Coping with the needs of employees’ personal and family lives stresses them and their managers. There are solutions.
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Entrepreneur: Prue Warrilow, Director
Company: Families at Work
Business type: Business consultancy: work/life issues
Founded: 1991
Turnover: (2001 - 2002) $1.5M
Head office: Sydney CBD
Contact details: +61 2 9261 1855
The Families At Work Story
Prue Warrilow's consultancy helps companies find common ground between the needs of the business and the personal and family needs of their employees. However, after several years as the sole director of her own company, she says that getting the work/life balance right is easier said than done.
It is hardly surprising that flexible work practices rule at Prue Warrilow's business, Families At Work (FAW). One of its core activities is advising companies about introducing effective work/life strategies for their staff. FAW's employees in Sydney are offered a smorgasbord of flexible work arrangements, including permanent part-time, compressed work rosters, varied hours, working from home, paid parental leave and unlimited paid family leave. The only caveat is that the flexible work practice fits in with the needs of the business.
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Key learning points:
- Business culture - Policies and procedures about employees’ working conditions can be changed but they will not change the business unless there is a commitment by management to understanding the culture of the business.
- Team building - Promote the company's successes to staff. Talk about the good news stories and successful projects.
- Keeping clients - Do not take any client for granted. Liaise with clients according to their needs, not the needs of your business. The key is to make yourself indispensable to your client.
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Many employers now recognise the perils of failing to have flexible workplace strategies. Cost consequences include trained employees failing to return from maternity leave, high staff turnover, absenteeism and tardiness.
Warrilow says: "Lots of organisations have fantastic work/life policies but it can be tough for employees to access them because the business culture isn't supportive. One example: someone wanting to work part-time but then being denied promotion because their manager feels they're not committed to the organisation."
The key, she says, is to negotiate clearly defined outcomes for employees and their managers before setting up new work practices. The result of such negotiation is that either party can be held accountable if the arrangement fails.
"Some businesses think that if they let one person work flexible hours, everyone will want to do it," Warrilow says. "That's not the reality. Some people like working from eight to five every day, not everyone is going to be pregnant at the same time, and not everyone is going to have elder care issues at the same time. You will always have a core of people available."
Managers also need to understand the workplace culture. Warrilow says: "You need to have someone who actually 'walks the talk’. It makes a real difference if you have a senior person who walks around and talks with staff."
At FAW, Warrilow has introduced monthly meetings between each employee and their immediate manager. These are informal chats that keep people informed about the business and cover areas of interest to the employee.
It is vital to pinpoint those affected by a change in work practices. Warrilow says: "These might be middle managers who have to implement it within their own small budgets or colleagues who don't understand what happens when you've got to pick up a sick child. Pre-empt objections by giving them the information that they need."
FAW manages two work-based child-care centres but this service is no longer an important growth area. Its fastest-growing business is an information service called Work/Life Links. Inquiries from employees and their families range from child-care and elder-care concerns to health and lifestyle matters. FAW recently added a coaching component to the service and now gets calls from teenagers wanting to talk about schooling or other issues as well as inquiries from employees.