Striking a balance
Is the concept of work-life balance a reality or just hype? HR professionals aired their views at a round-table discussion. Jane Lewis reports.
Finding the right balance between work and home life is often dismissed as an HR obsession that generates hours of discussion and miles of newsprint, but achieves very little actual impact.
Yet, as revealed in this round-table discussion, organised by Roffey Park in association with Personnel Today, the issue encapsulates many of the wider social and economic trends - particularly the blurring of boundaries between the home and work environments - that are now shaping modern management thinking.
Several panellists regard the adoption of more freedom of choice for employees as a kind of watershed between old-style authoritarianism, and a new style of 'adult' management, based on trust and personal responsibility. They were also able to demonstrate sound business cases for what greater flexibility had achieved in their organisations.
But the issue still has the power to provoke division - some members of the panel were more confident than others about the ability of employees to adapt to such a system. There were also differing opinions about the role legislation should play in encouraging greater uptake.
But underlying the whole discussion was the troubling, wider question, of whether an organisation's work-life policy - however deeply engrained in company culture - would be the first thing sacrificed when the chill winds of economic downturn begin to blow.
What is work-life balance?
The panel agreed the most important point is that you cannot impose a single definition of the right work-life balance on any organisation. The whole raison d'etre of the concept, is that people perform best when allowed to strike their own balance, fine-tuning their work commitments with those of their wider lives.
Thus, although the work-life debate should certainly be welcomed as an antidote to the long-hours culture - in which, as John Sparkes, HR director at the Generics Group points out, "the only way to be successful is to work 50, 60 or 70 hours a week" - there is a danger that in seeking to liberate, we only enchain ourselves in a different way.
But not all the panellists agreed with Tony Smith of Scottish & Newcastle's analysis, that "people become less effective" when they work long hours. For some, the intensity is part of the excitement of the job. As Christine Crewe from the University of Surrey points out, there are some staff who just want "to work and work and work".
Indeed, too much emphasis on avoiding a long-hours culture, could mean swinging the pendulum too far the other way and Asda's head of colleague relations, Marie Gill, warns against discouraging high-flyers "who want to get to the top of the tree by working above and beyond what is required to get there". While people should be empowered to choose the momentum of their own careers, she says, it is a fact of business life that "those who work longer hours and put in twice the effort, will get there quicker".
The panel agreed that age is a critical factor in any assessment of work-life balance. "The balance changes as you go through different stages of your life," says HR consultant, Wanda Bridge. "Fifteen years ago, I was happy to work 60 hours a week, but now..." Age brings greater focus, she says. "Once you've established your career, you get to the stage where you don't want to do it all the time."
There appears to be a tacit understanding that while junior staff feel the pressure to work long hours to get on, more experienced staff have earned the luxury of a more measured outlook. This may be because they have 'the authority' to insist on better hours, says Bridge.
But perhaps senior people have also learned to use their time more effectively. Indeed, says Sparkes, giving directors the space to fulfil outside interests enables them "to produce some very creative work". Moreover, encouraging different kinds of experiences only adds to the strength and diversity of the organisation.
How do you get work-life balance within your organisation?
Although the panel agreed with Crewe, that the "strength of the manager" is critical when it comes to driving reform, the team at Asda stressed that the real impetus has to come from the ground.
"It comes down to the individual," says colleague relations manager, Lee Redman. "You need to know what you want outside work and be able to manage yourself. You need to know your personal objectives."
When Asda's management introduced its family-friendly schemes, Gill adds: "We didn't make anything up. It was our people who told us what they wanted."
The real benefit of these new shift patterns, is that they encourage staff to be 'upfront' about the time off they need. Instead of 'taking a sickie' because a manager might refuse a request, all they have to do is arrange a shift swap.
The real point, she says, is that "you need to develop a community", and that means knowing what people do outside work, and helping them to do it. "It is about blurring the boundaries between home and work."
When it comes to selling the benefits of improved work-life balance to senior management, it is easy to run up against a brick wall, says Smith. "People will say, 'that's a great idea', but they'll baulk at the perceived cost, or the fact this kind of working is not traditional to their business."
The only way to "break this circle", is to prove the business case. Fortunately, in most companies the business cases are strong. At Asda, the path towards greater flexibility was considerably eased once managers proved it reduced staff turnover and absence, and improved productivity.
"We've got the lowest sickness and absence record in the industry," says Gill.
How important is communicating the policy?
The short answer is, 'very'. According to Gill, the secret of the scheme's success lay in marketing the idea and communicating it to the organisation. Staff needed to know they had "permission" from the top to manage their own time, and that taking unpaid leave was their right.
"It is the management population that present the most challenges," says Gill. Now that stores are open 24/7, one of her greatest challenges is persuading managers to switch off.
"It is hard for them to not phone in and check that everything is OK. But they learn to work with that," she says.
Communication is also a critical component in heading off clashes when different groups are working different hours. Bridge, who has considerable experience in the airline industry, says that considerable resentment developed at British Airways when one group perceived another to be "sitting around doing nothing and drinking coffee all day". The problem was, the company hadn't explained the policy properly across the whole organisation.
Establishing management by trust
Critical to the success of any work-life scheme is the underlying management philosophy that drives it. Nick Candler, HR and finance director of Allied Domecq, sees the work-life movement as a sign that "old style management is being phased out" in all but a few industries.
"We come at this from a totally different angle," he says. "We don't define people by the number of hours they work, we define them by what they are expected to achieve. We see work-life balance as giving people the autonomy to make choices about how they achieve their goals."
Candler believes it is all about giving people the 'adult' freedom to take responsibility for their own lives. But this is no soft option: the quid pro quo for greater flexibility, is proven achievement.
"We will give you the freedom to choose how you achieve [your goals], but the bottom line is that you must achieve them," says Candler. "If you don't, you can't remain in the organisation. That is the contract, one of trust."
Nonetheless, vigilance is still needed, says John Sparkes - particularly when it comes to handling younger employees.
"If you are too lenient people can take advantage," he says. "Graduates come and talk about work-life balance, but they tend to forget the 'work' bit. Sometimes they need reminding why they are being paid."
How should work-life schemes be monitored and measured? Wanda Bridge's suggestion that there is a role for legislation here was not taken up with any great enthusiasm by the rest of the panel.
Most agreed with her point that legislation tends to be reactive, following things people are already doing in their organisations. Besides, undue emphasis on legislation and bureaucracy would threaten the very flexibility that work-like schemes aim to introduce. Rather than "sweeping across everyone", says Sparkes, "the legislation should be there as back-up to give people an avenue for making a complaint."
Taking the plunge
So, how do you go about transforming an organisation in line with the new model? The logical first step, says Smith of Scottish & Newcastle, is a pilot project - particularly when you're attempting to change a business where 60-80 hour weeks are the norm and tightly controlled from the top. "But we thought, if we don't try it, how will we know if it works?"
Like Asda, Scottish & Newcastle found the most difficult group to tackle were managers, often working "horrendous" hours, "doing everything from opening up to the cleaning", often working until 1am. Their emphasis was all wrong.
"Ask a manager to name the most important part of his business, wages would be first and stock second. Sales were a distant third." Clearly, managers needed to spend more time training staff. But when someone is working 80 hours a week, Smith says "it is hardly surprising that you get a poke in the eye" if you ask them why they aren't doing more training.
He found the changes needed were not huge. If managers spent less time behind the bar and more time developing staff, it would have "a dramatic effect". The only way to achieve it was by establishing a culture where it was OK to say, 'I actually work too many hours, and cannot cope with it'. His conclusion is the same as Candler's: "People respond to being trusted."
What about costs?
This remains a moot point. Smith insists that in 70 per cent of Scottish & Newcastle's schemes there was no additional cost, because managers became more focused and learned to delegate more effectively. Indeed, he says, "I can show you sales profit and customer service stories that you didn't think were possible."
Other panellists pointed out this has not always been the case. Sparkes says: "You can get to a point where you pile on the benefits and make a short term gain, [yet] three to four years later, you find yourself completely eating your words."
He cites the example of the banking industry, which, in the 1980s and '90s, led the charge for family-friendly policies and career breaks. "Three years later, it was shedding half its workforce." No-one had thought through the consequence of changes - however beneficial in the short-term - to the longer term macro-economy and the structure of the industry.
Is work-life balance here to stay?
Ultimately, says Wanda Bridge, it depends on the type of business you are in and the kind of people you employ.
"There is a certain type of person who responds well to being trusted - they tend to be self-motivated people who want to do well. But there are a lot of people out there who need to be told what to do, and they would find it absolutely terrifying. Some people like routine; they like to know where they are in black and white. Flexibility doesn't fit in with everybody's values."
But the general consensus was behind Marie Gill's view, that "the idea of managing yourself is becoming more and more important". The driving force for these newly 'adult' bargains between employer and employee, suggests Nick Candler, is widespread change in the workplace. "People are no longer spending their whole adult lives with one employer."
New relationships require a different kind of psychological contract. Moreover, the evidence suggests the new generation coming on stream perceives a degree of flexibility in their working and private lives as a matter of right. "Graduates are now saying, 'I want a proper job, but I want my social life as well'," says Bridges.
How long this new 'cultural confidence' will last is a matter for conjecture. Certainly people are successfully demanding freedoms from employers that simply weren't considered a couple of years back, concludes John Sparkes. But this is "probably based on low levels of employment".
Should that situation change, even the most ardent proponents of work-life balance may well find themselves taking a very different tack.
