The Wisdom of Managing Change

work-life flexibility: it's about productivity

In some companies, people who arrive early and stay late are assumed to be productive. Managers will only approve limited requests for flexible work schedules, and only for employees who have already "paid their dues." Work-life flexibility is a fringe benefit... a privilege available to only a few employees.

Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson write about their frustration with this outmoded notion in their blog:

"even where the “cream of the crop” ideas in terms of flexibility are presented, employers are still talking about flexibility as a privilege."

It's unfortunately true that many organizations still treat work-life flexibility policies as a perk, reserved for a chosen few. This type of company typically view flexibility as an accommodation to employee needs, or a way to keep key high performers. Most employees are expected to "put in their time" -- to be at their desk for 40+ hours per week.

Of course, focusing on face-time instead of results has a bunch of negative consequences. Employees have an incentive to invest time in brown-nosing, because they can tell that their managers play favorites, and don't have a good handle on what employees are actually getting done. They also tend to fill their days with make-work and surreptitious computer game playing, since they need to "fill time" so they can be visible at the beginning and end of the day. Employees are actually discouraged from working efficiently.

Cali and Jodi provide evidence that redesigning the organization to be results-oriented, rather than face-time oriented, boosts productivity. In fact, they coined the acronym ROWE, and took the lead in implementing the results-oriented work environment at Best Buy.

Some well-managed companies, like Cisco, the Chubb Group, Corning and Xerox, have seen the productivity gains that come with redesigning their workplace for increased employee flexibility. Here are a few links that summarize the productivity gains observed:

• CISCO's CSR report section on workplace flexibility 
• Chubb Group reports on productivity increases 
• work-life redesign at Corning and Xerox (Rappoport study)

The bottom line:

Managers need to dispel the myth that flexibility is a privilege. It's not about perks for employees -- it's about increased productivity for the company.

blurring boundaries between work and life

Why would an employer offer paid sabbaticals to employees after a certain number of years of service? Why do employers offer paid family leave, for new mothers and fathers?

The simple answer is, to retain employees and save the costs that come along when an employee quits or is fired. (Federal law requires that companies provide unpaid family leave for 12 weeks, but some employers offer paid leave, which is not required by law.)

In fact, for many companies, not instituting policies that would allow employees to deal with their personal lives is a drain on the company's profitability. The cost of searching for a new salaried employee and training the new hire is often estimated at 30% of the previous employee's annual salary. This estimate does not include the lowered productivity of the company while the position is vacant, and while the new employee is getting up to speed.

Still, some companies are instituting new policies that go well beyond giving employees time off to deal with issues in their personal lives. For example, a New York Times article by Abby Ellen quotes employees who have been offered the option to bring their babies under 6 months to the office with them when they return from parental leave. (A link to the article appears at the end of this post.)

To what extent are companies offering this option to reduce costs and increase profit? I suspect that some companies are also considering their social responsibilities toward employees.

I'm sure that employees who bring babies to work help to trigger a cultural change for their employers' companies. That kind of cultural change can be tricky to manage. Some managers may resist, believing that the organization is better off if the boundary between work and personal life is clearly defined. On the other hand, younger employees may resist such firm boundaries, and seek out work environments where they can blur the boundary and integrate work and personal life more fluidly. 

Do you know of companies that are offering employees the option to blur work and personal life? In what ways? What have been the effects on the organization's culture?

Related links:

Abby Ellen's NYT article, Maternity-Leave Alternative: Bring the Baby to Work

From my blog, Telecommuting: How it has changed business life

From my blog, What do we not know about managing change?

From my blog, Can leaders drive a company through organizational change?

From my blog, Organizational culture change: can we manage it? (yes and no)

Telecommuting: how it has changed business life

I doubt that anyone could go to work dressed in pajamas 50 years ago, other than an artist or a wealthy investor trading stocks by phone. Nowadays, the ability to work from somewhere other than the office is a highly desirable privilege, and is granted increasingly often. Telecommuting was coined as the term to describe this type of work in 1972 by Jack Nilles. By 2007, 82 of the 100 companies on the Fortune list of best companies to work for allowed employees to telecommute at least 20% of the time. (According to Fortune, the top 10 businesses that encourage telecommuting include Cisco, Genentech, and Qualcomm.) Even employees of companies that don't rate in the top 100 often have the option to telecommute, and about 15% of American workers exercise that option.

Telecommuting has been an option for at least part of my work week ever since I was first employed. At one point, my husband was telecommuting across three time zones -- which allowed us to live in the same zip code, rather than experimenting with a commuter marriage. This significant innovation in work practices has meant that our careers have had a very different shape than those of our parents or grandparents.

How did this social change come about? In most cases, this was not a change initiated by top management. Instead, telecommuting was requested by employees, for a variety of reasons. Some employees wanted to be home in time to meet their kids when they got off the school bus. Others wanted to avoid a long commute.

At first, managers tentatively offered approval to only one or two employees. Gradually, as managers realized that productivity remained high (or even increased), telecommuting became more common. Eventually, managers began to recognize that there were even potential cost savings for companies if their employees chose to telecommute.

Technology also played a major role in bringing about this social change. The arrival of desktop computers, and then laptops, was key. Cellphones were also helpful, because they allowed employees to take work calls from any location.

The technology also brought with it a hidden danger, though -- the danger of being "always on". If work can be done from anywhere, when does work end? Unless employees use self-discipline to log out of email and power down the cellphone, work can invade their personal lives at any time.

We learned through trial and error to manage the technology to maximize its benefits and minimize its costs. My husband vowed, after quitting his first job, that he would never again accept a position that required him to carry a pager. I learned that if I had worked a 12-hour day, it didn't make sense to lug home the laptop or reading materials, only to lug them back to work the next morning, untouched. As the age gap between me and my undergraduates widened, I learned to set expectations carefully -- I did not want to have to answer emails as quickly as my students answered text messages from their peers.

Telecommuting has changed the pace of business dramatically, in less than 40 years. What we learn from considering this movement is that organizations must sometimes ride the tide of social change, adopting new practices and learning how to work differently in order to maintain positive relationships with employees.