CHAPTER 5
Leading to Results
Despite the benefits of work-life supports for employees and companies, not all companies are implementing them. These companies fail to leverage work-life supports to drive their results. In fact, work-life supports produce business benefits such as engagement, productivity, cost savings, and improved attraction and retention of talent.
RESULTS THROUGH WORK-LIFE SUPPORTS
The logic is straightforward. When companies provide work-life supports, they enhance engagement, satisfaction, retention, and employee health.1 These in turn are correlated with better organizational results. It’s a simple logic train in which work-life supports lead to positive business outcomes (better employee engagement, lower costs), which in turn lead to better overall organizational outcomes (profitability, financial performance, customer satisfaction).
This logic train seems straightforward enough, but it becomes nuanced because executives and researchers disagree about which factors produce which results. For example, does improved retention of talent cause other positive outcomes such as improved profitability, or is improved retention an outcome on its own? Is enhanced employee engagement an overall measure of business performance, or a means to achieve an ultimate goal of improved stock price? In addition, which factors lead to which other factors? The relationships among the variables are sticky because for any of them, it is difficult to prove the direction of the relationship—which leads to which—and it is difficult to prove that any factor causes another. Instead, the factors are merely correlated, meaning they tend to occur together and appear to have a relationship to each other and to work-life supports.
Regardless, it is enough to conclude that work-life supports have positive impacts. These positive impacts are defined in multiple ways (which I’ll describe here), but ultimately, they are positive for business. When organizations serve people, they serve their own business results. There is a healthy tension of give and take. Companies should offer work-life supports for people because it is the right thing to do in order to help them integrate work and life and to navigate through their life course. They should also offer work-life supports for the benefit of the organization, which will reap better outcomes. Greg Parsons,2 vice president, new landscape of work for Herman Miller, says:
Most companies focus on what they must get in terms of financial results and market performance but the real opportunity is to focus also on what they give—the distinctly valuable product, service, or experience that fulfills their purpose for customers. Companies get based on what they give. Companies focusing on what they give probably get more back than those focusing on what they hope to get. They reach their potential more fully–as a company, for their employees, and for the community–by doing both.3
I will begin focusing on the business results4 most frequently identified by executives in this study and most frequently demonstrated in the related research. Overall, executives in this study believe that work-life supports help organizations accomplish goals and reach better organizational performance. Work-life supports result in positive outcomes for employees and for organizations. K.H. Moon, former CEO of personal care goods company Yuhan-Kimberly, has provided multiple work-life supports to his employees and believes they make a difference:5
I strongly believe work-life supports are closely connected to key outcomes such as employee engagement, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, company growth, and stock price. We offered maternity leave, employee assistance programs, lifelong learning, and new work systems. The new work systems included flextime and the opportunity to work in a home office. As a result of these programs and systems we saw reduced turnover rates and we built loyalty and a sense of ownership on the part of employees. In addition, innovation grew and employees increased the rate of providing suggestions to the company. We also accomplished almost zero rates of accidents, waste, defects, and pollution.6
Moon’s beliefs are well founded. He has won formal awards such as the Most Admired CEO of Korea. In addition, his leadership resulted in Yuhan-Kimberly being named a “Great Place to Work” by the Great Places to Work Institute and one of “Korea’s Most Admired Companies.”
A gentleman who participated in my research, Kyle (a pseudonym), who is a longtime executive at an oil and gas company, describes a situation in which one of his employees was going through a very difficult time in which her husband was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. She needed to take a great deal of time away from work, and the company was willing to accommodate this absence. In Kyle’s view, this employee’s commitment to the company is cemented because she appreciates the support the company provided. “She would walk through fire for us now,” he says.
Even in situations that are not as extreme, providing for employees has benefits. Andrew Brondel, director of administration for Diamond Pet Foods,7 says, “When employees don’t have to worry about health care or financial issues, they can focus on success and growing our business. They have the mental clarity … to take the initiative and implement new ideas.”
Lisa Brummel,8 chief people officer for Microsoft, agrees that minimizing distractions contributes to employee engagement and contributions. She has this to say regarding Microsoft’s work-life supports.
For Microsoft, having an engaged workforce is essential to success. We understand that people who are able to focus on their work with minimal distraction are going to have the highest chance to help the company grow and succeed.9
Microsoft offers a variety of work-life supports. Brummel says:
We invest heavily in work/life support outside of traditional health benefits by offering things like back-up day care, on-site health center, fully subsidized athletic club memberships, pickup/drop-off dry cleaning, and many other resources for employees to feel like they are supported at “home” while they are active at “work.” We, of course, offer vacation and sabbatical programs along with matching donations for doing volunteer work in the community. In all, we try hard to address those things which our employees feel are important and we work to make sure they feel supported in activities that cross the work/life divide.10
Richard T. Clark, previous chairman of the board and CEO for Merck & Co., is featured in a video by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In it, he asserts that workplace flexibility results in better productivity because when you give people flextime, you increase their dedication.11 In the same Sloan Foundation video, Anne Mulcahy, former chairwoman and CEO of Xerox, says that when workers have personal and professional balance and satisfaction they will perform better than when they are stressed.12 Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute, agrees and also points out the importance of purpose and self-determination:
We know that employees who feel supported make a huge contribution. A big part of that is giving them a keen sense of responsibility and accountability, all while providing a deep understanding of the organization’s greater purpose in the world. This means ensuring that the individual employee’s own objectives and their team’s objectives align to the overall mission and purpose of the organization. It’s also about letting the individual employee figure out the best way to drive results, rather than this coming from the top down, command-and-control style. Indeed, there’s a lot of research that tells us that when employees are treated this way, they consistently deliver superior experiences to delight customers and that, in turn, drives performance and financial returns. This is the greatest support we can give workers: a real sense of responsibility, accountability, and purpose. When you do that, there’s no doubt that employees wake up every day excited about what they do. Work and life melt into one.13
RECIPROCITY AND OBLIGATIONS
A basic concept related to our human condition is reciprocity. As humans, we tend to want to respond in kind to others around us. When others help us, we want to help them. This is true in the workplace as well. When a leader helps an employee or when an organization provides assistance, the employee feels a desire to reciprocate and to respond in a way that mirrors the benefit he has been provided. It’s part of our basic nature. As a result, helping people feel valued enhances their commitment.
Hence, the organization has an opportunity and an obligation to serve employees. Barbara, head of Human Resources from a banking organization, says that because people work so much, the organization is obligated to allow some flexibility. Barbara is turning the reciprocity argument around: she believes that when employees work significant hours, the company should reciprocate by providing more flexibility. In addition, Barbara builds an argument for results. She argues that flexibility leads to better engagement, which in turn leads to better productivity, creating better results for the organization. Michelle, an executive I interviewed, is the chief administration officer for her global manufacturing organization. She links the provision of work-life support to productivity:
If you increase engagement and retention, you keep costs down because you have employees who are productive. If you give them flexibility, you’re meeting them more than halfway to facilitate that productivity.
In her comments, Michelle too demonstrates our deeply felt human desire for reciprocity.
ADVANTAGES OF HAPPINESS
When workers are engaged, committed, passionate, and happy in their work, there are plenty of benefits. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor makes a case for various benefits that arise from happiness. He argues that happiness is the origin (not the outcome) of motivation, efficiency, resilience, creativity, productivity, and performance.14 Thomas Wright, a professor with the Fordham University Business School, finds that the performance of happy and less happy employees varies between 10 and 15 percent.15 Gallup’s studies of happy salespeople find they sell 37 percent more, and they have less absenteeism, with 23 percent fewer symptoms of fatigue.16
Leaders have the opportunity to create the conditions for more employee happiness. At the same time, an adult-to-adult model suggests that we are only responsible for our own behavior and outcomes and not for others’. Leaders can, however, create conditions for others’ success. While employees are responsible for their own happiness, employers should do everything possible to help them achieve it. Creating abundance and fulfillment by providing work-life supports helps create the conditions for more happiness on the parts of employees. This in turn leads to all the positive outcomes of happiness. Ross, who participated in my research, is a COO with an oil and gas company, agrees:
You win the hearts and minds of your employees, which is about ensuring their needs are met as well as the business needs. The employee is going to work for you because they want to and because of respect and appreciation, as opposed to an employee that is just beaten into submission and is just going to punch a time clock. You’ll get much more innovation, much more out-of-the-box thinking, trying to improve the business as opposed to someone who is just doing their job.
The most powerful reciprocity comes not only from an emotional experience, but also from a cognitive experience. When companies provide for people emotionally—win their hearts, for example by offering caring and concern—they engender a higher level of commitment. Likewise, when organizations provide for people in a way that they logically believe is beneficial—win their minds, for example with policies that allow them to manage multiple demands in their lives—they also engender employee commitment. What is most compelling is the opportunity to win both hearts and minds. When companies win both hearts and minds, they achieve a level of employee engagement that is more powerful than either of the two separately.
PROOF THROUGH BRAIN CHEMISTRY
New brain research also bears out this connection between hearts and minds. Neuroscientists Adam Waytz and Malia Mason17 have identified multiple neural networks that control aspects of our thought and behavior. An affect network controls the ways we experience emotion and the ways we make decisions based on these emotions. A control network affects the ways we consider, weigh, and evaluate options for the long term. Leaders must create conditions that positively affect both emotions and thoughts. Leaders appeal to emotion and appeal to cognition by providing work-life supports that powerfully reinforce what individuals need. Neuroeconomist Paul Zak, author of The Moral Molecule,18 has also proven a link between brain chemistry and behavior. He finds that when oxytocin is released in our brains, we tend to demonstrate more cooperative, collaborative, and pro-social behavior. We can facilitate the release of oxytocin in others by demonstrating love, caring, and trust toward them. This creates a reinforcing loop of positive outcomes for individuals and organizations. (See my interview with Paul regarding work-life supports in this chapter.)
The Neuroscience Connection with Work-Life Supports: An Interview with Paul Zak, PhD
Paul Zak, PhD, neuroeconomist and professor at Claremont Graduate University, has written a book called The Moral Molecule. In it, he highlights the importance of brain chemicals on behaviors. He finds that oxytocin, a neuropeptide, is the basis for all kinds of pro-social behavior. Paul’s research provides a perspective on the importance of providing work-life supports as part of a high-trust, high-performance work environment.
What is the relationship of neuroscience to work-life supports?
PZ: Companies that provide work-life supports are creating the conditions for positive environments. I like to think of the POP model—people, organization, purpose. What I mean by this is that when employees are selected properly and put into an organization where they are empowered to face challenges and take ownership with a sense of purpose, they are more highly motivated and engaged, they feel closer to each other, they are more productive, and more innovative. When work is challenging, they will experience more physiological arousal as well as relaxation. In other words, they will be focused and relaxed. They will be in flow. This is the signature of a highly engaged employee.
So arousal and relaxation occur together?
PZ: They can. During a challenging task, the employee is in a state of arousal and then after the task is done, the heart rate quickly returns to normal. This is helpful to our physiology because it allows us to come back to baseline after the task. From a work-life support point of view, this means that employees don’t take any stress home with them. They can quickly decompress. When work is over, it’s over.
What are the conditions for that kind of “flow” state?
PZ: It tends to occur when employees are challenged and rewarded and praised and feel a sense of ownership with their task. Building a high-trust organization is the key.
What is the relationship of this “flow” to a work environment?
PZ: A high-trust environment allows personal choice for the employee. It allows the employee to choose how they work and where they work. It is an environment that subscribes to Peter Drucker’s principles of management by objectives, using milestones and objectives to manage the work. The best environments make the work engaging and fun. They provide challenges that require hard work but are attainable, not impossible.
What about the relationship of individual work and collaborative work?
PZ: In their work, people need time alone but they also need time together so they can bump into others on purpose. Those random opportunities to connect are valuable. We’re working with a company right now and when their employees show up each day, they receive a picture of another employee in the building. During the day they have to find that person and find out his or her birthday. Then, they have to enter it into the system and they get points. It’s a game-like way to have people develop new connections with others in the workplace.
Sounds like the beginning of creating friendships.
PZ: Yes. The only way to have a high-trust environment is to be friends with the people you work with. You want a situation where people really look forward to seeing their coworkers.
What about self-determination? Any neurological connection for that?
PZ: Absolutely. When people are more engaged with control over what they’re doing, they have better cardiovascular response. When they lack autonomy it can lead to burnout and stress.
I’ve heard you talk about re-set. What do you mean by re-set?
PZ: Companies violate work-life integration when they don’t give employees a chance to re-set. Companies that require employees to work enormously long hours—fourteen- or fifteen-hour days for too long—are abusive. Neurologically it’s unhealthy to have neurons constantly firing without a break. We can experience extreme physiological fatigue. We need a refractory period like a weekend. We’ve seen companies who will have employees show up on a Monday after the accomplishment of a project and be given tickets to a game or an amusement park and told to take the day off, on us. This is a great re-set.
Sounds fun.
PZ: Fun is really important in the work environment so that all challenges don’t seem like work. Work is work but we need to give people the opportunity to have fun too. At work, you can give something a “water cooler test.” In other words, what will people say at the water cooler? This is just as important as the “tell your spouse test,” which is what you tell your spouse when they say, “How was your day, honey?” You want employees to carry home something positive and engaging and fun.19
THE POWER OF BEHAVIOR
There is value in demonstrating commitment to employees through behaviors. Simply telling employees they are valued only goes so far. Really acting in concert with this declaration is key. In my first job out of college, I worked with an executive who regularly reminded his staff, “You’re behaving so loudly, I can hardly hear what you’re saying.” Likewise, many years ago, an international brand had a “This We Believe” statement of its values. Over time, the company received feedback that the statement was seen as hypocritical based on the behavior of a few key leaders. The company responded by launching a “This We Behave” complementary statement. It was important for the organization’s leaders to go beyond rhetoric and behave in alignment with its values.
How does this relate to work-life supports? Work-life supports send a strong message to employees regarding the extent to which they are valued by their organization. Providing work-life supports within the context of clear organizational principles demonstrates commitment to employees in a way that is tangible and meaningful. The executives in this study refer to this as employee engagement and loyalty. According to Xavier Unkovic,20 global president of Mars Drinks, Inc.:
We are unique because of our commitment to our Five Principles, which are: quality, responsibility, mutuality, efficiency, and freedom. We are putting these into action, and for us it’s all about the people, planet, and performance. As the third-biggest food manufacturer in the world, we have a great impact on the planet. We want to make a better life at work for people and for the planet. This relates to everything from the way we source our products, run factories, reduce packaging and energy consumption, to our provision of work-life supports. The principles are very visible but we’re not just talking about them, we’re also acting on what we do. For us it’s about how we put our principles into action. People play a central role here and it’s all about the people.21
This engagement is also related to the amount of time employees spend working and the extent to which work is a prominent part of employees’ lives. They must have a sense of purpose. Xavier goes on to say:
Work-life demands are a challenge. We spend more time at work than we spend sleeping or we spend with family and friends. If people aren’t happy or satisfied it will impact their work and beyond, then they aren’t at their best. They need to know why they are working and have the opportunity to express themselves as individuals. People need a sense of purpose and need to know they are unique and a part of a project in a community. We do everything possible to ensure our actions are aligned with our values. When people enjoy working and come to work with a smile, we all benefit. Mars helps you to grow and gives you the opportunity to bring ideas to the table. In every role in the company, people know they are important and respected.22
According to Michelle, chief administration officer at a global manufacturing firm, providing work-life supports sends a message to employees that the company cares about them as individuals. It affects their engagement because workers feel better about a company that provides work-life supports, even if they do not personally take advantage of every program or policy. Diane, a participant in my research who is an executive vice president in charge of administration, from a media company, believes that work-life support programs build enthusiasm and bonding as well as the feeling that the company cares about the individual. She believes that people will always “go the extra mile” when they believe the company has a stake in employees’ well-being. Like Michelle, she believes this is true whether an employee personally takes advantage of all the work-life supports available or not. The point to note is that there is benefit to be realized simply by making work-life supports available, even if not all employees utilize them.
Organizations that fail to provide work-life supports run the risk of alienating workers and losing their mindshare. An executive related a story: within her company, there was a new mom who was ready to return from her three-month maternity leave. The Sunday before she was to return to work, her baby contracted a very serious respiratory virus that required him to be hospitalized. Her boss didn’t handle it well. She insisted that this employee work from her son’s bedside. The employee quit. Her boss’s insistence that she work despite the critical health situation her infant faced was too much for the employee to bear. This is just one example. There are more, but the message is this: when work-life supports are not in place, employee engagement can be damaged.
SAVING MONEY
Leaders also believe that providing work-life support saves money. Frank participated in my research and is in charge of engineering, real estate, facilities, and quality for his manufacturing company. He calculates that, by giving an employee work flexibility and allowing the employee to work from home, he saves $100,000 per employee in facility costs because he avoids the expenses of maintaining an office for that person on-site. Isaiah and Lee, executives I interviewed, also lead real estate and facilities departments at the technology companies for which they work. While they have not quantified the savings, they both agree. Leaders in this study also believe they save money because they ultimately reduce absenteeism. When employees have little flexibility, they are forced to take full days off or call in sick in order to accommodate personal needs such as doctor visits or caring for children on a snow day when school is closed. On the other hand, when they have the ability to adjust their work hours—to come in late and work late in turn—they are able to perform their daily tasks in an adjusted way. Likewise, if employees have the ability to work from home, supported by the necessary technology, they are able to be productive from home even when children may be home sick. This type of flexibility results in cost savings, these leaders argue, because the organization isn’t losing money through absenteeism. Instead, it is gaining the benefit of an employee’s continued working time despite personal commitments that must be met throughout the day.
ATTRACTING AND RETAINING TALENT
Organizations must manage the experience people have as employees, but they must also consider how they entice people to join the company in the first place. The economy has a strong bearing on supply and demand and the balance of power between employees and employers. Before 2008, companies were offering work-life supports as a way to attract employees in a tight labor market. With the economic downturn in 2008, businesses were cutting head count and eliminating employees, and the power shifted to companies. Employees were afraid of losing their jobs and they were working harder than ever to stay employed, as they watched friends and colleagues flow to the unemployment lines. More recently, as the economy begins its tentative return to economic wholeness, employees have more power again. They are choosing to work in multiple careers over their lifetimes and in multiple organizations over their careers. Work-life supports can be the differentiating factor in an employee choosing an employer.
In 2013, Mars, Inc. was one of Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For,”23 so as global president for Mars Drinks, Xavier Unkovic’s perspectives are telling. He says:
Anytime you look at your market share you always compare yourself with industry competitors. When it comes to attracting talent, you compete with every company in the world from GM to Boeing and more. The biggest challenge we have is in finding people. In order to have a great company, you have to have great people who want to work for your company and who have alignment with your values. This is about creating better lives and work. Our legacy is that people are happier when they feel they have an impact on other people. Life is too short and if we only have one life, it is important to enjoy it. A company should make you want to stay and you should have fun and be able to smile. It’s not about perks, it’s about at the end of the week or the month whether employees can say they’re enjoying the company they work for and whether they feel their personal values are aligned with the culture.24
Ross, a COO with an oil and gas company, agrees:
Work-life supports are especially critical now. You’re not going to get the top talent that you require to deliver results unless you’ve got an atmosphere and culture in your company that gives you a good balance between the two. Work-life supports are a benefit that separates one organization from another. Employees are becoming more astute and demanding. In order to attract (and retain) the best and the brightest, work-life supports and work flexibility will be critical. There are exceptions to be sure, but in general, leaders in organizations are recognizing that employees worth hiring have raised the bar in terms of their expectations of the organization. Regardless of their generation or job, they want more from a company in terms of benefits, policies, and practices that support a fuller range of options for their navigation of work-life demands.
Retention has positive financial impacts. In general, turnover costs three times an employee’s salary. This is the cost for replacing the employee in terms of lost productivity (when the position is vacant), recruiting, training, and orienting the new employee. This impact is significant and it does not include the lost knowledge from the departing employee, or the potential negative impact on motivation among remaining employees. Adding to the complexity is the fact that those employees most likely to leave are typically the most talented, as they are in demand and have the most to gain from shifting to a different company. Work-life supports provide a solution by contributing positively to retention. In a 2013 study of workplaces, the American Psychological Association found that turnover was only 6 percent for companies that promote well-being and performance through work-life support measures. This was compared with a national average turnover rate of 38 percent.25 Creating an environment of abundance, where people are drawn in and want to stay, is worth it to the bottom line.
We had a saying at a company where I worked in the past: “We’re so fortunate here, you can work your eighty hours whenever you want.” We weren’t kidding. The culture in the organization was to work intensive hours, but in addition to our wages, we were paid in flexibility. The culture of the organization allowed us to come and go as we pleased—for dentist appointments, for little league games, to attend violin recitals, to drive for Meals on Wheels—as long as we delivered results. Delivering results usually meant working long hours to get it all done. We knew we’d made a deal with the devil, and we discussed it openly. The trade-off was worth it to many of us. Our sweat bought us the opportunity to be the moms, dads, mates, and community members we wanted to be. We may not have been serving ourselves—our sleep suffered—but we were serving our families and communities. While I’m not necessarily advocating for this level of intensity and intrusion into nonworking hours, work-life supports can be a powerful draw for employees who are seeking to integrate life and work and navigate across their life course.
Isaiah, an executive with a technology company, says that his organization is in an extremely competitive market for talent, and work-life supports are a critical component of attracting people. Recent research corroborates that flexibility in the workplace is attractive: specifically, one study found that when workplaces offer flexible options, they are more attractive to 90 percent of workers.26
HIRING “10S”
In an article in Inc. magazine,27 Martin Jacknis explains key hiring dynamics: in order to have the very best talent, you must hire the very best talent. Jacknis argues that 10s hire 10s because they are smart enough, and secure enough, to know that they should surround themselves with others who are as smart as possible. Leaders who are below a 10 tend to hire just under their own capability level so they look better. That is, 9s hire 8s, 8s hire 7s, and so on. So the real advantage only comes when you have 10s in an organization, and they in turn hire the best. The effective strategy is to hire so you’re always surrounded by people who are as smart, or smarter than you are.28 Otherwise, you’ll always have good—but not great—talent.
Regardless of whom you’re hiring, attracting new talent is fundamentally a matter of power dictated by supply and demand. Lorraine, an executive in charge of administration, philanthropy, and corporate communication with a media company, points out that the availability of work-life supports can vary based on how challenging it is for a company to recruit talent. She has seen that as the market for talent becomes more competitive, her company offers more work-life supports. When the market shifts and it is easier to attract talent to the organization, the work-life supports are reduced. She describes a hierarchy of needs in which, when the economy is poor, employees are just happy to be working and demand less in terms of work-life supports.
While there will always be some pendulum swing between good economic times and bad, leaders in this study believe that there is an all-out war for talent today. Baby boomers are retiring now or will very soon. In addition, these leaders believe our education system is not birthing as much talent as it once did and, moving forward, it will be very difficult to find the right talent. Work-life supports will be a differentiator, and companies that don’t offer these supports will pay the price in terms of the talent they are—and are not—able to attract.
SELF-DETERMINATION AND SELF-GOVERNANCE
Earlier, I discussed the need for self-determination and the importance of work-life supports that provide for choice making and autonomy. This control also results in positive organizational outcomes. Organizations that have a high level of employee control and self-governance perform significantly better than other organizations. They are more innovative, have greater employee loyalty, and higher customer satisfaction. In addition, they see less misconduct on the parts of employees and better financial performance.29
POINTS OF RESISTANCE
If work-life supports are so positive and beneficial to employees and the companies for which they work, why don’t all companies offer them? Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute, believes that it is related to the costs that are out of companies’ control:
The social contract has eroded over the past thirty to forty years primarily because of cost. In the two or three decades immediately following World War II, major American corporations could afford to be generous; there was hardly any competition from the rest of the world. With the rise of the global economy, companies have needed to cut costs in order to remain competitive. As a result, what I call the “hard side” of the social contract that employers have with their employees—job security, pay, benefits—has been shredded. At the same time, there are lots of ways that companies can support employees on the “soft side” of the social contract—that is, in terms of the ways that employees are treated, the ways they are engaged with their work, and the ways they are given a sense of purpose. These are all well within the control of a company, even in an age of brutal economic competition.30
Some executives resist providing work-life supports because they believe it’s not the role of the organization to do so. Their push back is “it’s not my problem” or “it shouldn’t be my problem.” This sounds like a classic Democrat/Republican debate. Regardless of your politics though, this resistance—that it’s not an organization’s problem—doesn’t hold. In reality, men and women are under increasing pressure to integrate the demands of work and family. Lacking comprehensive federal support for this work-life integration, the support offered by corporations is imperative. When companies serve their employees they win in the end because the employees in turn work harder and that’s good for organizational performance.31 As a result, it is relevant and necessary for organizations to pay attention to work-life supports.
Some leaders argue that it is difficult to measure the impact of work-life supports. They are right. Work-life supports are always part of a larger system and a broader experience of work. It is nearly impossible to isolate the variable of the work-life support options provided to employees from all the other variables in an organization. Elements such as the overall economy, reward systems, measurement systems, training systems, and employee personal life issues (to name just a few of multiple variables) will always have a bearing on an organization’s results. In addition, costs are often easier to measure than benefits. Lisa Brummel, chief people officer for Microsoft, says:
Leaders often get caught up in the cost of an activity because it is a more tangible metric than trying to measure the benefit of an activity. I would encourage all leaders to put a “benefit” list side by side with a “cost” list and take a hard look at where they can really create high satisfaction for their employees. There is immeasurable return in a happy and engaged employee, and leaders must not lose sight of that.32
It is possible that the argument of difficulty in measuring the impact of work-life supports is simply a smoke screen for a leader who doesn’t believe in providing them. Despite the difficulty measuring, it is still important to provide work-life supports and there are significant amounts of data that support this as a worthy endeavor. In part 3, I’ll provide detail regarding how to measure effectively.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
In general, executives who embrace the idea of providing more work-life supports are typically those who have benefited from them personally, or whose family members have benefited. We all form opinions through our personal experiences, and it is impossible to totally separate ourselves from that personal experience. Senior executives are no different, and those who tell stories of being helped by work-life supports—for their father’s illness, for their partner’s job loss, for their own knee surgery—tend to be those most likely to advocate for work-life supports. It’s helpful to think of senior executive viewpoints on a continuum from anti-sponsor to detractor to supporter to advocate.
Personal experience tends to move an executive left or right on the continuum. In fact, a senior leader’s personal experience may even be on behalf of an employee. My research shows that even if a senior executive has had to tap into work-life supports for her team member, she tends to be more of an advocate for them.
It is important to note that the leader’s enhanced support for work-life mechanisms was true only if the employee was a strong performer, and the leader believed the need was legitimate. Senior leaders are actually less likely to advocate for work-life supports if they believe they have been taken advantage of by an employee in the past. This is the Slacker’s Rule. When leaders have high-performing employees who are served by work-life supports, the leaders’ own advocacy for work-life supports tends to increase. On the other hand, when a leader believes that an employee has played the system or benefited unjustly from a work-life support system, the leader will be less likely to be an advocate for work-life supports generally. Such experiences can even result in the leader becoming a detractor or anti-sponsor of the work-life supports, and standing in the way of implementing them. The solution? Accountability. Leaders who hold individuals on the team accountable tend to get the best results from the whole team. The way employees are treated and the extent to which leaders hold them accountable sends a message to the whole team, and the message has powerful repercussions for overall performance.
Figure 5-1 Sponsorship Continuum
IN SUM
When companies fail to pay attention to work-life support, they run the risk of not attracting good people, of not tapping the best energies of their employees, of not retaining employees. The bottom line? Work-life supports are good for the bottom line. They are the right thing to do for people who are seeking to integrate all the parts of their work and life. They are also the right thing to do for the organization because the company will reap rewards from enhanced commitment, effort, and performance.