- An organization without a competent and committed workforce is an organization in trouble. Far too many organizations should realize they are in danger of not having the people they will need within the next few years and should be doing far more to resolve this issue. Waiting until workforce shortages occur is much like waiting to buy fire insurance until one’s house is ablaze… not an optimal strategy.
A key to keeping employees loyal and engaged for the long term is for employer to be sure the employee fully understands and appreciates the total value of their benefits package, including the work-life component. As important as understanding the package is to also know how to apply the benefits for maximum work-life satisfaction.
The importance of work-life in raising productivity and reducing labor-force costs, makes it imperative that organizations review the programs, policies and practices they have in place and develop a business-based work-life strategy that includes training front-line managers to help deliver the message. Angelina B. Laycock (Roma Communications) sums up the situation this way:
- When new ways to manage people are expected, training on how to do this must be a priority. Simply raising expectations without changing the way supervisors communicate with their group will only defeat the goal of creating change. Training must include the understanding of stated policies and the provision of specific strategies for creating a flexible workplace while meeting business needs.
A first step is to identify what benefits the organization already offers their employees, and what areas need to be improvement. To facilitate this assessment, The Alliance for Work-Life Progress (AWLP) created a free audit to help companies identify and organize their work-life programs, policies and practices. It’s available of the web at http://www.awlp.org/pub/selfaudit.pdf.
The Best People to Help Deliver the Work-Life Message
Because front-line managers experience first hand the issues work-life conflicts bring to employees and to an organization, they are uniquely placed to apply work-life services as direct solutions. In work-life terms, employee problems center on a natural or emergency conflict between their personal lives and their work demands, which, in turn, create organizational challenges. These can manifest as unscheduled absenteeism, voluntary turnover, decreased productivity and ultimately result in low morale. To help an employee with dependent-care issues, financial, heath or relationship problems is to ensure greater work performance.
Often, there are barriers to getting managers on board and at ease with the use of work-life tools as an essential factor in creating the kind of supportive culture, which advances the overall business strategy while treating workers respectfully and facilitating acceptance of the inevitable pull of life events upon them.
Potential barriers for managers include:
· Perception that work-life is “social work” and not intrinsic to improved performance
· Fear that support of work-life issues will be abused by employees
· Need to maintain a rigid control and conformity of team working hours and locations
· Lack of understanding about the effect of life events on work performance
· Belief that work-life solutions will detract from focus on performance
· Belief that the corporate culture is too competitive to focus on work-life
· Belief that good employees are lining up to join the organization and that attrition doesn’t matter.
To overcome these barriers some organizations have integrated work-life information into existing management-training programs. Instead of using traditional training programs for managers, the authors recommend a tool they’ve created—the Manager’s Solution Forum (See Figure 1). This interactive technique provides an effective means of using the real-time issues and solutions that are generated within the participant group.
The Manager’s Solution Forum
The principal difference between the Manager’s Solution Forum and traditional training is that traditional training is predefined—although content can be based on feedback from the group. Both tools can meet objectives (to show that work-life tools can be a solution to business issues such as productivity, quality, turnover and absenteeism) but in different ways. Using a facilitator, the Solution Forum involves managers in examining their own case studies and in using their own organizational resources to address individual situations. Through this process managers take ownership of the solutions they create.
The first objective of the Solution Forum is to fully communicate the work-life challenges employees are experiencing by using both qualitative and quantitative data. Quantitative data includes metrics around turnover and absenteeism, whereas qualitative data would tease out potential future issues such as impending life events, or the difference in engagement and productivity between, for example, a worker moving to a new house and one facing elder-care issues. By using corporate and anecdotal evidence, one can show exactly how these issues impact the organization’s bottom line.
The next step is to have managers provide stories illustrating the problem, followed by how these challenges impact the company’s operations. For example, a small workgroup in California is unable to retain newly hired employees. The organization provides flextime, concierge, onsite health club, etc. The manager of the workgroup continues to focus on hiring and is not working to close the door through which 40 percent of new hires are leaving—a statistic that troubles the organization. This manager’s problem is their focus on recruiting while ignoring the tools that are in place to increase retention.
During this process, the facilitator records the issues the managers share to use later on in the forum. This is a critical component of the training; by recording their experiences, they are becoming a part of the solution process and will be able to contribute when the discussions turn to available resources to create work-life effectiveness within their departments.
FIGURE 1: The Manager’s Solution Forum
Communicate the Issues - Survey results· HR data· Provide business case· Cost of turnover· Impact of reduced productivity
Engage Managers - Tap into their experience· Identify additional issues· Uncover hidden costs· RECORD EVERYTHING!
Outline the Work-Life Tools - Strategy· Programs· Policies· Practices
Create Solutions - Teams · Topics· Solution
Measures and Metrics - Performance Management· Utilization reports· Absenteeism· Turnover
The final section of the forum involves reviewing the work-life solutions available within an organization. Share the results of the internal work-life audit and break the resources down into components (Different organizations may have different definitions, below is an example you can use):
· Dependent care support
· Flexible work arrangements
· Health and wellness
· Financial and practical support.
Within each component outline the services, programs and policies that are available to employees including examples that illustrate the business case for work-life. Companies that have won awards for “best places to work” from publications like Working Mother, Fortune and AARP The Magazine can easily be found. “There’s no question that work-life initiatives are significant factors in the three major ‘best place to work’ applications” noted Richard Federico in a recent article outlining the publications awards. “’Wannabe-great’ companies that are willing to invest the time, effort and expense to go through the application process should be sure they have their work-life procedures, programs and policies in order before they fill out the application.”
Here are some additional examples that can be used: Nortel (Flexibility 2003), the studies from Brigham Young University and a study from Northwestern University Medical School.
Nortel
Nortel has 12,000 teleworkers out of a staff of 35,000; the telework program is nine-years-old, and the company has measured results.
Most of their teleworkers (94 percent) report that their productivity is up, and 65 percent of managers agree with them, with the average increase from 15 percent to 20 percent. Nortel calculates that a 15-percent increase is equivalent to 1.2 hours more productivity per day, and applying that to the 3,000 full-time telecommuters totals approximately $325,000 a day (most of their remote workers are manager-level employees). Their remote employees are 11 percent more satisfied, they say, and 41 percent more motivated than their in-office colleagues. One compensation analyst who has been working from her home office since the program began points out an unexpected advantage. She works with highly sensitive information, and says working from home provides security benefits. The information is always tightly controlled, whether in the office or at home. But at home there’s no chance that someone could be looking over her shoulder. Finally, for each office-based worker they estimate a cost of nearly $24,000 a year, while home-based employees cost a little more than $3,000. So Nortel figures its remote work program saves more than $20,000 per worker on office expense alone.
Brigham Young University Studies
Two studies by Brigham Young researchers have found a huge payoff in reduced absenteeism—nearly $16 for every dollar spent—when employers encourage health-promotion programs.
Both studies were led by Brigham Young University professor Steven Aldana The first examined the absenteeism records and health-claims costs for 6,246 employees and retirees from a Reno school district during six years, comparing absence records of those who participated in the wellness program with those who didn’t. They found savings of more than $3 million in absenteeism costs among participants. And the second study found that six weeks of proper nutrition and exercise resulted in a dramatic drop in the level of risk for illnesses like diabetes, cancer and heart disease. In that study, 337 volunteers participated in a 40-hour course for four weeks, adopting a diet emphasizing food like grains, legumes, fresh fruits and vegetables. Participants also spent 30 minutes a day in a cardiovascular exercise program. Within six weeks, they experienced significant reductions in body fat, cholesterol levels and blood pressure. Said Aldana, "This is about healthy living. Make a decision, get the right information and tools and involve people to show you how to change, and great things can happen."
Northwestern University Medical School
A study of 16,500 employees (Newswire 2004) found more than 10 percent missed work to care for an ill dependent in the previous two weeks.
The dependents were children and adults, and the missed work time averaged nearly a full day of work in two weeks—7.7 work hours. The study, by Northwestern University Medical School researchers, focused on the costs and consequences to employers and individuals when workers had to be caregivers. For the 1,749 caregivers, the study estimated the absenteeism cost in the two-week period at $240,000; for a full year it would probably have exceeded $6 million. Most likely to miss work for caregiving were younger workers and minorities, those with nonmanagerial jobs, those with stress-related symptoms such as depression, and those who report not enough time for sleep or exercise. Given the cost, said lead researcher Dr. Wayne Burton, companies would benefit from strategies to help employees cope, like flexibility, coverage for dependent care and mental-health benefits.
Next Steps in the Manager’s Solutions Forum
After thoroughly reviewing the work-life tools and providing a compelling business case, divide the managers into teams. Each team is assigned a different series of employee challenges and issues that were shared at the beginning of the forum. Additionally, the group is given the full list of organizational work-life resources that they have just learned about. Each team is given 20 to 30 minutes to review the issues and identify solutions using the work-life resources that will aid in resolving the problem.
This process always provides an eye-opening experience, both for the forum leader and the managers. The dialog among teams tends to begin slowly as they work through new ideas and the authors recommend that the facilitator moves from group to group to coach teams in this exercise. At the end of the discussion, each group reports back on their issues and which work-life resources will reduce or eliminate the problem.
All effective forums have accountability tied in to insure the new information is communicated and utilized. Measuring employee satisfaction or using 360-degree evaluations are examples of benchmarking progress. Existing HR systems such as performance management, productivity, absence rates, utilization of work-life services/programs and employee turnover can also be used.
By introducing work-life as a business strategy, an organization will begin to drive a change within its culture to create better outcomes affecting a raft of issues including attraction and retention strategies, as well as engagement and performance.
Creating a Culture to Support Work-Life Strategy
Changing one part of the way a business runs, of course, makes little sense without the necessary support of the rest of the organization, and especially in terms of attitudes, norms, behaviors and practices—otherwise known as culture. Organizations, whose view of work-life is merely programmatic, while the underlying culture remains unsympathetic to work-life challenges, can find their efforts are wasted.
Laycock (2006a) put it this way:
It is imperative that companies do not establish policies regarding work-life balance and then have executives who behave in ways that contradict those policies. Support must come from policy and actual management practices because the mixed-message syndrome is deadly to the success of work-life programs, difficult for middle managers to hurdle and counter productive in reaching business goals.
The bottom line is that all work-life initiatives need the commitment and endorsement of leadership if they are not to be seen as mere accommodations. C-level management is often, if not typically, swayed as much by return on investment data, as it is by any belief that recognizing and dealing with work-life issues are just the “right thing to do.” Taking care of human issues can seem like an inadvisable road to take when immediate return on shareholder value is perceived to be at stake. Statements of commitment both internally and externally need to be communicated, and training provided to C-level executives is usually necessary. Only then will the rest of the organization understand expectations, as well as being given permission to “jump on board” with any initiatives presented.
Adequate and appropriate resources need to be provided to support work-life integration. The authors’ experience indicates that a wide range of information, advice, programs, workshops, and other tangible signs of respect for work-life need to be present. Training is essential, especially for managers, but also for employees who may be reluctant to use the resources provided.
One most important element of culture change, of course, is communication. Many organizations have isolated and untapped examples of extremely successful arrangements where work-life has been used as a positive business strategy. It is vital to create systems for capturing and disseminating successful practices—this creates “positive buzz,” recognizes individuals, teams or departments, enhances training efforts, pools expertise and affirms the organizational support. Innovation and creativity can be rewarded by encouraging pilot programs to test new ideas, especially around work schedules and work redesign. By giving employees of all levels an opportunity to participate in communication efforts through multiple sources of media, excitement and ownership are generated, getting culture change to that most valued level of viral. The positive influences of the enthusiasm generated can be strategically leveraged for purposes of external public relations, recruitment, sales and other business goals.
References
Aldana, Steven G.. Ray M. Merrill, Kristine Price, Aaron Hardy and Ron Hager 2005. “Financial impact of a comprehensive multisite workplace health promotion program.” Preventive Medicine, February: 131-137
Aldana, Steven G., Roger L. Greenlaw, Hans A. Diehl, , Audrey Salberg, Ray M. Merrill, Seiga Ohmine and Camille Thomas. 2005. “Effects of an intensive diet and physical activity modification program on the health risks of adults.” Journal of the American Diabetes Association. March: 371-381.
Charlton. 2007. “Fifty-one Percent of Employees Underestimate the Value of Their Total Compensation.” http://www.charltonconsulting.com/resource-center/pdfs/OmnibusRelease-FINAL%204-11-07.pdf. Viewed Aug. 2.
Federico, Richard F. 2007. “’Best List’ Retrospective Shows How Far Work-Life Has Come as Employer of Choice Contributor. Workspan: October:
Flexibility. [AU: Need more information that was provided in the original. If this was a Web site what is the address of the article?]
Greene, Robert J. 2007. “Ensuring Future Workforce Viability” WorldatWork Journal, Fourth Quarter:
Laycock, Angelina B. 2006. “Middle Managers: A Key Link to Successful Work-Life Initiatives.” WorldatWork Journal, Fourth Quarter: 64.
Laycock, Angelina B. 2006a. “Middle Managers: A Key Link to Successful Work-Life Initiatives.” WorldatWork Journal, Fourth Quarter: 66.
Lingle, Kathleen M. 2006. “State of the Work-Life Profession.” WorldatWork Journal, Third Quarter: 74-75.
Newswire. 2004. AU: Need the name of the press release and, if possible, where it was viewed if it was viewed on the Web]
Yahoo. HotJobs. 2006. “Name of survey.” Location on Internet
Authors:
Kathy Kacher is president, Career/Life Alliance Services Inc. (CLAS), a company she founded in 1987 as an organization dedicated to the development and integration of work-life initiatives. During the past 18 years, Kacher has delivered work-life services to many Fortune 500 companies with programs and services that range from dependent care to policy development and deployment. Through CLAS, Kacher has been responsible for authoring several popular work-life tools, which include online dependent-care system, the nation’s first flexible work option guidance and tracking system, and the newest offering, a virtual benefits fair. A frequently requested speaker and presenter, Kacher has been featured at prominent industry events around the world and has been featured on local morning shows, Minnesota Public Radio, the (Minneapolis-St. Paul) Star Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Employee Benefit News, and in the book The Working Gal’s Guide to Babyville. Since 1998, Kacher has played a significant role with the Alliance for WorkLife Progress (AWLP) Innovative Excellence Awards as a committee chairperson and member. She is a faculty member at WorldatWork and participated in the creation of an interlocking suite of courses that will provide a certification process for the work-life professional.
Rachel Hastings is the vice president WFC Resources and has more than 17 years of experience as an internal and external organizational consultant and trainer. With a background in social psychology, she has held several senior management positions internationally, including director of the British Chamber of Commerce in Mexico. As a project manager in United Kingdom local government, she created a Web-based management and information system to integrate health-care provisions for the “over ‘60s,” and has worked extensively in the field of elder care.
