Interview with Kyra Cavanaugh, founder of LifeMeetWork.com

Dear friends,

Before Christmas, I was happy to be able to chat with Kyra Cavanaugh, founder and president of LifeMeetsWork and the publisher of www.LifeMeetsWork.com. In this time of economic upheaval, is work/life management feasible or even on a smart business leader's agenda? Here, Kyra explains why work/life issues still matter.

INTERVIEW WITH KYRA CAVANAUGH, FOUNDER OF LIFEMEETSWORK.COM

LIZ: Kyra, thanks for joining us today. We're curious what you've been hearing about work/life issues lately -- lots of people are concerned about keeping a job or getting one, so we're interested to know what people are saying about flexibility at work.

KYRA: We recently conducted a survey of close to 700 working Americans and companies to understand their attitudes about work/life issues.

What we found was that 77% of employers said they offered flexibility programs, most often in the form of accommodation (individual flex plans) or flexible start and end times. But, when we asked employees whether they felt that employers supported their work/life needs, only 20% of them said "yes".

This presents a problem, right? If employers think they're addressing the flexibility needs of their employees with their current programs, but employees don't give them credit for it, then what? Then, employers aren't doing enough, or they aren't doing enough of the "right" things, to get recognized for their efforts.

LIZ: Why is this important?

KYRA: Studies have shown that flexibility is key to employee retention, loyalty, engagement and productivity. So, if employees don't feel employers are providing enough flexibility, then there's a business risk that your employees will leave.

LIZ: Leave? They can't leave, look at the economy.

KYRA: Well, yes and no. Right now, in this economy, in this job market, employees can't change jobs. They're going to hunker down and ride out the storm. But, when you look back at recent history, you'll see what I mean. At the end of the last three recessions, there's been a mass exodus of employees to new companies.

LIZ: Why is that?

KYRA: There are a number of reasons and flexibility is part of it:

1) Layoffs erode employee morale and employee loyalty. There is a pervasive sense on the part of the employee that the company doesn't care about them. Even though they can't take action at the time, they file that away and when they can make a move at the end of a recession, they do.

2) There's little room for advancement during a down economy. That hunker down mentality applies to companies too. Opportunities for promotions, new projects, and other career advancement opportunities slow down. Raises and company bonuses are cut back and workers' earning potential is squelched. So, when the job market rebounds, so do career advancement opportunities with other companies.

3) Forward-looking companies recognize that flexibility is a competitive advantage. It goes beyond just the benefits that are being offered to something deeper. The only way you can run a successful flexible workplace is to TRUST your employees. When employees know that they're trusted, productivity improves and word hits the street about their culture: think Google, Southwest Airlines, and Microsoft in their day (remember how astonished we were that employees could work in the middle of the night and bring their dogs to work?)

So, when the economy turns around, where do your best employees want to go? To cool companies where the pressure to perform is intense, but where employees are given the freedom to succeed without having the "how and where" managed by the company.

LIZ: But, there are always people in an organization who complain and want more than what we’re able to do for them, isn’t that the case here?

KYRA: It would be easy to pass off as whiners employees who desire increased recognition and acknowledgement of their flexibility needs. Or, to think that they have unrealistic expectations. But, the problem is that the labor market is tightening. In a recent SHRM Workplace Forecast survey, six of the top ten trends for 2008-2009 involve threats to the current workforce: baby boomers retiring, shortage of skilled workers. Companies acknowledge that they need to find ways to retain their employees (that was trend number 5 in the SHRM study).

LIZ: So, what's a company to do, if they feel like they're trying but it isn't enough?

KYRA: We offered a number of ideas in our webinar which you can get by watching the rebroadcast on our website. But here are a couple of ideas:

1) Consider new technology solutions without spending an arm and a leg:
Replace desktops with laptops when the leases are up.
Consider cloud computing (migrating file sharing, project management systems, calendars to the internet)
2) Rethink the FTE default. What I mean is: we tend to automatically define every job as full-time, onsite.
Before you post to fill a job, think about whether it could be cut in half and performed by two part-timers by dividing up the accounts, or responsibilities in some other way.
Consider whether the job requires the employee to be onsite at all times.
3) Rework position descriptions to be performance and measurement based. Describe the results that you expect from that position (and how they'll be measured) rather than documenting what the position does.

Once you’ve made these sorts of changes, then you've laid the groundwork for going flex. Looking at the examples I just mentioned, let's follow it through:
--Employees can work from home because they have the technology in place to do it.
--Employees will be able to maintain their same job-level when they want to work part-time.
--Managers won't have to see their employees everyday because the performance expectations have been laid out and the employee will have agreed that's how they'll be evaluated.

I think it goes back to that old question, “How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time.” It’s too intimidating to say "today we’re going to start converting to a flexible workplace". No one has that kind of time, energy or luxury.

But, by examining how your company functions, and then taking small steps, in the course of your daily business to move your company toward becoming more flexible over time is much more realistic.

Given the economic and demographic realities companies are facing, I’m not sure you have a choice.