CHAPTER 4

Leading to Work-Life Supports

For organizations to be successful, leaders must create abundance and help employees respond to work-life demands throughout their life course. My research with senior leaders shows that there are a tremendous number of approaches to providing work-life supports. The approaches are as varied and individual as workers and their companies, but this chapter provides some ideas for executives who want to leverage work-life supports in their organizations. These are only the mechanisms available for work-life supports in the form of benefits, policies, and practices; they must be implemented with consideration for the factors I discuss in part 2. These options provide a starting point for the journey and offer examples of companies that are implementing different types of work-life supports.

DEFINING TERMS

I am defining work-life supports as benefits, formal policies, and informal practices that help employees navigate the demands of their work and life. Because there is some overlap between benefits, policies, and practices, examples are useful. Benefits are the company-funded options an organization provides to employees. Some are required by law, such as workers’ compensation, disability, and unemployment benefits. Other types of benefits are discretionary, and include insurance coverage for family members, life insurance, sick leave, financial assistance for education and training, and retirement benefits. Policies are the principles, rules, or guidelines that guide day-to-day operations. They are the documented protocols for the way the business will run. Examples of policies include flextime, caregiving leaves, telecommuting, employee counseling, and legal assistance programs. Organizational practices are established patterns for how the organization is managed; they may not be written down, but have become the norm for a group or the organization in total. For example, companies might offer development programs for supervisors or allow employees to leave early now and then in order to meet family obligations.

AN ABUNDANCE OF OPTIONS

Below is a list of some of the work-life supports that exist today. This is only a fraction of the options, as there is a plethora of possibilities. In addition, while they are categorized here, in reality there are areas of gray between each. More important than the way they are organized is that they are selected carefully and implemented effectively within organizations.

Those items marked with an asterisk (*) are offered so commonly among companies in Fortune magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For” list, they have their own icon in the article.² However, a large proportion of companies have not begun offering work-life supports or do not yet offer them to the level they could. For this reason, I’ll discuss a number of these approaches, as well as the criteria for their successful implementation, in later chapters.

SOME EXAMPLES

One especially effective form of work-life support is flexible working options. These allow employees to choose when and where they work, as well as the projects on which they focus. As an example, an employee may have latitude in the way she solves a problem, or an engineer may have choices pertaining to which projects he works on during the year. In addition to providing autonomy and control over one’s work, flexible work schedules allow employees to meet work demands at the same time they meet the demands of family. A dad may need to drive car pool or pick up his children from school. A woman may need to take a break mid-workday in order to meet the furnace repair technician at her home. Some companies are also increasing flexibility by providing the choice for a compressed workweek. With a compressed workweek, employees work a standard number of hours in a compressed fashion; for example, a worker might work four ten-hour days, taking the fifth day to meet family demands or continue education. Another option is seasonal long-term arrangements. These types of solutions take many forms, including work schedules that shift between summer months and school months. At some organizations, leaders are recommending policies that provide for extended breaks, sabbaticals, or job sharing in roles that would traditionally not have allowed for a job-sharing model. Telecommuting programs and work-at-home programs are familiar options that are gaining attention. Some organizations are experimenting with shortened workdays or workweeks. Other companies are attempting to find ways to limit mandatory overtime or even schedule working hours so they align with school days.

Flexible work schedules go hand in hand with control over one’s work because employers must have a degree of trust that employees are working and accomplishing results even when they are not in view of supervisors. A paradigm of trusting employees to do their best work without direct supervision and providing employees with more control over their work is in concert with overall self-determination. In all of these cases, the employee’s increased ownership and control over his work is intended to help integrate the demands of work and home. They are typically also aimed at reducing the negative spillover from work to home or vice versa. One notable fact is that the presence of greater proportions of women occupying top-ranking positions at a company is connected with a greater number of family-friendly options as compared with companies that have fewer women in top leadership positions and less family-friendly policies.³ Is the presence of women driving more family-friendly policies and practices? Or do companies with more family-friendly policies and practices simply attract more women to those top positions? More research is required to answer the question, but the trend remains toward companies increasingly providing options and choices to employees in order to enhance the support of work and life.

TAKING ADVANTAGE—A DISCONNECT

While corporations may have formal work-life support policies and practices, the reality is that many workers do not take advantage of them. This is typically attributed to personal preferences as well as the American cultural ethic valuing work. Economic pressures, downsizing, and reductions in head count on the part of companies are also blamed. As companies eliminate jobs, employees may feel a greater sense of job insecurity or fear, causing them to work harder and longer—and not take advantage of work-life supports, even if they wish they could.

The extent to which employees feel they can take advantage of work-life supports also varies based on norms and unwritten rules within the organizational culture. In some cases, men and women may not take advantage of work-life supports because of a perception that negative career ramifications could result. In later chapters, I discuss ways to increase the likelihood that employees will take advantage of valuable work-life supports.

COMPARING COMPANIES

When I consult with management and human resource departments, they frequently request case studies and benchmark information concerning work-life support policies and implementation. They want to know whether they are keeping up with other companies, or, better yet, staying ahead of the curve. Companies vary widely in their policies and practices. Following are a few examples. While I have changed details in order to retain anonymity, these are real companies provided as examples and thought starters. Whether companies are more conservative or progressive, they can offer a meaningful cocktail of work-life supports which matches their culture and business needs. The Goldilocks Rule is important here. Work-life supports must be right for any given company, and no two companies’ solutions will be the same. Companies that are most successful with work-life support implementation avoid having too few or too many work-life supports. Instead, they have a set of approaches and solutions that are just right — hence, the Goldilocks Rule. “As much as necessary, as little as possible,” is another way to think about establishing the right approach. Keep solutions as comprehensive as necessary for success, but also keep the solution set as straightforward and simple as possible.

Figure 4-1 The Goldilocks Rule

Example: NalydCo

NalydCo is an oil and gas company that provides an example of a company taking a more conservative approach to work-life supports. It is based in Houston and is one of the largest producers of national gas in the nation. NalydCo is in a constant battle to attract and retain the best talent to accommodate its consistent growth. The company’s workforce is quite senior, and NalydCo has little turnover. The company is known for its family-oriented culture and demonstration of care toward employees. NalydCo’s culture is decidedly face to face, and employees find it difficult to get things done unless they are in person with co-workers.

NalydCo is stepping into alternative working approaches cautiously. Management believes that work must be accomplished on site, although the company has allowed for a shift in working hours seasonally. During the summer, employees are allowed to come in one hour later, leave one hour earlier, and work from home on Friday afternoons, provided their work in the office is completed. Managers are choosing this path so they maximize the time that employees are face to face in the office and ensure the hours in the office are consistent. NalydCo also has provisions for special circumstances. If an employee has an emergency or an unusual situation or if an employee is working on a short-term project that requires concentration, the employee may coordinate with her manager to plan a work-at-home day. Upon returning to work the next day, the employee is required to demonstrate what she completed while at home. NalydCo is relying on work team leaders to be the primary decision makers since there are no formal policies for flexible working.

NalydCo also offers assistance in the case of catastrophe. Since its region has been affected by multiple hurricanes, the company is second to none at supporting employees through disasters. During the last hurricane, NalydCo purchased generators and loaned them to employees. In addition, the company offered employees and their family members places to shelter—on site as well as in short-term rental housing—in cases where their homes were damaged or destroyed. NalydCo also offered no-interest loans for employees who needed to repair or rebuild homes. For employees who receive such significant support at moments of critical life events, the company’s contribution to their survival has resulted in untold levels of loyalty and appreciation, and in turn, employee contribution and retention. While NalydCo is making conservative forays into the provision of work-life supports, the company is an instructive example. NalydCo demonstrates that even when a company only wants to tiptoe into the work-life support arena, there are meaningful ways to do so.

Example: ElsaCo

ElsaCo is a leading manufacturing company that produces heavy equipment worldwide. The company has a bifurcated workforce in which the majority of employees are either quite senior and close to retirement or quite junior and new to the organization. This “barbell effect” is the result of ElsaCo having gone through a period when it wasn’t hiring. ElsaCo prides itself on taking care of its employees.

ElsaCo has formalized its work-life support options through a policy manual that provides detail on every specification for each solution. In addition, the company has a comprehensive benefits program including health insurance that focuses on rewards for well-behavior such as participation in health assessments and demonstration of healthy habits, generous maternity leave policies, and eldercare leave. In order to accommodate flexible work, ElsaCo offers a rigorous process for assessment, selection, and application for employees to be part of an alternative working program. ElsaCo allows any employee to develop and propose a flexible work arrangement. Most requests are honored, provided the employee has a good performance record and continues demonstrating positive performance after the alternative working arrangements are implemented.

ElsaCo also requires employees to track their time so leaders can see trends and ensure that employees have reasonable work hours. Some leaders within the organization are skeptical. They say the time tracking sounds like “Big Brother,” and sends a negative message regarding employees’ trustworthiness, but the company stands firm, insisting the time tracking is intended for the benefit of employees. The program, the company says, flags employees who are working too many hours, allowing management to help prioritize their projects and ensure a reasonable workload. ElsaCo also has rigorous standards for performance and checkpoints in the alternative working process. This organization provides an example of a process-oriented company, offering options for flexibility while also attending to a systematic approach for all the elements of the program.

Example: XelaCo

XelaCo is a well-known global consumer goods organization with consistent growth and shareholder return. As a way to ensure it maintains a focus on employees, the company has formalized an extensive array of policies and practices.

One of the unique perks the company offers is technology support for employees who work at home. With this benefit, XelaCo’s IT gurus will go to employees’ homes as requested to help set up new equipment if the employees need assistance. XelaCo offers the opportunity for employees to select up to five projects a year of their own choosing as a means for career development. XelaCo also has an extensive offering in terms of benefits, one of which is gender reassignment medical support. Children in the community, as well as employees’ children, are supported through community programs for kids during the summer. XelaCo offers on-site day care at most facilities and near-site day care in some of its smaller locations. All the food in the cafeteria is offered at significantly reduced prices and employees who work late may order in or may take home meals from the organization’s food service. For the locations within metro areas, XelaCo offers pretax metro cards for which employees may use pretax dollars to pay for mass transit. When the snow flies in its more northern locations, XelaCo offers a service where it will brush, scrape, and warm up employees’ cars for a nominal fee.

One of the practices employees are perhaps most appreciative of is the option for sabbatical. After ten years with the company, each employee is eligible for a sabbatical. The length and frequency of the sabbatical increases as seniority increases, and it is available to all employees with good performance records. Several of the senior leaders in the organization actively take advantage of work-life supports themselves, choosing to work from home regularly and taking advantage of sabbaticals. This is significant, as it helps send a message to employees that it is acceptable within the culture to take advantage of the work-life supports the company provides. While this description doesn’t include every single option the company provides, it does give a sense of the extensive work-life supports available to employees.

Example: YertCo

In a final example, YertCo, a technology company, is fast growing and has a very young workforce in which the average age is thirty-two. The company is global and works 24–7 in order to be in close contact with its global customers. YertCo has had struggles hiring enough talent fast enough to fuel its growth and views employee attraction as a key priority for its business. In terms of work-life supports, YertCo offers extensive benefits, including medical, dental, and unlimited time off for sickness. In addition, the company offers amenities such as shuttle services to and from parking areas and on-site car detailing.

YertCo also has an alternative working program for which employees enroll online. The online enrollment is not an application for approval, but rather a sign-up for financial assistance to purchase furniture and equipment for a home office. Additionally, at-home ergonomic assessments are available for those who work from home three or more days per week. YertCo also provides a monthly stipend for employees to choose their own technology. Most employees set their own hours and come and go from the office as they wish. There are few formal policies and instead, leaders simply allow employees to work as they wish, emphasizing the results employees achieve rather than whether or not they are present in the office. It is the norm to see dogs in the work environment and the cafeteria even sells Milk-Bones and packaged servings of dog food. Employees at YertCo will tell you that seeing dogs in the work environment now and then is as much a morale boost to them as it is a convenience for the dogs’ owners. The company does not believe in formal employee training. Instead, it believes all development happens on the job and it has little use for formalized learning—classroom, online, or otherwise.

IN SUM

A multitude of work-life support options exist and may be applied in a variety of ways. It is most important to connect the work-life supports with an organization’s situation for the greatest effectiveness. In the following chapters, I’ll share more on how to leverage work-life supports, but in the meantime, the examples above are meant to provide ideas, no matter what an organization’s unique context or culture.