In this final column on this topic, drawing again on Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time, we'll look at the workplace and what steps we can take to make our work-lives more balanced. We'll explore this issue from two directions: what we as employees can do and what we as workplace leaders can do. Obviously the second perspective offers more power to make a difference, and I imagine that a significant portion of the readership of this column enjoys some influence over employees' experience at their place of work.
Let's begin with what we as employees we can do to achieve greater balance. Schulte found "chunking" her time to be one of the most helpful strategies she learned. Research shows that we really only work effectively for 90 minutes at a stretch. After that we should take a complete break for an extended period of time (not just five or ten minutes). The research also shows that knowledge workers work productively for no more than six hours a day. A study of Microsoft workers revealed that they worked productively only 28 hours of their 45 hour work week, or 5.6 hours a day.
Applying this research, Schulte works in focused 90-minute chunks. She assigns different responsibilities, responsibilities determined by overarching goals, to distinct chunks of time. This way she knows that while she's doing her paid journalism work, she doesn't need to worry about her home/family tasks because she has allocated focused time for that as well. Tony Schwarz, author of The Way We're Working Isn't Working and the advocate for the 90 minute chunks, also advises that we choose one important thing to do each day and to do it first, when research shows we are most productive.
Full focus requires that we acknowledge how much email and our phones distract us. Most time management experts recommend turning off the indicator signaling a new email. We should also turn off our phone, and maybe even put it somewhere where we can't see it. We can allow ourselves to check email and the phone during our breaks.
Some of us certainly work in a face-time culture: places where employees are expected to be physically present, regardless of whether the face-time hours demanded of them actually bear any relationship to productivity. People in these situations who feel they can't go elsewhere, might try this strategy. If we're leaving at a reasonable time, and a supervisor expresses disapproval, politely ask, "Is there something you need?"
Which brings us to this face-time culture, the "ideal worker," and the role we as supervisors can play in creating balanced, humane work environments. On the basis of extensive research, Schulte argues convincingly that organizations that provide employees with more sense of autonomy and control over their time, that focus on performance rather than time in the office, that provide flexibility and breaks, and that give employees the opportunity to have a life outside of work have proved as productive if not more so than organizations with demanding face-time cultures. One of the many studies demonstrating the advantages of a more reasonable work environment comes from Harvard Business School. They compared two sets of workers: one group worked forty-hour weeks, took their full vacation, and created an on-call system to meet client needs that allowed those not on call to unplug. The other group worked fifty-plus hour weeks and did not take their allotted vacation. The first group enjoyed higher job satisfaction, learned more, had better teamwork, and, most importantly, proved more productive than the second group.
Schulte finds many "bright spots," companies that have adopted policies that allow their employees to find balance: Menlo Innovations (a software company), Stanford Medical School, Ernst & Young, Patagonia and L.L. Bean, the U.S. Patent Office and the Pentagon's policy branch. She also identifies several law firms that are challenging the "billable hours" culture including Valorem in Chicago and the Potomac Law Group here in D.C. The strategies the different organizations have adopted include firm ends of the workday with no expectation for after-hours digital connectivity; flexibility about when and where work gets done as long as it is done well; encouragement of outdoor activities; perks to make life easier such as zipcars to get off the crowded Stanford campus easily to go to an appointment or attend a child's play.
The law firms present particularly interesting examples since generally lawyers make their money by billing their clients for the work they do on an hourly basis. Up to a point at least, such a system favors inefficiency. One of the women who founded Valorem became more efficient once she had children. Her work was just as good and she won cases; but, because she didn't bill as many hours as some of her arguably less efficient colleagues, she got passed over. Without offending my many lawyer friends and attorney readers, I have to say I have never understood a business model that values physical presence over getting things done. These new law firms don't work that way. Valorem, for example, offers fixed fees and other payment arrangements and allows its employees to do their work when and where they want to. They have clients such as 3M, DSW, and Kayak and one of their founders has been named to Illinois' list of top fifty female lawyers. Valorem is proving that law can be practiced well under a different system that provides much more flexibility and autonomy to its attorneys.
Schulte identifies several important characteristics shared by successful organizations that have established more reasonable work environments. Everyone, from top to bottom, must buy into the system and actually practice it. Having policies is not enough; leadership has to model the behaviors they say they want for their employees. They need to leave work at the appointed time, work flexibly themselves, go for a hike in the woods, use all our vacation, or take paternity leave. If people are supposed to unplug after the workday, leaders need to as well. Or at least they shouldn't send emails after hours (that's what the delay-send function is for). Even if I'm not expecting an answer to the email sent at 10 PM until the next morning, the person on the receiving end, who reports to me, may not know that and feel obligated to answer it immediately. We have to help people learn to work differently and in particular we need to train managers to evaluate employees on the basis of "performance, not hours."(130) We also need to frame these kinds of changes as a "morale and staff issue," as Michele Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under Robert Gates, did when she shifted her Pentagon department to an Alternative Work Schedule, "Because this has never been just a women's issue."(147) These kinds of changes are about making life better for everyone, not just working mothers. Moreover, if we don't make these kinds of changes, Millennials will leave to work somewhere that has.
We need our organizations to have clear, well-understood missions. We need to outline and communicate clear expectations. We need to structure work so people can easily fill in for each other. We need to have deadlines and hold people accountable for producing quality work. We need to answer employees' questions: "How much is enough? When is it good enough? How will I know?" with sufficient specificity that they can feel confident about what is expected of them. This kind of clarity relieves ambiguity and anxiety and frees people to do their work well. It should also give them time to spend with family and friends, and to pursue interests beyond work. We should pursue such approaches if for no other reason than it makes people more productive, which, in turn, redounds to the benefit of the organizations for whom they work.
While I know we could make Holton an even more positive work environment, we do a lot. Teachers have always done a portion of their work at home, meaning there is an element of flextime built into the profession. They also get long breaks, time to rejuvenate after the intellectually and emotionally demanding work they do. We have generous benefits including paid maternity and paternity leave, and ample sick and personal days. We support our employees with professional development funding and encourage people to seek out leadership roles, at Holton and elsewhere. We provide wellness classes, the use of the fitness center, and "renewal grants" of up to $3000 to use largely as someone wishes. We offer 50% tuition remission at both Holton and Landon for faculty and staff children. Perhaps most importantly, we provide onsite day-care, a benefit that I am positive keeps many women working. And let's not forget the yummy breakfast and lunch. We want happy, fulfilled employees who are free to concentrate on their jobs. When we do this, they can do their best for their students, your daughters.