Although national unemployment hovers at double digits, employees demand work-life balance, which seems counterintuitive. According to the news reports, job prospects for new college graduates and those who are unemployed seem bleak. Should those who have jobs just be happy that they are employed? What does work-life balance really mean, and how can it become a reality?
Today’s Workforce
Is it a prerequisite for today’s workforce? The origin of work-life balance requests is coincidental with the influx of women to the workplace in the late 1970s. Those workers with infants and small children experienced the most acute need for work-life balance. Now, people in their 20’s who are new to the workforce decry the amount of hours they work in the same way as those who are nearing retirement. And those sandwiched between their teenagers and aging parents also long for work-life balance to better allocate their time between professional and personal priorities.
Today, those seeking work-life balance transcend all generations. Achieving it, however, means different things to different people. One’s age, lifestyle, and ability to prioritize and manage time all affect the definition of work-life balance.
The expression, work-life balance, is actually deceiving. Typically, it is a euphemism for electing some alternative work arrangement that enables an employee to work remotely, work fewer hours or work on terms that are more conducive to satisfying personal goals and priorities.
In addition, this request for work-life balance – which is viewed as a mandatory means of competitive recruitment and landing the title of employer of choice in some organizations – is a source of friction between managers and their employees.
Companies are Challenged to Drive Growth
The near-collapse of the financial services sector created a tsunami that has affected businesses of all sizes, driving some to bankruptcy and others to make deep cuts. These cuts created job losses that have stretched the capabilities of those who retained their jobs.
The Department of Labor estimates that 7 million jobs were lost during the past two years, causing the survivors to pick up the slack. While this has created productivity gains for employers, it also has extended working hours and increased stress for employees. According to a Kenexa Research Institute survey of 10,000 workers, published by USA Today on January 11, 2010, more than 30 percent of workers in government, retail, healthcare, communication, services, and utilities said they were understaffed. So it is not surprising that requests for work-life balance are prevalent.
However, all businesses, regardless of their size and mission, are under pressure to produce results and grow in order to remain viable. No organization is immune to the challenge of accomplishing results in this volatile economic environment. And, unlike 1993-2003, today’s high unemployment has created a competitive job market that favors employers, so fewer companies need to have work-life balance programs, i.e., any non-traditional 9-to-5 work arrangement such as job sharing, alternative work hours, telecommuting, et cetera, that will enable employees to have more personal time.
However, Gen X and Y view work-life balance as an imperative and a priority, so having these programs could be a competitive advantage (assuming salary, other compensation and the job itself are comparable to other companies), especially for firms that are in high tech or emerging markets.
Identifying the Need
Is it work-life balance that is needed, or simply better time management? What is the role of time management and personal self-discipline? While some professionals are doing the work of two, others are not pulling their weight. They arrive at 9 (for a 9 a.m. start time), but then get coffee or some breakfast and get “organized.” It is nearly 10 a.m. before they are actually ready to be productive. Then, add the time for the coffee and other breaks they need and the time in the workday evaporates with little accomplished.
If you believe that multitasking is the answer, think again. “People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time”, according to Clifford Nass, Eyal Ophir and Anthony Wagner. These three are Stanford researchers whose findings are published in the August 24, 2009 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers are still studying whether chronic media multitaskers are born with an inability to concentrate or are damaging their cognitive control by willingly taking in so much at once. But they are convinced the minds of multitaskers are not working as well as they could. In their view, by doing less, one could accomplish more.
Regardless of what one does for a living (and whether one works in the office or elsewhere), there are only 168 hours in a week. Part of achieving work-life balance is being able to set priorities, achieve goals and manage one’s time. Another component is technical competency, because when a performer is incompetent or inexperienced, the tasks take longer and results become elusive.
Another factor affecting time management is whether the performer understands the performance goals for the team. Some workers get so involved in the process they are performing that they forget about the need to produce a result. An audit-related example includes the time spent planning the review. Some auditors believe that they must collect every scrap of information concerning the process under review as though they were going to rival the business managers for subject matter expertise. In so doing, too much time is spent planning, which produces too little results, and the audit exceeds budgeted hours with little value-added impact.
Within results-oriented (aka pay-for-performance) organizations, employees either perform or risk receiving performance appraisals that effectively freeze their salary or result in termination. The emphasis is not how many hours you have worked, but what have you contributed. It is the cause of the Peter Principle in which one rises to the level of one’s incompetency, where your mobility and salary are frozen, assuming you are not fired.
In the aftermath of the financial services meltdown, this results-driven focus permeates today’s business environment, affecting all positions. Its impact is arguably harder on exempt employees, i.e., the ones who receive a fixed salary regardless of the hours worked than non-exempt staff who must receive overtime (in the U.S.) for hours worked in excess of 40.
The Challenge of Managing Knowledge Workers by Remote Control
Requests for alternative work arrangements mask the more serious problem of managing knowledge workers, i.e., people who are paid for what they know and how well they are able to transform that into something useful. Internal auditors are an example of the quintessential knowledge workers because they perform non-revenue generating, monitoring functions.
Consider the three basic phases in any audit: planning, testing, and reporting. All depend on critical thinking. Just how long should it take to think creatively or productively about the scope of an audit? How long should it take to write up an audit finding or compile an audit report?
It is a lot easier to measure productivity when employees create something tangible that can be measured in units per hour. However, the U.S. it has increasingly become a nation of knowledge workers. We should face the fact that some people think slower than others but reach better conclusions than their speedier colleagues. However, this does not necessarily mean that more time spent on thought equates to better results.
So, as one contemplates instituting alternative work arrangements, just what is the right workload for knowledge workers? How much time is needed to accomplish thinking work? How long should a knowledge worker’s tasks (i.e., creativity, problem solving, design and drawing conclusions) take? What is a realistic workload? More importantly, how closely is the quality of results monitored? For example, if auditors regularly complete superficial audits that are accomplished in a timely manner and in adherence to the pre-determined time allocations for planning, testing and reporting, the company experiences greater detection risk than it realizes.
Companies need to increase and sustain productivity, especially in this volatile, competitive global economy. Consequently, they seek to eliminate administrative activities, which reduce the time that could be spent on mission-critical or mission-oriented tasks. Working remotely puts greater pressure on managers to provide effective and timely direction, oversight and coaching. More time needs to be allocated to communication. And “out of sight out of mind” is a genuine concern for those who want their career to progress but who work remotely. The ability to “see and be seen” requires more concentrated effort and time than it would if all players were on site.
The Technology Enabler
Technology was supposed to make our lives easier and give us more free time. I remember being told this 20 years ago and fantasized about how I would spend it. Well, the reality is quite the contrary. Technology has now made it easier to work 24 hours a day – every day. Technology enabled the advent of virtual teams and created opportunity for employees to work from home (with or without their fuzzy slippers and pajamas). This ability is especially nice when the demands of work and one’s personal life collide and has made working remotely very popular.
While technology has made it possible to work remotely, does this mean that everyone should be doing it as a means of achieving work-life balance? Although technology enables us to work 24/7, this is not necessarily good for the business or the individual. When people in their 20s and 30s want to work from home and this is denied, they look at their boss’s age and attribute the denial to the generational difference. But some jobs – like landscaping or retail sales – do not lend themselves to telecommuting, job sharing or alternative arrangements. These jobs need to be performed on-site and during normal working hours. Other jobs, like administrative support, are just more efficiently executed if performed on-site.
Factors Affecting the Work-Life Balancing Act
The company one works for, its culture, the size of one’s department, and the job one has to perform affects access to alternative work arrangements. In smaller companies and departments, the cost of installing and maintaining equipment needed to work remotely can be a barrier and can fuel the risks of data leakage and unauthorized access to systems and confidential information.
The nature of the job also affects the work-life balancing act. In certain corporate cultures like investment banking and sales, working long hours is expected because the deals (results) are what matter and their occurrence does not follow a normal 9-to-5 shift. For global businesses with virtual teams, the work is performed non-stop. There is inherently more work-life balance flexibility in internal audit than other functions because the work is not date sensitive. In contrast, finance work revolves around the month-, quarter- and year-ends, and these dates shift each year. Lending, M&A and sales are three examples of work that revolves around consummating deals, which could occur at any time of the week, month or year. So, if one needs a 9-to-5 schedule or a lot of scheduling flexibility, choosing the right job is critical.
Within the audit function, the amount of travel needed to complete the work affects work-life balance. The work-life balance of an internal auditor in a three-person department within a community bank with 10 branches that are all within a 60-mile radius from headquarters will differ from that of an internal auditor in a similarly sized audit department in a chemical company with worldwide operations.
Work-life balance manifests itself differently depending on the nature of the audits. Risk-based operational audits of de novo processes can be more involved (and possibly more stressful) than recurring financial statement audits. While aspects of risk-based process and financial auditing can be accomplished without being at the auditee site (e.g., by using data mining and analysis), these audits cannot be completed without being on site. “Phoning it in” will not work because it is imperative to be physically on-site at some point during the audit.
And, as anyone who works in a one-person department knows, it is helpful to have a sounding board when evaluating test results and arriving at an opinion. It is also easier to discuss audit test results with clients in person, so reactions can be observed directly and issues can be resolved. While these exchanges can occur via email, video, Skype or phone, there is no replacement for meeting in person.
Personal Strategies for Enhanced Work-Life Balance
Given the number of jobs eliminated because of the economy, your work-life balance may need some adjustments. Following are some strategies to regain equilibrium:
- Propose some compensatory time-off programs, if you are really doing the work of two.
- Think about your assignments. What can be eliminated?
- Find your life’s work, if you are not already doing it already. Working will be more joyful and rewarding.
- Manage your time, e.g., learn to say no in a diplomatic way. The easiest way to do this is to respond, “I’m tied up for the rest of today and am on deadline, but I can help you tomorrow morning (or whatever time works better for you), if you like.”
- If you are doing the work of two, identify aspects of the job that are not adding value and are not mission critical, but be sure you are not eliminating a key control.
Try these strategies. You may not hit the bull’s-eye on this moving target, but we all know whoever hits closest wins.