Why are family-friendly policies in the workplace not taken up more widely? And why, despite the fact that they've been around for years, are such policies more often mere rhetoric than reality?
According to Ms Lucy Daniels, co-author of the recently published Work-Life Manual: "The focus in many ways on family-friendly policies had been a barrier in itself because inevitably people tended to think about mums with babies and problems around maternity leave."
Instead of being taken on board as a core business issue, family-friendly policies were sidelined as a human resources issue for a few needy employees, she says.
The key difference between family-friendly initiatives and work-life is that "work-life is about respecting the needs of everybody at every stage of their life cycle, whereas family-friendly does tend to focus on carers, in particular parents. . . A good work-life strategy recognises the overall need for work-life balance and develops working practices because they make sense for the business as well as being sensible for employees," says Ms Daniels.
In other words, it isn't only mothers or fathers who have a life outside the workplace: it's everyone. And the more businesses and workers recognise and respond to that fact, the more effective workers will become while businesses will be more profitable.
The Work-Life Manual, with a forward by Cherie Booth, wife of the British prime minister, is published by the Industrial Society, a think-tank with 10,000 member companies, which campaigns to improve life at work through advocacy, training and publishing. Its chief executive is Mr Will Hutton, former editorin-chief of the Observer.
The Work-Life Research Centre, a virtual research centre comprising Ms Daniels and other key thinkers on the modern workplace, created the Work-Life Manual as a workplace "bible" for businesses of all sizes. The manual also involved an element of "future-gazing on what needs to be done," she says. The researchers realised that work-life policies are likely to sit gathering dust in the workplace unless "your culture doesn't in some way echo what you're trying to achieve through your policies".
Moreover, it's not so much what you do as how you do it. "It's how you roll it out that really matters. Involving people at all levels and communicating what you're doing effectively and having it as part of your core strategy," she says.
The manual provides a sixpoint framework for action towards developing a work-life culture. The following is an abbreviated version of the framework. [SBX]
Make work-life part of your core strategy.
Look at your culture and develop an open door attitude to discussing the issues.
Resource work-life policies with a generous budget and adequate personnel commensurate with the size of the organisation.
Communicate what you're doing effectively and celebrate success stories. Use communication to discuss barriers and problems experienced by people.
Help and support your managers because managing more flexible workers is a different way of working. Demonstrate the business case for work-life policies in action.
Look at innovative work organisation in its own right rather than as an employee accommodation or an operational need. Come up with creative ways of working which work for different individuals.
The business case for work-life includes obvious ones like employee retention and attracting new staff by having a strategy which you're able to advertise. Work-life initiatives fall into four areas:
Innovative working: e.g., flexitime, part-time working, maintenance of status, homeworking, four-day weeks, nine-day fortnights, job splitting, job-sharing, term-time working.
Employee development: using your appraisal systems and personal development plans as an opportunity to plan ahead and look at work-life balance. To plan ahead better, look at peaks and troughs in work demand and what's happening in people's lives.
Employee care and support: e.g., information packs about local childcare facilities, sponsoring services, having an employee assistance programme.
Leave provision: companies could repackage things like parental leave in a more proactive way.
Ms Daniels says: "Have a good people plan, rather like a good business plan." The Work-Life Manual should help you to achieve just that. The Work-Life Manual costs £75 sterling (€122). For details, telephone: 0044 870 400 1000.
Industrial Society website: www.indsoc.co.uk jmarms@irish-times.ie
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