Guest Bloggers: Jennifer Kohler & Brande Stellings
Today we are lucky to be joined by guest bloggers Jennifer Kohler and Brande Stellings of Catalyst. Ms. Kohler is an Associate in Advisory Services and Ms. Stellings is the Senior Director of Advisory Services, where she leads Catalyst's practice to advance women and promote inclusion within the legal profession.
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Getting Beyond the “F” Word
Many organizations already support workplace flexibility as a means to recruit and retain talent and increase employee productivity. But is it enough? Our research, our consulting work with companies and firms, and the work of other organizations suggest it is not.
Although our reference to “flexibility” as the “f word,” is a bit tongue-in-cheek, the need to get beyond discussions of flexibility – and concentration on flexible work arrangements as the solution – is very real. As currently practiced in most organizations, flexibility has not been leveraged to its full potential. Instead, it:
- Focuses on the short-term
- Focuses on individual work solutions
- Is an accommodation for a select few
- Values time spent
- Regards employee needs, interests, and concerns about burnout as obstacles to accomplishing work
- Focuses on managing employee schedules
We hear all the time from women (and men) at law firms about these limitations. Utilizing a flexible work arrangement is often seen as a career derailer. A woman law firm associate told us, “Reduced hours schedules are a mommy track; they reduce the ability to do substantive, important work and limit advancement.” This perception is not without merit; in some law firms, working reduced hours is a barrier to attaining the top position in a law firm – equity partnership. This might explain why lawyers report one of the lowest levels of utilization of flexible work arrangements among professionals; although 98% of law firms offer flexible work arrangements, just 5.4% of lawyers availed themselves of reduced hour schedules in 2007, according to NALP. Of course, we know that not everyone wants to work reduced hours and it can be hard to know what the take-up would be in a world where working differently might not foreclose future opportunities. It is worth noting that at the “Best Law Firms for Women,” as awarded by Working Mother and Flex-Time Lawyers, 8% of lawyers worked reduced hours in 2007.
We also hear of other limitations: from a culture of secrecy where a flex-time lawyer is advised to hide the arrangement to perceptions that flexible arrangements are available only to women with children, leading to resentment from co-workers without children who feel that they are expected to pull late hours or heavy weekend work.
This is not to say that firms should abandon flexible work arrangements or the very laudable programs that some have put in place, many of which are hugely valued by their participants. In one innovative program, Weil Gotshal created a new partnership category, the Flex-Time Partner, which was created for new partners making a long-term choice to work on a flexible schedule. Another law firm, Gibbons, a 2009 Catalyst Award winner, has successfully created a flexible working culture, where women have combined both parenting and career success: more than two-thirds of the firm’s women partners are mothers.
These successes, although notable, are not the norm for many organizations. A shift in focus is required for many organizations. At Catalyst, we advocate adopting the larger paradigm of work-life effectiveness (“WLE”).
Catalyst’s approach to WLE combines flexibility with process improvements to support individuals, teams, and the bottom line. This approach goes beyond the traditional notion of flexibility as an individual employee “perk” to view effectiveness as a mutually beneficial partnership between business and employees. It is a management tool aimed at finding workplace solutions to common challenges affecting all employees and allows organizations to be more flexible, adaptable, and nimble – enormous benefits in a competitive and constantly changing global economy, in both good times and bad.
In the current economic environment, every program is under scrutiny. An integrated approach to work-life effectiveness need not be “on the chopping block,” as it can be a useful and viable strategy in place of downsizing. Some companies are cutting back on administrative operations, adding unpaid vacation days to reduce operating costs, or shifting work schedules to better reflect client needs, demonstrating that the strategies used can be more or less aggressive. The limitations posed by the billable-hour model – where time spent working on client matters is directly linked to increased revenue – may be weaker in this economy, where traditional ways of doing things are up for grabs. Law firms are working with their clients to come up with win-win billing solutions for both parties, ones where fixed, flat fees may reward efficiency over hours billed.
WLE, at its core, is about evaluating work and work practices and eliminating inefficiencies. It is about how the work gets done. While the law firm/billable hours environment does not naturally lend itself to time efficiency, the focus on strong performance and employee sustainability under any circumstance is very applicable. Recognizing when employees do their best work and capitalizing on it by allowing them to work early or late, starting from home or ending at home, scheduling meetings during a range of “core hours” can be part of bringing better work-life effectiveness into the law firm environment. Some law firms have been successful at this; because the emphasis is on getting the work done, the “face time” culture has diminished, although the trade-off requires being constantly connected to one’s Blackberry. This is precisely the point, however: focusing on work-life effectiveness means having candid discussions about the trade-offs associated with different approaches and options.
Keep in mind that WLE is an approach that meets the needs of virtually every employee demographic. Going far beyond the traditional view of flexibility as a “women’s issue,” WLE has the potential to meet the needs of men, single employees caring for aging or sick parents, the disabled, students, those with long commutes, dual-career spouses, younger employees, and more. We have seen from Phoebe Taubman’s blogpost here and her work at A Better Balance that the workforce of the 21st century law firm – both women and men -- desires better work-life balance and is willing to make trade-offs to attain it.
Employing WLE requires clear communication and business-based criteria and will not work in every situation. It must be presented and adopted as a business-based strategy that enables the organization to react quickly to changes in the economic environment. The approach also requires organizational support from leaders and managers, many of who are already employing elements of the approach in their daily juggling act but are not necessarily transparent about it. Recognizing and supporting WLE is critical, as is monitoring the success of fostering a WLE culture. Monitoring need not be a full-time job; however, as managers should already be paying attention to the productivity, satisfaction, and individual needs of employees, likewise, individuals should hold themselves responsible for managing these elements of their career.
In this ever-changing global work environment, the ability to identify what is most important and to focus effectively on priorities will help both individuals and organizations remain resilient against challenging external circumstances. WLE fosters a high-performance, sustainable work environment which has implications for success both now and in the years to come.
Some forward-thinking organizations have already begun to adapt to these changes. Deloitte’s Mass Career Customization is an innovative program that moves the discussion beyond flexibility to one about building careers and developing talent over the long-term arc of an employee’s career. It is now time for law firms to begin to build work environments that fit the needs of the 21st century workforce.
For more information, link to Catalyst and search for work-life effectiveness materials, knowledge products, and content experts. Also, feel free to check out the Catalyst publication, “Making Change: Beyond Flexibility: Work Life Effectiveness as an Organizational Tool for High-Performance.”