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By Ken Lizotte CMC
So the "Corporate 9" staged a rebellion. No longer would they travel more than 8 days in a single month, they said. They would make other arrangements, they would use videoconferencing, and email, and (easy to forget) the phone. But the days of leaving their families unless absolutely necessary were over.
Knowing how important these managers were to their front-battle operations, the company gave in. What was striking however was that such a revolt had to erupt at all. This company prided itself on work-family values.
The incident is not a surprising one for those who pay attention to such things. A large discrepancy exists today between the execution of many so-called "balance benefits" and their description in the official corporate brochure. What companies boast, in other words, about what they offer their employees seems to be often at odds.
The travel rebels, for example, represent a growing clamor for insuring that corporate commitments to balance benefits be something more than "just verbal," explains Dr. Bruce Katcher, an industrial/organizational psychologist with The Discovery Group, Sharon Massachusetts, which helps companies measure employee and customer satisfaction. That's chiefly because of "the senior people, who do the promoting-- That's not the kind of lifestyle THEY lead."
Balance programs are offered, and touted, at many firms today, particularly the largest, such as those that routinely attain the lofty status of Fortune Magazine's annual lists of top companies, including Fortune 100, 500 and 1000, and its similarly prestigious "100 Best Companies to Work For." Companies on these lists include such luminescent organizations as Cisco Systems, Southwest Airlines and Charles Schwab. Studies over the years have cited most of those in Fortune rankings based on profitability alone as also highly-committed to meaningful employee benefits. But even in the list of "best companies to work for," signs of fissures can be seen.
On this year's list, for example, #3 ranked Cisco System reportedly installed a 16 million dollar childcare facility for 432 children only after employees "pestered" CEO John Chambers. Following this capitulation to repeated employee demands, Cisco put together a state-of-the-art daycare center, including web cameras that afford parents "a real-time 'window' on their child's day."
The companies will tell you unabashedly that they offer such benefits principally to attract and retain good employees, a prodigious challenge today. But what happens after new recruits get lured in with multi-promises of health clubs, child care, concierge services- anything to make their lives easier in exchange for fifty-plus dedicated hours per week often required of professionals today?
According to a new book by a Harvard researcher, the realities once inside the door are not always good. In The Widening Gap: Why American and Working Families are in Jeopardy and What Can be Done About it, Jody Heymann, associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, asserts that standard, inflexible, work schedules and current family-leave policies today are more the norm than the exception, and that such discrepancies affect both performance on the job as well as educational outcomes of employees' children. According to Heymann:
- Over half the parents of those children scoring lowest in math and reading report no paid-leave benefits at their workplace at all.
- Nearly ¾ of working parents say they are allowed no time off for any reason.
- More than 60% of middle-income working parents cannot change either their starting or their quitting times for the purpose of accommodating family needs. Half also report they are not allowed to take time off even to care for their children when sick.
In a recent interview, Heymann reflected she was "very struck not only by the extent to which the poor are the worst off, but by the extent to which the middle class are significant worse off than the well-to-do," adding, "The majority (of employers) have not provided these benefits, and are unlikely to do so if their competitors are not providing them."
Where they are provided, however, raises the matter of "lip service," how committed is a company's private face vs. its public one? One CEO confided to me that, although he considered himself a liberal person and totally favored allowing women in his company to take a few months off after giving birth to a new baby, he had trouble accepting the idea of a man, the newborn's father, doing the same thing.
Then there's the issue of for whom the benefits are intended at all. Most companies seem to favor strongly family-oriented benefit packages, letting their single workers all but languish in the shadows.
"A lot of benefits are indeed skewed to people who are married," says Martha Fields, author of Indispensable Employees, How to Hire Them and How to Keep Them, (Career Press, 2001) and Principal of Fields Associates, a human resource management consulting firm in Cambridge Massachusetts. "It becomes a question of what does 'work-life balance' mean to people who don't have kids?"
Sharon Machrone, a human resource expert based in Salem, Massachusetts agrees. In her consulting work, Machrone frequently hears resentment from single folks who grouse about work-life programs' bias toward families. "I've heard someone say, 'What do they think, I was hatched? Just because I'm single and have no children seems to mean I am always available to work overtime.'"
Drawing
from personal experience, Machrone comments, "A single person who has
no kids can have very specific family concerns. Their friends become their
family." She just spent time herself with a childhood friend who had to
undergo a serious hospitalization. Adds Cliff Balzer, author of the forthcoming
book Business and HR: The Link at the Bottom Line (Quorum Books),
and an adjunct professor at Bentley College, in Waltham, MA, "On-site
daycare and family health plans are tops on the list of most parents with
young children but do little to entice prospects who have no dependents."
He agrees with Machrone that, "Employers have to expand their model of
work-family thinking."
And they may be beginning to, suggests Kristen Bowl, Manager of Media Affairs for the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), the Alexandria,, Virginia- based professional association for human resource professionals. A lot of current family friendly benefits have come about as the result of more moms joining dads in the workforce, she says, and because companies, eager to recruit and retain the best workers, wish to make their workers' lives easier. Many employers are thus working now with single employees too to see how their needs might also be met.
One way to do this, say the experts, is via greater communication tools and plain old-fashioned listening. Martha Fields exhorts companies to survey their employees more in order to learn which benefits match the needs of their diverse employee constituents. "Those companies that have a true sense of the demographic profile of their staffs can tailor balance benefits to the needs of different segments and generations."
Bowl adds that, with company loyalty gone the way of the "horse and buggy," successful employers are finding new ways to be responsive, including the growing approach of offering benefits on a "cafeteria plan." Under this concept, companies place a dollar value on each individual benefit and employees receive a lump sum with which to shop the menu. A worker who needs childcare, for example, is free to purchase that option, while her single co-worker may instead spend her benefit dollars on time in the gym. Both however are likely to also opt for flextime.
Explains Dr. Katcher: "Flexible scheduling is among the most appreciated benefit of all because employers actually 'own' your time. So, whenever we can obtain more control over our time, we want and appreciate it." Some people will actually take a job that offers less money but more control over their time, he says, thinking, "I can have more of a life. It'll be OK to leave at 5 o'clock and not get a dirty look."
In the end, however, it must also be admitted, the analysts point out, that it takes two to tango. Often it's employees themselves who drop the ball; when it comes to meaningful benefits. How many stories, for example, have you ever heard like the one that opened this article?
"Employees sometimes have unrealistic expectations when it comes to work-life balance," said Machrone. "What exactly does that mean? How is that defined? A lot of what it means, and what gets offered, is based on the business's needs, and individuals need to understand that. Can a receptionist be allowed to come and go as she pleases? Can a company accountant take extended time off during tax season? A lot of unrealistic employees get unhappy because their requests are not met because often it's a decision based on business."
There's also the reality of many people feeling uncomfortable about even asking for time off. "They don't want to show up as being needy," Machrone said, to which Katcher adds, "This is especially true for people who work for workaholics." Employers may talk a lot about work-life balance programs, he says, but often "they don't practice it themselves, especially the senior management. They work crazy hours. They work weekends. So, in order to feel in the in-crowd, employees decide that that's what they have to do as well."
It's a veritable Catch-22: Many companies will offer concierge services because their people work so hard, feeling that's the least they can do for them. But frequently, Katcher reports, people are too busy to take advantage of them. This holds true for employee assistance programs as well, designed to relieve worries, anxiety, nervous reactions. "People in many of today's workplaces are too stressed out to even use them," he says.