| | |  There may be no better time than right now for you and your organization to develop new initiatives on the work-life balance front. Generally speaking, when managers think of families, they think moms, dads, and kids. When they think of moms, the chain of thought moves logically to maternity leave. When they think maternity leave, they think time, law, and accommodation.
It can be a real challenge to broaden the conversation beyond those parameters. But managers also know that their employees are not all moms, and those employees harbor hopes that policies and practices share this wider view. So as a manager, what will you do to challenge your own perceptions about work-life balance, and reap benefits at the new frontiers of families?
A race from the bottom
To start, let's look at the obvious: leave time. Where does your company stand on this? Do you have a policy that meets a legal standard for your country? Do you exceed that minimum? What about your holdings in other nations?
Employees are globally aware, and they know the trends in other countries. It hardly takes effort to find family leave data on the internet. Employees will want to know if your company policy is geared to a baseline for each specific country, and no further. Some of them are going to want to know why. A scant few companies take a stand that their parental leave standards will be equal for all employees, regardless what nation their offices reside in. This results in a true challenge for companies with holdings in several countries.
For example, if you have offices in the U.S., the law requires employers grant 12 weeks of parental leave and that the employees' job responsibilities are kept at their previous level upon return. In Germany, the law ensures mothers are granted 14 weeks at full pay. In Chile, it's 18 weeks with pay; Norway requires a full year at 80 percent pay.
Does your company meet the legal standard, and do so on a country-by-country basis? Or do you exceed it? Your employees in Chile and the U.S. would see a benefit they may not have expected, given their experience with companies that have a standard geared to a legal minimum. But perhaps the net effect is greater retention and loyalty, as well as a sense of belonging to a truly global operation that values its employees the same no matter where they live. Are you as a manager or your company at large ready for a race away from the bottom?
Here's your daddies
How does your office frame the conversation? When you think about leave, do you immediately think of maternity leave? And does that immediately conjure images of lactation accommodations? Reduced work weeks? Soccer moms? Absolutely it does.
If you've got half a brain as a manager, you're going to seek ways to accommodate your new and existing mothers in your organization. So what are you doing with the other half of that brain? Hopefully you're spending time planning for the new fathers, the non-lactating mothers, the adopters and the child-free in your midst!
Let's consider dads. Most laws use "parental leave" language, and are construed to extend leave rights to fathers as well as mothers. British Prime Minister Tony Blair grabbed headlines in 2003 when he scaled back his workweek after his son was born. What is your response to something like that in the culture? Many business leaders put forward their defense this way, "Yes, but he's the PM of a major industrialized nation! He's a special case, with an enormous staff and resources."
Perhaps Mr. Blair is a pioneer or just a media hound. It doesn't change the fact that your employees can read a newspaper. Perhaps you need to prepare an answer to the question, "If a whole country can afford to have a major 'employee' reducing his work week, and nothing fell to pieces, why not here?"
There are also growing ranks of employees who have chosen not to engage in a lifelong relationship, or have chosen not to have children. But they certainly don't think of themselves as "childless" or "family-less!" The scope of what employees embrace as their "family" has changed from marriage, blood relations, and kids into a much broader view.
Look over your own attitude toward family leave, and sharpen your self-critique. As a leader, are you talking about leave as a matter for mothers? Your new dad is approaching the office in five minutes and has an accommodation request. Are you ready?
Balancing it all
There's a strong push to put work-life balance issues on the table in the office. As more top employees come from highly individuated conceptual frameworks around the idea of family, their managers should be prepared to adapt to these concerns. The first steps we've already talked about—start thinking of maternity leave as more than legalities, start thinking of leave as more than maternity—so let's push a little further.
Unless you're in a situation where you own a company whose vice president is your husband and whose only employees are your four children, you have employees right now who are from single parent homes, or who are adopted, or who live in domestic partnerships, or who are unmarried and child-free, or any of a host of options. There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that your employees each have their own perspective about their family group and how they relate work to home life.
Do you assign out of town travel to your single employees only? Do you discuss lactation needs with every new mom? Do you know which of your employees use formula instead? Do you say things to dads that you wouldn't dream of saying to moms? Did you ever ask employees when they're having kids? Do you have an employee whose parents are aging and need more focused care?
The issue before managers and other leaders is not just protecting the company from lawsuits, defending the family, giving the same workload to singles as parents, or flexing your schedules. It's fitting work into the work-life picture held in your employees' minds! As a manager, you need to step up and take responsibility for making the most of the work side of your employees' work-life balance equations.
For your convenience, here's a way to think about the work-life balance matters that your employees are dealing with, or will be soon. For the acronymically inclined, we've sorted these ideas into six handy steps, appropriately called SEE-SAW:
Stop – Are you making assumptions? Slow down and look around. Listen the language you use, and see if you think of balance as a women-only or mothers-only issue.
Educate – Learn your internal policies as well as the external legalities.
Exceed – Where can you and your organization exceed the bare minimums, either of the law or your own policies? In each situation, can you eye the long term and treat employees accordingly? For example, maybe 12 or 16 weeks sounds like a lot. It doesn't if you treat an employee like someone who'll work for you for 1040 weeks (20 years).
The plain fact is, as a manager, you may not be able to do much about this. But keep a close eye on your own hiring pattern. If you think your company's family benefits policy is costing you the best employees, you can and should open a conversation with your higher ups. Prepare with some of your own research, demonstrating the number of conversations over time when potential hires have been lured away by the competition's family policies.
Be Sensitive – Open your eyes and ears to your employees' concerns. Ask questions and look for who else in your workplace might have work-life balance concerns. Each employee has a unique situation. Ask carefully and then engage them in such personal conversations on their own terms. Be prepared to back off if so asked.
Accommodate – There's more to this than meets the eye. Providing a lactation room for mom and letting dad leave to go get his kids from school is one direction, and it's a good one. Do you have single employees who would like to stay in town next week? Maybe that new mother wouldn't mind flying to see a client, if you can help find a way to provide childcare for her. Some compromises and sharing of burdens will go a long way.
Welcome – Invite your people to bring their life matters into the workplace in a non-disruptive way. Does your organization have a lot of social functions? How long is the guest list? Is there a sense that children are welcome? What about life partners? |
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