Managing the 21st Century

Workforce: Flexibility and

Supportiveness at Work

Faculty Leadership and Development Seminar

Bayview Medical Center
October 30, 2007
Kathleen Beauchesne, MSW, MBA, PhD, LCSW-C
 Goals for Today
• Gain an understanding of work/life issues from and
individual and systems perspective
• Provide an overview of leadership and management
skills required for today’s workforce
– Traditional supervisor/Integrated supervisor
– Old Workplace/New Workplace
– Leadership skills for flexibility and support
• Increase knowledge of resources that can be helpful
– Imagine the Consequences
– Signs and Symptoms/Dos and Don’ts of Effective Intervention
– Nine Key Steps in Early Effective Intervention
 What Has Changed?
• Technology and globalization
• Employment, wages and benefits
• Aging boomers
• Diverse workforces
• Childbearing and fertility rates
• Marriage and divorce
• Changes in family structures
• Women’s labor force participation
• Speeded up lives and overwork
 Work-Life Issues: The Evidence

• 87% of employees go home to care for a family member every

night (NSCW, 1997)
• As the population ages, more and more employees are
providing elder care for relatives. In 2002, 35% of workers,
men and women alike, say they provided regular care for a
parent or in-law over 65 in the past year, helping them do
things that they could not otherwise do themselves (NSCW,
2003)
• Fathers in dual-earner couples today spend 42 minutes more
doing household chores on workdays than fathers in 1977.
 Work-Life Issues: The Evidence
• Mothers have reduced their time by approximately
the same amount.
– So the combined time that spouses in dual-earner couples
with children spend on household chores has not changed
over 25 years-what has changed is how family work is
divided (NSCW, 2003).
• Employees with families report significantly higher
levels of interference between their jobs and their
family lives than employees 25 years ago (45% vs.
34% report this "some" or "a lot").
– And men with families report higher levels of interference
between their jobs and their family lives than women in the
same situation. (NSCW, 2003)
 Work-Life Issues: The Evidence
• One out of three workers is experiencing one or more
symptoms of clinical depression, and coincidentally, it is
the same number of people who are feeling over-loaded
(NSCW, 2003)
• Employees reporting significantly better mental health
have the most work-life supports in place and they
experience:
– More control over schedule
– More access to flexible work arrangements
– More supportive managers and supervisors
– More supportive organizational culture
• 77% of those who experience their culture as being
supportive say it is highly likely they will still be working
at the company next year, compared to 41% who don’t
Working Conditions: The Evidence
• Flexible and supportive supervisors are critical to
recruitment and retention
• Greater work/life supports (flexibility, respect, supervisor
support, supportive work culture) are more strongly
associated with positive work outcomes than fringe
benefits
– Job satisfaction
– Commitment
• Loyalty
• Willing to work harder than required to help employer
succeed
– Retention
• More likely to stay with employer for at least the next year
Multiple Roles Across the Life Span

• Imagine your life as a wheel

– Divide your wheel into pieces so that it represents a picture of your life right
now
– Make a list of the roles that make up your life now
– Where do the roles conflict?
– What about your wheel of life in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, etc?
• Think about the wheels of your colleagues/subordinates/staff
– How do these roles affect the way we work?
– How do these different roles affect the way we relate to each other?
– How do our wheels affect the achievement of our work goals as well as our
personal goals?
 Supervisors: Old Models/New
Models
Traditional Supervisor
• Authoritarian
• Very much in charge.
• “Command and control”
type of manager
• Tries hard to keep
everything under control
• Expects employees to
leave their home-life
issues outside the office
door
Integrated Supervisor
• Facilitator and coach
• Flexible and supportive
• Relational practice
• Employees are human
beings with full lives
outside of work and
important personal
responsibilities to handle
 Working Conditions: Old
Workplace/New Workplace
Old Workplace
• Jobs come with two choices
– Full-time (long hours and
benefits)
– Part-time, limited, casual
(short hours, low pay, no
benefits)
• Acting individually places
careers at risk
• Patterns of limited coverage
• Health care and pension
systems are in trouble
• Two choices of work/life
benefits
– Support the ideal worker
– Provide flexibility
New Workplace
• Focus on work redesign
– Quality part-time jobs connected to
career tracks
– Sequence in and out work
• Focus on the physical plant
– Ergonomics
– Physics
– Design better buildings
• Diversity in leadership
• Flexible hours
• Redesign benefits
– Access to paid-time off
– Generous maternity leave policies
– Health care
– Pensions
– Work/life benefits
• Employee voice
– Work/life councils
 Leadership Skills for Flexibility
• Old Skills from the Industrial Revolution
• New Skills
– Complex environment
– Knowledge and service workers
– Education is a necessity
– Work involves hearts and minds
• New skills include:
– Coach, empower, enable, collaborate, support team
work, trust, manage results, manage change, manage
partnerships, behave as an adult towards adult staff
 Reinventing Work
• A systems approach
• One person’s problem may be experienced by many people
• The problem affects not only the individual, but the
organization, the family, the community, the school, etc.
– The case of Ken
• Ask yourself: How can organizations move
beyond policies and programs and address work-
life integrations in a more systemic manner that is
of benefit to both the business and its employees?

– What is the new strategy to take us into the future?

 A Systems Model: The Tools

• Identify and assess assumptions

• Evaluate habitual work processes
• Paradigm shifts
• Managing up
• Create new stakeholders

• The goal is to address both individual and

business needs.
 Identify and Assess Assumptions
• Assumptions about work and the ideal
worker influence our ability to link work
and personal lives and achieve
organizational goals
• Assumptions about work may be counter-
productive to the achievement of
departmental and institutional goals
 Assumptions Exercise
• Bob Jones and Joe Smith are both vice
presidents at the same organization.
– Bob takes a week vacation. He takes his fax
machine, cell phone, and laptop computer with him.
He calls the office daily and reads and responds to his
e-mail.
– Joe takes a two week vacation. He takes his fishing
pole with him. He leaves an emergency number with
his assistant who never calls him.
• What are the traditional assumptions implied in
this story?
• Which vice president is more valued by the
company?
 Examining Work Processes
• Examining habitual work processes in a team
• Customizing jobs
• Effective communication processes
• Duplication of work
• Flexible work schedules
• Cyclical work schedules
• Assumptions about work processes
• Breaking down silos
 Create New Stakeholders
• Include the family as a stakeholder
– Families prepare us for work
– Families affect our ability to work each day
– Family events can rejuvenate us
– Family experiences can help us feel motivated
and energized
• Multiple roles as human beings
 Paradigm Shifts
• Paradigms provide rules, frameworks and
models for doing our work
– People deeply believed these ways were the
best
• Leaders or pioneers help paradigms shift
• Ask yourself: What do I believe is impossible
but if it could be done would fundamentally
improve our work?
 Resources That Can Help
• Signs and Symptoms
• Dos and Don’ts of Effective Intervention
• Nine Key Steps in Effective Early Intervention
• Eight Key Steps in Disciplinary Action
• How to Make a Facilitated Referral
• How to Make a Condition of Employment
Referral
 Imagine the Consequences…
• Phil has been promoted to associate
professor. His new rank requires him to
produce more publishable material and
teach more classes. The combination of
the added demands of the job, his clinical
load and the pressures in his personal life
have resulted in several emotional
outbursts directed at colleagues and
students. Lately, Phil has begun to miss
his classes.
 Imagine the Consequences….
• Jane is a nurse who has worked with
George for a long time. She has started
arriving later and later for work, and when
questioned she talks about how stressful
her job is. Today, she is over an hour late
returning from lunch. Her coworkers have
been covering for her absences. George
just heard through the office grapevine
that Jane is taking care of her frail, elderly
mother.
 Resources That Can Help
• FASAP and WORKlife Programs
– Michelle Carlstrom, Director
• Organizational Development
– Jeff Baronian, 410-550-1777
• Career Management Program
– Audrey Trappe, Director
• Faculty Development
– Lisa Heiser, Assistant Dean
• Professional Assistance Committee (PAC)
– Chester Schmidt/Steve Achuff or any member of the
PAC
 For More About Flexibility and
Supportiveness at Work
• Go to:
– www.hopkinsworklife.org
• Click on:
– E-Training
• Two on-line workshops for
– Employees
– Supervisors/Managers
 References
• Miller, B. (2000). Reinventing work: Innovative
strategies relinking life and livelihood to benefit
business and staff. Chicago, IL: Artemis
Management Consultants.
• Rapoport, R., Bailyn, L., Fletcher, J.K., and Pruitt,
B.H. (2002). Beyond work-family balance. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• National Study of the Changing Workforce,
Families and Work Institute, No. 3, 2002.
• National Study of the Changing Workforce,
Families and Work Institute, No. 2, 1997.