One thing that constantly annoy me has been the expectation that because we are professionals, we stop becoming a father or a mother or a husband or a wife once we walk through the doors of the office. Apparently, we are supposed to focus on the job that we are paid to do during the hours that we are paid for to do it. We can spend the time on our domestic issues during lunch hours, break time or from the time we start walking out of the door. But if we start eating into office time, please apply for time off and let's not talk to anyone about our home problems because everyone is professional in the office.
Unfortunately it is never true. How can it be? We cannot deny our family roles which are with us 24 hours a day: our families occupy our thoughts, our aspirations, our worries at all the times that we are working for their very own wellbeing. In fact, we work in large part because of them - why wouldn't they be foremost on our minds? Still, many are made to feel inadequate, unprofessional, not a team player by our managers or feel a bad parent/spouse/child/sibling in our minds. Does it need to be like this?
I have been fortunate that of late as I have been the one setting the rules. Some time ago, I was interviewing a lady for a finance head position with my client. She started the entire interview by apologising for putting her child before her work. Poor lady: I guess she didn't expect to be told off for it, "You never ever ever EVER apologise for putting your child before your work. It is something you should be proud of." It is sad that we have been so conditioned to feel that being human is not the professionalism expected in the work place.
Many years earlier, my then secretary came to me asking for advice because she was going for a job interview with a lady boss in a small company. I asked her, "Your son is your priority, right? So, ask her whether you can take off if your son is sick." "But, Jim", she replied, "She's a woman: surely, it's OK, right?" "Ask anyway", I said. She came back to me a few days later saying confusedly, "She said no." Sometimes women can be their own worst enemies.
Which reminds me of an incident when I was heading a governmental agency. I was fortunate that the nature of my job allows my wife and baby to tag along for many of our programmes. Attendees and organisers at these events are often quite happy to welcome my wife and baby - well, especially the extremely cute baby, who gets to become the centre of attention & recipient of many gifts that the rest of us will never get. Except at one event. One very apologetic young man came to my wife asking her to take the crawling baby out of the room. Cut a long story short, it led to a showdown between me and the lady organiser who eventually had no choice but to leave the quiet and unobtrusive baby alone. I do wonder at times whether some (and only some) women feel a need to demonstrate a work place professionalism by being ultra anti-family?
From the commencement of my CEOship, my wife and baby tagged along with me to the office. I am not exactly sure what the team really feels inside (Asian culture being especially discreet in sharing negative personal opinions in person) but I can definitely see the impact the baby has on the team: everybody lightens up when they see the baby. Stress levels go down and morale goes up. Everyone relaxes and performed better. They really do and I do credit the baby for a good part of it. My intention was of course to invite my wife and baby to be part of my work and see & participate in what I do. The effect on the office is only a by-product but I am happy to send the message that family is priority - that they are free to settle their family worries so that they can focus on their work. The culture of the work team as a family - not just as a slogan but where we really know each other's families.
Other than the moral benefits of treating your staff as people, I believe strongly that maintaining family roles during office hours bring much productivity benefits. Mainly, it unlocks people whose availability does not fit into traditional HR manuals. Also, the impact of morale cannot be overstated and people who appreciate being treated as people often try to repay it by going the extra mile. And, how productive can a person be if they spend their working hours worrying about their children? - better they clear the issue so that they can focus on the work, even if at 11pm.
What's the cost? The manager has to be flexible and invest more time in managing the team. Managing the team by deliverables rather than time at work is key, but wouldn't we already need to do know how to that with millennials - those who doze off at 10am, play games at 2pm and email you their complete spreadsheets at 3am? I am always happy to send the message to my team that I am paying them for what they produce, not the hours they work. Scheduling can be a bit more complicated, but nothing that good communication & clear team goals cannot solve. At the same time, we need to be street smart enough to pick up cases of abuse of our good intentions.
Bringing the family into the workspace not only involves micro-management techniques, macro company policies will also help. Workspace nurseries, outsourced or organic, will assuage parental worries and logistical concerns. An office building where I once worked had one and I have quite a fond memory of preschoolers lining up to evacuate during a fire drill. Flexible hours does no harm to the office other than the manager's scheduler and I had always been happy for my staff to align their work hours according to their children school hours. The pandemic has also taught us how to manage staff who work regularly from home - by managing output delivered rather than visible effort and timely presence at the work desk. Offsites should NEVER replace the weekend but may overlap with it so as to give staff the option of a family break: Company pays until Saturday morning and staff can pay for a Saturday stay over at negotiated rates.
We were only a small company but it can work if we empower the departmental head to manage according to local departmental needs. Maybe the nature of our jobs where we run youth programs and the fact that the entire team comprised open-minded youths does help but prioritising the family is no more than an expression of the values of respecting each team member as an individual - each with their own story, people connections, dreams, blessings, fears, burdens. All these make up the person: we cannot take out a part of that person excised from all the other identities and still expect that part-person to function effectively. Ultimately, it is not a resource that deliver for us in the work place but a wholesome individual person and the sooner we recognise that & treat that person with the respect due to a person, the keener the person will deliver for us, fulfilling us in the process.
Postscript: It doesn't only work with people with domestic duties. I once had an accountant who was on a rather expensive short term contract but she initially refused to work on a permanent contract as she loved to travel and require the flexibility to allow her to take time off for her holidays. I said, "Tell you what. You give me your travel schedule for the year since you book a year ahead and we organise the work around that." She agreed and I got my work done while she had her travels with security of a permanent contract. Being bold does pay dividends.
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