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Work/Life Balance and New Workplace Challenges - Frequently Asked Questions For Managers

For Managers

As a manager, I already have too many priorities to manage. Why should I take this on?

Managers need to take work-life balance seriously. The more overworked and overloaded, the higher the demands or the expectations on the department or the work unit, the more the managers have to rely on their employees to produce at the highest possible level of efficiency, effectiveness, and quality. If your people are out of balance or stressed or sick then they will be less committed to the outcomes, they will be less committed to the organisation, they will be less committed to the client, the customer, the product or goods or service that you're producing.

(See also : «The Quality of Work: Why it Matters for Workers, Employers and Society External Site» (PDF Document), a presentation by Graham Lowe, for the Second International Conference on Researching Work and Learning, University of Calgary, 26 July 2001.)

As a manager, how do I support work-life balance with my limited time?

Managers first need to look at their own personal sphere of influence. If your only sphere of influence is your own approach to work-life balance, then model it, demonstrate it; that might be the best thing you can do. It may mean managing up and saying, "No, we can't take on another project in our Department because it will impact on the health of my employees." It means looking at things you can control, such as the number and frequency of meetings, the number of reports, activities, processes that they require of their direct reports, to see what can be eliminated, what can be tightened, and what can be changed.

How can I make change in my department if I'm on a strict budget and have no resources to devote to this?

There are lots of things that managers can do to be supportive without requiring financial resources or making more work for themselves. Many of the solutions actually reduce work for managers. Managers need to start by looking at what is within their sphere of influence. For example, take a look at the agenda of your weekly staff meetings. Is it possible to only meet every other week? Is it possible to cut the length of the meeting in half? What can be done in terms of information sharing in alternative formats? Making a change to a weekly meeting that reduces workload and adds time for other projects can have a huge impact. Many of the strategies managers have at their disposal are low-cost or no-cost, high-impact solutions.

I want to implement flexibility, but the senior management is not on board. What do I do?

The business reasons for supporting balance have been clearly documented. (Benefits and Costs). If senior management hasn't been exposed to the business case for balance, they might need some education or briefing. If senior management has seen the arguments, but are unconvinced, you again need to take a look at your sphere of influence. If you have the authority to structure a work arrangement and you want to go ahead and do that, then do it. Document it well. Clearly communicate it to co-workers and colleagues. Don't try to hide it, but also don't just let it happen haphazardly and without careful thought. And then, if the arrangement is working well, communicate that upwards through the organization.

I'm not against workplace flexibility, and we have the policies. Why do none of my staff ask for them?

There are a couple of reasons why employees are reluctant to take advantage of existing policies and programs. Some companies have introduced policies without doing any kind of needs assessment to determine what the demand is to begin with. It may be a policy or a program that doesn't fit the demand or need at that particular time. It may be that it is not culturally acceptable to take advantage of existing policies, that people believe that if they take advantage of it, they will be penalized. It may be poorly communicated. People might not know it's available or might have some assumptions that it's available but doesn't apply to them. And it might be experience. It might be that they have seen somebody else take advantage of that kind of a work arrangement and have seen negative consequences or negative impact. To the extent that, as a manager, you can determine whether the policies you have in place are the ones that are suitable for your working environment, you can communicate them clearly to your staff, you also communicate your support of the policies and willingness to work with employees to find effective solutions, you will see an increase in usage. To break current workplace culture it may help if you, as a manager, ask employees if there is anything you can do that would help.

If I only do one thing as a manager to support balance, what's the most important thing for me to do?

There is no magic answer, but one of the pillars of a supportive work environment is clear, concise, complete, timely, two-way communication. If you want something to be done and you want it done a certain way by a certain time, the more clear you are on communicating those expectations, providing the resources to meet those objectives and then recognising them when they're complete, the more likely you are going to get employees to state that it's a supportive environment.

What are the consequences of managers lacking attention to this issue?

Managers are already paying for imbalance and balance, either directly or indirectly. If an employee goes on stress leave, the manager is going to suffer. If they remain and they're unhappy and they're disgruntled, you're going to get a whole range of behaviours from bickering and increased volume of conflict, right through to outbursts and out-and-out violence, and the whole spectrum in between that.

  

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Last modified :  2005-02-03 top Important Notices