Judith Finer-Freedman is the founder of WorkLife Juggle©, a consulting service that specializes in assisting organizations to take action to support the needs of employees.  She also works with graduate students to better evaluate companies’ family friendly attributes. Her doctoral dissertation entitled, The Unfriendly Realities of Family-Friendly Policies, at the University of Toronto is the subject of her seminars at academic and industry conferences. A native of Oklahoma, she resides in Toronto with her husband and their three children.

Q: Over the last ten years, how have employees’ attitudes towards work and their employers changed?  

If we look back over the last ten years, it’s hard to remember what our work lives were like before the advent of Blackberrys and immediate access to the Internet.  Technology has changed the availability of information, now accessible 24/7.  Breathing room and time to strategize and plan are luxuries of previous generations.  Today, employees are moving in time with their computers and Blackberrys and are reeling from the pace of work and accompanying stress. 

Not only has the speed of work increased but so has the scope.  Over the last decade, managers have widened their span of control as a result of downsizing and corporate re-structuring. According to the study, Voices of Canadians Seeking Work-Life Balance released in 2001, managers were responsible for 20 direct reports as compared to six in 1991. As this study shows, employees have trouble saying “no” to employers and feel that they cannot turn down requests to work overtime.

Q: Over the same ten years, how have employers’ attitudes towards addressing work-life quality changed?

Employers have realized that it makes good business sense to support flexible work policies for the following reasons:

1. Recruiting top talent:  A recent Canadian Catalyst study of lawyers determined that work-life considerations are important for women AND men when choosing a firm.  This reflects a broader market trend of workers desiring a life outside of work.
2. Retaining top talent:  When high performing workers have access to flexible work arrangements they feel more loyalty towards the organization.  Enhanced retention translates into thousands of dollars in savings in recruiting and training costs.
3. Achieving Bottom Line Benefits:  Employers now pay more attention to the hidden costs associated with an employees’ departure.  For example, the loss of client relationships when an employee leaves take a tremendous amount of time and effort to re-create.
4. Building Business Relationships:  Finally, organizations are introducing work-life policies to keep up with the organizations with which they do business.  This mirroring of policies strengthens the business relationship through like-minded strategic programs for employees.

Q: Is the workplace a friendlier environment now for women and families then it was a decade ago?

The best indication that companies are more family friendly than a decade ago is that the discussion about work-life balance issues is no longer limited to employees around the water cooler; it is taking place around the boardroom table now.

In addition, the combination of Baby Boomers (those born from 1946-1964) retiring and Generation X (those born from 1965-1980) becoming parents and managing dual income households has changed the cultural landscape of the workplace.

Some barriers remain.  In some organizations, the creation of work-life policies are still seen as an accommodation for women rather than  accepted as an evolution in a worker’s (female or male) career life-cycle.  Senior managers also need to become better role models for work-life balance.  Progress in this area would include experimentation with tele-commuting, no longer upholding the cultural norm of “face time”, or even taking leave to spend time with children.  Employees need to see managers experimenting with these alternative work arrangements in order to feel that they too can access them. 

Q: There are a wide variety of work-life effectiveness programs and initiatives available to employers, which do you feel are particularly effective?

There are many exceptional programs available but more important to making a work-life effectiveness policy successful is the environment in which it is executed.  Programs are only as dynamic and meaningful as the managers who execute them. Reduced hour workloads and tele-commuting policies have proven to be successful. This gift of “time”, according to a joint Canadian-US study on reduced-load work schedules, allows employees to adapt and shift their work and family roles more effectively.

Q: As companies invest more and more in addressing the work-life concerns of their employees, how can they evaluate the return they are getting on these investments?  

The metrics for evaluating work-life policies have expanded as management strives to substantiate its investments.  Here are some examples of how ROI is being calculated and evaluated:

1. Reviewing the costs and benefits of enhanced employee performance of those who access work-life effectiveness policies (e.g., improvement in customer service, lower absenteeism, and enhanced loyalty).
2. Examining retention costs.  These include the hidden costs of relationships that are built internally and externally and are lost when employees leave.  Another hidden cost is the high price of training new employees by managers and co-workers.
3. Evaluating the impact on the bottom line.  The Great Place to Work Institute makes the point that a “buy and hold” investment strategy in the publicly traded companies on the Fortune “100 Best Companies to Work For” list (1998) demonstrates superior investment results when compared to the same “buy and hold” investment in the S&P 500 indices and the Russell 3000.  The results: 10.97% return for the "Best List" as compared to a return of 5.70% from the S&P 500 indices and 5.31% from the Russell 3000.