From the ‘ghetto’ of women’s issues, work-life balance has emerged as a genuine business driver. But the battle is not yet won, reports Eila Rana
Supplement: The People Management guide to work-life balance (web-only longer version of this article)
Publication date:
26 September 2002
Source:
People Management magazine
Flexible working is one of the keys to achieving a better work-life balance and the figures are stacking up unequivocally in its favour.
Eighty per cent of HR professionals believe flexible working should be available to all employees; 74 per cent believe working long hours is not an indication of commitment; and 56 per cent disagree that part-time working is more appropriate for roles at lower levels in an organisation.
The figures come from People Management’s Work-Life Balance Survey 2002, conducted jointly with flexible-working consultancy Flexecutive.
The good news continues: 84 per cent disagree that part-time workers are less committed; 77 per cent believe organisations should allow employees to attend to outside commitments and make up the time elsewhere; and 90 per cent believe fathers, as well as mothers, should be able to have time off when their children are sick.
But the survey of over 250 HR practitioners also reveals some stark contradictions. Seventy-three per cent believe there are few promotion opportunities available to part-time workers and 66 per cent believe moving to a part-time or flexible career will harm career prospects. Career progression is important to 68 per cent of respondents. In addition, 90 per cent believe part-time or flexible work is taken up mainly by women and 72 per cent believe this will affect promotional opportunities for women.
“The implication is a potential ghettoisation of flexible working – by saying it’s an important issue for only one type of person and that it’s going to hurt your career,” says Rob Bailey, senior consultant at Flexecutive. “It could affect the numbers of men who are likely to take it up.”
The UK’s work-life balance movement will have to take note. It grew out of the women’s movement and the equal opportunities and childcare agendas. But for some time supporters have been trying to make it relevant for everyone. The consensus is that most people have understood this.
Penny De Valk, group director at Ceridian Centrefile, which offers work-life balance consultancy services, says that the first 10 years of the American campaign on this issue were all about mothers and children.
“In the UK, we seem to have skipped quite quickly to recognising work-life balance is about everyone,” says De Valk. “And we were quick to realise that fundamental systemic issues, like long-hours cultures, needed addressing.”
Lucy Daniels was one of the UK’s work-life balance pioneers. In the early 1980s she wrote what is thought to be the UK’s first employers’ guide to childcare for the then Greater London Council. Soon after that she set up Parents at Work, an organisation which grew out of the Working Mothers’ Association, and wrote the first national employers’ guide to childcare.
"It developed from talking about childcare - because women would still have problems juggling work and family - to talking about career breaks, flexible working and so on," says Daniels, now a work-life balance consultant. "They became ‘family friendly’ policies."
But by the early 1990s, interest in the issue was still limited. It had become “ghettoised as a women’s issue”, with insufficient focus on business needs. Daniels explains why: "A lot of people saw the family friendly agenda as being about people with young children. There was insufficient focus on business needs."
The Work-Life Manual, co-published in January 2000 by the Industrial Society (now the Work Foundation), followed a wave of research into the lack of interest. Here, for the first time, was a toolkit for employers on how to roll out the policies. “It was about everyone, and it was balancing the needs of the workplace and the family,” says Daniels.
Around the same time Shirley Conran, author of Superwoman, set up the Work-Life Balance Trust, an organisation aimed at raising awareness of the importance of work-life balance. "Shirley was beginning to look at her grandchildren and people she knew, and noticed how much pressure was around, and that work was quite a considerable cause of stress and lack of control," says Lindsay Cook, trust chairwoman. "She felt something ought to be done about it."
Legal drivers were also gathering pace. The Employment Rights Act 1996 was a key piece of UK legislation says Minaxi Woodley, employment law specialist at City law firm Hobson Audley. “It made employers more aware of their legal duties and put employee rights firmly on the agenda in a way that previous employment legislation had not.”
Since then, European Union directives have also made a massive impact on UK law. The working-time regulations sought to tackle the traditional long-hours culture head on. Parental-leave regulations, part-time workers regulations, fixed-term employees regulations and the agency-workers directive have all sought to give improved rights to various parts of the labour force, making non-traditional ways of working more viable.
Woodley points to Anna Diamantopoulou’s appointment as European commissioner for employment and social affairs in July 1999 as the root of the EU’s interest in work-life balance. “Diamantopoulou’s objective is the promotion of a European social model which is both achievable and can be maintained. It’s based on a culture of social inclusion and equality,” says Woodley. “It stems from the basic principle of the free movement of markets and workers, but it is not only about free movement; it is also about balancing employee and employer needs.”
In March 2000, Tony Blair launched the government’s Work-Life Balance Campaign – as the 24/7 culture and an increasingly diverse workforce had made traditional, nine-to-five working practices unsuitable for all concerned.
“The campaign was launched to persuade employers to introduce new ways of working, which could meet the needs of both business and customers while simultaneously improving the work-life balance of their employees,” says Patricia Hewitt, secretary of state for the Department of Trade and Industry, which is running the campaign.
“We want to emphasise the importance of quality of life, of getting the best out of people, and of giving people some flexibility in their lives. We want to change the pervading work culture based upon excessive hours, and prove that work-life balance can make a difference to productivity.”
Cue the Employment Act 2002, through which Woodley says work-life balance legislation will really begin to kick in. Key provisions include the right to request flexible working and paternity leave – until now never a statutory right.
"A core part of the DTI’s agenda is to help drive up UK productivity and competitiveness – and work-life balance policies play a major role in achieving this," says Hewitt. "It’s clear from research into the working patterns of other European countries that the UK is gaining little from long hours and a lack of balance."
Worker to worker, the UK’s current productivity gap is 15 per cent with France and 7 per cent with Germany. For each working hour the figures are 24 per cent and 23 per cent respectively. "This has to change," says Hewitt.
The government also turned to Peter Ellwood, chief executive of Lloyds TSB, for help in pushing work-life balance up the agenda of UK businesses. Ministers wanted business to take the message to business and Ellwood is well known in industry for leading a company that has progressive work-life balance policies.
In March 2000, the Employers for Work-Life Balance – an alliance of 22 businesses – was launched. “The aim of the group was to become a one-stop-shop for employers looking both for information and to take action in this area,” says Sally Evans, chairwoman of the alliance steering group and acting head of equal opportunities at Lloyds TSB.
The alliance website, which features benchmarking and action-planning tools, has become the group’s main point of contact, but it has taken part in seminars around the UK and produced booklets and guides, including one for small businesses.
The alliance is also working with Investors in People to develop a voluntary work-life balance model, to be launched in January 2003, to sit alongside the current IIP standard.
Originally set up for one year, the life of the alliance has been extended, but it intends to disband in March 2003. “We have reached the point where we thought the awareness-raising exercise we set out to do has been reasonably successful,” says Evans. “We need to identify how that work can best be carried forward into the future. We want to maintain the business-to-business angle.”
Sue Levett, managing director of the Work Life Balance Consultancy (WLBC), has worked closely with the DTI, sitting on a ministerial advisory committee on work-life balance. As work gathered pace, Levett felt a process was needed to drive forward the changes being talked about: the National Work-Life Balance Standard was born.
The standard focuses on five areas: flexible working arrangements, work breaks, adult care, childcare support, and information, advice and other services. Rather than carrying out a work-life balance audit, organisations applying for the standard are benchmarked against these categories.
"The standard can also be used as a framework in which work-life balance policies and practices can be developed," says Levett. Organisations that achieve the standard go through a tough accreditation process, which includes the submission of a report on their progress, prepared by an assessor, to an accreditation panel. The panel is made up of representatives from Business Links, the DTI, accredited organisations and a senior advisor from the WLBC.
The importance of work-life balance to today’s organisation should not be underestimated. “It’s all about recruiting and retaining talent and then creating a workplace environment that stimulates people to add the best value they can,” says Dianah Worman, CIPD adviser on diversity.
The need for increased productivity will be a constant driver but Daniels says the more immediate reasons for implementing work-life balance policies have changed over the years. The recession at the beginning of the 1990s meant the recruitment and retention crisis was no longer an issue. “Then the equal opportunities agenda kicked in and more recently, before 9/11, the war for talent had emerged,” she says.
De Valk believes the skills shortage forced employers to think about how they could re-engage the workforce and persuade them to stay. “Other drivers include the increasing pace and intensity of work, and the demographic shift to there being more women in the workforce,” says De Valk.
"Work-life balance is one of those rare situations where you start it for one reason and it does impact on the bottom line," says Cook. "It makes good commercial sense."
Organisations such as BT and the AA have recorded 30 per cent higher productivity among their home workers compared with office workers doing the same job, according to Cook. "They may put the washing in the washing machine and go and collect the children but they are so happy to have control over their lives that they do more," she explains.
The recent weakening of the recruitment market did cause some tension amongst work-life balance proponents but their cause appears to have survived the downturn.
"Because recruitment and retention was a primary business driver we thought employers would maybe take their foot off the accelerator but it hasn’t happened," says De Valk. "They are saying it’s a demographic issue, not an economic issue. The good news is when it becomes a compelling issue; that is, when organisations say: "We are not going to become an employer of choice unless we have good work-life balance policies'."
De Valk believes most employers understand the arguments for work-life balance but still need help in aligning it to their specific business needs, otherwise it can very quickly “smack of philanthropy”.
Others are more cynical. Daniels is pleased it has taken just two years for “work-life balance” to enter our vocabulary, but she feels many employers still pay lip service to the principle. “There is still a lot of fear in the workplace about being seen as less committed if you reduce your working hours, and people are economically committed to working full-time as well,” she says.
Lindsay Cook, chairwoman of the Work-Life Balance Trust, believes the lip service is often unconscious. “They don’t realise there is nothing in place to make it happen,” she says. “Line managers need to be trained; work-life balance within their teams needs to be part of their appraisal; and employees need to be reminded about what is available.”
Hewitt accepts there is scepticism about work-life balance among senior decision-makers within UK plc but points out that an organisation’s culture cannot be changed overnight. “There is a need for a fundamental change in our working culture,” she says. “Government research showed it could take up to 20 years to bring about changes by best practice alone. This is why we are introducing legislation to spread best practice more quickly and we are investing in raising employers’ awareness of the business benefits of giving employees a better balance between their work the rest of their lives.”
The DTI’s Work-Life Balance Challenge Fund has to date given 399 organisations £11.3 million to pay for consultancy services on flexible working practices.
Jo Morris, senior policy officer at the TUC, believes employers’ track records in this area vary enormously. "The ones who are doing it in the best way are the ones doing it alongside trade unions in the workplace because you can’t really develop work-life balance for staff unless you ask employees what it is they want. People’s needs differ," Morris says.
De Valk insists we have made progress – despite a lack of genuine buy-in from board directors – because five years ago it was unheard of to include work-life issues in an HR strategy. She does accept, however, that the average board director is still unlikely to think of work-life balance as a powerful lever to compete on. When the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) surveyed its members on proposals contained in the work and parents green paper, which eventually became the Employment Act 2002, 90 per cent opposed an automatic right to work reduced hours.
That’s not to say that work-life balance practices don’t occur on an informal basis. Stephanie James, policy adviser at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), points out that the UK has the second-largest part-time workforce in the EU. But she admits most employers are more likely to be sympathetic to parents requesting part-time work, as opposed to any other group.
“I don’t think many smaller firms really understand the business benefits,” says James. She points to the “key-worker contradiction” as evidence. Many employers are reluctant to let key employees work flexibly because they are indispensable to the business, but this very inflexibility could prompt these members of staff to leave.
“It’s a lack of understanding and expertise that you can’t blame them for,” says James. “They are just not big enough to have an HR person on board, which is why the Better Regulation Task Force report is a really good idea.”
Ministers have agreed to follow up three recommendations from Employment Regulation: striking a balance, the report by the government advisory body, launched in May 2002. They will test the feasibility of an employment-law advice service for businesses with fewer than 50 employees and a shared HR-advice service for small firms. Ministers will also seek to harmonise the start dates of domestic law, based on EU directives.
This should go some way to addressing the “red tape” protests from employers but Woodley says businesses don’t want to deny employees their rights. “If there was a system that could implement this legislation smoothly and effectively, employers could manage the financial and operational consequence without seeing it as a burden,” she says. “But to achieve that, there needs to be better guidance from government.”
Ministers’ commitment to the cause is key as, De Valk warns, demographic drivers for work-life balance are going to escalate. On a more fundamental level, she believes the UK needs to start looking at cultural issues in the workplace.
She explains: “Are people really looking at why there’s a long-hours culture in their organisation? What are our performance and management issues? Do we do work that’s efficient for management and the individual? There is scope for more work redesign and challenges around how we use technology.”
And with the imminent introduction of the ‘right to request flexible working’ legislation, Worman is uncertain that organisations can continue to take reasons into account when employees want to work flexibly. She explains: “The challenge for the HR profession is to ask, ‘Can it be done? Will it work? Can we actually make a change in the way something is done in order to resource it in a slightly different way?’
“The issue is coming out with a practical solution that benefits the individual and the business. I would hate to see this issue start fully down the route of personal rights because businesses have to survive.”
Levett believes the carrot of persuasion is always better than the stick of legislation but she accepts that the new right to request flexible working is fundamental to the work-life balance cause. "It’s going to make line managers think for themselves about how they create an environment where there is fairness and consistency," says Levett.
She dismisses fears that the legislation will open the flexible-working floodgates, instead predicting a similar course to that taken by the parental leave. The anticipated upsurge in parents taking time off hasn’t materialised but what has been created is a climate where parental leave is recognised and accepted, says Levett.
Worman believes industry is not yet fully switched on to the advantages of work-life balance, making it important to keep pushing the message across using practical examples. But she warns against copying other organisations’ solutions. Customisation is crucial and while a solution might work now, employers have to be prepared to refresh and update it as external factors change. Daniels agrees. “The willingness to experiment, to remove the culture of fear and to allow managers to be creative is vital,” she says.
Communication is key, because simply writing the policies does not mean they will be taken up by employees. But it is not a one-way process.
"Individuals have to take responsibility for this too," says Daniels. "We are all suffering from overload…trying to juggle different spheres of our lives. It’s either a question of prioritising or of finding quicker ways to do what we want to do."
Daniels believes people are starting to realise this and predicts personal life coaching will become more prevalent as a result.
The wrong culture and lack of communication is perhaps the crux of the contradiction between aspirations and reality highlighted in the People Management survey.
Bailey predicts: “The reality is just behind expectations, but given the way many organisations are now looking at flexible working, soon the reality may catch up. However, I wouldn’t expect it to be simple or easy. There are genuine obstacles that organisations have to overcome to implement this, but if people give in to them, they are agreeing to some of the costs of the present situation.”
Not only that, De Valk maintains that organisations that ignore the case for work-life balance will be fishing from a much smaller pool of talent and employee commitment could be compromised.
The issue certainly isn’t going to go away. “If anything, it’s going to accelerate as the population ages,” says De Valk. “We have designed our organisations to fit a workforce that doesn’t exist anymore… we have to come up with ways of giving people a greater sense of control because businesses are going to come under pressure to find solutions to get as many people working as possible.”
Hewitt believes employers who want to attract and retain a loyal and committed workforce will have to embrace work-life balance practices. She warns: “UK industry really cannot afford to ignore the need for change if it is to remain among the best in the world.”