Chapter 8
Moving Your Manager towards Work/Life Balance
In This Chapter
Understanding your boss
Showing how work/life balance benefits everyone
Explaining what you want
Negotiating your way to success
Handling opposition
Accepting no for an answer
Your boss may respect and appreciate the work you do and can see that you want to balance your work and your personal life. However, people in management positions have their own goals to meet and these often affect the decisions they make. Putting it bluntly, your boss needs to think about matters other than just you.
Managers base their planning, decisions and outputs on what best suits the entire team/department/company. They work out how your requested change in your working arrangements is going to affect productivity, staffing costs, performance, work outputs and other staff.
This chapter shows you the importance of putting together a good business case that not only gets your boss to give you the go ahead for more flexible working arrangements, but also results in real benefits for the workplace.
Managers Are People Too
If you enjoy your job, the best way to get a better work/life balance is to ask your manager for more flexibility. This flexibility could involve one or more of these options:
Banking hours: This is when you work overtime to be used up at a later date, such as for a school sports day, medical appointment, and so on. This can also be used to make up time when you have to leave work earlier than normal for an unplanned event, for example, caring for a sick child.
Compressing your working hours: Some people choose to work ten hours, four days per week, in order to have one working day off each week.
Having flexible starting and finishing times: For example, you might start at 7 am and leave at 3 pm, or start at 10 am and work until 6 pm.
Switching to reduced hours: For various reasons, some people find they cannot continue to work full time. Negotiating shorter working hours means the employee stays in the same job (job sharing is one solution to this) and the employer keeps the skilled and trained worker.
Nobody enjoys walking into the manager’s office and asking for something that is not yet being offered. You may have a very good reason for requesting a change to your working hours or structure but you must make sure that you have fully researched what your manager — or your company — needs from you.
You know what you want — what does the boss want?
I’m fairly confident that I know what you want from your work and your life:
Affordable child care or care for elderly parents
An enjoyable job and achievable career progression
Good training and development opportunities
Good health
More time with family and friends
More time for sport and hobbies
Time to do some voluntary or community work
Am I mostly right? I also think that bosses want pretty much the same for themselves.
What must your boss achieve?
Even more than your own job, managers’ jobs are measured in terms of set outcomes and targets they must achieve. A great deal of their time is spent looking after the two layers of staff that surround them. A good manager tries to keep you and your colleagues interested, motivated and working productively. A good manager also tries to protect your and your colleagues’ jobs, responsibilities and achievable workloads.
Managers want
Improved employee wellbeing, morale and loyalty
Increased employee productivity
Reduced absenteeism
Recognition and rewards by their managers for leadership and target achievement
For your flexible workplace arrangement request to be considered seriously, you must get their attention. This can be done by linking your proposal to the outcomes that they are interested in.
Convincing Your Boss to Care
Many employers are finding difficulty in retaining skilled staff. Many are now realising they need flexible workplaces for these important reasons:
Ageing of the workforce: As baby-boomers (the generation born following World War II) steadily reach retirement age, employers are accepting that their skills can be used beyond the age of 55.
Fewer numbers of workers entering the workforce: The baby-boomer generation is the single largest generation in the workforce. As these people retire, the volume of workers replacing them is going to be smaller.
Instability: Employers need to create a workplace that employees want to stay in for the long haul.
Lower fertility rates: Australians are having fewer children than were born 50 years ago so competition for employees is going to be stronger in future.
Non-traditional employees: Retirees, people with caring commitments (children, elderly parents, and so on) and people with disabilities have skills and experience of value to employers — when the employer can offer flexible workplace conditions.
But wait, there’s more!
You can show your boss many advantages of using flexible work practices, including:
Assisting and improving compliance with anti-discrimination and workplace relations laws
Being recognised as an employer of choice
Earning greater staff loyalty and higher return on training investment
Improving occupational health and safety records
Improving productivity
Maintaining a better match between peaks and troughs in workloads and staffing
Reducing absenteeism and staff turnover
Reducing stress levels and improving morale
Retention versus replacement
Employers generally want to employ the best staff they can and no employer likes to lose valuable staff. Replacement costs accumulate through paying out a leaving staff member’s entitlements, re-advertising the position, conducting a selection process and training the new staff member. What is more difficult to calculate are the additional costs incurred through lost experience and corporate knowledge, having to re-establish good customer service relationships and the general impact of staff turnover on other staff’s morale and workload.
Many flexible work options are on offer for employers to use to attract and to keep good staff.
Defining Your Demands
Thanks to the Internet, email, messaging systems and working in a global economy that functions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you’re no longer bound by sticking rigidly to working from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday.
Flexible working means adaptable or variable working-hours arrangements. Because the working hours are flexible, the arrangements can include many different versions, such as
Flexible leave arrangements
Flexible rostering or scheduling
Flexible start and finish times
Job sharing
Make-up time
Nine-day fortnights/compressed working week
Regular or occasional working from home
Regular part-time work
Rostered days off
‘Downshifting’ — finding flexible arrangements that suit you
The popular term downshifting is widely used, but with many definitions. To simplify the meaning of this word a little, I’ll explain. Downshifting originally stemmed from the idea of voluntary simplicity, or simplifying the way you live. This simplification was (and still is) most commonly achieved by reducing your salary, minimising your purchases and use of material goods, and being more aware of environmental sustainability. Many people immediately picture the outcome of these actions as quitting their jobs in the city and heading towards country cottage farms that provide their food, shelter and a small income.
However, in terms of finding a work/life balance that is achievable (and presumably, a less dramatic move) for people with careers, families, mortgages and an appreciation of some of life’s labour savers, downshifting has two other meanings:
Making the decision to change your lifestyle by taking a job that makes you less money but provides you with more fulfilment. This is achieved through the increased opportunity to spend time with family, through doing non-work activities and through negotiating flexible working arrangements. For more information on how you can do this for your own career and work/life balance, see Chapter 14.
Taking a form of downshifting known as voluntary demotion, which describes when an employee elects to take, with the approval of their employer, a lower position than their current role. Many government positions have provisions for this choice but whether you can make the change depends on the needs of the department and of the employee. These demotions can be granted for many reasons:
• Change of career direction
• Changing from field work to office work (and vice versa)
• Health/illness
• Job relocation
• Reducing commuting times
• Reducing the stress and workload of a particular role
• Reducing work hours
• Undertaking more education
• Upcoming retirement
To discuss downshifting, this book uses the first of the two definitions. I believe this definition of downshifting provides a much clearer and more practical link to arranging the flexible working arrangement that suits you. These flexible working arrangements can be applied in a variety of ways.
Flexible start and finish times
Employers can specify the core hours of the day when employees are required to be in the workplace, and can give employees the flexibility to start early/late and finish early/late. This means that you’re able to negotiate the most suitable start and finish times to suit your family responsibilities and also meet your work commitments.
Shorter working hours
Shorter working hours can mean two things. First, you can break the culture of working overtime and, instead, be able to go home at a reasonable time without damaging your career prospects.
Second, you can choose to reduce your working hours from full time to part time. Part-time work can range from four and a half days a week to only half a day, depending on your workload, budget and career expectations.
Rostered or accrued days off
Employees can work additional hours during the week in order to accrue sufficient hours to have a rostered day off once a fortnight or once a month. This arrangement doesn’t change the total number of hours worked by an employee. Some employers allow employees to work additional hours during the week and have Friday afternoon off when the office is quiet.
Banking time
Employees can accumulate extra hours worked to take time off in lieu of payment for a specific purpose, or at a time which is convenient to the employer and employee. Employees are given the equivalent time off on an hour-for-hour basis for the additional hours worked. If employees haven’t banked enough hours to cover a particular absence, they can be required to make up the time within an agreed time frame.
Accumulated hours can be banked for school holidays or for ad hoc or unexpected family matters, such as medical appointments, pupil-free days, school or sporting events for children.
Records need to be kept of additional hours worked. Employers may wish to consider placing a limit on the number of hours or days that can be accumulated, and a time limit for the clearance of accumulated hours or workers could be at risk of working too many hours.
Compressed working week
The hours in a work cycle can be compressed into fewer, but longer shifts, for example 10-hour shifts so that employees can choose to work their ordinary working hours over four days rather than five days.
Term-time work
This work cycle applies during school terms with the employee taking leave for the school holidays. This arrangement particularly suits workers at kindergartens, schools and universities, with options for the employee to take leave without pay during the holiday periods. This leave is extra to their annual four weeks leave. Alternatively, they can purchase leave to cover the non-term time periods.
Win–win of working from home
Telecommuting is work done either full time, part time or on an occasional basis by an employee. This is work done away from the traditional office environment, including work from home or via the Internet when the employee is travelling for work reasons.
By using the term telecommuting, I am separating the other ‘Working from home’ employment system, which applies to people running their own businesses from home (commonly called home-based business). That topic is discussed in Chapter 13.
Making an Offer the Boss Can’t Refuse
Before you walk into your manager’s office and ask for a more flexible working arrangement — for flexible working hours, unpaid school holiday leave or working from home — you need to take the business’s needs and goals into account and make sure that your arrangement does not negatively impact the business.
Presenting a business case to your boss is an effective way of showing that you have thought your situation through seriously and ensured that your proposal can benefit your employer. Your boss needs to know that, under any flexible working arrangement, your job can be properly managed, that it has the capacity to provide you with flexible working options and that it can be developed into guidelines for other staff to use.
Developing a compelling business case
For your purposes, a business case is not something you hide a newspaper and some soggy sandwiches in. A business case is a structured proposal for business change that is explained and justified in terms of costs and benefits. Here are some important pieces of information to include in your business case:
Discuss the impact on your customers: Many customers like their preferred contact person available full time. However if two staff are in a job-share arrangement, the staff members can offer the customer earlier start times or later finishing times for contact on their particular day working.
Identify the benefits: You can introduce more work/life flexibility options to improve staff morale and wellbeing. For example, job sharing can create employment opportunities for workers not currently in the company. Job sharing also can prevent other full-time workers from leaving the company.
Identify what training employers can undertake: Find out if any of the company’s managers are currently working flexibly. Are they aware of what the company currently offers staff? Include suggestions to adding work/life balance modules into manager training and inductions.
List HR and IR policies already in place and how they can be improved: If the company has a flexible hours policy, find it and review it. Has it ever been used? Are staff members aware of it? Is it still relevant? An existing agreement may apply to maternity leave. Find out how many women return after maternity leave. If they don’t return, find out why.
Show the savings: Flexible working arrangements can save costs by reducing absenteeism, staff turnover, recruitment costs and training costs for new staff.
State how your employer can monitor and evaluate the new workplace arrangements: Explain that your employer can measure punctuality when core working hours are extended or reduced, can compare rates of absenteeism before and after new flexibility options are introduced, measure rates of staff turnover and the reasons for leaving and staying (via staff exit interviews) and look for an increase in the number of applicants for newly advertised positions (because the business is now a preferred employer).
Using case studies to clinch the deal
Like most people, I love hearing about success stories. Good case studies show a company or person identifying a problem, coming up with a solution, putting the solution into practice and reaping the benefits. Case studies can also be used to encourage other employers to try new ways of working as well.
The Diversity Council of Australia has a range of Australian employer case studies to look through, and convenes an awards scheme that celebrates employers of choice. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is a well-known employer that can provide you with a good start on what policies are being used to motivate employees and give them more flexibility in their work.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
The ABC introduced the following policies to improve work/life balance options for their employees:
Availability of information: Information was improved via regular mail-outs to state human resource (HR) managers and directors. Specific information was sent to department supervisors on how to implement the new working arrangements, a work/life improvement mailing list was made available for interested staff and work/life management workshops were set up around Australia.
Men at Work Program: This program led to a series of interactive workshops where participants could discuss and learn about men’s physical and psychological health, how to balance their work and lives, how to deal with relationships and communication, as well as networking and mentoring systems.
Women in Television Project: Workshops available for women aimed at developing skills in career planning, negotiation and mentoring. The project ran a series of nationwide networking lunches on a range of work/life topics. As well, a series of breakfast seminars, featuring local and international speakers, was conducted. A newsletter titled Visions of Balance was published and included case studies of industry women balancing work and family commitments.
Work/life arrangements: The arrangements aimed to recognise an employee’s work environment, including long hours, shift and rostered work, blocks of concentrated work throughout the year, early-morning starts and late-night finishes, immediate deadlines and work requiring travel at short notice and work at a range of locations. Work/life initiatives addressing the ABC workplace included flexible working arrangements, child-care centres, referral service, guidelines/information for managers and staff and an employee-assistance program.
The ABC’s actions
Increased awareness of the issues of balancing work and life across the ABC by both management and staff.
Increased managerial and staff participation in work/life initiatives and forums.
Increased uptake of flexible working arrangements for both women and men, including increased approval of local part-time work arrangements, transfers, relocation and leave without pay.
Reduced stress levels.
Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) Web site is a very useful place to visit online because DEEWR presents case studies that provide good solutions to workplace flexibility issues. These studies highlight the positive results that can be achieved. Furthermore, you may find case studies like those in your own workplace and you can use these to strengthen your business case for more flexible working arrangements. DEEWR cases cover a wide range of situations in the workplace.
Flexible working hours
A retailer enabled staff members to have a working arrangement that meant longer opening hours for the business and staggered working hours for the staff members, leaving them invigorated and increasing their energy and motivation. Offering flexible starting and finishing times to employees has been particularly successful. Staff members can elect to start later and leave later, avoid peak-hour traffic and meet their caring responsibilities. These options leave employees with more energy and reduced stress levels and their increased motivation means they are more productive from the moment they arrive at work.
Compressed working weeks are another flexible option where staff members may elect to spread their working hours over four days rather than five days. Again, this situation can provide a longer period of opening hours for customers and the ability to have one weekday off for staff members.
Part-time manager
One retail business owner realised the importance of keeping valued staff. When a skilled and experienced store manager wanted to return to work after maternity leave, the employer was keen to negotiate a way for her to return and also achieve the right amount of work/life balance. The manager’s needs were met by coming back on a part-time basis. Because she was retained, the business benefited from her skill and knowledge.
This flexible arrangement also had a positive impact on the two assistant managers — both of whom worked full time and reported to the store manager. The manager was happy because she retained her position, the assistant managers were happy because they remained in full-time work and were trusted to use their initiative and continue to learn from working with such an experienced manager.
Flexibility in rosters
In one retail chain, the store staff members can make changes to the roster to suit their needs. The main proviso for the stores is that whatever the flexible roster arrangements may be, the store must maintain or improve its performance and the changes must be done in consultation with the manager.
In some stores, employees have the flexibility to swap rosters or even to swap between stores located near to each other. In another store, rosters are adapted to the particular needs of employees to cover such situations as caring responsibilities, university study and participation in sport. The end result has seen employees feeling a greater sense of control over their working times. Also, the business needs are covered and absenteeism and managerial administration time have been reduced.
One store had to choose between two equally qualified and skilled staff members for the store manager position and decided to solve the problem by allowing the two people to job share. The two people worked out the allocation of tasks and responsibilities between them and how they were to report to their area manager.
Without this flexibility, the store would have most likely lost a valuable staff member who may well have gone off to work for a competitor. The advantage of the shared-manager situation for the store was that the arrangement produced
Better store performance due to the improved efficiency and effectiveness of store management
Increased managerial coverage and higher employee motivation as there is more than one manager who can respond to their needs
Reduced reliance on the area manager as the two managers have the other manager for advice
Working from home
One business offered an employee returning from maternity leave the arrangement of working from home on a regular basis. The employee’s needs were met because she could achieve work/life balance and the arrangement also sent a positive signal to other staff about the value the employer places on experienced and skilled staff.
The business owner benefited from the arrangement because a valued employee who had received considerable training and experience in the business was retained. The business owner also noticed an increase in efficiency, resulting from the employee working at home, because the employee was motivated to make the most of the opportunity and the usual office interruptions no longer existed.
Dealing with Objections Positively
Your boss has a lot on his/her plate and needs to consider your request as part of a much bigger staff picture. If the boss’s own responsibilities are large and you need to supervise more of the work, the boss is less likely to want change and your proposal could be seen as a negative for the business.
All good negotiators in business and in life — both cases apply to you in this instance — are able to anticipate what the other party (your boss) is likely to raise as a reason or concern for not approving or buying your proposal. Examples of questions that an employer may raise are:
Have you proved to me that you can be trusted to work with little or no supervision?
How do I measure your work output and performance other than whether you’re at your desk in the office?
If I grant you flexible working arrangements, won’t I then have to do the same thing for everyone else?
If this flexible working option is approved, will the work still be done?
Will the work be done to the same level of quality, and will it be done on time?
Will this arrangement affect the level of customer service you provide?
Will you be contactable when I need you?
Providing answers and finding help
Try to put yourself in your boss’s shoes when you think of a likely objection to your flexible working arrangements and then think of ways to a solution. Be a step ahead of your manager and show you’re anticipating queries and developing strategies to resolve the problems raised.
Continuing customer service
Most jobs these days rely on providing a high level of customer service. Sometimes customer service is the deciding factor that brings repeat business or new work. Having a strategy to deal with customer service in your new arrangements shows your boss that you appreciate that the team — and your job — values customers and that you’re part of a highly effective team working to continue this standard.
Recommend that your customers should be advised of any new working arrangements to ensure that they feel as though their business is valued and their needs are still being met. This advice not only shows professional courtesy but can also make you a key contact person who can communicate with them by phone or email as well as in person. In addition, mention trialling a buddy system where each staff member trains another to deal with their clients effectively. This system not only covers part-time or flexible hours of work but other absences, such as sickness or holiday leave.
Dealing with the ‘more work for me’ dilemma
To make your boss feel listened to, agree with his or her concern that your new arrangements may create more work for your boss. You can also clarify this situation by pointing out that adopting new working arrangements is expected to create more work at the start, but less later. Studies have shown that when employers trust their workers to get on with the job with minimal supervision, the result is greater motivation, loyalty and productivity. Time-saving methods your manager may consider include changing team meeting times and changing staff communications so that staff working part time or from home can fit them in.
Managers can also involve their staff in helping to come up with ways to make the arrangements work, such as having an increased say in rostering times, email etiquette (only emailing when necessary and combining multiple emails in one), bunching up queries (to save lots of interruptions) and running shorter and more effective team meetings.
Fumbling with flexible performance assessments
Managers become concerned with how they’re going to assess a staff member’s performance in a flexible working arrangement. This concern is valid because very few bosses are trained in how to incorporate flexible working into their teams or how to manage staff who work flexibly. Some ideas for your boss to consider include setting a meeting with you to discuss and set the following measures:
Agree on the best times to hold one-on-one meetings and the best times to communicate with each other via phone or email.
Agree on what staff meetings you must attend (after considering the hours you’re at the workplace), any training and development you may still need and any other organisation or team-wide responsibilities you have. Be realistic about what you can contribute if you’re reducing your hours.
Discuss what the most important aspects of your position are and come up with solid measures of your performance, such as projects completed, customer satisfaction and achievement of team goals.
Unlocking the floodgates
How many times have you heard the phrase, ‘Oh, if I do it for you, I’ll have to do it for everyone else’. Avoid rolling your eyes if your boss utters these words. Instead, listen and acknowledge your boss’s concern as a valid one. An effective way to keep your manager on side is to say something like, ‘Not necessarily, because you still have the authority to assess each application on its merits, including the responsibilities of the particular job, the skills of the worker and the needs of the team.’
You can also mention that the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) has useful tips on how to assess, approve and review flexible working arrangements and where to go to seek help and advice. Furthermore, if other staff members do seek a flexible working arrangement and your boss can manage this, the worst that can happen is that the manager ends up with a motivated workforce of employees determined to see the new arrangements succeed!
Test driving
If your manager is still unsure about the idea of how your flexible working arrangement can succeed in practice, suggest a trial period. Ideally the trial period should be for a set period of three to six months, with some performance targets set before starting. Recommend to your manager that during this period you can schedule regular fortnightly reviews to address any issues and to discuss your workload, how you’re communicating with other staff and customers and what your most productive times are.
At the end of the agreed trial period, you and your boss can review the flexible working arrangement to decide whether the arrangement is to continue. Address any changes that are needed to improve the arrangement, and decide whether the arrangement is to continue. Whatever the outcome, suggest to your boss that the decision be put in writing and signed by each of you. You can revisit the arrangement at a later date and your experience can help you develop a more suitable alternative.
Keeping your cool at crunch time
If summoning up the courage to ask for what you want isn’t hard enough, you also need to practise how you’re going to manage your emotions during the negotiation process.
Getting angry or showing frustration and disappointment are not usually ways to impress someone or get what you want. Your boss is likely to consider your business case more favourably if you make an appointment with your boss and sit down to calmly discuss the issue.
Some quick tips to consider if you think you may become a bit emotional during the meeting:
Involve your manager: Thank your boss for taking time out to meet with you and for being prepared to discuss a solution that suits both of you. This way you come across as professional and mature and leave behind a good impression.
Know what sets you off: If you worry about forgetting key points, write them down and read directly from them so that your boss can see that you’re serious and have done your homework. If you think you may get teary, give the business case to your boss in writing beforehand so that your case has been read and digested, which helps you to avoid going on the defensive as soon as you sit down.
Think you may become angry? Take some deep breaths, read slowly from the list of points you wish to discuss and dare to pause and take a breath every now and then. This presentation is more successful than rushing through your opening statements and demanding a ‘yes’ immediately.
Listen, listen, listen: When your manager wishes to ask you a question or throw in a comment, listen to what’s said. Active listening shows that you’re not easily distracted or just waiting for the boss to stop talking so that you can jump in again.
Offer choices: Providing more than one solution shows your manager that you’re considering a range of options and can discuss how and why they work. This way you reveal that you’re taking your boss’s needs into consideration.
Take notes: Concentrating on listening and taking notes of what’s said has worked for me on many occasions. If I’m at a job interview, or in a meeting that I’m nervous about, having a pad and pen handy to jot down some notes does three things:
• Helps me understand properly what the other person is saying
• Enables the other person’s point to be written down without my judging it or immediately arguing about it
• Gives me a second or two to collect my thoughts and think about the best way to respond
Coping with ‘No’
Heaven forbid that your boss should say no to your request for flexible working arrangements. Remember if this happens, all is not lost. Here are some other avenues to investigate:
Ask your boss to put the reasons for the decision in writing: Having a written statement that clearly explains the reason for your rejection gives you something to read through in a quiet place and time where you can think about the reasons when you’re not in the meeting.
Request a review of the situation and set a date: By asking your boss to review the decision in six months time, you can have an opportunity to re-work your business case. This review becomes your second chance to find ways to present your proposal. Do more research, understand your manager’s views, consider other flexible options and make sure you’re presenting enough different reasons to be convincing.
Seek advice from your HR representative: Your employer may have staff policies that can set guidelines for flexible working arrangements or give you information on the processes you need to go through to set up an arrangement. Furthermore, your HR manager may know of other staff who successfully used flexible working arrangements in other parts of your company and who you can contact.
Seek advice from your trade union: The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), at www.actu.asn.au, can be contacted on 1300 486 466 if you believe you have been treated unfairly at work. The ACTU can also help you find the union that’s relevant to your industry. The ACTU also runs the Workers’ Hotline on 1300 362 223 to provide free and confidential advice on your rights in the workplace.