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Corporate
Work Life Effectiveness
To develop a corps d'elite companies are adopting strategies that help employees balance their personal and business goals.
The term "work-life" means different things to different people. In the best of cases, it starts with a point of view that puts a high value on the employee as the resource that makes a company tick. From there, it moves on to a series of concrete measures that enable the company and its employees to benefit from the effective management of work and personal responsibilities.
In the spring of 2002, Eugene O'Kelly took over as chairman and CEO of KPMG. Talk about timing. Corporate America was being hit by scandal after scandal, and accounting and tax firms like KPMG were being caught in the backlash. "To say the past year was a baptism by fire wouldn't be an overstatement," says O'Kelly.
Although KPMG's new CEO had his hands full with external matters, he knew that the press coverage of the scandals was causing serious morale and productivity problems within the firm. O'Kelly had a critical job: to turn KPMG into a firm that employees were proud of and a place where they wanted to work. "Our firm's success rests with our people," he says, "and that's not just talk. We have to do more than just say it."
Fortunately, O'Kelly had a good foundation to work with. Several work-life programs—an Employee Assistance Program and LifeWorks, a resource and referral service—had been started in the mid-1980s. But, as Kathy Hannan, KPMG's vice chair, human resources says, "Gene's visible leadership on this issue was the juice and firepower behind the initiative's growth. We've expanded our work-life initiatives to include emergency back-up dependent care, two weeks of paid time off for new parents, universally accessible information on flexible work arrangements and an array of discount programs for such things as auto insurance and home loans."
"By helping our employees manage their dependent care issues, work more flexibly and take time off when they need it, we wound up with a very meaningful return on investment," says O'Kelly. Talk about understatement. Based on work days saved and a projected reduction in turnover, KPMG's new emergency back-up child-care program has provided a whopping 521% return on investment. Another impressive statistic: Two-thirds of employees on flexible work arrangements say they would have left the firm if the child-care option hadn't been in operation.
Recipe for Success
Like KPMG, many companies have discovered that work-life initiatives can be leveraged into a cost-effective way to achieve business goals. Not that the concept is new. Back in the 1930s, W.K. Kellogg Company, the country's leading maker of corn flakes, tried a new recipe, replacing the traditional three daily eight-hour work shifts with four six-hour shifts. Result: Employee efficiency and morale jumped. Since then, changing demographics and business needs, along with the development of sophisticated technology, have produced a wide variety of work-life offerings.
 Still, corporate America has a long way to go. In Why the Bottom Line Isn't: How to Build Value Through People and Organization, Dave Ulrich, business professor at the University of Michigan, and Norm Smallwood, president of Results-Based Leadership, make the point this way: "'Work-life balance' has become an oxymoron as more people in the U.S. work longer hours than ever before." Nevertheless, they note, even "with all of this effort aimed at work, we don't seem to be continuing to outpace the rest of the world in productivity."
Part of the challenge is the new look to the workforce. According to statistics from the Labor Department, the "traditional family"—the father as the breadwinner, supported by a stay-at-home mom—represents less than 20% of today's workforce. And yet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, married couples make up about half the population, and married couples with children account for one fourth of all U.S. households. Today, over 60% of women with children under the age of six are employed, and mothers with preschool children are the fastest-growing segment of the workforce.
But work-life is not just about children. Many employees now have, or expect to have, elder care responsibilities. According to the Labor Project for Working Families, a national advocacy and policy center, 40% of people caring for elders also have child care responsibilities, and many of these "sandwich generation" caregivers are in the workforce. By 2030, some 70 million Americans will be over 65, and those over 85 are already the fastest-growing segment of the older population.
It's not just about care-giving either. Work-life means different things to different people depending on where they are in their life and career cycles. For some, it's being able to go to the gym or learn a new skill. For others, avoiding rush-hour commuting is important. In spite of all these factors, many business policies, programs, benefits, and practices in place today were designed for the needs of the "traditional family," those people who make up only 20% of the actual workforce.
Hence the thrust behind the current work-life movement. Starting in the early 1980s with a focus on child care, today's programs typically include a combination of policies, benefits, and practices designed to address both business and personal needs. A June 2003 report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)—the leading human resource management association—reviewed more than 30 surveys on work-life issues published between 1997 and 2003. Its findings: The number of employers offering benefits has dramatically increased and continues to do so.
Connecting the Dots
According to SHRM, today's top five "family-friendly" benefits are dependent-care flexible spending accounts, flextime, family leave, telecommuting on a part-time basis, and compressed workweeks. Today's work-life initiatives also
include elder-care assistance, child-care services, management training, adoption assistance, community outreach, and many other forms of workplace flexibility and redesign. Progressive companies are using work-life initiatives to "connect the dots" so that the end-users—the employees—can get the help they need, when it's needed, allowing them to focus on business issues.
Along the way, we are moving from the notion of "work-life balance"—which no employee seems to have and most employers don't want, since it implies a win/lose situation—to work-life effectiveness, where the goal for both the organization and the employee is the ability to more effectively manage personal life and work. The two are symbiotic because when work is effective, life benefits. And when life works, work benefits. While that may sound like plain old common sense, it hasn't been common practice. Today, employers of choice and best places to work are trying hard to turn common sense into common practice.
To pave the way, a new National Work-Life Initiative has been created as an education and awareness campaign. Developed by the Alliance for Work-Life Progress and FORTUNE magazine, the Initiative has a corporate chair that changes annually. For 2003, the corporate chair is the American Business Collaboration, whose nine lead members are Abbott Laboratories, Allstate Insurance, Deloitte & Touche, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Texas Instruments.
A key activity of the National Work-Life Initiative for 2003 centers on a congressional resolution, co-sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy, as well as Christopher Dodd and Lamar Aexander, to designate October as Work and Family Month. Senator Kennedy is an ardent supporter: "Millions of men and women in all parts of the country are finding it more and more impossible to manage the responsibilities of work and family. It's a huge emerging issue, and Congress can't ignore it. This bipartisan Senate resolution is a way to encourage wide discussion of work-life issues and to set the right priorities to help Congress and American business deal with these increasingly serious challenges."
When Senator Hatch introduced the resolution, he urged his colleagues "to bring attention to the need for a family-friendly environment." Patricia Kempthorne, the wife of the governor of Idaho, sees the congressional resolution as "an important foundation, something to build on to generate awareness and get the attention of top-level decision makers." Senator Kennedy adds this: "It's premature to speculate about specific outcomes, but I'd like to see a consensus develop on how to address these issues. It may take something like FDR's New Deal—the problem is that serious."
Early Childhood Education
The non-profit Corporate Voices for Working Families in Washington, D.C., was created to bring the private sector into the public dialogue on issues affecting working families. "Collectively," says Donna Klein, president and CEO of Corporate Voices, "our 36 partner companies employ more than three million individuals throughout all 50 states, with annual net revenues of $750 billion. Over 70% of our partner companies are listed in the FORTUNE 500, and all share leadership positions in developing family support policies for their own workforces." Along with the Business Roundtable, Corporate Voices recently called on state and federal governments to make the development of "high-quality" early childhood education programs a top priority.
Meanwhile, individual companies have taken work-life matters into their own hands. In the early 1990s, Texas Instruments formed several women's groups, provided them with funding and turned them loose. According to Tegwin Pulley, vice president for workforce, diversity and work-life strategies, "One team decided we needed a small survey to determine what people really wanted in the way of work and family support. The HR person was an advocate who helped get buy-in and funding for a corporate work-life needs assessment. The results showed that there was work to be done, so HR created what was supposed to be a one-year position. The position still exists today."
Two particular companies see work-life as part of their diversity initiatives. Abbott Laboratories focuses on the needs of women for a practical reason: Women are involved in every step of its operations, from research and discovery to the marketing of new drugs. And Abbott is serious about making things happen. In addition to an actively engaged chairman and CEO that champions diversity and inclusion, the compensation for managers is tied to leadership goals that include leading from a people perspective, building an organization and inspiring people, and hiring and advancing women and minorities. "It's included in the goal-setting process," says Sharon Larkin, divisional vice president of human resource programs and business integration. "And when it's in the goals, it gets done."
Profiting From Righteousness
At Allstate, the diversity initiative has been an on-going effort for more than 15 years. Championed by its CEO, Allstate is proud of the success of its efforts. "We strive to create a supportive environment because we know that yields higher performance," says Joan M. Crockett, senior vice president, human resources. "Inclusion, dignity and respect, work-life balance, and a commitment to affirmative action are the hallmarks of our diversity program." One measure of the progress Allstate has made: a double-digit increase in the number of women and minority executives at the company over the last five years.
Addressing the child care needs of the workforce has also become a major initiative in corporate America. Companies that offer worksite child care report a significant return on their investment. Boston-based Bright Horizons Family Solutions, the largest provider of employer-sponsored child care, early education, and work-life solutions, has clearly documented that employer-supported child care helps with retention, especially of top performers. One of the main findings of a recent study of eight organizations showed that voluntary turnover of child care center users was almost half that of the voluntary turnover among the total workforce, resulting in a $3.4 million aggregate cost savings. Moreover, retention of top performers who used the child care centers was 97%.
"The high quality worksite child care supplied by Bright Horizons has provided a measurable positive impact on absenteeism and turnover," says Citi Cards senior vice president of human resources, Ray Bergman. "Eliminating concerns over child care for employees allows them to concentrate on the job and focus on the customer, providing a higher quality service to that customer. We consider this an important tool in our benefit tool box that affects the long-term loyalty of the employee and our bottom line."
Adapting to Change
Johnson & Johnson has long been a recognized leader in the development of work-life programs, particularly in the area of child care, where the company has demonstrated that child-care programs can adapt to changing employee and business needs. Six Johnson & Johnson complexes boast on-site child development centers. All are accredited by the National Association for The Education of Young Children, and the on-site child care facilities accept the grandchildren of employees. The centers, which have also begun to accept children on a part-time basis, recently changed hours to better align with flexible work schedules, and started a summer camp program for older children.
Lucent Technologies has focused resources on creating a more family-friendly environment, especially in the area of dependent care. According to Pam Kimmet, senior vice president of human resources, "Lucent has supported community-based programs since 1989 through its Family Care Development Fund, providing grants for after-school programs, family child care, and services for older adults." Two years ago, Lucent rolled out a national child care provider training program called Quality Connections. To date, 473 early childhood professionals at centers serving 16,000 children in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Colorado have received 1,396 hours of free training through the program. "High quality, stable child-care pays dividends," says Kimmet, "enabling parents to come to work and focus on the task at hand."
At drug-maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a major focus is on health and employee well-being. According to Dan Phelan, senior vice president of human resources, "The merger of SmithKline Beecham and GlaxoWellcome presented an opportunity to develop a work-life initiative that mirrors the mission of the company: to help our employees do more, feel better and live longer. In this fast-paced environment of technology and globalization with 24/7 work, we have to recognize that employees are volunteers and we need to convince them every day that this is the best place for them to work." With a CEO mandate to simplify everything possible to help employees be more effective in their work and personal lives, GSK has developed a comprehensive, integrated model to ensure that managers and employees have the resources and tools they need to manage work and personal life effectively.
One part of the GSK program is its resilience and well-being standard, under which managers assess their workplaces for organizational factors that might contribute to employee stress and work-life conflicts. In addition, says Phelan, "Managers review the results of their assessments and work with human resources and their teams to develop and implement appropriate action plans." The GSK program also includes a communication strategy and manager's toolkit, both designed to reinforce the message and importance of health and resilience. These materials and processes help employees and managers identify the aspects of work that contribute to inefficiencies, frustrations, undue pressure and work-life conflicts that impair business results, which aspects can be controlled and are important or impactful enough to do something about, and what actions need to be taken to minimize these issues.
Flexibility and Productivity
 Workplace flexibility is another work-life initiative that has tremendous implications for employees and employers alike. It's a powerful retention tool, as Deloitte & Touche discovered. Based on a 2003 survey conducted by WFD, a Watertown, Mass. consulting firm, 86% of Deloitte's client service professionals cited workplace flexibility as a strong reason for the attractiveness of staying with the firm. Having flexibility enabled Deloitte & Touche to avoid an estimated $27 million in turnover-related costs during fiscal 2003. Flexibility can also be a key variable in fostering productivity. Data from a study by the American Business Collaboration of off-site work shows that productivity is as high or higher for remote workers who have some control over where and when work is done.
Ernst & Young (E&Y) has long been a supporter of workplace flexibility for all its people. According to Jim Turley, chairman and CEO, "Our PeopleFirst strategy supports a flexible work environment and enables both our people and our firm to succeed. Giving our people the ability and the tools to regularly navigate their workload to determine where, when and how their work gets accomplished, continues to set us apart. Everyone at E&Y should expect understanding and flexibility to meet their personal and professional goals. It is the supportive culture that we want."
Kerrie MacPherson's story exemplifies how E&Y is supporting flexibility in the work place. "Join our group, see the world" was the motto of the Transaction Support Group (a.k.a. Mergers & Acquisitions) for Ernst & Young's Canadian practice, developed by MacPherson, a partner, in 1998. While Kerrie and her virtual team were based in a number of Canadian cities, they often spent a lot of time in other countries like Belgium and the U.K. From the start, Kerrie and her team were committed to ensuring everyone in the group had a personal life outside of the office—which is no small task when a group travels extensively.
Kerrie's flexible leadership style was so successful that last year, she was asked to come to New York and do it again for the new Financial Services Office, Transaction Support Group. Kerrie's commitment to her teams is unwavering. "Every one of us has a life. If something is important to you, it doesn't need to be important to anyone else—but you need to make it happen—make it work." Kerrie believes that if someone wants to create a full life outside of their career, they need to take individual responsibility to make it happen.
Even with more than 2,300 people on formal flexible work arrangements, the firm recognizes that its workforce needs a culture of flexibility coupled with life management policies. In the first year of E&Y's parental leave program, they found that with approximately 1,000 births a year, 950 employees took parental leave, and nearly half were men. So much for the myth that work-life initiatives are only for women.
At General Electric, more than 50,000 GE employees worldwide have the technology that gives them remote access and the flexibility to work from home or the road. In 2001, in response to employee feedback, GE's financial services businesses launched an all-out effort to increase work-life flexibility for their employees. This effort included formalization of informal programs, the creation of a centralized website, plus manager and employee training focused. This effort speaks to GE's commitment to being an employer of choice. As chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt puts it, "I want to make sure that GE is always the Employer of Choice. This has to be a place where people want to come to work and where they want to stay."
The best practices in work-life are typically an evolutionary process. In the best of cases, a clear work-life strategy is tied to business goals. In all cases, communication is critical. Developing key messages and making sure they are consistently used, branding the work-life initiatives so employees will recognize them and creating consistent internal and external messages are some of the ways leading-edge companies are distinguishing their efforts. A number are connecting work-life with diversity or health and wellness because they see an obvious relationship. It also makes business sense.
Kraft Foods works hard to see that its work-life focus is clearly presented in all company communications. Kraft also seeks input from current and potential employees about the company's work-life initiatives. In response to what it learned, one of the areas the company has focused on is work redesign and streamlining. As Betsy Holden, co-CEO of Kraft Foods, president Kraft Foods North America, puts it, "Streamlining work requires that we get rid of low-value processes and create the culture, technologies and practices to speed everyday activities." The Kraft employees who participated in a Personal Efficiencies Program pilot reported an average of seven hours per week in timesavings resulting from increased efficiency. Participants also report being less stressed, and having better focus on priorities inside and outside of work resulting in improved work life.
Many organizations provide employers with material designed to help their employees manage work and life issues. One such organization, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, was created to equip parents and other adult caregivers with the tools they need to raise drug-free kids. The Campaign offers employers a free online toolkit, "@Work: Tools for Reaching Working Parents," which presents youth drug prevention resources to parents in the workplace. "The @Work parent resource is a valuable workplace benefit providing accurate and useful information to millions of families," says John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. "It's designed to be simple to integrate into existing corporate communication channels—making this important resource readily available to their employees."
Most comprehensive work-life initiatives include financial policies and assistance and Morgan Stanley is among the most progressive. With benefits such as 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave for birth, foster care placement or adoption for full-time and qualified part-time employees and adoption assistance of up to $5,000 per child and $6,000 for special needs adoptions, Morgan Stanley demonstrates the value it places on the needs of parents vis-ˆ-vis their children. Additional benefits that assist all employees in managing the demands of their personal lives include medical plans for retirees, medical benefits for dependents of a deceased employee, domestic partner benefits, comprehensive health fairs and tuition and transit reimbursements plans.
Morgan Stanley also offers employees the use of fitness centers (some with physical therapy, yoga and on-site massage services), on-site health units with nurses providing basic preventive health care, quiet rooms for employees who feel ill, and lactation rooms for nursing mothers. "Our superior programs and services are designed as tools to help employees navigate personal and professional responsibilities throughout all life stages," says Marilyn F. Booker, executive director, head of diversity and work-life programs. "By providing open and innovative programs to assist employees in this effort, the firm fosters growth and increases employee loyalty and the quality of service provided to our clients."
Morgan Stanley, which had 3,700 employees in the World Trade Center, was deeply affected by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. The firm's work-life program was put to the ultimate test, and it proved its absolute value. The challenge of providing immediate support for so many employees at once was met by creative planning and coordination which ensured immediate and sustained on-site counseling in all of its New York offices and several of its other offices throughout the country. Despite the weakened economy and the impact of Sept. 11, work-life remains a high priority at Morgan Stanley and the firm is committed to staying on the cutting-edge of providing quality work-life programs. Morgan Stanley will continue to share its vision on the value of quality work life programs by serving as the 2004 chair of the National Work-Life Initiative.
Think Global, Act Local
Large multi-business, multi-site companies typically have a common work-life philosophy, but the implementation of the programs may vary. AOL Time Warner has a common overarching vision of work/life effectiveness reflected in enterprise-wide programs such as domestic partner benefits and employee assistance and child-care programs. The specific programs at a location or within a business line can vary based on business goals. Backup childcare benefits are provided throughout AOL Time Warner. The Time Inc. division's backup childcare center in Manhattan is available not only to its own employees but also to local employees of other divisions including Home Box Office, Warner Music, New Line Cinema, Time Warner Cable, and corporate headquarters. Other divisions with large employee concentrations in a single location provide primary childcare facilities—Warner Bros. Entertainment (Burbank), Turner Broadcasting (Atlanta) and America Online (Dulles). AOL Time Warner also leverages the experiences of its business units through its Work-Life Council which includes representatives from all divisions and meets regularly to strategize work-life issues across business lines. Large multi-site companies like AOL Time Warner find that work-life initiatives make good business sense at both a local and enterprise level.
Intel, the world's largest computer chip maker, initiated a comprehensive approach to work-life effectiveness in 1999 by offering tools, resources and options to foster an environment that supports all phases of an employee's life and career. The company developed a "one stop" website to provide convenient access to information and to communicate its plans for addressing new work-life challenges. Intel also developed training for employees and managers, plus an extensive global child-care program tailored to the needs and resources of each community and country.
To get from here to there, many companies establish a committee or task force as a decision-making body with accountability for work-life activities and results. There may be two such groups, one at a senior level that focuses on strategy, and a lower level group that actually develops and manages programs. Companies have learned a great deal over the last 25 years in terms of what works and why. At Guidant, a leading developer of cardiovascular medical products, it began with a philosophy. "Guidant believes that employee-owners want to be—and deserve to be—successful in both their personal and professional lives," says Guido Neels, group Chairman, office of the president, "and the successful integration of personal and work life delivers outstanding results for the company. Everything we do to help employees manage both priorities well is a win for the employee and the company."
Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson Education, the world's leading education company, feels much the same. "In everything we do," says Scardino, "we aspire to be brave, imaginative and decent." Rich Glicini, a senior vice president, is one of the people within Pearson who works hard to make it happen. As he puts it: "These words translate into a commitment to support employees and their families as they seek effectiveness in both a successful, productive career and a satisfying, fulfilling personal life."
Hard at Work
The strategy can be seen at work at Bristol-Myers Squibb, where the work-life initiative started in 1991 with child- and elder-care resource and referral services. Today, it's about eliminating barriers to success and enabling employees to make the best professional and personal choices. "We strive to sustain a work environment and culture that relies on the diversity of its people, their perspective, and their experience to achieve results," says Stacey Gibson, the company's senior director, work-life and diversity programs.
While work-life has made great strides, a number of hurdles still exist. One major challenge is getting the support of senior management. At Astra Zeneca, a major force in the international healthcare business, CEO David Brennan is a leader who "gets it" and reinforces the company's work-life principles. "Our corporate culture is built on trust, and it empowers our people to produce superior results. We believe there is a strong link between a supportive, flexible work environment and increased productivity, innovation, quality, and retention."
As work-life becomes even more important to business success, companies also are discovering that the key issues cannot be stereotyped. The Gen Xer may be concerned about an elderly loved one, while the baby boomer may be looking to go back to school. The important thing is that policies, benefits and programs are in place so employees have choices, and that company practices don't penalize—overtly or covertly—employees for the choices they make. Companies deal with this issue in a variety of ways, but "At ExxonMobil," says Lucille Cavanaugh, vice president of human resources, "we let employees make the decisions that are right for them so they can experience both work and life to its fullest." The company's compensation, benefits, policies, and programs are designed to assist employees in making that happen as demonstrated by such policies as allowing employees to work from home to accommodate pressing personal needs for up to two years.
Sum of the Parts
Another challenge is not just designing a new program or policy, but also establishing a link to business needs. The growing focus on the importance of human capital should make the connection clearer. Jeanne DiFrancesco, principal of ProOrbis, a consulting firm in Chester Springs, Penn., hopes so. "Human capital is owned by the individual who chooses to invest that capital in different aspects of life, one of which is work. The company's human capital is a business asset that is the sum total of the skills, knowledge, talent, and enthusiasm that people invest in the work of an organization. It is only when the human capital is invested that an asset is created."
Robert Reich, a former Secretary of Labor who is currently a professor at Brandeis University, agrees: "'Relational capital,' or the cumulative experience of people in an organization, is what distinguishes one company from another. Everything else is easily replicated by the competition." As Reich sees it, "people are the unique competitive advantage for organizations. And this understanding is in direct opposition to another development—the cost cutting and push to show short-term profits that's so intense these days. Since roughly 70% of an average company's costs are in payroll, the result is outsourcing and the loss of many functions."
"What is lost," Reich continues, "is invaluable relational and human capital." Still, Reich is finding senior management receptive to the notion of relational capital. "The best companies are looking for ways to improve. One measure of success," he says, "is the pronouns employees and managers use. If they say 'my, mine and they,' that's one message. If they use 'our, we and us,' the organization is probably doing a better job of fostering relational capital."
Prudential has studied one aspect of relational capital—the idea that satisfied employees can do a better job serving customers as loyal stewards of the company. Not surprisingly, an internal survey indicates that employees' work-life satisfaction and utilization of flexibility options directly correlate to overall job satisfaction, commitment to the company, and to retention. These factors also strongly correlate with Prudential's customer satisfaction. "From every vantage point," says Arthur Ryan, chairman and CEO of Prudential, "it's easy to see a positive link from our work-life results to our business results. It might be clichŽ to say work-life makes good business sense, but it is very true for us."
There is no question that there is a great deal of diversity in the workplace today—not only in terms of race and gender but also in life style, career choices and age—all of which present unique opportunities and potential obstacles for companies in their effort to improve productivity. It is only when these obstacles are removed that the full potential of human capital can be realized. As ProOrbis' DiFrancesco says, "Billions more could be made by finding the right use for underutilized talent. This requires new ways of thinking about the relationship between work and life."
Measuring Results
Surveys are a good way to measure the results of work-life initiatives. Ford has implemented a Diversity and Work-Life Dashboard, an electronic database that uses data from several employee surveys to provide consistent, comprehensive and valid diversity and work-life metrics along with planning tools to encourage managers to improve results. At Raytheon, two-thirds to three-quarters of respondents to its 2002 employee opinion survey said they have enough flexibility to manage work and home life, and that mangers are supportive of their need to do so.
Deloitte & Touche, which has conducted extensive surveys to understand why people are attracted to the firm, found that the ability to manage work-life responsibilities and having a flexible, supportive work environment were the differentiators that contributed to recruitment, retention and increased commitment. The firm's surveys also reinforced a common finding, that informal flexibility—being able to occasionally take time for such things as a child's school play or parent's doctor appointment—is "very important" to an employee's decision to stay with the organization.
PricewaterhouseCoopers believes that work-life flexibility is a critical business issue that affects the firm's ability to retain top talent and provide excellent client service. Internal employee surveys showed that work-life issues were important to everyone: men and women, partners and staff. Different people wanted flexibility for different reasons. But whether they were juggling children, preparing for the marathon or going back to school, everyone experienced challenges. In fact, exit interviews find the inability to balance work and personal life is a major reason people leave the firm.
That is why PwC's U.S. Management Committee recently released a white paper outlining the firm's philosophy with respect to work-life issues. Leaders understand that managing work and personal commitments is particularly challenging in a professional services environment. However, PwC is committed to creating an environment where "employees can respond in the most agile way to the demands of a client service business while providing partners and staff with control and influence over their own quality of life." While PwC offers an array of formal flexible options, such as reduced hours and telecommuting, the firm finds most people are looking for informal flexibility to manage their day-to-day lives.
To promote informal flexibility the firm is working to embed these issues in engagement planning and focus on performance rather than face-time. The messages to partners and staff are clear. Partners "lead by example" and encourage their staff to manage their hours "maturely and sensibly." And these changes are getting results. As Dennis Nally, U.S. chairman and senior partner, sees it, "Trust and open communication—coupled with our flexible work options—are making a difference in attracting and keeping our top talent."
 Measuring results is a big issue for IBM. The company created a global work-life strategy in 2001 with specific objectives, actions and measures. Each quarter, a scorecard provides the work-life leadership team with results on implementation of the strategy. The scorecard is also posted on the IBM internal diversity website, so all employees can see the results. Based on the 2001 survey, the percentage of U.S. employees reporting difficulty managing work and personal life declined from 48% in 1996 to 33%.
- 62% work at companies that have formal work-life programs in place.
- Almost half measure employee satisfaction with work-life programs.
- 10% measure the ROI of their work-life programs.
- 17% believe work-life programs provide the greatest ROI whether formally measured or not.
Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, a New York-based non-profit research organization, has just released the highlights of the findings from the Institute's 2002 "National Study of the Changing Workforce," a study it undertakes every five years. In the 2002 study, interviews were conducted with a random sample of 3,504 workers. "Consistent with our other research studies," Galinsky says, "we have once again found that what helps employees most is having a supportive workplace that includes access to flexible work arrangements that employees can use without jeopardy, as well as a supportive supervisor and workplace culture. These factors are more powerful than specific work-life programs and policies, which of course can set the stage for a workplace culture that helps employees succeed at work and at home."
Don't Kid Yourself
Randy Tobias, former CEO of Eli Lilly and now President Bush's Global AIDS Coordinator, has toiled in the work-life vineyard. His conclusions: "It's not enough to offer benefits and programs. The underlying cultural issues also need to be assertively addressed. You can ask your employees to leave their personal lives at the factory fence, but you're kidding yourself if you think they can comply. You can't hire part of a person. Your policies and programs will be effective only if they bow to this reality and address the whole human being."
Paul Rupert, president of Rupert & Co., a consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., agrees: "The priority of the next decade is to redesign the way companies work, from setting realistic goals and assessing against them, to redesigning waste out of processes that lack reasonable boundaries. On such a platform, it will be possible to use a decade of promising experiments and a host of new office technologies to create a fully flexible workplace that will give people genuine control over where when and how they deliver on clearly set goals.
The future may also provide even more compelling reasons for work-life in organizations, as Susan Seitel, president of Work & Family Connection, a Minnesota based workforce information service and consulting firm points out, "We may as well find that the demands being placed on today's workforce will backfire in light of rising health care costs, as we begin to see the link between those costs and increased stress and stress-related illness. Britain has already seen the connection and is preparing to fine companies that don't alleviate their employees' stress. The need to reduce stress will be an invitation and an open door for work-life progress."
"As employees make informed choices about what matters most to them," say human relations experts Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, "they are more likely to choose companies that care for the whole person. A new employee-employer contact is inevitably going to emerge where the employer looks more at outputs than inputs. Inputs focus on when you arrive at work and how late you stay in your office. Outputs are the results of your work. As companies shift their employee-employer contract to outputs, they will realize that employees might be equally or more productive from home, from a vacation, early in the morning, or late at night. When we measure the ends and not just the means, we give employees more autonomy over their work-life issues."
Professor Brad Harrington, executive director of the Center for Work & Family at the Boston College Carroll School of Management, (the organization that has developed the Standards in Work-Life Integration), is convinced the future of work-life is bright. People are defining the field more broadly than ever before. Employers are expanding their focus from simply offering valuable programs and policies such as dependent care and flexible work options to taking steps to insure that they are truly creating a more enlightened work environment. Work-life is the field that looks at the two most important aspects of most people's lives—their families and their work—and tries to foster effectiveness in both of these important domains. With this as a focus, how can the field of work-life help but flourish?
—Karol Rose
Ms. Rose consults on work-life issues and has written four books on the subject, including Work-Life Effectiveness: Programs, Policies and Practices (2000), a resource for organizations. She is on the board of the Alliance for Work-Life Progress and a member of the International Women's Forum.
The American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care (ABC)
In 1992, a group of companies came together to form the American Business Collaboration (ABC), an organization of leading U.S.-based companies that have partnered to ensure their employees have access to quality dependent care programs and services.
The guiding principal and belief of the group is that participating companies can "do together what none can afford to do alone." Current ABC members include: Abbott Laboratories, Allstate Insurance, IBM, ExxonMobil, Texas Instruments, Johnson & Johnson, Deloitte & Touche, General Electric and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Initially focused primarily on the quality and supply of dependent care in the U.S., the ABC has expanded its focus to include new ways to support employees in the changing workplace such as telework and flexibility. Innovative programs for child care, back up care, elder care services, intergenerational programs and school-age programs have been developed to alleviate gaps between the needs of working families and available services and program. Over the past 11 years, the American Business Collaboration has invested more than $135 million in dependent care funding, and impacted more than 1.2 million children and elders in 68 communities across the country.
The Alliance for Work-Life Progress
The Alliance for Work-Life Progress (AWLP) is committed to advancement of the field of work-life effectiveness through publications, forums and professional development strategies. AWLP's members represent a diverse group of work-life stakeholders including corporations, labor unions, universities, government agencies, service providers and consultants. In addition to regional events, AWLP hosts an annual conference for human resource professionals and others interested in work-life issues. For more information, or for a toolkit on how organizations can celebrate Work-Life Month, visit www.awlp.org.
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