1.   effective Landscape

Employees increasingly seek employers that help them balance their family responsibilities with their careers.  Worldwide research consistently shows that employees increasingly worry about maintaining careers without sacrificing their families.  In a Rutgers University study, 88% of employees say the ability to balance work and family is “extremely important” and it outranked medical coverage, income and opportunities for advancement as job criteria.  A separate study by the Radcliffe Public Policy Center found that more than 80% of employees said a job schedule that allows for family time is more important than money, power or prestige.

Counter to stereotypes, men value work/life balance as much as women do.  Approximately 82% of men aged 20-39 and 85% of women aged 20-39 listed family time at the top of their criteria for considering job offers, research shows.  Finding a balance between their personal and work lives is the number one goal among recent graduates in Europe and the United States, according to the Universum Graduate Survey.

Statistics show that family-friendly policies enhance organizational productivity, retention, competitiveness, and ability to attract technically skilled workers.  Family-friendly policies avert problems that diminish productivity such as absenteeism or mistakes caused by distractions associated with family issues.  For example, toy manufacturer Mattel offered emergency childcare after a survey revealed that breakdowns in childcare cost the organization the equivalent of two work years through absenteeism.  Work/life programs also increase employees’ willingness to “go the extra mile,” even if they don’t use the programs, according to a University of Chicago study. 

Overall, 48% of European organizations and 68% of large U.S. organizations offer flexible work programs.  In Sweden, 77% of organizations offer such arrangements, compared to 14% in Italy.

2.      Myth of the Separation between Work and Home

Today work and family are the two dominant spheres for most working adults.  Men and women struggle to manage the dual responsibilities of their professional and personal lives.  They experience work-family conflict when their work and family roles become incompatible, when participating in one role makes it more difficult to participate in the other.  For example, a manager experiences work-family conflict when an important project/programme purpose meeting conflicts with a long-standing appointment with his child’s teacher.

But the reality is that employees’ lives are not bifurcated into two distinct spheres.  Their personal lives don’t magically disappear when they go to work.  The notion of separate spheres is a myth.  Family responsibilities such as tending to an ill child spill over into work, and job responsibilities such as project/programme purpose trips affect home lives.

The myth separating work and home lives developed gradually over the last 300 years. Before the Industrial Revolution, most people worked with their families in agrarian economies.  With the growth of manufacturing, people left their families to go to workplaces created outside of the home where organizations other than families were in charge of production.  After the Industrial Revolution, work and family activities generally occurred in different places, at different times and with different sets of people.

Traditionally men have been the paid worker and women in charge of the home.  But as women entered the workforce in the 20^th century, more men and women had significant responsibilities both at home and at work.  Workplace practices and expectations have lagged behind these changes.  Organizations have begun reconciling their practices with the reality that employees’ personal lives and professional lives are intertwined.

3.      Birth of the Daddy Track

The 1990s saw the advent of the “Daddy Track,” where men were willing to sacrifice promotions and compensation in exchange for having more time for their families.  The Daddy Track is the male version of an idea introduced in the late 1980s by Felice N. Schwartz, a long-time advocate for working women.  In a controversial article, Schwartz suggested dividing female managers into two categories: “career primary” and “career and family,” later nicknamed the Mommy Track.  The career-primary woman places her career ahead of her family.  In contrast, career-and-family women accept slower career growth and less pay in exchange for freedom from overtime and working weekends.

Societal changes fueled interest in the Daddy Track.  As women entered the workforce, men have been relieved of the burden of being the sole breadwinner.  Today both the husband and wife work in 60% of U.S. marriages, compared with 44% in the late 1960s. 

As employees became interested in balancing work and families, organizations have felt the consequences.  Both men and women have left employers who remained inflexible.  At Baxter, a medical-products manufacturer, a survey found that 49% of men were looking for new jobs because of work/life conflicts – compared to 39% of women.

Men who opt for the Daddy Track feel that they must explain their unconventional choice and are putting their careers in peril.  The Industrial Society, a not-for-profit organization based in the United Kingdom, found that 84% of male managers thought organizations should have flexible policies, but 88% thought they would damage their careers if they used the policies.  In Australia, men who refused promotions or switched to part-time jobs are viewed with suspicion, according to the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations.

4.      Cross-Cultural Work/Family Issues

Organizations that span multiple countries should adjust their work/life programs to have the appropriate cross-culture perspective.  Policies need to be meaningful to their multinational workforces.  Therefore, organizations must understand social and cultural differences when assessing work/life needs.  For example, work and family issues are perceived as a personal and organizational concern in the United States.  But Europeans widely expect workplaces, governments and unions to be involved in work and family issues, according to The Center for Work & Family at Boston College.

European countries provide basic work/family benefits not offered by other countries.  Unlike the United States, countries in Europe tend to have a national health-service program that provides health insurance and dependent health care.  In Sweden, universal childcare is publicly provided.  In Germany, organizations offer “career breaks” that can be used for childcare.  In the Netherlands, employers are required by law to allow employees to work part-time if they request it.  Approximately 63% of women work part time in the Netherlands, compared to 1.8% in Greece, where flexible work arrangements remain rare.

Employees sent abroad face unique work/life challenges, according to a study of American, German and Japanese international workers.  Organizations should inorganizational work/life practices that help expatriates adjust properly and complete their assignment rather than opt to leave early.  About 80% of international assignees bring a spouse, children or both.  Spouses often lack social-support networks and feel lonely.  Children attend new schools and learn new languages.  Organizations can help by offering career planning that shows expatriates how their international experience will foster their careers and by providing regular visits to the home country office.  For families, employers should offer pre-arrival housing and access to support staff.

5.      The Fictitious “Employee without a Personal Life”

The struggle to have both a fulfilling personal life and a good career arises from the Western image of the ideal worker as a person willing to put work first, according to a Ford Foundation report.  Many organizations seek the fictitious “employee without a personal life.”  The Ford Foundation report “Relinking Life and Work” said this attitude results in unfriendly work practices such as early-morning and late-night meetings.  People are consumed by what one researcher in the 1980s referred to as the "greedy institution."

The grueling schedules that once were typical only of senior organizational management and self-employed people are becoming commonplace in more occupations.  organizational attorneys, investment bankers, computer programmers and other professionals routinely are expected to work 70- or 80-hour weeks, research over the last 20 years has found. One in five Australian employees worked more than 50 hours a week in 2001, according to the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training.

When workplace practices are based on the idea that employees can make work their priority above all else, employees try to hide their personal lives by falsifying reasons for having to leave work early or by secretly bringing their children along on project/programme purpose trips.  Employees who resist sacrificing all else for their jobs typically lose out on workplace rewards and recognition.  Evidence indicates that individuals who make their jobs their top priority still often fail to meet the expectations for the “employee without a personal life.”

6.      Why Employees Can’t Solve the Work-Family Dilemma Alone

When individuals change but the system doesn’t, the individuals encounter unexpected negative consequences.  For example, one team leader in the Ford Foundation research had arranged a compressed workweek to spend more time with her children.  In the end, the team leader was stripped of her supervisory duties, and management regarded her efforts as negatively reflecting on her potential and capability. Similarly, a study of female managers, administrators and executives in Canada and the United States found that women who use “structural adaptations” such as switching to three-quarters workload were more satisfied with their careers than those who made individual “contingent adaptations” on an as-needed basis.

Piecemeal and individualistic approaches leave both the organization and the individual unhappy.  The individualistic approach frequently fails – or hurts -- the employees intended to benefit from them because they lack support from senior management.  The individualistic approach also hinders the organization’s ability to use work-family issues as a catalyst for creative innovations in work practices.  The report determined that “flexibility at the margins actually undermines flexibility at the core.”

Employees respond skeptically to a patchwork solution.  In many cases, organizations introduce stand-alone programs such as childcare in response to employee requests, rather than developing a comprehensive strategy.  Understandably, employees remain skeptical of senior management commitment to the stand-alone work/life program and worry about backlash if they use the program.  They recognize that their employers view the programs as accommodations to appease employees rather than as sound programs from a project/programme purpose perspective.

7.      Missed Opportunities for the Organizations

Organizations forfeit opportunities when they adopt individualistic approaches to work/life balance concerns or add single stand-alone programs introduced without linking them to the organization’s project/programme purpose strategy.  This approach generally overlooks new practices that could significantly enhance their results.  Instead, their assumptions about what constitutes the behavior of a “good manager” contributes to them ignoring novel approaches.  For example, the team leader’s four-day workweek mentioned in the Ford Foundation report allowed other team members to gain leadership experience by acting as the team leader on the fifth day. 

Organizations that address work/life initiatives as strategic tools and in a systematic manner ultimately reap the bottom-line results.  They see productivity, quality and beneficiary service improve.  Employee satisfaction increases and absenteeism decreases.  Consider the experiences of a midsize regional bank in the United States.  The bank created a work/family strategy, recognizing that the two are not discrete phenomena.  The bank re-engineered job descriptions, work processes and organizational structures with family issues in consideration.  It resulted in the bank offering on-site childcare or vouchers, and job sharing.  The bank also eliminated attendance guidelines and empowered employees to adjust their schedules to their work and family demands.  Bank executives credited the strategy with contributing to a 55% profit gain over two years. 

Work-family strategies provide organizations with a effective advantage by strengthening the employee-employer relationship.  For example, an automotive gasket manufacturer found that employees who used its family-friendly programs were more likely to participate in team problem-solving activities and twice as likely to suggest product and process improvements,

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8.      Strategic Linking of Work and Family

Some employers have adopted strategic work/life approaches that accomplish the "dual agenda" of improving project/programme purpose results and employees' work/life integration.  The U.S. national policy study “Holding a Job, Having a Life: Strategies for Change” examined organizations whose project/programme purpose results improved after developing strategies that linked work and family issues.  The organizations did not view work/life initiatives as employee perks but as tools linked to core organizational objectives.

In these organizations, a fundamental first step was securing support for a work/life strategy from senior management.  Without visible support from the top, work/family efforts quickly can crumble.  One way for senior-level managers to demonstrate their support is to solicit input from employees at all levels.  In fact, the work/life redesigns described in the national policy study differ from traditional top-down re-engineering because they encouraged bottom-up problem solving, involving workers in all phases of the change process.  The organizations also approached the topic as a long-term journey, not a strategy that could be implemented 100% immediately.

Another critical element to solidify the link between work and work/life is objectively highlighting the effect that people-friendly policies have on the bottom line.  Organizations can link work/life initiatives to the bottom line by measuring their effects on cost per hire, beneficiary defections because of dissatisfaction, lost intellectual capital, productivity and return on investment.  For example, Ernst & Young said that parts of the organization where life-balance pilots were implemented saved the organization $17 million. To avert mistrust within the organization, employers always review the progress satisfying the “double agenda” to ensure that benefits from the work/life change process continue to accrue for employees and for the organization.

9.      Fostering the Process of Change

The Work in America Institute endorses the following actions to foster the successful implementation of a work/life strategy:

Getting Started

·         Introduce the change initiative as a response to a felt project/programme purpose need.

·         Create a safe environment in order to engage employees in the change process.

·         Gather data in order to identify points of change with the greatest leverage.

·         Focus on the work-group level.

Building Organizational and Managerial Support

·         Enlist support from senior management.

·         Design and change efforts that are collaborative in nature, involving all levels of the organization.

·         Implement some “quick hit” changes in the work process to build credibility.

·         Require line management accountability for Human Resources.

·         Let line leaders drive the change process, but enlist the support of Human Resources as a strategic project/programme purpose partner.

·         Reeducate managers.

Evaluating Results

·         Evaluate results continually and design measures based on employee input.

·         Use surveys as a starting point for dialogue, problem-solving and data analysis.  Survey-guided development uses questionnaires to construct a picture of an organization’s internal processes and problems.

·         Use both qualitative and quantitative data to build the project/programme purpose case.

Sustaining and Diffusing Work/Life Change Initiatives

·         Develop organizational strategies and resources for replicating the change process.

·         Select sites run by managers who see a “work/life-project/programme purpose challenge” connection.

·         Link data gathering and work/life change with broader organizational redesigns.

·         Use electronic “tool kits” or databases that disseminate best practices and recognize work/life “champions.”

·         Plan initiatives to re-energize existing change efforts.

10.  Challenges to Succeeding

Organizations must decide who is “family,” a term that has different definitions to different people.  Some people limit their idea of family only to spouses and children.  Others include non-married partners or grandparents and siblings in their definition.  Organizations need to examine their assumptions about who qualified as family and how its definition enhances their work/life strategy.

Soliciting comments and opening the organizational dialogue to work/life discussions will elicit skeptics, critics and resistance.  Organizations should listen to and learn from people’s objections, inorganizational their concerns and ideas, and involve them in fulfilling the “dual agenda.”

After organizations introduce their strategies, they must ensure that policies, practices and processes are in sync.  Many organizations offer family-friendly policies in theory, but in reality managers either through their words or actions discourage employees from using the benefits.  The project/programme purpose importance of work/life balance must become part of the culture, through management’s words and actions and through training.

In the end, financial pressures still can tempt organizations to reduce work/life programs during leans times.  Organizations should ensure the viability of their work and family programs even when confronted with pressures to restructure or downsize.  Why?  The most effective and efficient employees and managers often are the ones who confidently manage responsibilities in all spheres of their lives, according to research by the International Labour Organization.