tm webinar feb-worklife-25feb16
TRANSCRIPT
WORK-LIFE BALANCE: CONFESSIONS OF A REFORMED WORKAHOLICMonthly Webinar Series
February 25, 2016
2Topic Agenda
Item Time (min)
Introduction/Why the Topic? 5
Role of Work-Life Balance in Employee Engagement
10
Work-Life Balance: Who’s Problem is it? 10
Does your organization suffer from cultural work-life imbalance?
5
Steps to Improve Work Life Balance Culture 5
Q&A 10 Norm Baillie-David SVP Engagement - TalentMap
Agenda
Monica HelgothVP Engagement - Western Region
3
15 years in business7,000+ employee engagement surveys since inception1,000,000+ employees surveyed500+ employee engagement surveys annually
Only 1 Focus
TalentMap by the Numbers
4Sample Clients & Benchmark
Award Programs Technology & Engineering Not-for-Profit & Association
Financial Services
Health Sciences
Other
Why the Topic?
Role of Work-Life Balance in Employee Engagement
6
Overall Engagement: 87%
WORK-LIFE BALANCE CAN BE A CASUALTY OF HIGH ENGAGEMENT
7
Organizational Vision
Values
Executive Leadership
Work Environment
Immediate Management
Customer Focus
Teamwork & Colllaboration
Performance Feedback
Continuous Improvement
Professional Growth
Information & Communication
Compensation
Work/Life Balance
Accountability
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
132565767781115
10
6676810
911101211
1313
18
9392929087858484838181777272
Unfavourable Neutral Favourable
% Frequency
PRIORITIZING OPPORTUNITIES: WHERE DOES WORK-LIFE BALANCE FALL?
Improving engagement should be focused on dimensions exhibiting a combination of low performance scores and strong drivers
Focusing on the lower dimension scores exclusively may not fully address what is needed to target and improve engagement
“Maintain:Keep doing well”
“Leverage & Expand”
“Medium/ Low priority”
HighPerformance
LowPerformance
Weak Driver ofEngagement
Strong Driver ofEngagement
High need for improvement coupled with powerful drivers of engagementOpportunities
ForImprovement
8
AND THUS, TOO OFTEN IGNORED 9
SAFETY
2ND LEVEL MANAGEMENTORGANIZATIONAL VISION
CMT - CORE MANAGEMENT TEAM
IMMEDIATE MANAGEMENT
CUSTOMER FOCUSINNOVATION
TEAMWORK
INFORMATION & COM-MUNICATION
WORK/LIFE BALANCE
PROFESSIONAL GROWTH
PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK
WORK ENVIRONMENT
COMPENSATION
Strong Engagement
DriverWeak
Engagement Driver
Worse Than Benchmark
Better Than Benchmark
+/- TM Benchmark
Overall Work/Life Balance
The amount of work required of me is about right.
I am able to maintain a balance between work and home.
My job is not too stressful.
I have control over my workload.
I often feel compelled to work outside of the office during evenings, weekends,
vacation, etc.*
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
30
27
33
31
29
44
21
19
17
26
23
23
49
54
50
43
48
33
Unfavourable Neutral Favourable
% Frequency
-10
-9
-19
-8
-6
n/a
WORK/LIFE BALANCE: WHAT ARE TALKING ABOUT? 10
Data is rounded to the nearest whole number* Custom question(s) not included in overall average. Question has been reverse coded. “Favourable” being “Strongly Disagree/Disagree”.
WORK-LIFE BALANCE:WHO’S PROBLEM IS IT?
(TOO) OFTEN SEEN AS THE EMPLOYEE’S PROBLEM
“TECHNOSTRESS”
Mondieepa Tarafdar, Qiang Tu, et al: Crossing to the Dark Side: Examining Creators, Outcomes and Inhibitors of Technostress. Communications of the ACM, September 2011 Vol 54, No. 9
“TECHNOINVASION”“The situation where professionals can potentially be reached anywhere and anytime, and feel the need to be constantly connected.”
“these same technologies make (employees) feel compulsive about being connected, forced to respond to work-related information in real time, trapped in almost habitual multi-tasking, with little time to spend on sustained think.”
Most importantly – not being connected causes professionals to lose their sense of importance to the organization.
INTERESTING EXPERIMENT National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention*
• 700 professional, skilled tech workers divided into 2 groups• Worked long hours (>50 per week)• Some worked remotely, but pressure to be visible at the office
• Group 1 – Treatment Group• Given greater control over when and where they worked • More supervisor support for family and personal lives
• Group 2- Control Group• Conditions unchanged
*Published in American Sociological Review. Nanette Fondas, HBR, June 10, 2014
EXPERIMENT RESULT
16
Over a six month period:• Significant reduction in work-family conflict – that chronic sense of
being pulled in two different directions• Parents reported working one hour less per week than non-parents• Other workers did not have to increase workloads to accommodate
parents• Treatment group reported they felt they now had adequate time to
spend with families• Felt more in control, less overwhelmed.
No surprises here: First ever study to offer evidence based on randomized trial that workplace interventions improve employee work-life conflict.In other words: ORGANIZATIONS (AND MANAGEMENT) CAN IMPROVE WORK-LIFE BALANCE.
BENEFITS ARE OBVIOUS• Reduced Hypertension• Better sleep• Lower consumption of alcohol and tobacco• Decreased marital tensions• Better parent-child relationships• What about productivity?• Treatment group almost doubled average hours of work at home
(almost 10 to 20 hours per week)• Adjustments in management thinking about when and where work
gets done and support for employees’ lives outside work led to:• System-wide flexibility (relieving pressure)• Without burdening those who work conventionally• Without placing onus on individual workers to figure out how to
achieve balance
DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION SUFFER FROM CULTURAL WORK-LIFE IMBALANCE?
18
SIGNS YOUR ORGANIZATION SUFFERS FROM WORK-LIFE CULTURE IMBALANCE
19
• “Face-time” – people feel they will be judged poorly by their peers and/or supervisors if not physically present
• Peers and supervisors equate presence with productivity and output• Performance is recognized by work quantity, not quality:
• “He’s great. He’s always here late”• “She’s very responsive – she’ll answer an e-mail day or night”• “He’s not a team player – always leaves before 6:00”
• Meetings/calls at odd hours:• “because it’ shows you’re committed”
• Disorganization, lack of consideration for others’ time, last minute requests
• At 3:30 Friday afternoon – “I absolutely need this by Monday morning”• Meetings never start on time – because being there on time would be
interpreted as not being busy enough – and the senior person always arrives last.
• Lower productivity and procrastination: • “I’ll be here till 8:00 anyway, I’ll get it done later.”
POOR WORK-LIFE BALANCE CULTURE
20
• Self-preservation - Employees deflect tasks and avoid accountability.• “I’m already overloaded this weekend – sorry.”
• The “Badge of Honour” (I’m really guilty of this one!)• How are you? “OMG – I’m so busy!”• In meetings: “I’ll look at this over the weekend…..”• “It’s just part of the (enter name of business here) business”• “I’ve been divorced twice! He/she couldn’t accept the ‘lifestyle’”
ENTER YOUR BEST “QUOTE IN THE QUESTIONS OR CHAT SECTION”
SAW ON LINKED-IN TODAY… RECRUITING FOR A TECH FIRM!
STEPS TO IMPROVE WORK-LIFE BALANCE CULTURE
22
Organizational Traits
• Fun
• Ambition• Flexibility• Openness
• Cooperation• Informality
• Flat organizational structure
• Trust• Responsibility
• Support
• Pride*bold indicates commonalities with employee engagement
Management Actions which Created the Culture
• They were understanding of employees’ needs and concerns
• They made themselves available to employees
• They were supportive of employees when they encountered challenges
• They demonstrated trust of their employees
• They gave their employees feedback on their work
WHAT DOES A POSITIVE WORK-LIFE BALANCE CULTURE LOOK LIKE?
23
STEP 1: THE POLICY FRAMEWORK
24
While “culture” begins at the top, leadership must demonstrate it takes work-life balance seriously by instituting a number of policies and practices around:• Work hours and job design
• Restricted hours, minimal work required during off-hours
• Organizational culture • Minimize negative norms such as “no one leaves
until 7:00 p.m., no internal meetings after 4:30 p.m.,etc”.
• Incentives which encourage balancing work and non-work domains
• e.g. “Use it or lose it” vacation policy, incentives for not claiming sick/personal days, etc.
• Enablement: provide managers and employees at all levels with surge capacity.
STEP 1: POLICIES AND PROGRAMS (CONT’D)
25
• Increasingly: flexible work/telecommuting arrangements• pay attention to equity and fairness, as some jobs lend
themselves better to this than others and inequity is often a source of strife
• Becoming a “must” in the GTA.
• Wellness and benefits:• Gym memberships with “use or lose” provisions• Child and elder care provisions• Paid paternity leave• Adoption assistance
• IMPORTANT: Policies should provide opportunities for those who want to improve and set a positive example to others – not enforce standardized work habits.
STEP 2: ADDRESS THE TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGE
26
Google study identified two types of workers in terms of how they deal with competing demands:• Segmenters: able to cleanly separate work and personal
activities• Integrators: work looms constantly in the background.
They not only find themselves checking email all evening, but pressing refresh again and again to see if new messages have come in (demonstrate compulsiveness inherent in Technostress), BUT
• 69% of integrators indicated a desire to achieve a better separation and become better “segmenters”, and couldn’t do it on their own.
Google’s Strategy: • Help employees disconnect by designing environments which make it easier
for employees to disconnect: “Dublin goes Dark”• Charity fines for those who respond to off-hour e-mails
“Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance (and Much More)” Laszlo Bock, March 27, 2014 – Human Resource Management
STEP 3: ADDRESS THE CULTURE
27
• Steps 1 and 2 begin to send the signals that work-life balance is an enabler of employee engagement, productivity, and profitability.
• To change the culture the following steps need to be taken to address root causes:• Base performance on output, deliverables, and quality. De-link ANY inference to
performance based on physical presence.• Recognize and reward performance of individuals who work from home or
outside the office (of course, if performance warrants)• Lead by example:
• Be aware others are watching how long your are in the office• Be open about working outside the office on a regular basis• Devalue the “badge of honour” comments• Manage external pressures through negotiation of reasonable deadlines and
pressures, at every possible instance.• My own favourite: Always arrange for major deadlines on Fridays. NEVER
Mondays.
WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR IDEAS TO CHANGE WORK-LIFE BALANCE CULTURE?
STEP 4: KEEP AT IT! SHOUT IT OUT!
28
WATCH EMPLOYEE MORALE SOAR, PRODUCTIVITY RISE,
RECRUIT BETTER CANDIDATESAND MORE!
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UPCOMING TALENTMAP LEARNING SESSIONS
THANK YOU!QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION
30
Monica HelgothVP Engagement – TalentMap [email protected], x515
Norm Baillie-DavidSVP [email protected], x504
FOR A COPY OF THE PPT OR RECORDING:http://www.talentmap.com/webinar-past/
Louie MoscaDirector of Sales – TalentMap [email protected], x501