8.3. ZIGZAGGING CAREERS

Work-life balance may slow your momentum, but it doesn't have to bring your career to a dead stop. More companies are redefining their career development process to allow for more variety in how employees navigate the organization. The route need not always be a straight line any longer. Workers can zigzag up, across, down, and up again. They can detour to an "off ramp" for a while and then return via an "on ramp" that takes them to the same or a lower spot in the organization.

Some employers tell new recruits that how they split their time is up to them. The company provides flexibility, but the employees control the throttle on how hard they work. They're going to have to put in long hours and travel if they're aiming for senior management. But there's also room for people who want to strike a better balance between work and personal life.

Some law firms are becoming more flexible about billable hours so as to give young associates a choice in how intensely they work. Perkins Coie, a Seattle-based law firm, will let associates reduce their annual billable-hour requirements from 2,000 to 1,800 or 1,900. Should they exceed their new lower level, they will receive a bonus. "Some of our young associates want more freedom after work than they could have if they billed 2,200 or 2,300 hours a year," says Darrin Emerick, director of personnel. "Retention is definitely a challenge, so we need to make the workplace as appealing as possible. It can easily cost a couple hundred thousand dollars to replace an associate."

In an online survey of law firm associates, the American Bar Association's ABA Journal found that 84% of respondents would accept a pay cut in exchange for lower billable-hour requirements. Skeptics question whether associates will look like slackers and take themselves out of the running for a partnership if they shoot for a lower billable-hour target. Still, many law school students believe a saner life is more important than money and titles. "We kept hearing from friends that they're pretty miserable with 18-hour days six or seven days a week," says Andrew Bruck, copresident of Building a Better Legal Profession, a student-driven grassroots organization that is publicizing law firms' billable-hour requirements, diversity hiring records, and pro bono work. "We're trying to improve the quality of life at law firms. There's a pretty high depression rate among young attorneys."

Bruck, who attended law school at Stanford University, notes that work-life balance is "like the elephant in the room" during job interviews. "Students don't want to bring it up for fear that it will look like they're lazy, and it's hard to know what's true from the law firms' slick recruiting materials," he says. "So the burden should be on the firms to explain in detail their policies on billable hours and flexibility."

Like lawyers, many management consultants and accountants also put in long hours at the expense of their personal lives. Although consulting and accounting firms can't suddenly put everyone on a 40-hour workweek, some are giving employees alternatives that let them slow down, at least for a while. Boston Consulting Group Inc. is offering employees more unpaid leaves of absence and part-time schedules, as well as greater career-track variety. When a consultant with a few years of experience needs more time at home and less intensity at work, for example, he can "roll off" the consulting track and switch to an administrative job.

The firm is also experimenting with flexible promotion timing. "We are an up-or-out environment, but we want to ensure more flexibility and promote when employees are really ready," says Dorota Keverian, global director of consultant human resources. "People who get off track for a while may need more time, and a Ph.D. candidate may not be on the same timeline as an M.B.A. recruit."

Millennials, however, may be reluctant to take advantage of Boston Consulting's menu of flexibility options. Many consultants have been loath to take leaves of absence because they fear being left in the dust by type-A colleagues. "Where leaves of absence are more accepted, they're being taken by more people," Keverian says. "The take-up rate is higher in Germany, for example, than in the United States."

At Deloitte & Touche, the buzzword these days is "mass career customization." That's a mouthful, but it boils down to adjusting the speed and direction of your career to fit your changing life. Deloitte is gradually rolling out the career planning program to employees, who will move on "lattices" instead of ladders as they maneuver through their careers. They can climb, take lateral moves, or make planned descents. "Young people are telling us they need the flexibility to fade in and out of work," says Cathleen Benko, vice chairman and chief talent officer. "With mass career customization, we are looking for alternatives to the one-size-fits-all approach to the proverbial corporate ladder."

Millennials sometimes believe that reaching a senior level such as executive vice president or managing partner means giving up a personal life altogether. The top dogs look like workaholics, and many millennials will leave the company rather than face that kind of future. To retain and groom millennials for senior management, companies will have to demonstrate convincingly that even the CEO has a life outside the office and can achieve some balance between work and play. That means bosses should be role models for work-life balance.

To that end, Deloitte has created a new initiative called "Compulsively Transparent." It aims to demonstrate that flexibility is truly part of its corporate culture from the lowest to highest levels of the organization. Rather than pretend that work always comes first, the firm is encouraging managers and executives to be honest about the times they duck out of work early to coach their kid's baseball team or get a haircut and manicure. Benko took the lead in pushing Compulsively Transparent, announcing to a roomful of Deloitte's "big guns" that she had skipped a high-level meeting to go shopping at a major sale at the Nordstrom department store. "Younger people don't want to be like they perceive us to be," she says. "But we can send a huge signal to them by our example, by not making excuses when we fit life into work."