The topic of work-life balance seems to be getting more attention than ever. That’s generally a good thing — everyone could benefit from a little more balance in life — but a closer look at the media coverage reveals a common theme. Much of the conversation around finding work-life balance revolves around how individual workers can better juggle their careers with their personal lives, such as brushing up on their time-management skills or unplugging on the weekends.
Coverage rarely focuses on the pivotal role that employers and corporate leaders play to make that juggle possible. It’s a glaring oversight — and points to a huge opportunity.
In JUST Capital’s annual survey — which asks the American public what they care about most when it comes to business practices — work-life balance has consistently been one of the areas that Americans want companies to prioritize. And several other studies have uncovered significant benefits in workers’ productivity, satisfaction, and retention among companies that provide them with flexibility and help them manage their personal needs.
For example, one study from the CEB, a global best practice insight and technology company, found that employees who report having a good work-life balance work 21% harder and are 33% likelier to plan to stay with the company.
Employers can’t overlook the fact that today’s workers are attracted to companies that accommodate and care about their personal needs. Millennials and younger generations of workers expect a level of work-life accommodation from their employers that earlier generations of workers may not have imagined possible, says Julie Cohen, an executive coach and trainer and CEO of Philadelphia-based Work. Life. Leader.
“Asking for certain things — like the ability to work from home occasionally — used to be really risky,” Cohen says. “Now it’s often part of the discussion before someone will accept a job.”
But there’s also the reality that workers can only do so much to balance their work and personal priorities without help from their employer, Cohen says. For example, many employees still have to ask their manager for permission to take an hour off to take a sick child to the doctor.
So, what can leaders and managers do to encourage work-life balance among their employees? Here are six key ways, including both the better-known but crucial strategies we’ve written about before and a few lesser-known but equally important methods.
Some leaders may avoid offering broad flexible scheduling benefits to their employees because they think it will open a floodgate. But realistically, most employees who ask for flexibility request pretty modest scheduling accommodations, Cohen says. Perhaps they want to work 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. instead of the typical 9-to-5 schedule so they can pick up their kids after school. Maybe working from home just once or twice a week will provide them with extra time to take care of personal matters.
The important thing is realizing that flexibility can’t be a one-size-fits-all benefit, Cohen says, and managers who want to do it right should have individual conversations with everyone on their team to determine their personal accommodation needs.
“I may have four direct reports, and one of them loves being in the office from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and has no desire to work from home,” Cohen says. “Someone else is going to have a totally different set of needs, and it’s going to be a totally different conversation.”
Less than half the companies JUST Capital evaluates and ranks every year disclose flexible working hours. But according to our research, those that do have a median five-year return-on-equity (ROE) 2 percentage points higher than the companies that did not.
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Leaders should consider the overall amount of autonomy they give employees – as that will directly affect how flexible they view their jobs, Cohen says. However, providing autonomy naturally requires that the organization has built a culture of trust where employees feel they can take ownership of their work — and in turn, when and how they perform that work — without feeling micromanaged.
Autonomy supports work-life balance because it means employees feel comfortable dictating their own work schedule — at least to some degree — and can thus make their own accommodations without feeling they always need a manager’s approval. They can take an hour-long run or bring their kids to the doctor without feeling like someone is always looking over their shoulder.
Raising kids is one of the biggest balancing acts many workers face. Companies that create policies and practices designed to make life easier on parents — such as providing backup or on-site childcare and giving new parents ample paid leave — can pay off for the company, as well.
JUST Capital research found that only 23% of the 890 companies we ranked in 2018 disclosed that they offer supplementary or backup day care services, but the win-win was clear: The companies that offered this benefit to employees had a median five-year ROE 2.5 percentage points higher than the companies that did not.
Starbucks is widely considered a leader among large companies in terms of providing work-life balance. It offers up to 10 days of backup care per year to employees to care for both children and adults.
See more ways your company can better support working caregivers here.
Work has unfortunately become an around-the-clock expectation for many people, encroaching on their personal time and obligations. Many modern workers feel they must check their email in the evenings and on weekends. A study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that people who use smartphones for work spend more than 13 hours every workday and five hours during the weekend checking work email. Another survey found that only 28% of workers use up their vacation time.
This is burning people out — and making them more likely to quit.
Company executives and managers who encourage their reports to unplug and take work-free vacations will benefit from overall happier, less stressed employees. Some companies are even paying their workers to take time off. Expedia, for example, gives its employees an annual travel reimbursement of $250 to $750, depending on how long they’ve been employed there.
You don’t have to go that far right away: Something as simple as making it very clear to your team that responses to email are not expected while on vacation can go a long way in setting the tone for a true break.
One reason employees may be working long hours is because clients think they’re always available and will respond to emails or calls swiftly, Cohen says. Managers can alleviate that burden by telling clients that employees often don’t check their email or voicemail when they’re not working or simply that they should expect a call back within 24 hours.
Likewise, managers should make sure someone is appointed to serve as a backup contact for any employee who’s taking time off, so that the employee doesn’t get bombarded with emails and calls when they’re supposed to be taking personal time.
Generous work-life balance policies and accommodations aside, leaders who don’t walk the talk by also showing they value their own personal time will discourage their employees from valuing it, too. If you encourage workers to, say, use up their PTO days, you should be doing that, too.
“If you’re a boss who says ‘don’t send emails after 7 p.m. and then you’re sending emails at that time, you’re sending mixed messages,” Cohen says.
Ultimately, leaders and managers need to be cognizant of the work and personal balancing acts their employees’ face – and they shouldn’t assume that employees without kids or who don’t talk about their personal lives at work don’t have their own personal needs and goals.
“You can’t come to any of these conversations with a preconceived notion of what anyone wants,” she says. “Let them tell you what they want and need.”
We’ve covered topics like workplace burnout, employee retention strategies, and which companies treat employees best in the past, but we’ll never stop tracking the shifts being made to prioritize worker well-being. To stay up to date on this issue and much more, sign up for our free weekly newsletter, The JUST Report, today!
The family caregiving demands faced by U.S. workers — from having and raising children to tending to ill or aging family members — has reached “crisis” levels, according to a recent study by Harvard Business School.
According to the study, 73% of workers reported having some caregiving responsibilities, and about one-third of workers had quit a job due to their caregiving demands. The top reasons cited for leaving a job were caring for a newborn or adopted child, but other common reasons included caring for a sick child or older adult with daily-living needs.
The researchers found that employers are “largely oblivious” to the immense strain caregiving can place on their employees. And this is a problem for those companies, because employees overwhelmed by caregiving duties tend to be far less productive and far more likely to quit.
“Care obligations has become a principal reason for voluntary turnover,” says Joseph B. Fuller, the study’s co-author, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and co-chair of its Managing the Future of Work initiative.
Interestingly, the voluntary turnover rate due to caregiving is highest among highly skilled, highly paid, and talented workers — because these workers tend to have the cash reserves to weather a period of unemployment and feel more confident they can find another job quickly when needed.
Productivity loss due to absenteeism (missing work) and presenteeism — when people show up to work but aren’t really working — are also significant.
But it’s not all bad news: JUST Capital research shows more and more companies are supporting working families through paid leave to new parents. This year, 41% of the companies we rank reported providing new parents with paid parental leave, and of these, 24% (or 90 companies) did not disclose parental leave last year.
We’re seeing that companies are increasingly prioritizing work-life balance for working caregivers, though there’s still room for improvement — which is why we’ll continue to track performance on this important issue.
In the meantime, companies have to understand the importance of supporting employee caregivers through the benefits and policies they offer, Fuller says. Corporate leaders can’t assume that because employees aren’t broadcasting the stress that caring for family members places on them that they’re not experiencing it.
So what can employers do? First, Fuller says, they should work to create a culture that demonstrates an understanding and openness about the demands faced by caregivers. That starts at the top and with leaders talking about their own caregiving demands and work-life balance goals.
“If there’s a c-suite executive who has a child with special needs and he or she discusses that, the added pressure and the compromises they make, that gives psychological permission to any employee to discuss that,” Fuller says. “They don’t have to feel ashamed talking to their own supervisor about their caregiving obligations and the accommodations they might need.”
Akamai CEO Dr. Tom Leighton – who we spoke with in last month’s Quarterly JUST Call – is a great example of someone doing this right: His transparency about his own caregiving experiences as a father sets a great example for his employees to take leave when they need it.
In addition to transparency, employers should do more to understand what their employees’ caregiving obligations are — and what kinds of policies and benefits would help them most. This can be done through employee surveys. Then, they should work to implement those policies and benefits.
Some executives may automatically assume that generous paid leave and paid time-off benefits help caregivers the most. And while they are beneficial, there are other things they can do. Here are six ways companies can greatly help working caregivers:
Allowing employees to work hours at least somewhat tailored around their personal needs can significantly reduce voluntary turnover, because scheduling constraints are a top reason people with caregiving obligations quit, Fuller says.
Letting a parent work, say, 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. instead of the traditional 9-to-5 schedule can allow them to be home when their child gets off school — so they don’t have to worry about finding and paying for after-school care.
Likewise, allowing someone to work from home occasionally or regularly not only reduces the time burden of commuting, but it gives them greater flexibility to accommodate their caregiving needs.
Most highly ranked employers among our 2020 Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies provide flexible scheduling and work arrangements to some degree, though some are particularly progressive. One such example: VMWare, a cloud infrastructure company, lets every employee from c-level down to entry-level set their own work schedule, so that every employee can design a schedule that fits best with their lifestyle.
Giving employees more paid time off — whether that’s more PTO days or paid sick leave — is a major relief to caregivers, who are more likely to need the extra time. Consider a parent of a child with special needs or an employee with an elderly parent and the time they may need to take off for doctors appointments.
Fuller foresees more companies getting rid of caps on the number of PTO days and moving toward unlimited PTO policies that allow workers to decide how much time they take off — assuming of course they fulfill their work requirements. (Contrast that with the 25% of American workers who get no paid time off whatsoever.)
Workday, an enterprise cloud applications provider, is just one example of a company that’s providing its workers with unlimited PTO.
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Giving both new mothers and fathers the same amount of leave is not only fair, but it also takes the burden off mothers to provide most of the caregiving to newborns by allowing fathers to take off to fulfill their responsibilities and desire to spend time with their new children.
Without equal leave, mothers can feel overwhelmed and fathers may face extra stress by having to help with childcare from work or having to take PTO.
More companies are moving toward paternity leave policies that provide mothers and fathers with an equal amount of paid time off. PayPal Holdings, for example, offers its mothers, fathers, same-sex spouses, and domestic partners eight weeks of paternity leave or “parental bonding leave” at 100% of their base pay.
Akamai leads is this area, offering mothers 18 weeks of paid parental leave and fathers 10. In discussing how pivotal it was for him to take paternity leave as a first time father, Leighton said it was the “hardest job I ever had. But it made a huge difference to me and to our family to be able to do that. A wonderful experience, taking many months off to be a primary caregiver.”
Beyond looking after the post-childbirth needs of parents, companies also need to consider the needs of people looking to adopt — which can be equally if not more stressful.
With the average cost of adoption now more than $40,000, employees who adopt can benefit from both financial and childcare relief. Some companies provide adoption benefits, such as offering $5,000 or $10,000 to parents who adopt children. But more have expanded their paid leave policies to include adoptive parents. Netflix, for example, provides one year of paid leave to new parents, whether those parents adopted or not.
Once mothers return to work after the birth of the child, finding a comfortable and relaxing place in the office for lactation can be a challenge. Companies can support new mothers by creating special rooms specifically for that purpose.
Amazon, for example, offers Mothers’ Rooms with comfortable chairs, hospital-grade breast pumps, refrigerators, microwaves, sinks, and doors that lock. This makes it easy for new mothers to get privacy for pumping milk during the workday without the stress of having to use an employee restroom or another area where they could be interrupted.
More companies are finding they can relieve the caregiving demands of their workers by commissioning third-party organizations that can provide relief, Fuller says. One company he’s familiar with provides care coordination to employees as a benefit — helping them find the right long-term care facility for an elderly parent who lives in another state, for example.
Some companies offer, say, up to five days of backup child, adult, or pet care through Care.com’s Care@Work program, he says.
Companies that address the caregiving demands of their employees will ultimately win the talent wars of today and the future, Fuller says. “If your institution can provide an extra level of support and engagement with your workers — tangible signals that you’re allowing people to live their best, most gratifying life — that can be a very big competitive advantage.”
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