Be a Work/Life-Friendly Boss

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Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. I'm talking today with Scott Beason, a professor of management at Fairleigh Dickinson University and the author of the Working Dad Survival how to Succeed at Work and at Home. He writes about work and family issues for time, the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, and of course hbr.org and as well I should mention on your own blog, Father's Work and Family. Scott, thank you so much for talking with us today.

Oh, so happy to be here.

So the research shows that managers have a major influence over their employees work life balance, which makes sense and also shows that employ with good work life balance tend to be more engaged and that the companies tend to have better financial performance indicators. I mean there's a lot of research here that shows this is something that's good to do. And yet I think a lot of managers are really clueless when it comes to helping their employees foster this balance or maybe don't realize that it's their job. So and not in a malicious way, but they've got a lot in their plates. They're not thinking about it. So I thought we could start by talking about how should managers be thinking about this in addition to the laundry list of other work problems they have in their plate they're trying to solve? And how should managers think about their employees work life balance as an issue that they themselves should care about and try to manage?

Well, I think you're absolutely right. I think that most managers are well meaning people who would like to do the right thing by their employees. But it's just that maybe they don't quite know how or they haven't thought that beyond workplace issues is their purview. The way I tend to look at it is your employee really is a whole person. And if the whole person is recognized and developed and allowed to be successful, then they're going to be more successful as employees. That's the mindset that I would suggest managers have is looking at their employee as a whole person, not just as someone who's in the office from 9 to 5 or 9 to 6. From a mindset standpoint, that's maybe the easy part. But the next step is understanding that a person will be more successful if they have some control over their time or how they get their work done. That if there's Some outlet for them if they can have some opportunities to recharge and replenish. And all those things are very positive with performance. I think most managers get it, but they don't want to sacrifice any sort of short term performance for long term sustainable performance. And that's where the convincing has to get done is that it's really not so much a short term cost to have somebody take all their vacation time or to be more flexible with them about family leave. It's really something in the long term that will really return more than any sort of short term cost.

It's interesting. One of the biggest challenges, I think, for managers, right, is when an employee comes back to them after they've made a request and says, you know, boss, I would love to do this project, but I just don't have time. Or maybe they don't even say, I'd love to do this. Maybe they're just like, I don't have time to work on this. I think that's probably, probably not the most diplomatic way that an employee could phrase it, but that's often how it comes out. And then the manager is in this position of trying to figure out, well, is the employee just not being productive with his or her time? Do they really not have time, or could they somehow squeeze it in if they tried harder in a moment like that? What is a good way for a manager to respond to that kind of pushback?

You know, I'm a big advocate of asking the question behind the question, so to speak. So why can't we get this done? What could I do to make it easier for you to get this done? Let me take a look at what projects you're working on now. Is there a way that we could shift some things around that would make it easier for you to do this? These would be some questions and responses that as a manager, I would hope that they would ask in a situation like this, instead of reflexively saying, how dare you say no? Or even just being so thrown by hearing a no kind of asking the question behind it. Because there could be a real good reason. Maybe someone else had asked them for this big project and you didn't know about it. And now you can manage that because you're uncovering a root cause of this inability as opposed to just reacting to the surface of it.

Mm, okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. I think another common scenario. I'm running through my list of common scenarios, so I think another common scenario is that managers often may try to protect their own employees from overwork but don't do a good job of protecting themselves from long hours. So a manager might say to her staff, don't work on the weekends or don't work at night, or may even say, I saw you sending emails last night at 9pm you really don't have to do that. But then the manager herself is under the gun and is doing that. And so my question is, do managers have to model the behavior themselves or can they somehow try to enact a double standard where if they want to be workaholics, that's fine for them, or if some other people on the team want to be workaholics, that's fine for them, or do they really have to both model the behavior and then kind of enforce this code of we don't do email at night or on the weekends or you know, stuff like that on their team?

Yeah, well, that's a tough one because obviously, you know, managers have a whole lot of responsibilities, so there's a lot of pressure to make sure nothing falls through. So I empathize and I get it. However, I really think in a sustainable way, you need to role model these types of behaviors. You shouldn't know if people are emailing at night because you should be on it yourself because that creates some of the pressure or the perceived pressure to do so. And there are employees that almost game this sometimes. I've heard and I've read stories and I've talked to people who they'll save an email and after their kids go to bed at 10 o', clock, they'll send it just to show the boss that they're still working late. And that's exactly what we don't want. We want people to be super productive and then have time to recharge and unplug. And that starts with the boss. In many cases, you're setting the tempo for your sphere of influence, whatever that is. If you're running a team or a division, it's really important. It's one thing to say, hey, I believe in work life balance, or hey, I believe in respecting your time. But. But it's more important that you do it than you say it. And actions obviously speak louder than words, especially in leadership positions.

That's so true. Okay, now another common pitfall I think probably for a lot of managers, performance reviews. Because even if they've done a good job of modeling the behavior, and even if they're really sensitive and employees push back on work, somehow performance review time comes around and even a really good, well meaning boss might slip into some bad habits there. So what are some of the traps there that managers really want to try to avoid and what should we do instead?

Well, this is actually my article on hbr.org from last week talking about this particular issue about how performance reviews can be really, really critical. The thing is, most, well, not most, many companies and many managers don't do a great job when it comes to performance evaluation.

I think you could say most, I think you could say most.

And we wind up paying attention to indicators of performance as opposed to performance itself. And indicators could be, you know, time in the office or just how someone presents themselves, those types of things. The better a company is or a manager is at really tracking performance, we can let go of some of the how and the why and the where which allows people freedom to kind of create their own work life balances that work for them. There are a few companies that have done a great job on this. Where I highlighted in my article, there's a financial services firm called Ryan LLC based in Dallas that they track five metrics for all employees. Plus they do periodic 360 degree reviews on teamwork and people working well together. And that's what they track. The performance evaluation actually is hardly done by a manager at all. It's done by these metrics that have been really well thought out. So the more we can point to actual performance and frankly, employees themselves can help their managers along with this. And one of the strategies I recommend is in the Working Dad Survival Guide is that working dads or working parents can help their bosses better understand what they're doing at work. Write up reports, keep time logs, have goal setting sessions if their managers aren't holding them themselves. Ask for coaching and feedback sessions throughout so that it's not a performance review at the end of six months after not having really thought hard about someone's performance for a while. Because if we do that, if it's an infrequent performance evaluation, then you know, we're relying on faulty memory. Whereas if we're having frequent informal conversations about performance on various projects, you're more likely to have an accurate picture. There's a lot of things in that answer. I apologize for that, but it's a complicated issue.

Yeah, no, it is really complicated. And I think one of the challenges is that in some organizations managers have so many people who are reporting to them that it makes the time to have all those one on one conversations really hard to find. And I think that's one of the biggest pain points we hear about from our readers. And is I either have time to do my job or I have time to manage. It's really hard to find time to do both.

Absolutely. And I don't want to minimize the pressures that most managers face, but I would suggest that a 10 minute conversation every two weeks for an employee is probably well worth the time and investment and will free up your ability to not have to micromanage somebody to better know what their capabilities are, to develop them to a point where you can manage them more loosely and free up much more time going forward. So in the short term, I think, yes, it's an investment of time, but that investment of time of coaching and frequent feedback really opens time up. If you think about it.

It's interesting too to think about. You could actually see in some ways a case to be made. Make sure that we get to this, because I think this is probably a pretty common one in these days of flexible work. Sometimes I think star employees get perks like working from home or flexible hours. And then I think a lot of managers worry that if they give their star employee that perk, or if they talk about the fact that, well, so and so works from home or so and so has these flexible hours, they're worried that some of the not so star employees will ask for it too, and then they'll feel like they have to give it to everybody. And that fear of, oh, then we'll have to give it to everybody kind of stops them from giving the flexibility that the stars really have earned and deserve. So how can managers balance that kind of right?

There's two types of fairness that you've described there. Fairness of outcomes or equalness of outcomes versus the fairness of opportunity or process. And what I think a manager could do in this situation is maybe even be very upfront about this at a staff meeting and say, listen, I've been getting requests about working more flexibly. Let me let you know what my criteria are for allowing such things. The reason why I would say yes, include things like your track record of performance, the reviews that you've gotten, the type of work that you do, which might be different than the type of work someone else does. And if you lay those out, then you're letting employees know how you're making these decisions, which should lessen the blow of maybe some people being offered this opportunity to work more flexibly than others get. Secondly, there's a company that has turned this on its head. And this is State street bank out of Boston, where it's called Manager Initiated Flex, where their managers are required to look through the job Descriptions and the projects of their employees and go to them and say, you know, looking at this project and looking ahead the next six months, it looks like you could do a fair amount of this work at home. So why don't you work from home two days a week for the next three weeks or something to that effect. And it's on the managers to bring this to the employee's attention as opposed to an employee having to ask for a perk. And then finally I would just say again, if focus is on performance and you're getting good performance, then you can let go of the where and the when work gets done. But I absolutely agree that I think only employees who have earned a reputation and of trustworthiness and getting the work done, you know, there's no reason they shouldn't get maybe a better deal at work than employees who haven't yet proved themselves in that regard.

Okay, so we've talked about modeling the behavior, performance evaluations, flex time. Are there other pain points? Things you hear from managers when they say I really want to be a family friendly boss or someone who supports work, life, sanity, but these are my fears or these are the things that keep getting in the way.

I think ultimately it's a question of risk aversion. Doing it the traditional way reduces some risk. And doing something different, there could be an upside, but there could be a downside to it, at least in managers minds. So I don't know if it really takes a leap of faith because the research and the best practices are very, very clear that having more flexibility in most cases is good. Giving employees more autonomy depending on their type of work is generally good. But some people need to experience this at least in the short run before they fully buy in. So it's a question of risk aversion sometimes. So starting small I think would be a good way for a manager who's perhaps a little reluctant can begin in this regard. A six week trial period or let's experiment on this one project or you know, that's something that maybe could be done. So it's a question of risk aversion. And the other thing is if the overall culture of the company is not one that supports flexibility or employees as whole people, but you're a manager who does value those things. It takes some bravery to stand out.

Yeah.

And to try something new and keeping things informal or under the radar a little bit within your work group might be a good short term strategy as well. Until you can demonstrate that it actually works and then lead with more confidence.

It is interesting that you mentioned that, that it's something that people keep under the radar because we did publish some research maybe almost a year ago now that showed that actually people do tend to hide these arrangements and that people who don't know about them, supervisors who don't know about them, can't tell the difference between the people working flexible hours and the people working 90 hours a week. There's no performance difference. And in fact, sometimes the people who are in and out of the office more have higher ratings. It's sad to me that people have to cover their behavior that way.

Yeah, well, again, I hate to sound like a broken record, but I teach this stuff and everything. But I really think performance evaluation is the key to this. And it's something that managers, because it's an awkward thing to have to do, managers tend not to do it particularly well. But if we really measure performance better, we can let go of these other non performance things and this will make life better, really for everyone.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting too to hear you say that because we sort of started out this conversation almost talking about having to justify why a manager should care about their employees work life balance. And now it actually seems like when you talk about performance evaluations, that's the core of management. That is what a lot of managers core task is, is to evaluate how their employees are doing accurately and fairly.

Yeah, I was on a panel discussion not that long ago about this and they were talking about, well, what can we do with diversity and inclusion programs and having more gender equity in the workplace. And there was a sentiment in the room and I agreed with it most of the way, that it's important to have a diversity and inclusion program or a work life program. But it's more important that we think about our typical usual management practices and policies and really think about how we could do these better and in a more fair way. Some people are saying, well, younger women in my firm are not getting the opportunities to meet with upper management. It's like, well, can't we track this? We can give goals to managers to make sure that their younger associates are sitting in on other meetings or are shadowing or are getting involved in another group's project so that they get seen by other managers in the company, which could lead to promotions down the line and breaking through a glass ceiling, for example. If our performance evaluations are better, obviously this helps this happen. If we're tracking turnover among targeted groups, say among 30 something prime parenting year employees, we could track this by manager, by unit, by division, and then once we have some data on it. We can use our typical management practices to work on it. I think we need to get beyond labeling these things as a work life issue and really understand that it's a performance issue. And if we're focused on performance, we can give more flexibility and how and where things get done.

Okay, so we're just about out of time. And that would be a good place to leave it. But I would feel. I would feel remiss if I didn't ask you about bosses whose maybe intentions aren't so warm and fuzzy and good and. Or who maybe who have good intentions, but who don't realize how they come across to other people. Because I think a lot of us either have had or have heard friends grouse about bosses who will do things like roll their eyes when someone says that they're pregnant or roll their eyes when the employee asks for, and maybe they don't even realize they're doing it. So I feel like we've really spent a lot of time talking about what the manager should do. But if that's your boss or if you're that boss but you don't realize you're that boss, how do we solve that problem?

Right. Part of it's empathy. Part of it is self education. But if you're the employee in a situation where you have an aggressively bad boss, the best thing you could do is get yourself out of that situation. And maybe it takes six months to do so, but there could be internal transfers or resumes going out the door. It's hard. Managing upward is difficult. But I think we have to remember that careers are 45 years long. And maybe the role that we're in with the boss that we're in or even the company that we're in doesn't have to be the only job we can consider. If we perform well, if we network well, we can have options to move. So I hate to say that as the kind of unsatisfying advice here, but do what you can to educate and start thinking. But if you have someone who really can't be moved through data or emotion, maybe you need to move.

I wasn't planning to bring this up, but we had to reschedule this podcast because you had a conflict. That was a family conflict, and you were totally upfront with me about that, and that was fine, and we just moved it. It wasn't a big deal. But I wondered because I think a lot of people in the past have rescheduled things with me and have just said, oh, I have a commitment at that time that I wasn't aware of, you know, and they don't really say, like, oh, my kid has this thing and I have to be there. And I'm just wondering if all of us, in a tiny act of rebellion, could experiment with being more transparent when we have those to sort of signal to other people like, hey, we're all doing this.

I 100% agree with that. I think that anybody who has any sort of job security should do this and just be upfront about these things. You know, it's a shame we have to hide this part of our lives. One of my friends sent someone an email. One of those out of office messages came back to them. And the out of office message said, I'm on paternity leave for the next four weeks. If you need somebody, please contact this person. And if you're a dad, you should consider paternity leave. And I thought that was just brilliant. If we could talk about this and make it more normal. Because really there's nothing being a good parent and being a good employee, you know, these are not mutually exclusive things and we need to talk about these more. I think one last thing I'll leave on is one of the dads I interviewed in the book was a manager, but he also coached his son's Little league team. So he would leave at 3:30 because he had a fairly long commute to get back for his son's little league games. And this is like two days a week during baseball season. And he would just check in with his team before he left. Hey, do you have everything you need? Hey, I'm going to check my emails once at like 9:30 after my kid's in bed. And then he'd leave. And he didn't flaunt it, but he didn't hide it. After a while, it kind of gave his team and others who saw him almost permission to do the same. And it became like a really important role model in his workplace.

Yeah, I don't have kids, but I try to do that with my own other things. Like I'll just say, I'm going on vacation, I'm not gonna check my email. And then I just won't. And every now and then someone can't quite believe it. They email you several times. You know, did you get my email? But I'm not checking, so I don't see it till I get back, you know, So I think it's good to. Whatever it is that's going on in our lives that we carve out that space and let other people know about it. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, you know, if we are more successful in all the areas of our lives, including having time for ourselves and being healthy physically and mentally and having time for friends and for our loved ones, I think we're healthier people and we tend to be more productive when we're feeling better about ourselves.

Definitely. Well, Scott, thank you so much for taking some time out of your very busy life to talk with us today.

Oh, thank you so much.

That was Scott Beeson, a professor of management at Fairleigh Dickinson University. For more from Scott, go to hbr.org.