Quality of Life with Professional Excellence
Too many articles about work/life balance place the full burden for achieving that balance on the individual. No one can maintain balance without the support of their employer, co-workers, family, and community.
Employers can no longer get off easy. Quality of life issues must be seen as extensions of occupational health & safety concerns as employers adopt specific programs that are set up as preventative rather than corrective. Quality of life issues are also integral in other management concerns like recruitment and retention of talent, client development, and maintaining a diverse workforce.
Human resources must be served
A Health Canada study indicates that work-life conflict costs companies $6 - $10 billion a year in increased absenteeism - one-third of which is due to employees taking mental health days. Creating a healthy, welcoming workplace culture is key to employee satisfaction. Creating an atmosphere that is pleasant and stimulating contributes to productivity. Proper support can produce workers who are responsive, focused, efficient, and resilient.
The emotional and spiritual health of partners, staff lawyers and employees can be supported by management practices that keep lines of communication open and use traditional human resources tools to help employees on the verge of burn-out.
The Mayo Health Clinic identifies causes of employee burnout that personnel managers must address:
- Lack of control -- from an inability to influence decisions that affect the job, such as which hours are worked or how assignments are distributed or lack of control over the amount of work that comes in.
- Unclear job expectations -- uncertainty over degree of authority or not having the necessary resources to do the work or unclear job descriptions.
- Dysfunctional workplace dynamics -- working with an office bully, being undermined by colleagues or having a boss who micromanages the work.
- Mismatch in values - an individual's values or ethics differ from how the company appears to do business or handle grievances or practice law.
- Extremes of activity - extended periods of overwork or long lulls punctuated by frantic emergencies
Without a cooperative employer, no one can find harmony between their work and their personal life. Law firms, being educated and informed partnerships, should be leading the way in developing workplace practices and policies that create the conditions for a balance between quality of life and professional excellence. Instead they stumble along without the benefit of modern human resources tools and sensibilities.
Reflecting the world's majorities is a necessity
The new Canadian workforce is older, ethnically diverse and includes proportionately more women, working mothers, dual-income families, and fathers with responsibility for dependent care, workers with dependent parents, and workers in sandwich generation with responsibilities toward parents and children. The majorities in the world are actually those often referred to in North America as minorities. To reflect the majority, efforts must be made to transform the law firm image from one of mature white males in suits.
Women executives have been found to rely on three factors to manage their work/life balance
- Employing outside domestic services
- Curtailing personal interests
- A supportive spouse
- Delegating work to subordinates
- Working from home
- Limiting travel
- Reducing non-work commitments
These strategies may work to reduce conflict between home life and work life but will not generate harmony and professional excellence. An individual needs to continue to develop personal interests throughout life and to take-up outside activities both to retain their mental and social well-being and to maintain contacts in their communities.
When a woman's time is overcommitted or her work demands bleed into the family time, it is the family that suffers especially if the husband faces similar work demands. Employers need to think of both men and women as family-centered and consider how their policies can adapt to the needs of busy families.
The new workforce is famly-oriented
"What [Generation X] saw in workaholism was divorce, fatigue, illness, substance abuse and one-track lives. And so their generation grew up to say 'not us,' " said Chuck Underwood, a Cincinnati-based generational consultant. That might explain the results of a study the Families and Work Institute recently released that shows workers ages 18 to 37 are more likely to view family as an equal or higher priority than work. And other studies suggest that Generation Y (the Millennial) attach the same or more importance to family.
Many studies also tell us that the younger generations of men are also seeking more involvement in family life and work/life harmony. A recent international survey found that young associates are refusing to commit to 2200 annual work hours and rejecting the path to equity partnerships. Twenty percent rejected the trade-offs for an ownership share. In fact, salary is no longer a motivator - it came 10th out of 17 factors. Their top priorities at work were
- more time away from the office,
- opportunities for professional development
- career advancement
- job security.
Partners and managers must walk the talk
To create the necessary change in the firm culture, the law firm partnership needs to articulate a vision for a healthy and resilient staff, a productive and successful firm, and satisfied clients. Managers need to model healthy habits and "balance behaviours" not merely manage them for others. Staff needs to take responsibility for their own choices.
The United Kingdom has the Flexible Working Regulations 2002 requiring employers to accommodate staff who request arrangements that will facilitate work-life balance. Even when a firm establishes such arrangements, the management level employees do not avail themselves of the benefits. By continuing to overwork and burn-out they send a message that employees who do use the benefits do not have management potential.
See my article on recruitment and retention.
Staff have the solutions
Staff are usually aware of their unmet needs concerning their health and well-being, their lack of time or stress-management tools or skills, their interpersonal relationship needs, career development, and personal and professional development. Rather than implement "standard solutions" firms should ask current employees what they actually need.
A recent study of US and Canadian businesses by research firm Circadian Technologies Inc. shows that companies that work their employees outside of the hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and allow them to work excessive hours suffer, financial consequences due to lower productivity, increased turnover (300%), absenteeism, health problems and safety issues. So it clearly benefits employers to encourage, if not enforce, reasonable working hours.
What benefits are sought by employees?
Common requests from employees are:
- Flexible schedules, liberalizing the time/location demands of work
- Job-sharing, compressed work weeks, telework and part-time work
- Emergency child care and back-up care for sick children
- Child care and elder care arrangements with extended hours
- Referrals to qualified care givers for the elderly
- Concierge services
- More autonomy in planning work projects by focusing on output not hours
- Unpaid leave for things like compassionate leave, study leave, to go traveling
Some employers are already trying out employee benefits that facilitate harmony between home and work. There is a cost but there are enormous benefits in loyal and satisfied employees. Such services provided by employers include:
- Concierge services provide conveniences like dry-cleaning pickup and delivery
- Stress and time-management training
- Nutrition and wellness programs
- Peer support networks
- Travel or party organizers
- Personal services like haircuts or massages available on-site, but not free, which are designed to free up employees' evenings and weekends.
- Weekly sessions with a personal trainer and negotiated group discounts on personal trainers
- Breakfast or lunch service or facilities
- A health code for time sheets
- Financial management coaching and consulting services
- Use of the boardroom for after-hours association activities
Family-owned JM Enterprises, provided employees with on-site personal services like free haircuts and manicures, yoga and Pilates classes, and shoe repairs and dry cleaning.
Employees often will use these services only if there is implicit and explicit support in the organization. No one wants to take advantage of these opportunities if doing so has a negative effect on their career advancement. For good effect, employees must know what is negotiable and what is not, what are core expectations and what is negotiable, and that they need not fear reprisals for negotiating work responsibilities.
Flexible work structures and hours
Flexibility works if you set core hours and standard meeting times, use process design, implement delegation practices, and demand rigorous meeting conduct.
See my article on flexible work.
Read a success story at Alston & Bird discovers the laws of low turnover
