This is the question asked by a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about the problems both employees and employers are having with the FMLA. Workers are being fired or punished for making use of the law. Employers are so paranoid about fraud they are hiring private detectives with hidden cameras to spy on their employees. Barf.

First, we have to say that even though a Results-Only Work Environment challenges the status quo of how we work, we in no way advocate breaking the law. We believe that, in the future, the Department of Labor is going to have to rethink a number of its laws, which were designed for an industrial economy and not a knowledge economy. But for now, everyone has to play by the rules.

In the meantime, both employers and employees need to start having a conversation about what any kind of leave means.

Consider this excerpt:

Mr. Kappelmann, 46 years old, of Coral Springs, Fla., says he was required to get several forms signed by doctors and get them to [his employer] Brown & Brown by a certain date, which he contends he did. But the company, he says, soon fired him and stated in a letter that he wasn’t medically able to perform his job. Prior to his firing, he says, a manager asked, “If you’re not going to be here, who is going to do this work?”

We have a number of stories about people at Best Buy who would have been eligible for leave under the FMLA, but elected instead to work through their medical or family crisis. The reason is that their managers weren’t asking them questions like the one above. Instead they were trusted to do their work on their own terms, whether that was from another state or at “odd” hours. As long as the work got done that was all that mattered.

Yeah, but don’t people take advantage?

We hear this question a lot and it’s understandable. The workplace is a breeding ground of mistrust. But here’s a thought for all those employers who worry about people slacking off:

You can’t fake results.

In a ROWE, people either perform or they don’t. Once you make this change, it becomes very apparent who is contributing and who isn’t. And once you free people from the confines of the cube farm and the 40-hour week you’ll find that people want to contribute, even when the circumstances of their life might say otherwise.