Work / Life Balance
Often cited as an important benefit by public services employees, perception of work / life balance afforded by employers can vary greatly. It can be broken into the following areas:
Supportive Environment: The degree to which the organisation provides an environment in which employees feel that they are considered and cared about as people.
Recognition of Lifestyle Needs: The degree to which employees can achieve a balance between work demands and their life outside work.
Flexible Work and Retirement Options: The degree to which the organisation allows employees to choose the hours and days they work and the age at which they retire.
Security of Income: The degree of security of employment and income provided to the employee.
Social Environment: The degree to which positive social interaction between employees exists and is fostered, within and outside the workplace.
What Could This Mean in Practice?
'I can leave in time to collect my children from school and do my workout at lunchtime - what you do here is more important than getting in early or being the last to leave'
- Recognition of Life Cycle Needs - childcare, partner support, elder care support
- Flexible working arrangements - part time/term time/evening/early morning options/job sharing
- Manageable work pressure - 'good' stress - prevention of 'burnout'
- Telecommuting - based on trust
- Security of employment - mapped/managed
- Social environment - e.g. team outings, chess clubs, sports facilities
Is this an issue in your organisation?
Assess:
- Do you have a philosophy around Work/Life Balance? What is it?
- What policies do you have around flexible working?
- Who do your policies apply to?
- What does your organisation do to foster a supportive working environment?
- What does your organisation do to encourage social interaction between employees (e.g. sports teams, reading group, Friday night drinks, team dinner, team away day, team/organisation volunteer day)?
Benchmark
External benchmarking (pdf, 24Kb) of non-financial awards may help you gather the evidence you need to support recommendations for change.
- How do your work/life balance policies and practices compare with statutory requirements? (Flexible working practices must be considered if requested by the parent of a child less than 5 years old, or less than 18, in certain circumstances. The BERR website [External website] has more information.
- How do your work/life balance policies and practices compare to the external market?
- Who do you compare yourselves against?
Look at what some of the best employers are doing both here and overseas – Best Places to Work.
Change
Consider:
- Ensuring the policies and practices you have are written down, well-understood and communicated.
Guidance on developing a Work/Life Balance (pdf, 20Kb) is available.
Examples
Asda offer a wide range of Work/Life balance options, including:
- IVF leave (five days' paid leave to women undergoing IVF treatment, and 1.5 days for partners);
- 'Benidorm' leave - up to three months unpaid leave between January and March while maintaining a continuous work history (in addition to paid annual leave);
- Grandparent leave - five days unpaid leave on the birth of a grandchild;
- Sabbatical leave - up to two years' unpaid leave while remaining a member of staff and with a guaranteed job on return;
Flexible Working
When considering what flexible working practices to introduce or maintain, you should consider the following questions:
- What flexible working practices are currently used? Who do they cover? In what areas? If you do not make the same terms and conditions available to all employees at a similar level, you may be at risk of an Equal Pay case.
- Are your current arrangements contractual? If flexible working practices are contractual, you will need to negotiate any changes - favourable or otherwise - with individuals and/or unions. Speak to your recruitment specialist and employment contract/law specialist. You may need specialist legal advice.
- Are your current arrangements legislative? You cannot contract out of the law unless there is specific provision for an opt-out (e.g. as in the Working Time Directive).
- What flexible working practices most closely reflect and reinforce your Total Reward Strategy and Philosophy?
- What flexible working practices have been requested? By whom? On what basis were the requests granted or refused?
- If you have few or no employees currently taking advantage of flexible working practices, why do you think this is? Are the employees simply not interested (e.g. young with no family commitments), or is there something in the organisational or departmental culture that prevents people working flexibly (e.g. an emphasis on being in the office, a manager who comments 'half day, is it?' if an employee leaves at 5p.m.). If the latter is the case, it is likely that there will need to be a great deal of communication and training before any flexible working initiatives can be successfully implemented.
While this list is not intended to be exhaustive, it should provide some insight into what flexible working practices are appropriate in your organisation.
This Hay Group article discusses the benefits of flexible working.
Ideas: Flexible Working
Ideas for flexible working practices include:
- Flexitime - gives people choice about their actual working hours, within limits set by managers. A specified number of hours have to be completed during a given period, but the times of work can be altered. Usually, but not always there is a core period during which everyone must be at work.
- Combination of short and long days.
- Compressed working week - e.g. working four long days instead of five or nine days a fortnight.
- Part-time working e.g. mornings and afternoons, or certain days only, working alternate weeks.
- Voluntarily agreed reduced hours for less pay but same status e.g. a four day week or nine day fortnight
- Job sharing or splitting - involves two or more people carrying out the duties of a post that would normally be done by one person.
- Job combining - involves employees combining 2 or more, often part time roles to increase the total number of hours worked.
- Annualised hours - staff work a required number of hours each year, the hours worked vary throughout the year. This can be beneficial for employers who can make working hours fit in with peaks and troughs of work.
- Home/teleworking
- Term time working - means employees can remain on a permanent contract either on a full or part time basis, but have unpaid leave of absence during the school holidays. In the hospitality industry holiday work is often covered by students.
- Part-time working - works reduced hours for an agreed period at a reduced salary.
- Create culture where working excessive long hours are not encouraged
- Shift Swapping - means employees can negotiate working times to suit their needs and re-arrange shifts amongst themselves or within teams - provided the needs of the business or service are met.
- Self-Rostering - gives team members more control over their work times. Parameters are set first about the numbers of staff and the skill mix required during each working day. Individuals then put forward the times they would like to work and times they cannot work. Shift patterns are then complied, matching as closely as possible the individual preferences of staff with the agreed staffing levels.
So how do you choose which flexible working options are most appropriate to your organisation? Your responses to the following questions will guide you towards that decision:
- What is your organisational philosophy towards flexible working?
If the culture of the organisation is strongly against flexible working, that attitude needs to be worked on before individuals will feel free to request flexible working, regardless of their legal rights.
- Is flexible working possible?
In many roles (e.g. nurse in Intensive Care ward), the requirement is for the individual to be in attendance at the required time. Even so, these roles often have scope for some form of flexibility (e.g. part-time work, or different shift patterns). The challenge is to think 'how could this be made to work?'
- What flexible working options do you currently have that work effectively?
These are likely to be options that you would want to maintain and possibly extend to other groups of employees.
- What flexible working options have been requested by employees?
If this is what employees want, the challenge is to make it happen within the boundaries of possibility (not the boundaries of 'how it's always been').
Further Resources
