6
HR
West
®
W
hile I try to be a person of the present,
I’ll admit to occasionally wishing for a
time machine. One of the things I’d
do is go back and not give stink eye to parents with
crying children in the grocery store. I gave a lot of
stink eye before I had children of my own. And now
I realize that sometimes, you just need milk. Going
back in time and not acting like a rigid judgmental
person seems just as easy as finding all of those
tired parents and infants and apologizing…
If only rigidity and judgment had stayed confined
to off-hours grocery store forays. That same
twenty something self was also charged with policy
writing, time and attendance tracking, scheduling,
discipline, etc. as a fledgling HR Manager. These
were the days when many of us could use the term
HR professional and rule monger as synonyms. At
a company that in 1990 had a dress code that listed
pants as inappropriate for women in the office (well
I did get that changed quickly enough.) Needless
to say, we weren’t focused on things like flexibility
and adaptability. Conformity and consistency were
the rules of the day. Bringing one’s personal life
to work was not acceptable. Pre ADA. Pre FMLA.
Pre Commonsense. Pre Talent War. One could be
compassionate personally but rules were rules and
the rule was that work was work.
Unless, of course, you were an executive. These
folks enjoyed incredible amounts of flexibility when
it came to schedules and times and policies and
such. Over the past few decades, the playing
field has leveled. Demands of the generation of
workers before this one – most of whom had two
working parents for the families – or, heaven forbid,
interests outside of work, forced organizations to
consider individual plans and flexibility for many
of the team, not just the executive team. As the
war for talent heated and we continued the
transition to knowledge work, the rigid started the
game with a significant disadvantage. Access to
information on what progressive organizations did
and do influenced workforce design because the
workforce knew about it too. New tools also made
flexible arrangements possible.
So flexibility and adaptability are old news, yes?
Why bring up what is now so ubiquitous?
Because the definition keeps changing and
newer dynamics are emerging. Consider an ever
growing segment – the Sandwich Generation.
Pew Research defines this group as folks 40-59
who have children at home AND responsibility
for parents. In 2012, 47% of this core group of
productivity and knowledge in most organizations
had these competing pressures with 31% of them
reporting that they always felt rushed. We thought
we were progressive back in the day when we
sent out a memo about finding childcare and
government agencies that could help. Now there is
eldercare and so much more, often simultaneously.
And the aging “baby boomers” who are still in
the workforce present their own dynamics that
have expanded the definition of flexibility beyond
telework or compressed work weeks. The Sloan
Foundation lists a myriad of options: altering start
and work times, extended or variable break times,
compressed work weeks, phased retirement, part-
time, job sharing, part year work telework, Results
Only Work Environments (ROWE). Plus, all of these
post X generations that are used to something we
that came before only dreamt of… choices. The
list goes on.
In World at Work’s 2013 study on workplace
flexibility, they reported that telework, flex time or
part time work is now offered at 80% of companies.
What if your organization isn’t even doing what
the workforce considers “basic”? What if your
organization “can’t”? What are you doing to keep
and retain talent in the face of the new norms? Even
something as simple as varying start times to meet
individual needs with core hours give folks a sense
of autonomy and choice.
The same report also said that 53% of managers say
it is difficult to establish the productivity of workers
with flexibility, that only 4% of organizations attempt
to calculate an ROI on flexibility and almost none
do any management training for folks managing a
more flexible workplace. These reasons alone make
the topic worthy of our attention as the architects
of our organizations charged with optimizing both
effectiveness and efficiency.
Leaders and executives are entrusted with the
responsibility to maximize success in a rapidly
changing future. This requires vision and the
ability to adapt and execute.
– Wharton Magazine (June, 2013)
Lead we must. Or our organizations and our
careers will fall to the wayside. What is your vision?
The rules of the game have changed. In many ways,
it is a game without “rules” at all. How will we play
to win?
Wishing you a wildly successful career,
HR
Danika Davis
Chief Executive Officer,
NCHRA
415.395.1911
Executive Letter
“We’re living in a different world now in terms of employee needs, and companies
have to offer alternative methods for getting the work done. Even under the most
difficult circumstances you can have creative flexibility.” — Anne M. Mulcahy
