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A Full-Life Approach to Work

Flexible work programs. Job sharing. Working from home. Flex start times. These are all wonderfully intentioned policies that the workforce, young and old, increasingly wants. Many policies—written and implied—are in play across different industry sectors, in companies small and large throughout the country. But many have no such policies. And in some cases, as with Yahoo, flexible work options are being retracted because they’ve gotten out of hand and impacted performance and profitability, or at least the perception of performance and profitability.

Millennials are going to figure this work–life balance thing out eventually, as they grow into leadership positions. The companies that figure it out with and for them have, and will continue to have, a strategic advantage over those that don’t.

As Gina, twenty-five, says so assertively, “I’m going to spend more time working than anything else as an adult. I don’t want to wait until retiring to have a life—I want my work to be part of my life. And I definitely don’t want to be like my parents, who both have jobs they really don’t like and are waiting until they can retire to enjoy themselves.”

The call for the elusive work–life balance has been a constant and increasingly loud drumbeat for the last twenty years, give or take a few years. Working women, with or without children, carried that drum for the first span of time, and in the last few years their working father counterparts have joined the chorus with increasing volume.

What impressed me during my research was the call for work–life balance now, at the beginning of their careers, by every single one of the Millennials I talked with—male, female, working, not yet working, parents, childless, married, single. They’ve joined the voices of working parents and working caretakers of aging parents who have been juggling life and work for a while now, and Millennials are pushing the boundaries on what it looks like to work and have a full life and not just work to live.

“I’m ambitious, but I’m willing to give some of that up if it means I can have a better life now,” says Paul, twenty-seven, a high-performing CPA at a real estate private equity firm. While outliers exist on the perimeter, particularly in investment and management where big big money is in play, the general sentiment of Millennials seems to follow Paul’s.

Younger men across sectors—from technology to management consulting to finance—“increasingly want schedules that work around family needs—just as women have been demanding for years.”¹ This sea change is even happening in medical schools.

This conviction stands in stark contrast to Harvard’s recent survey² of C-level executives on the topic—that study showed that current top executives see work–life balance as an issue for women. That was true, even though 44 percent of the almost four thousand executives interviewed between 2008 and 2013 were women. The silver lining, as Jessie Grose writes on Slate, is that the Harvard Business School students who interviewed the executives “were dismayed by the findings. Both male and female students resisted the notion that you can’t be an executive and also lead a balanced life.”³

Technology and Remote Work

At the same time, advancing technology has made it possible to be connected yet distributed, and Millennials have grown up being educated with an increasingly sophisticated parade of technologies in the classroom. They are used to being connected by a virtual tether, not necessarily by their butts in the seats.

With robust cloud-based project management, work flow and storage systems available and priced for teams from one to one thousand, and effective one-to-one and group video conferencing systems and apps available at a wide range of price points, teams can have access to all of the information and processes they need to get the job done. “Why does my boss need to know where I am,” asks Alice, twenty-eight. “I’m getting my work done—who cares if I’m not in the office?”

And here we step into the quicksand. “I personally struggle with how this approach can be so productive, when they’re expecting so much at the outset,” says Victoria, fifty-three. “We have to figure it out—but it’s going to be messy.”

Flexible Work Isn’t The Same For Everyone

Not everyone can work from home or remotely whenever they like or all the time. If you’re in a service business (and aren’t we all, in some way) being available how and when the client or customer wants or needs you is required.

Some people work much more effectively and efficiently on certain tasks alone with no sounds to distract them, while others seem to disappear when they work remotely, and their work quality and efficiency on the same tasks suffers dramatically. For projects or work periods that demand a highly collaborative, high-performance approach and require fast, collective decisions and interdependent work, employees may need to be physically present, depending on the leader, the type of work, and the technology and systems available.

Bottom line, the companies that figure out how to offer some perceived freedom of movement and more flexible work policies will be the ones that attract and retain the future workforce. This is a strategic advantage now, and that advantage will grow as the number of Millennials becomes a larger and larger proportion of the workforce.

But it’s not all that clear how to drive flexibility into the workplace in a way that works for everyone and is perceived as fair by everyone.

As my colleague Liz O’Donnell, author of the popular blog HelloLadies.com and the book Mogul, Mom & Maid, articulates so well, “If you want access to work–life benefits, you need to be able to negotiate for them and, more importantly, to prove that they work.” And that’s it. Flexible work schedules, access, benefits, and attitudes are a give and take.

By definition, flexible work schedules are inconsistent. It takes work to make them work—work on the employer’s side and work on the employee’s side. It takes intentional overcommunication to make sure everyone is on the same page.

But the benefits of flexible work arrangements can far outweigh the hassles. First, keeping great employees working with you as long as possible, through the ebbs and flows of their lives, maintains work continuity and performance. Second, employees are far more likely to be loyal to the team and company when the company flexes to accommodate their lives. The trick is to do it so that it doesn’t impact team morale and overall performance.

The burden is on the employee to make it work—to make it work for him, his team, his clients, his customers, and the company. One bad apple can absolutely spoil it for everyone. A person who is hard to reach when working remotely, doesn’t finish his work on time, doesn’t tell his teammates his schedules during the workday, or has an attitude that assumes everyone else has to accommodate him puts the viability of the whole policy in jeopardy.

When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer changed the company’s work-at-home policy, it came out that many people who had been on a work-from-home schedule couldn’t be accounted for. The shift exposed a “great divide” in perception, as Forbes contributor Micheline Maynard⁴ wrote, and uncovered resentment among people who worked from the office and knew that some who worked from home did not have their level of dedication.

Flexible Attitude

At the agency, we have a “flexible attitude.” In practice, this means that people earn the privilege of working from home as many as three days per week (and sometimes more when circumstances require it) as long as the work allows. It also means they can handle personal e-mails during work hours and prioritize health and family—so they can attend kids’ school functions and activities, make personal appointments to see a doctor, dentist, acupuncturist, or other provider during regular hours, and get to the gym or yoga studio regularly.

I value togetherness, and I actually prefer that everyone be in the office together all the time. But I am not able to do this, and if I want to have a single standard for all the employees I can hardly expect that everyone will want to do this. Our practice is that everyone come into the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that people schedule remote days as early as possible. We are all on IM during the day regardless of where we are physically, so that everyone can see who’s “on” and who’s “off.” And if the team, the client, or the business requires people to be in the office, everyone’s in the office. Period.

For the people who come into the office on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we make sure there’s a small perk that people at home will miss but not trade for being remote. For example, on Fridays we always have cocktails in the afternoon, and sporadically on Mondays or Wednesdays we’ll bring in afternoon treats or lunches.

The UPS driver knows our office really well and can tell a lot about our shopping habits as people have their online purchases delivered to the office instead of their homes. This lets people be sure they get their packages, and they can return items from the office rather than having to schlep them back and forth and then work in going to the post office.

Compared to some larger companies, which offer on-site laundry services, on-site gyms, on-site day care, and free meals all day long, we come up short. However, those benefits are designed to keep people at the office as long as possible; our policy is designed to keep people at the office so they can work in close proximity regularly, but not all the time. We want to allow people to work remotely when we don’t need them together to get the best work done.

This flexible attitude requires a strong team approach, constant communication, and robust reinforcement. And, most importantly, it requires trust and proof that we don’t leave our teammates hanging just because we need or want a schedule that doesn’t fit an uninterrupted nine-to-five workday.

Clif Bar & Company, a client, is famous for its culture and benefits. One flextime policy Clif Bar & Company has in place is the “9-80 work schedule,” which allows employees to fit eighty hours of work into nine workdays. Effectively, this means that as much as half the company is off every Friday. It works for them—the company keeps growing.

Different divisions of large companies often have different policies, official or not, which match flexible schedules with the type of work done by different teams. “My team is spread out all over the world, so flexible schedules mean something different for us,” explains Ted. “We need everyone to be together by video conference call a couple of times a month, which means someone’s up late while others are up early. Other than that, each group in the team needs to come up with the work practices that work for them. We probably have four or five different ‘policies’ in place throughout the team, but it works.”

In the end, it has to work. The work has to get done, on time, and to a high standard. Team members need to have confidence that everyone is being treated with an egalitarian hand, so that over time, everyone gets the same treatment and opportunity. And, yes, it’s true that sometimes it takes getting back on the computer after the kids go to bed, or post yoga class, or after the water polo practice or the book group to make sure that all of the work is done, if you left at 4 p.m.

Paving the Way

In some cases, older employees who have been pushing hard for flexible options for a long time and have finally earned the right to a flexible work schedule are bitter that their younger colleagues are getting now what they worked so hard for over their careers. “It’s taken me fifteen years to get to be able to regularly work from home—I’ve had to overdeliver to prove the point that I can do the job and not always be there, and these kids want this flexibility now,” complains Abby. “And I don’t see any of them overdelivering like I had to.”

Those who have paved the way for flexible work schedules and now begrudge the people who follow them need to get over it. Thank you for all your hard work. Thank you for proving the point that working remotely can be done well. You’ve made it possible for companies to make these changes. Your kids have watched you and want what you worked so hard for now—you’ve taught them what is possible, and they know it can work. Just because we didn’t have more flexible work plans when we started our careers doesn’t mean we shouldn’t allow the younger generation what we know is a good thing for them and for the business.

At the same time, everyone, regardless of age or situation, needs to make sure she doesn’t take flexibility for granted. Clear policies and guidelines about how to make flexibility and freedom work will help anyone, of any age, from feeling or projecting an attitude of entitlement.

“She just told me that she’d be out all afternoon for a doctor’s appointment,” says Michael, thirty-six, a product manager in a California-based produce company, talking about a recent declaration from one of his twenty-four-year-old direct reports. “And this was one that she’d scheduled weeks before. She didn’t think to ask if it was okay that she’d be gone. She hadn’t bothered to check the deadline schedule to make sure her being out wasn’t going to trip up the whole team. It turned out that it was okay, but I was really put out that she just assumed that she could go.”

When, during our call, Michael asked for advice on how to “correct this behavior,” I asked a few questions.

What’s common courtesy to one person is implied or assumed by others, and not necessarily because they’re feeling entitled. I think most often it’s because they simply do not know what is expected.

Sue, another senior leader, fifty-one, shared her story about her twenty-nine-year old direct report’s regular texts to her.

This text interchange and variations thereof went on for weeks. Sue assumed “that she’d figure it out that this was not okay,” but nothing changed until Sue texted back one day: “When are you going to figure out you need to get an earlier bus?” Nancy replied, “Oh yeah.” And Nancy hasn’t been late for meetings since.

Guidelines Are Imperative

Again, what’s obvious to some remains elusive to others, even when they don’t make their commitments. Without guidelines and reinforcement about what’s important and about the procedure required to get flexibility, you may be disappointed and angry about how other people interpret a flexible policy.

Companies and their leaders must put guidelines behind flexible work policies that help everyone comply without leaving teammates hanging out to dry or having to pick up someone else’s work to get the team’s job done. This becomes very important when we need to deal with our employees’ life emergencies. When teams have a history of being able to flex during regular life activities, they are much more capable of navigating during times of personal emergency. If each person is confident that, when he has something urgent occur in his life, the team will cover him too, team members move much more easily to fill a gap created by an emergency.

Finally, an egalitarian approach to flexible work schedules does not necessarily mean that everything is equal. Different people work best in different conditions, and different roles have different requirements. Some positions require that the employees filling them always be present; others do not. If someone demonstrates that she can’t work remotely and be effective, then bring her back, and help her earn the right to try again. We need to adjust given both the work at hand and the people at hand.

It would certainly be easier if everyone would just show up regularly, on time, and not even ask for any accommodation. But that train has left the station and is not returning. We need to work together to make it work.

So What Do You Do?

I’ve reviewed more than two dozen flexible work policies and the only thing they have in common is that they each allow work outside 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. in the office standard. Each organization needs to find the flexible work policies and guidelines that work for its own work style, conditions and business mandates. Write them down, and know that you may need to adjust the guidelines more than once to get it right so that they work. Follow these guidelines to get you started:

Address these issues immediately; do not let them fester or discontent will take root and grow. Use the circle of communication to help come to new agreements and arrangements.

Remember, one size does not fit all people or all workplaces!

Management Dos and Don’ts

• Do articulate and put in writing your expectations for people’s presence in the office. Be specific about start and stop times. Be specific about when people need to be present.
• Do set a policy and provide specific guidelines about how to deviate from the regular schedule.
• Don’t assume that everyone will just “get it” and know when they need to be there or how to get permission or inform their managers about time away from the office.
• Do lead by example: show people how to flex their time effectively by overcommunicating your schedule and how you will get your work done in time without requiring other people to change their schedules.
• Do put in systems that facilitate remote and shared work. Consider using Basecamp, SharePoint, Box, or other cloud- or server-based systems to share work information securely from anywhere.
• Do ask what people want. Do give people the reasons you have your policy.
• Do be reasonable. Let people prove that they can make it work.
• Do be consistent.

Millennial and anyone else with a flexible schedule Dos and Don’ts

• Don’t assume the work policy is without reason.
• Do negotiate for flextime rationally by articulating how you will make it work, not drop the ball, and get your work done.
• Don’t assume you can just take the time off.
• Do ask, “Is it okay if I take off early today? I’ll make it up tonight.”
• Don’t assume, just because there isn’t a written policy, that rules don’t exist.
• Do get your work done on time and well. Better yet, be early! Prove that you can work remotely without letting the work slide.
• Do let people know how to reach you if you are working remotely.
• Don’t make people chase you when they can’t see you.
• Do understand that “egalitarian” does not necessarily mean “equal.” Different people work best in different conditions. Some positions require that employees be present; others do not.
• Do think before you complain.