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Pay Attention to Work/Life Issues
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As the business world grows ever more competitive, the workplace is becoming
increasingly intense, and the pressure on individuals can be damaging. Study after study
shows that most people nowadays feel they are working too hard and for too many hours---often
in more than one job. The effects include fatigue, anxiety, depression, sadness
and anger. Problems abound at home. Relationships at work become strained. Morale
sinks. Quality and productivity suffer dramatically. Turnover skyrockets: The best
people simply won't work for you if it prevents them from meeting their personal needs.
Is the solution to hire more people and spread around the burden? Expect less of each
person? Seize fewer opportunities in the marketplace? Become less profitable? Get
crushed by the competition? These solutions are simply not realistic in the real new
economy.
IF NOT FEWER HOURS, THEN MORE CONTROL
A manager at Microsoft once told me, "We have a flexible scheduling policy for
everybody: You can work any eighty hours a week you want." He was joking, but there
is much more to that idea than just humor. When individuals have more control over
their own schedules---even if they must work many, many hours---they are much better
able to balance their work requirements with their personal responsibilities. This allows
employees to focus more on work when they are working and also results in much greater
levels of commitment. At one customer service center owned and operated by Xerox,
managers turned over scheduling to the center's employees and the result was a 30%
reduction in absenteeism. Meanwhile leaders at Johnson & Johnson have found that
employees who worked flextime averaged 50% less absenteeism than others.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
The opportunities are increasing every day for employers to give people more control
over where they live and work. With advances in communications and transportation
technologies, proximity of location is steadily diminishing as a logistical concern. What
is more, an increasing share of the work to be done is information related---"bytes not
bits" as the saying goes---and thus more amenable to being done from remote locations.
Because individuals increasingly want and expect more control, smart business leaders
are doing everything they can to accommodate flex-place demands. When J.C. Penney
implemented a system for matching geographical job opportunities with geographical
preferences of its employees, the company turned a negative (forced transfers) into a
positive, yielding increased performance and retention. Telecommuting programs
typically result in similar successes.
FLEX-TIME AND FLEX-PLACE YIELD INCREASED PERFORMANCE
Often people perform much better when they have flexible work arrangements because
they don't want any question to arise that might compromise their situation. When
people work out their custom deals, they will work doubly hard to prove themselves and
keep the deals in place. And they won't be going to work anywhere else any time soon.
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Managing Talent through the Downturn |
For a limited time only (we hope),
Bruce Tulgan is offering a special presentation addressing workplace
issues in the current economic downturn. For more information, see our
Web site at
http://www.rainmakerthinking.com/downturn.htm, or contact
Mark Kurber via phone (203.772.2002 x110) or
email.
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