Unintended Consequences
More than ever there has been a lot of focus on companies building up diversity in their workforce. And it’s about time.
After listening to an HBR IdeaCast highlighting work-life supports, the researchers discovered an unintended consequence resulting in increased diversity in the workplace. Life always provides unintended consequences and it would behoove us to slow down and take a look at those.
The article, Surprising Benefits of Work-Life Support by Professor Alexandra Kalev & Frank Dobbin https://tinyurl.com/hbrworklife found that the big three most valued benefits especially for minority workers with children are flex time, time off with or without pay, aka family leave, and child care assistance. The findings, all from U.S.-based companies, over a period spanning 30 years, showed that formalizing and getting the word out that these three benefits are available to all employees are more effective in increasing a diverse workforce, especially for management positions than racial-equity programs which seems to be where the bigger emphasis is. In fact, the authors have named the subtitle of their insightful article: It’s a secret weapon for achieving organizational diversity.
As a society, we learned a lot going through COVID-19, employers and employees alike. Employers realized that a company can remain productive and sometimes exceed performance despite employees working from home. Employees realized that working from home is kind of nice.
Alphabet recently increased their paid leave to 24 months with other giants like Meta and Netflix upping their investment in a happy workforce to four months and one year of paid leave respectively. The article also lists big box retailers offering generous benefits to retain employees.
The Great Resignation that began in 2021 underscores that employees want and need flexibility in the workplace. According to a newsletter from Cigna, flexibility and work-life balance exceed financial compensation. A whopping 63% of job seekers recently surveyed indicated work-life balance was their top priority when picking a new job. The same survey found that workers are nearly three times more likely to report being happy when satisfied with their companies’ time and location flexibility. https://tinyurl.com/redefiningfuturework
None of this is news. Companies have known for years that promoting work/life balance results in less turnover, increased productivity, and overall positive employee morale. Women and people of color need flex time, time off in the way of family leave and assistance with child care the most, because they experience greater challenges and have fewer resources that they can access easily. Now if we can just get more decision-makers to be intentional in implementing this balance- maybe we can get to a tipping point where life/work balance is the norm and everyone benefits, not just a select few.
