May 08 National Newsletter   How work-life conflict is eroding your firm's profitability and sustainability Andrew Levy, Consultant, Beaton Consulting

 

 

 

Are you a managing a law firm? Are staff retention and talent recruitment two of your biggest challenges? And are you a Baby Boomer? It may just be that you are part of the problem.

 

Beaton Consulting has released a new report into the demands that people face at work and at home and the consequences these demands have on their work and home lives and – importantly for readers of this publication – on their employer.

 

The report is entitled "Work-life balance in Australia in the New Millennium: rhetoric versus reality" and can be downloaded from www.beaton.com.au. The report was written by Canadian academics Dr Linda Duxbury and Dr Chris Higgins and uses survey data collected by Beaton Consulting in 2007 from a sample of nearly 12,000 Australian managers and professionals. This makes it the largest study into the subject ever conducted in Australia.

 

In summary, the report finds that managers and professionals are indeed working long hours. It shows how these hours are a key driver of turnover and absenteeism in firms. With turnover costs of around $100,000 per person, and the costs of absenteeism, it’s actually costing partners a huge amount in terms of profits.

 

Even in the unlikely event that turnover costs aren’t your concern, there’s the mere effort of trying to find suitable candidates to fill your ongoing needs. Baby Boomers tend to view hours at work as an indicator of commitment and loyalty to the firm. Perhaps this is because the bulk of their career was spent in times of high unemployment, when competition for jobs was fierce, so it was a way to prove one’s value. But this is no longer the situation. It’s now a seller’s market for labour – and hours at work are more likely to be turning people away, as younger professionals choose to work for firms and partners who are supportive and flexible and are less likely to be motivated by the promise of a vast income “one day”.

 

Further, part-time work is no solution, because part-timers (usually women with children) tend to squeeze more hours into their part-time slot than they are paid for, and then do a full week’s work in commitments outside work. So part-timers often have even less balance than full-timers. Part-time work turns out to be a complete furphy of a solution. Instead, the key word is flexibility.

 

"Work-life conflict" (as the problem is termed) is one of the biggest strategic issues facing business and the professions in the short, medium and long term. But the report does provide some key things that firms can do now, to bring back staff commitment, engagement and intention to stay around

 

This brief outline covers 5 topics:

 

1. What the issue is about – and what it is not about
2. How many hours people are really working
3. Who the is problem worse for
4. Why this is a such a problem for law
5. Things that will have the biggest impact in alleviating the problem in the short to medium term

 

1. WHAT THE ISSUE IS ABOUT – AND WHAT IT IS NOT ABOUT

 

The term “work-life balance” has all sorts of connotations and to many experienced practitioners, may sound like a nice-to-have dream that is simply not attainable given the demands of clients in the era of email and Blackberry. To other people, work-life balance is about helping women stay in the workforce by letting them work part-time after they have children. While these may be your experience of the term, they do not adequately reflect the impact this topic is having on Australian businesses, including law firms.

 

The more accurate description is the term is "work-life conflict" which comprises these four elements:

 

1.Role overload: this occurs when an individual has too much to do and too little time to do it in.

2. Work interferes with family: this occurs when work demands and responsibilities make it more difficult to fulfil family role responsibilities.

3. Family interferes with work: this occurs when family demands and responsibilities make it more difficult to fulfil responsibilities at work.

4. Caregiver strain: this occurs when an employee experiences physical, financial or emotional strain which can be attributed to the need to provide care or assistance to an elderly dependent.

 

Work-life balance is not just about childcare
 

The report paints a picture of just what types of family commitments people have outside work.

 

For example, the report shows that work-life balance is no longer just about childcare. A significant proportion of people have responsibilities for an elderly parent or relative – referred to as “eldercare”. As anyone with elderly parent will know, eldercare can be just as much as a commitment as childcare.

 

Just over one in three managers and professionals have an elderly dependant who lives nearby and almost half have responsibility for an elderly dependent who lives elsewhere. Many have responsibility for more than one elderly dependent.

 

Interestingly, people are more likely to share eldercare than childcare. In fact, just over half of the respondents agreed that within their family, the responsibility for eldercare is shared. When it is not shared, both men and women agreed that in their family, the woman has the primary responsibility for eldercare.

2. HOW MANY HOURS ARE PEOPLE REALLY WORKING?

 

If you’re a solicitor or you manage a legal practice, then you already know how hard lawyers work. Here’s a sample of what the data shows:

 

• Approximately 20% of the men and 10% of the women in the sample spend more than 56 hours per week in work
• The majority (69%) of the sample extend their work day and spend time working from home in the evening and on weekends. These people spend approximately 6 hours each week performing unpaid overtime.

 

On average, employees devote 75.7 hours per week to work and family activities. Given these demands, it is not surprising they have relatively few hours to spend in leisure – only 11 hours each week.

 

The majority of employees work long hours and bring work home to complete. This is unfortunate because, hours per week in work are not a good predictor of productivity. However, they are a good predictor of:

• Role overload
• Work interferences with family, and
• Physical and mental health problems.

 

In fact the strong link between hours in work and role overload, work-life conflict, burnout and physical and mental health problems suggest that these work loads are not sustainable over the long term.

 

The people in this sample are 3.6 times more likely to give priority to their work role than to their family role.

 

3. WHO IS THE PROBLEM WORSE FOR?

 

Not surprisingly, the report finds that employees who have both childcare and eldercare (the so called “sandwich generation”) have higher demands than those in other groups. But many of the men in the sample have lower demands overall. Why? The answer is quite simple: they are more likely to have a spouse who works part-time and who has assumed primary responsibility for tasks at home. These men have fewer limits with respect to the number of hours they work.

 

So if you are male, and a Baby Boomer, you are less likely to be in position to know what it’s like juggling work and family responsibilities. Ask yourself: are you seeing the world through your eyes or through theirs?

 

On the other hand, the majority of women do not enjoy the kind of support at home that men do. Rather, they are part of a dual-career family where work and non-work demands are shared more evenly in the family.

 

This gender difference with respect to family support for career may help explain gender differences in career success in a sector that has traditionally focused on hours at work as a measure of productivity, contribution, loyalty and engagement.

 

One fascinating finding in the report, is how many women have delayed having children because of their careers. This has created a huge gap in our population, so that there simply aren’t going to be enough people entering the job market to fill the positions of those leaving. This is where the sustainability problem comes up.

4. WHY IS THIS A PROBLEM FOR FIRMS?

 

The report suggests that many firms will not be competitive in an increasingly competitive labour market. In particular, they will struggle when it comes to attracting and retaining professionals, unless they are able to deal with the issues that are important to their workforce.

 

Here some key points:
• Employees are unlikely to be committed to your firm if they experience high levels of role overload and work interferes with family.
• Only half (54%) of employees are highly satisfied with their jobs.
• Just over one in three (38%) were moderately satisfied while 8% were dissatisfied.
• A substantial number of professionals are dissatisfied with workloads, career development and pay.
• Professionals with high levels of role overload, work interferes with family and family interferes with work are less likely to report high levels of job satisfaction.
• Work interferes with family, in particular, is associated with a decline in job satisfaction.

 

Our own analysis of the legal profession here, indicates that life is particularly tough for women with dependents in the law. As a result, many skilled female lawyers are staying away. But with women making up more than half the number of legal graduates, that makes an already tight market even tighter.

 

Turnover

And what is effect of this:

• Almost one in four professionals are thinking of leaving their current firms once a week or more – in fact, 5% indicate that they are thinking of leaving daily, 6% several times a week or more, and 12% approximately once a week.
• Fewer than half the sample (43.5%) said that they never think of leaving their current firm.
• If you experience work-life conflict (or specifically, overload, high work interferes with family and family interferes with work) you are approximately three times more likely to intend to leave than if you have lower levels work-life conflict.

 

This is why work-life conflict translates directly into turnover costs and hits your partners’ profits.

 

Flexibility around work schedules is low
 

The report finds that flexibility with respect to work hours helps balance work and life, reduces absenteeism and is a powerful recruitment and retention tool. Despite this, flexibility levels are perceived, across the board, to be very low.

 

Only half the sample work for a supportive manager
 

The report finds that support from one’s manager or partner is associated with higher work-life balance and lower absenteeism. On the other hand, having an unsupportive manager:

• Decreases your commitment,
• Increases your stress,
• Decreases your job satisfaction, and
• Increases your intention to leave.

 

So how are these partners going at supporting their staff?

• Half (55%) of employees in this sample perceive high levels of management support.
• One in ten report to a non-supportive manager.
• But one in three report to a manager who is inconsistent with respect to his or her management behaviour.

 

There is a long way for partners to go to improve these figures.

5. WHAT THINGS WILL HAVE THE BIGGEST IMPACT IN ALLEVIATING THE PROBLEM IN THE SHORT-MEDIUM TERM

What can employers do to reduce work-life conflict?

 

There is no "one size fits all solution" to the issue of work–life conflict. But the report shows that there are three concrete things that firms can do to reduce work-life conflict right now:

1. Increase partners’ ability to be “supportive”. Yes, folks, change partners’ behaviour towards their staff.
2. Increase perceived flexibility. This has nothing to do with policies. It’s about lawyers perceiving that if they need to take time off, that their partner will be fine with that, and
3. Reduce workloads. This means take as much administrative and other burdens away from professionals as is reasonably possible, and give time off to recover from periods of intense work.

 

These three strategies must be implemented hand in hand, not piecemeal. The reason for this is that the data shows that, through their behaviour, managers are the ones who make workers believe that they are able to exert some degree of control over their work schedule, and hence to reduce work-life conflict.

 

1. Increase partners’ ability to be supportive:
 

Partners need to improve their behaviour. That is, stop behaving like it’s a seller’s market for labour and start realising the true economics: that you simply cannot afford to behave towards your staff in any way other than supportively.

 

Specifically, partners need to:
• Make work expectations clear
• Be better at planning the work to be done and what options people have when busy periods are over or people feel overloaded.
• Provide constructive feedback when performance standards are not met. This is a skill most lawyers need to learn,
• Ask for employees' input before making decisions that affect their work
• Have realistic expectations about the amount of work that can be done in a given amount of time, and
• Do not expect employees to put in long hours, just because the partner does.

 

2. Develop appropriate email etiquette – especially for after hours work

 

3. Limit the amount of work that employees take home.

 

4. Increase perceived flexibility:
 

To help employees cope with work-life conflict, employers need to make it possible for their staff to arrange their work schedule to:
• Meet personal/family commitments
• Interrupt their work day for personal/family reasons and return to work
• Take their holidays when they want to
• Be home in time to have meals with their family, and
• Vary their hours of work.

 

5. Challenge the long hours culture:
 

Firms need to challenge the type of culture that encourages attitudes like:
• If you don't work long hours and take work home you will not advance in your career
• Career advancement is linked to long hours and never saying no, and
• Hours at work is an indicator of commitment, loyalty to the firm.

You can do this by focusing on output and deliverables rather than hours and being seen.

 

6. Introduce new performance measures and rewards:

Firms need to introduce new performance measures. These measures need to focus on objectives, results and output. That is, they need to move away from a focus on hours to a focus on output.

 

It is very difficult – if not impossible – to increase perceived flexibility in firms where the focus is on hours rather than output and presence rather than performance. So, to increase perceived flexibility, employees need to reward output not hours and reward what is done, not where it is done. They also need to reward people who have successfully combined work and non-work domains and not promote those who work long hours and expect others to do the same.

 

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?

 

None of this is easy and some of it may be hard to accept. But if you are concerned with the profitability and sustainability of your practice, then you may feel it is your responsibility to at least consider what the data is saying.

 

If you simply take from this article that the behaviour of your partners is contributing to the high levels of staff attrition, low morale, commitment and productivity, then you have taken the first step.

 

And don’t despair.  We talk to partners all the time about how to work with people in better ways, and they’re rarely as terrified as the managing partner.