New Work+Life Flex Normal by Cali Yost

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Work/Life: Congress Introduces Flexibility Bill! But Where's the Next Prez?

At the same time we announced that nearly 60% of respondents to the 2007 Work+Life Fit Reality Check survey believe the next president should introduce legislation that would make it easier for organizations to offer and for individuals to have more flexibility, Congress took a first step. On December 6th, Ted Kennedy and Caroline Maloney introduced the Working Families Flexibility Act to Congress. Presidential candidates from the Senate, Christopher Dodd, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are co-sponsors of the bill.

The U.S. is following the lead of other countries where flexibility primarily for caregivers has been a high profile political issue for quite some time. In England, work+life flexibility was a key part of the platform of Conservative Party candidate, David Cameron (see a blog I wrote about it in March, 2006). There’s been legislation passed in both New Zealand and Australia improving access to flexibility.

While they may have co-sponsored the newly-introduced legislation in the Senate, none of these candidates have made work+life issues and flexibility a core focus of their campaign speeches. This is surprising considering the fact that a majority of respondents across all demographics (except 55-64 year olds) want the next President to focus specifically on these issues. This is especially true for women, younger voters 25-34 years old, parents, and individuals without a college degree. All of these groups were significantly more likely to want the next President get involved. Below is a breakdown by demographic group of those who responded “True” when asked if the next president should play a role in making flexibility more accessible:

Total 58%
Men 54%
Women 64%

25-34 years old 66%
35-44 years old 59%
45-54 years old 55%
55-64 years old 44%

1 person household 55%
2 person household 53%
3+ person household 63%

No Children 54%
Children 63%

High School Degree 65%
College Degree 54%

Why do people want the next President to step in? I believe it reflects a frustration with the pace of innovation and change inside of Corporate America. It’s taking too long for employers to offer work life flexibility to employees as part of their day-to-today business management. People want the government to step in and not only speed up the rate of change, but remove the stigma of pursuing flexibility.

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been some, albeit slow, progress. There has. According to the survey, 25% of respondents reported they had the work+life fit they need. While that’s still only 1 in 4, it’s an improvement from 15% the year before. Here’s another indicator of slow progress--only 37% felt that their employer saw flexibility as a business strategy for managing talent, workflow and resource. The other 20% thought it was a “perk,” and 35% said that their employer didn’t offer any flexibility at all. So, we still have a long way to go, and people don’t want to wait.

The next President can begin to improve access to work life flexibility for families by supporting the legislation introduced last week. I don’t believe flexibility can be mandated, because there are too many variables in each person’s work and personal circumstances. However, as outlined in the Working Families Flexibility Act, the government can provide incentives for organizations and individuals by:
• Encouraging managers and employees to develop mutually-beneficial flexibility plans
• Protecting employees who propose to work flexibly, (but not guaranteeing the proposal will be approved, of course, because not every type of flexibility will work in every job, and not every employee performs well enough to work flexibly)

In addition to expanding access to everyone, other incentives not in the legislation could include:
• Rethinking the way work is done and creating new, more flexible, ways of working
• Encouraging flexibility in where, when and how work is done to reduce the environmental impact of commuting.

I want to be optimistic that the Presidential candidates will respond to those voices of the American workforce. But I think the reality is that the issue is not on their radar screens because most of them haven’t been in the business world trying to manage personal responsibilities for years, if ever. They don’t understand what the 24/7, high tech, global work reality looks like from the inside of an advertising agency, a law firm, a manufacturing facility, a school or a doctor’s office. And they don’t understand how important flexibility is to working and having a good quality of life in today’s world.

Just look at the fallout from Congress’ recent announcement that its members were going to start working “four days a week.” What the leadership really meant was that members would telecommute from their home districts on Fridays. But they didn’t even have the language to describe what they were trying to do accurately. It wasn’t working less, it was working differently.

Will the next U.S. President at least support this new legislation and encourage a faster pace of change with regard to work life flexibility for everyone? If the majority of respondents to the Work+Life Fit Reality Check have their way, yes! What do you think?

(Go to my Work+Life Fit Blog for “How do 63% of Companies Without a Flex Strategy Survive?”)

07:29 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Work/Life: The 2007 Work+Life "Fit" Reality Check Survey Results Say...

The results of the 2007 Work+Life Fit Reality Check national survey are in! The research covers fresh work+life fit topics such as the U.S. presidential campaign, the impact of flexibility on customer service, as well as challenges some of the findings from other work+life research. Overall, the results show that, yes, the U.S. culture is making progress from the prior year, but there is still more work to be done.

Why conduct an annual Work+Life Fit Reality Check? In my first Fast Company blog posting, I wrote, “Work+life “fit” requires change on many levels: individually, managerially, organizationally and culturally.” And in my day-to-day work, I do see progress.

Individuals have greater access to the mindset and tools that help them partner with their employer to find mutually-beneficial work+life fit solutions. Managers are creating an environment that supports using flexibility as a tool to manage time, talent and resources. And organizations are operationalizing flexibility as a key lever for business success. But was change happening within the culture? Was progress being made on a broader scale?

To answer these questions, in 2006 we conducted our first national Work+Life Fit Reality Check survey. The goal was to take an annual “pulse” of the U.S. culture. We wanted to measure if the we were collectively evolving beyond our 20th Century, Industrial Age mindset and language about work, life and flexibility and adapting to a 24/7, high tech, global work reality. Last year, we identified and challenged a number of stereotypes keeping us stuck.

Now that the results for 2007 are in, join me over the next few weeks on both my Fast Company and Work+Life “Fit” blogs where I will take a more in-depth look at the areas of progress and opportunity identified in the findings. I look forward to hearing if they reflect your work+life fit “reality.”

12:36 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Work/Life: Houston's "Flex in the City" Takes Commuting Into the 21st Century

It seems I’m not the only one asking the question from my blog post a couple of weeks ago, “Why do we all commute at the same time?” Not only are others asking the question, but they are doing something about it!

FC Expert Blog readers shared examples of organizations rethinking how we commute in the comments section of the post—thank you! One was about staggered shifts at Boeing in Seattle, and the other about IBM in Germany where there are no set hours.

But companies aren’t alone in trying to bring commuting into the 21st Century. Communities are also recognizing the benefits of using flexibility to save money and resources that are currently wasted during our daily “mass” commute.

Yesterday, when I was having lunch with my former boss Ellen Galinsky, President of Families and Work Institute she mentioned the City of Houston’s “Flex in the City” initiative. The goal of Flex in the City (love that name!) is to get companies and individuals in Houston to use flexibility at the same time for one week in September to reduce the number of people commuting during the traditional rush hour period. The city’s 2006 Flex in the City effort resulted in an estimated $16.8 million savings. Here’s a description of the initiative from the City of Houston’s website:

“2007 Flex in the City is an opportunity for Houston area employers to try flexible work options. Employers are asked to adopt an additional flex option that eliminates at least one peak commute between September 17 – 28. During which time employers measure the effect on productivity – when the right employees, in the right jobs, practice the right flexible work option(s). At the same time the Houston measures the effects on mobility. By moving a relatively small number of cars off the roads during peak congestion periods, a measurable improvement in mobility can and will be realized. A savings of 906 peak-commute hours were experienced as a result of the 2006 Flex in the City on both the North and Southwest Freeways. This time saving translates into $16.8 million annual user cost savings.”

Houston will be recognized for their efforts this year as one of the When Work Works community-based honorees. (When Work Works is an award program overseen by Families and Work Institute and funded by the Alfred P. Sloan and Twiga Foundations that recognizes the innovative use of flexibility strategies in organizations and communities across the country.)

Houston, Boeing and IBM can’t be alone. There have to be more examples of new, more flexible commuting models out there. FC Expert Blog readers let’s put our heads together and keep gathering stories as a way to promote more change.

It can’t happen too soon. I was reading an article in this week’s Newsweek magazine that estimated, “more than 4 in 10 Americans are on the move during a two-hour window each weekday,” and “on average, Americans sit in traffic for 38 hours a year wasting an estimated 26 gallons of gas per person.” That doesn’t even include the estimated waste in human time and energy from waiting and stress.

Maybe the “rush hour” commute will become a relic of the past faster than I’d hoped.

12:34 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments

Work/Life: "Good" Mothers Don't Miss Back-to-School Night

A couple of months ago, I got an invitation to a national gathering of flexibility experts. This was a unique opportunity to spend two days sharing best practices with some of the most respected individuals in my field, and guess what my first thought was? “Oh, I can’t go because I will miss back to school night.”

That’s right. As I looked at my calendar to see if I could attend this once-in-a-lifetime event, my primary concern was back-to-school night and the how I couldn’t possibly miss it. Looking back now, it sounds silly. But in the moment, the choice seemed very clear. And it wasn’t attending the meeting.

Thankfully, I snapped out of it quickly and logically rethought my decision. I realized that my daughters would survive if I didn’t go to back to school night because their dad was more than capable of handling it. Furthermore, I would be missing out on a professional opportunity which was very important to me.

But don’t think I didn’t feel major guilt for a couple of days as, “how can a good mother miss back to school night?” kept ringing through my head. It made me stop and wonder how the definitions of a “good” mother, father, or adult child of an aging parent influence our work+life decisions.

In the end, I went to my meeting and it was wonderful. When I arrived home my absence from back to school night wasn’t even noticed as my husband competently navigated the visits to each classroom and left loving notes in each of their desks. Would he have done that if I’d been there? Probably not.

So, not only did I get a chance of a lifetime, my girls had evidence of how much their dad loves them that they wouldn’t have seen otherwise. It was a win-win. Maybe a “good” mother can miss back to school night after all.

Can you relate? Have your personal definitions of what a “good” parent or adult child of aging parents should do led to unnecessary work+life guilt?

02:10 pm | 0 recommendations | 3 comments

Work/Life: Why Do We All Commute at the Same Time?

A member of my team and I caught the 7:05 a.m. train into Manhattan for a client meeting. Something must have been wrong with the trains that morning because it was standing-room only and there were still eight stops to go. People were not happy. We arrived in Penn Station and then fought our way through the crowd into the equally packed subway. Once we emerged into fresh air we both looked at each other and almost simultaneously said, "Why do we all keep commuting at the same time when we really don't have to?"

We started imaging what the world would look like if everyone staggered the time they went to work or worked from home at least one day a week. Not only would you have fewer cars on the road and fewer people on public transportation, but the roads, trains and buses would be used more efficiently. For example, one group could arrive early and leave early, another shift could arrive mid-day and stay later, and then a final group could arrive in the late afternoon and stay through the evening.

Think of the benefits:
1) Teams and clients in other times zones would have better coverage
2) People would have more flexible options for managing their work+life fit
3) Employees would be less stressed and drained when they arrive at the office and at home
4) The environment would benefit
5) Companies would use their real estate more efficiently

As we arrived at our client's office, we ended our brainstorming session with a prediction: in 30 years we will look back and laugh that we all ever commuted to work at the same time everyday. Today we are like the pre-Industrial Age farmers who couldn't have imaged going to work in a factory. Our children and grandchildren will commute to a location when it makes sense, and not just because it's what "we all do." And they will do it in a flexible way.

What do you think? What is your vision of the future of commuting and what do you think the tipping point will be that will challenge this outdated, unnecessary behavior?

10:43 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Work/Life: It’s About Time AND Energy

My colleague’s been having a tough time. A number of relatives recently died, and she had a minor health scare. The other day she said, “I am getting a personal experience of how work and life is about time and energy. On paper, I still have the same number of hours I always did to get things done, but I just don’t have the energy. And I need to find a new “fit” that deals with all of these energy-draining circumstances, or I am going to hit the wall.”

Time and energy. Time management tools will only get you so far in finding a better “fit” if you don’t include the critical component of energy. And yet we don’t hear anything about it. Adding energy to the equation is so important that when I wrote my book, Work+Life: Finding the Fit That’s Right for You, five years ago I devoted an entire chapter to the concept. You'd think by now our culture would have caught on, but I’m beginning to see signs that might change.

Other work+life experts are incorporating energy (www.reneetrudeau.com) into their process. Another sign of change is the bold front-and-center headline “Are You Heading for an Energy Crisis?” on the cover of last month’s Harvard Business Review (October, 2007), for Tony Schwartz’s “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time,” article.

What does it mean to manage your energy? In a competitive, 24/7, high tech, global work reality it isn’t enough to clock your hours. You need an intuitive understanding of the sources of energy in your life, and the uses of energy.

Just as the personal and professional demands on your time are going to change throughout your life, so are the demands on your energy. The good news is, however, unlike time which is a finite resource, energy is renewable. But you need to be aware of when energy is being depleted to order to implement strategies to maintain and increase it. If it’s not part of your awareness, you will be continually frustrated when your detailed work+life fit time analysis keeps coming up short.

Schwartz’s process and my book include many of the same energy strategies—meditation, exercise, eating well, taking planned breaks from work, being with friends and family, and pursuing avocations. But our time-focused culture hasn’t figured out that the time spent on these activities is not a net loss. Quite the contrary, when the energy gain is included in the calculation, the time and energy increase is an invaluable positive net return.

So challenge the conventional wisdom that time is the only factor in managing your fit. Experiment with investing some of that precious time in energy enhancing activities (which by the way don’t actually require that much time), and begin to benefit from the positive net time and energy return.

Do you have a time and energy management strategy you’d like to share?

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Work/Life: Bye, Bye "8-to-6," Flexibility to Find a "Fit" Across Time Zones

Work+life flexibility is an effective retention strategy, but in a 24/7, high-tech, global work reality it is much more. It’s a resource and time management tool for coordinating global clients and teams so that work is done across time zones without burning people out. Too many people are working their traditional “8-to-6” schedule in addition to doing global work after-hours. Something has got to give, and greater flexibility is the solution.

Increasingly, I find business leaders are recognizing that you can’t ask people to work “8-to-6” and then get on calls with Asia from 11pm-3am without rethinking if the standard “8-to-6, in-the-office” model of work even applies anymore. It doesn’t. Flexibility in where, when and how work is done achieves global client and team objectives while giving people the time and energy to still have a personal life.

There is also the issue of fairness. For many individuals in other countries technology constraints require that all after-hours communications take place in the office. Therefore, unlike in the U.S. where late night or early morning calls can often happen at home, employees in less-developed countries will find themselves in the office around-the-clock. In other words, if a global organization makes “8-to-6” the norm for its U.S. employees then those in other times zones are consistently required to sacrifice their work+life fit with early morning or late-night communications. Without effective flexibility, someone somewhere is bearing the 24/7 brunt. To share the sacrifice, organizations need to encourage employees to use flexibility to find a work+life fit that accounts for responsibilities in other time zones, because it can benefit everyone.

A friend who manages a division for a Fortune 500 company recently told me how one of his employees went to my website, read my book and came to him with a work+life fit plan. The employee would work from 8-to-12pm on Wednesdays and then leave the office and go back to work from home from 7:00pm to 12:00 am servicing their Asia clients. Not only does the employee get more time with her daughter, but, as my friend noted, “Our Asia clients are thrilled because they know they can get a live body on Wednesdays without having to either come in early or stay late themselves. It’s a win-win.”

Yes, flexibility is a powerful tool for getting the talent you want and keeping the people you have, but perhaps even more importantly it’s the strategy that reflects the new way we all need to work—service clients effectively and coordinate teams fairly—and still hope to have a personal life in a 24/7 world. Bye, bye “8-to-6!”

08:34 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments

Courage to Share Our Stories!

Readers of my Work+Life Fit Blog shared my eighteen month work+life fit journey caring for my mother until her death from lung cancer this past July. The heartfelt emails I received from readers included their own personal eldercare experiences as well as surprising remarks about the courage I showed by sharing my story. And once again, I was reminded how difficult it is for most of us to share our work+life fit realities and choices, often at great cost.

Writing about my struggle of manage a full-time job, two children, a husband, and a sick mother whom I loved dearly wasn’t an act of courage. It was about survival and the search for a common understanding of experience and support. But for many of the people who reached out to me with their stories, that honesty was an act of bravery.

Why do stories matter? Because until we talk about how we’ve responded to work and personal transitions that challenged us to rethink our fit, the illusions that workplaces don’t need to be flexible and that careers are still linear will remain. Only when we begin to tell the truth about how we are really working and managing our personal responsibilities and choices will more meaningful managerial, individual, and cultural change occur.

But we don't say anything! I can't tell you how many times the following scenario has occurred when I've gone into a company to help develop a flexibility strategy. First, the leader who hired me explains that only a small percentage of their employees work flexibly. Then, when I start talking to individual managers and employees I find that a much larger number of people have creatively adjusted where, when, or how they work in order to manage their fit. But the "company" doesn't know about it. Why?

First, the individuals with the flexibility often don't want to say anything, "I don't want to call attention to this great thing I have and maybe lose it." The assumption being that he or she is the only one working differently from everyone else so, "shhhhh."

Second, people are afraid it will hurt their career to be perceived as not following the standard work model or career path. This is especially true for men. In our 2006 Work+Life Fit Reality Check survey, we found men significantly more likely to cite, "I'm afraid what others will think" as the reason they don't pursue flexibility. And if they do have flexibility, they don't want to talk about it. The same holds true for women.

Inevitably my corporate clients are shocked to learn about the wonderful examples of successful flexibility that already exist in their organizations. And that success prompts an even greater corporate level comfort, as well as commitment to capture, scale, operationalize, and optimize a mutually-beneficial flexibility process (not policy) more broadly. But it's not until those stories of how flex worked for the individual and the organization come to light, that the old paradigms of what work and careers should look like are challenged.

One of my favorite examples happened when I encouraged a friend who was going to quit a job she’d loved for over 15 years to present a proposal for flexibility before she left. To her shock, not only was her plan approved immediately but her boss said, “Oh, I did the same thing ten years ago.” Afterwards, my friend said, “It might have been nice if she’d shared the fact that she used flexibility during her career, maybe then I wouldn’t have come so close to quitting. I would have known there was another option!”

If I, as a work+life “fit” expert, have the courage to share my story with the world, then I urge everyone to consider taking the risk and talk with others. Your story about how you creatively used flexibility to manage your work+life fit in a way that met your needs as well as the needs of the business can not only help you find support, but it can move all of us further toward embracing new ways to work and chart our careers.

12:15 pm | 0 recommendations | 3 comments

Work/Life: Why It's Work+Life "Fit," Not Balance!

Welcome to my first posting as a Fast Company blogger! In the spirit of full disclosure, if you clicked through hoping to learn how to achieve “balance,” I am afraid you will be disappointed. You see, I don’t believe there is such a thing as work/life “balance,” a concept I first discussed in the provocative October, 2004 Fast Company article by Keith Hammonds, “Balance is Bunk."

If, however, you want to join a thought-provoking dialogue that challenges the conventional wisdom about managing your work+life "fit" in a 24/7, high tech, global work reality, then you are in the right place. That’s right, I said “work+life fit,” not balance.

Why does it matter whether we call it “balance,” or “fit?” Because words have meaning. For too many of us, “balance” is a magical, yet unattainable and unsustainable, 50-50 split between our work and our personal lives. For others it's some nebulous destination out there toward which we are all traveling simultaneously. Arriving at our collective "balance," we will all hold hands and celebrate. Neither of these scenarios will ever happen which is why balance has become a deficit model or that “thing we never have.”

Our thinking must change radically. "Balance” needs to be discarded along with all of the other 20th Century, Industrial-Age concepts that no longer apply in today’s world. As long as “balance” is the objective, we won’t see the possibilities for our work and life, which brings me back to work+life “fit” and the focus of this new weekly Fast Company blog.

How is work+life "fit" different? First, work+life “fit” is about the countless potential combinations of work and life. Your unique work and personal choices and circumstances determine your "fit." In other words, it’s about what you could have, not what you don’t have. This is a subtle but important mindset shift. With “fit,” there is no right or wrong answer, just what works for you and your job at a point in time.

Second, it is a verb, not a noun. Work+life “fit” is a career management strategy that helps you adjust the boundaries around work and the rest of your life whenever you experience a personal or professional transition, both large and small. That transition will require a new set of work+life choices, or a new "fit." Small adjustments in how, when and/or where you work make a big difference, but you have to see the possibilities and know how get there before you can make a change. That’s our goal.

Work+life “fit” requires change on many levels: individually, managerially, organizationally and culturally.

For individuals, it means understanding that work+life "fit" is a career management strategy that involves meeting your employer half-way to find mutually-beneficial solutions.

For managers, it means seeing work+life and flexibility not as a “perk” reserved for a particular demographic, but as a critical business strategy for managing time and people resources in a 24/7, high tech, global work reality.

For organizations, it means clarifying the process that creates a culture and work environment that supports work+life "fit" problem-solving and conversation between manager and employee.

Finally, for the culture overall, it means starting to ask the real question, which is “How do we all work and have a life in a 24/7, high-tech, global work reality where the old work and career models no longer apply?” Work has changed and careers have changed over the past 15 years. It’s time for us to catch up.

Please join me at Fast Company every week as we tackle this challenge from all points of change, and hopefully get a little bit closer to creating a new 21st Century model of “work+life fit,” not balance.