I’m confused.
In his book, Winning, Jack Welch writes in his Work-Life Balance chapter:
“Even the most accommodating bosses believe that work-life balance is your problem to solve. In fact, most know that there are really just a handful of effective strategies to do that, and they wish you would use them”
In his straight-talk style, he adds:
“Your boss’s top priority is competitiveness. Of course, he wants you to be happy, but only inasmuch as it helps the company win. In fact, if he is doing his job right, he is making your job so exciting that your personal life become a less compelling draw.”
Spoken like a man who divorced his first (non-compelling?) wife and - by his own admission - didn’t know his children very well. GE must’ve been like crack to Jack. So compelling. So exciting. So addictive.
If so, then Jack’s been away from the pipe for a few years. And it seems he’s rethought his perspective on work-life balance. He recently told attendees at the SHRM conference that, “many companies are turning to tools they hadn’t used before to keep their employees happy, such as flexible work arrangements. It’s important to take care of your best, so they don’t leave when things get better.” (Thank Kyra from LifeMeetsWork for sharing!)
There’s been a lot of noise in the life-work balance arena lately. HR execs and other decision makers seem genuinely interested in compressed workweeks, reduced workloads, and job-sharing. Cripes, if Jack is saying it’s worth a shot, it must be, right?
But a still, small voice inside me can’t help but wonder if all this work-life talk is going around merely to make employees feel better about furloughs? There’s a Dilbert’like cartoon being drawn in my head in which the Point-Headed Boss asks, “If we call it a flexible work arrangement, can we pay you less?”
Whaddya think? Is Life-Work Balance for real this time?
Comments
You’re absolutely right about the noise. Even in my office, we debate whether flexible work schedules that were put in place for companies to save money in a recession should really be considered flex work. On the one hand, you can argue that kind of flex doesn’t deliver work/life balance or make employees happy (how could they be—they just lost part of their income). On the other hand, the fact that companies are looking for creative solutions to hold onto their employees, instead of laying them off, is progress.
Recent studies show, despite all the articles in the press to the contrary, that companies are maintaining or adding flexible work programs, not getting rid of them.
And, a number of multi-nationals are dusting off their under-utilized, under-communicated flex work programs in a low-cost effort to engage a workforce that’s taken major hits of late.
So, respectfully, my answer to your question (and our internal office debate) is “so what?” Does it matter whether organizations are taking up flex work due to high gas prices, government incentives or guilt over wage freezes?
No, because the more practice managers and organizations get managing alternative work arrangements, the better chance we all have of flex going mainstream. The more managers have to figure out how to communicate with a dispersed workforce, and the more workers get a taste of how nice it is to spend Fridays off, the more likely it is that attitudes about how and where we work will change.
That’s because the biggest barrier to flex as a mainstream way of life (or work) is cultural resistance and a lack of understanding about how to do it right. And, in times of financial crisis, those barriers can’t trump the need to reduce real estate costs by 20% in order to keep the company solvent.
Managers who would’ve resisted this change in better times have to figure out how to make it work. Employees, who used to be satisfied with a 50+ hour work week, may come to enjoy gardening, spending more time with their family, or working out on their mandatory Friday off. And, they may want to maintain this lifestyle after the recession is over.
Some would say that none of this matter long term—the minute the recession turns around employers will go back to their old ways and employees will fall lock step in line behind them.
But, if you look at the convergence of trends: skilled labor shortage, generational attitude shifts, advances in technology, environmental awareness, the need for disaster/contingency planning, alternative work schedule experimentation and the changing values of Americans in response to the recession, I think it’s a fair bet that things will never go back to the way they were.
