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The Manager's Work-Family Toolkit:

Introduction and Section 1

Introduction

As we approach the next millennium, our work environments continue to change at break-neck speed. Employees are working faster, harder and longer than ever before. The expectations of shareholders, taxpayers and customers continue to increase. Globalization and intense competition in the marketplace offer opportunities for both employees and employers. Organizations of all sizes and in all sectors are re-organizing, re-engineering and re-designing their processes, products and services. Industrialized nations are facing a shortage of skilled labour, and many industries are finding it increasingly difficult to attract and retain highly productive employees.

Chart 28: Weekly Hours of Employed Work

All these new forces in the world of paid work affect Canadian families as well as the organizations that employ them. The shape of family life has changed now that dual-earner families are increasingly a necessity and the norm as opposed to being the exception they were less than a lifetime ago. Businesses and other organizations employ a different spectrum of people than they did a generation ago in terms of age, sex, education, training, culture and experiences.

Employers are looking for ways to make their organizations family-friendly. Though they all know that this is "the right thing to do" in human terms, employers with work-life and work-family initiatives also know that their programs and policies contribute to getting and keeping the best employees, whose good work is necessary to quality products and services.

It is an item of faith. I am a statistician and I think in terms of a design experiment -- but I don't know how to design this experiment. It really boils down, not to evidence, but to logic and faith. -- Ivan Felegi, Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada

Maximizing success

The Manager's Work-Family Toolkit is for organizations that are moving into or moving on with work-family policies and programs. It is a guide to maximizing success founded on proven methods, approaches and strategies.

Of those organizations conducting formal impact assessments or evaluations of their work-family initiatives:

86% said they were very or somewhat effective in increasing productivity;
89% said they were very or somewhat effective in reducing absenteeism;
97% said they were very or somewhat effective in improving employee morale.

Christine Taylor, The Corporate Response to Rising Health Care Costs, Conference Board of Canada, 1996.

Work-family and work-life initiatives produce the best results for employers and help employees most when:

awareness of the issues is high,
utilization of and participation in programs is encouraged, and
supportive management behaviours are recognized and rewarded.

Communicating changing practices and policies is therefore the key to success, and one that requires careful consideration and in-depth consultation. Employees are being bombarded with change. They are required to learn new skills, reach changing objectives and implement new processes. As a result, when a new program or initiative is introduced there are many other issues seeking their attention. Communication must be clear, consistent and continual, using direct and indirect, verbal and non-verbal means. When this happens, management can reach the different points of view of their increasingly diverse workplaces.

Supportive managers

Managers must walk the talk. They are the key to ensuring appropriate awareness. Their behaviour is crucial, as are the ways they promote the use of and participation in the programs to individual employees and to their work units, departments or teams. It is no surprise that research shows they are more likely to demonstrate supportive behaviours if they are held accountable for their actions. Peter Drucker, management consultant says, "You can't manage what you can't measure."

Chart: Impact of Having a Supportive Manager

According to Duxbury and Higgins, managers must demonstrate their commitment to work-life initiatives, or they will not be taken seriously. If their support is lacking, these initiatives will be inconsistently applied and will not benefit those who most need them.

For an organization to become an employer-of-choice, and to attract and retain top talent, its leaders must make the connection between employer and employee satisfaction. They must do more than state polices and initiate programs, they must change their organizational culture. Only in this way will they eliminate barriers to workload improvement, career advancement, quality of service and institutional loyalty.

The challenge

"Work/family", "work-life", "families and work", "personal and professional lives" are competing or complementary terms, all of which point to basically the same approach to a supportive workplace. They all are founded on the research and experience showing that the most productive, committed and satisfied employees are those with positive and supportive home lives and that the happiest and healthiest citizens are those that are working in jobs they enjoy, that they find challenging and that are supportive and respectful of their lives outside of work.

Our challenge and opportunity is to set priorities, focus our energies in positive directions, invest in relationships, and facilitate and respond to the exciting and dynamic changes at home and at work.

Change will continue, and the pace of change is likely to increase. While we may not be able to predict the future, we know that creating supportive work environments, strengthening families and investing in our communities are all necessary to achieving goals such as organizational prosperity, individual and societal health and well-being, and personal satisfaction.

There will always be more work than we have time to do it in, so we have to focus on what work to do and do it well.
-- Laurie Harley, Director of Diversity and Workplace programs at IBM Canada Ltd.

SECTION 2

Getting Started: Your 12-Step Planning Guide

This planning guide will help a manager, task force, committee or organization create a supportive, family-friendly work environment. You should complete each step either formally or informally, using internal resources (employees and managers); or you can contract with an external consultant. The steps can be taken one at a time, or in parallel over a few days, weeks or months. The hardest and most important step is to get started - the rest is relatively easy.

STEP 1. Organize a work-life task force/committee or advisory group

Ensure broad representation.
Involve senior management.
Include representatives of your entire employee population (age, gender, cultures, family, marital and job status).
Establish mission statement, values and principles, set goals and objectives, plans and priorities.

STEP 2. Review existing information

Review employee demographics.
Identify top Human Resource issues from employee, manager and organizational perspectives.

STEP 3. Identify existing supportive policies and practices, pilots and trials, tools and techniques

See the Work-Family-Life Audit in this kit.

STEP 4. Assess your organizational culture

Conduct focus groups, interview key informants and document the unwritten rules and expectations, e.g. "To get ahead here you need to work a lot of overtime."
Ask customers and clients to describe the organization.
What is it like to visit? How are people treated?
Elicit answers about relationships and experiences -- not just traditional measures such as customer service and quality of products or services.
Were employees happy? Interested? Rushed? Over-worked? Do employees have the authority and resources to meet the customers' needs? Would the customer like to work for the organization? What characteristics of the organization or employees would you like to have in you organization?
Observe the organization and the daily activity:
Do people arrive happy? Are they wanting to work? Are they comfortable at work? Do people talk with each other? Is anyone excluded? Are people rushing and frazzled, or calm and busy? Do you hear laughter often? Do employees and customers seem to be having fun? What are people wearing? Is there a different "uniform" for different positions, e.g. suits for managers, casual for employees?

STEP 5. Assess behaviours and attitudes of employees, managers and unions

Observe how employees talk about each other, the company and the products/services.
Document how employees relate to each other socially.
How do they celebrate personal events? -- Birthdays, weddings, births.
Identify how employees and management recognize accomplishments -- Verbal recognition, rewards, celebrations, awards.

STEP 6. Determine work-life support needs

Use existing data (opinion surveys, employee relations data etc.,) or collect new specific data.
Conduct focus groups.

STEP 7. Benchmark against other organizations

Check out your competition, your suppliers and your customers.
How does your organization rate in comparison. What are their plans for increasing levels of support? What programs or initiatives do they offer that are different than yours?
Find out if they are addressing the same issues, and if they are interested in collaboration.

STEP 8. Develop a corporate work-life profile

Assess the data collected in steps 1-7 and identify strengths and weaknesses, challenges and opportunities.
Prepare a complete profile and an executive summary.
Share your profile with decision makers.

STEP 9. Design a comprehensive work-life strategy

Develop goals and objectives based on your work-life profile.
Develop a communication plan (internal and external).
Identify, recognize and celebrate exemplary practices (internal and external).

STEP 10. Design a monitoring and evaluation strategy

Prepare an evaluation and monitoring plan that includes an annual review of steps 1-7.
Be diligent, be realistic, be specific and measure everything you can: program participation, retention rates, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction.
Compare and contrast with your benchmark data .

STEP 11. Implement strategies and plans

Start with small steps and pilot programs that lead to visible successes; don't try to change the entire corporate culture in a day.
Communicate the strategy and plans to all employees and customers.
Don't be afraid to challenge traditional thinking.
Be prepared for backlash, since most people don't like change even if it is for the better. ("Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.")

STEP 12. Integrate work-life strategies with corporate goals and objectives

Don't keep your work-life strategy in a closet or on an island.
To create a truly supportive workplace, your plans need to be integrated with all the other management plans including: employee recognition, rewards strategies, occupational health and safety, human resources, benefits, financial planning, strategic planning and research and development.

To order a complete copy of The Manager's Work-Family Toolkit ($95), please use our Publications Order Form.