You Need the Right Team: Achieving Work/Life Balance (Part 3)

My Family Care asks an HR Professional: With September comes a refocus on our work life balance. With the holidays over, children going back to school and buckling down before Christmas why is a good balance important and what advice would you give to parents for making this fall a more balanced one? How have you successfully managed/supported parents in your company from when they announce they are pregnant (or their partner is) to sports days and emergency illness?

A broader playing field

What's changed for parents in the workplace? Most noticeably, it's not a 'women's issue' any more. Fathers have begun to speak up about their needs for flexible working and their desire to be part of raising their families, hands-on. From society's point of view this is good, and it takes the debate from being about gender to being about juggling work and dependants, whoever you are.

So as a firm we strive to be 'gender neutral' in all our offerings: that's the first step, even if it's driven by targets for female retention. If you can be more family-friendly generally, you will attract and retain women and also be better for dads and carers too, which is great. Of course it's still women carrying the greater load around maternity (in every sense!), so we have extra support in place: it's just accessible to anyone, including any dad brave enough to take Additional Paternity Leave.

What do we provide?

Culturally: We've done training in unconscious bias and also match younger lawyers with mentors, so everyone has a chance to understand how to 'get on' in the law and in the firm, whatever your background or other responsibilities. We've also circulated internal communications that include pieces by senior employees about life experiences and encouraging employees to take sports day off, so long as your work load is managed. That's easier for more senior people but at least this gives permission for more junior people to ask too.

Managers: We've trained our HR team to work with managers who are directly supporting parents and carers. We have a checklist to go through for maternity & paternity leavers so that they can take on more of a coaching role to encourage the manager to communicate well at this important time.

Maternity: We've got extra peer mentoring around maternity, and these mentors were specially trained! We make good use of Keeping in Touch days with networking events that individuals can build into a KIT day. Network events are open to everyone and we do get a balance of fee earners and support staff. But for fee earners we also provide individual professional coaching. The challenges can seem overwhelming and we've found people receiving coaching feel more confident and that helps with how they manage working hours. A lot of it is about setting up the right systems and relationships to work from home occasionally (to cut down the commute) and to work on the fly with the blackberry at other times if that's what it takes. Some fee earners leave the office for 'bath-time' then log on later.

Flexible Role Models: We've done quite a bit to gather stories from people who work flexibly and set up clearer processes and tips for managers. Again this is everyone: mums, dads, carers, and some people doing it for other lifestyle reasons such as training for a marathon or periods of study.

Policies and benefits: We overhauled our various offerings to make sure people felt supported practically. The emergency childcare benefit we provide is one of the most valued and well-used parts of this!

Different career routes

So can parents now have it all? We can all now think of women who are Partners and mothers, and also those who have been happy to take alternative routes, such as becoming a support lawyer. All firms have subtle differences in how they approach this but there have been experiments where individuals are provided with senior director-type roles that are different from partners, allowing someone to work 4 days a week but focused on certain projects. Some say this is a 'Mummy Track', and that we haven't solved it, but I think the very fact that we have put different routes in place - not just having the single 'up or out' pyramid - is positive.

Overall

It takes flexibility and the will to succeed on both sides: the individual should be open to give and take and so must the employer. Yes, there are cultural challenges with some senior people set in their ways and yes, you have to be energetic, determined and highly organized to get on. But coming back to your question about 100 years - these days we have some very nice forms to fill in for flexible working arrangements. No chaining yourself to the railings required!

HR generalist, Legal sector