What would you like to change?

Hello, I’m David Innes and I’m joined by my colleague Mark Dawson from PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mark and I both work in our change practice within PwC. We’re joined today by two members of the public, both Laura and Nicola, and they have expressed an interesting response to our campaign “What would you like to change?”. Our theme today is around a four-day working week. I’d like to ask Laura about the four-day working week and what it means for her.

“I just really feel that I spend so much time at work, five days and quite long days at that, that I don’t get enough time to spend with my family and friends and at the end of the day work for me isn’t the most important thing in life and it would just be nice to redress the balance and I think a four-day working week would just help redress that in my life and give me a better quality of life.”

“And I agree with Laura, same for me I’m looking for a better work-life balance and to spend five days working really intensively, long hours, by the time I get to the weekend, I spend my weekend recovering and then suddenly it’s Monday again and start the whole cycle again.”

“Thanks Nicola. It’s quite interesting as we develop as a society, as we do well economically, as our expectations raise, we then want to work less – an interesting oxymoron. Mark, what’s your point of view?”.

“Well I think work-life balance is tremendously important and organisations need to take the strength of feeling that we’ve found through the question we’ve asked very seriously. We’ve been overwhelmed with the responses in the last ten days on this subject from all professions from a whole host of different types of organisations. If you look at some of the statistics, organisations that have the best employee satisfaction and employee loyalty are often those that have the most flexibility about working arrangements. So organisations do need to listen to the feedback that we’re providing, that people who are answering the question are providing. A shorter working week is one way of doing that, annualised hours is another way of doing that and then focussing on some of the stronger motivators around recognition and challenge and variety of work as well as focussing on inputs around time are clearly important. Having said that, I think there’s a very interesting question here about presenting work and life as a dichotomy, as a choice and therefore we reduce work so we can have more life and I wonder if that’s the right way to look at the question in its entirety and I wonder as well as organisations needing to respond to the change whether there’s more that we as individuals can do to sort work-life balance within a 24 hour period. I’d be really interested in Nicola and Laura’s views on things like the use of technology and the way it makes us available 24 hours, about the way that we can delegate, about the way that we say no, about our tendency, certainly in my organisation, to be hyperactive overachievers and whether those are some of the drivers of the problems as well as the simple input of the length of the working week.” “Yes, I think actually there’s a few good points in there. I personally feel like I am contactable all the time and from multiple avenues, be it Blackberry or email or phone. It doesn’t give you a lot of time to yourself, even when you do get to go home and spend time with your family and so there’s probably something in there about me saying no and switching that stuff off and saying no, it’s half past five, I’m going home and the world is not going to end if I don’t send this email.”

Have you set yourself boundaries, because I guess that’s what you’re describing?”

“No, I haven’t really. It’s partly a cultural thing as well. Where I work we have a culture of trying to push ourselves really hard and if you want to get to the top you’ve got to be willing to do whatever and so I think there’s also a cultural thing. It’s all very well me saying yes, I’m going to do that but being able to do that at work is another matter.”

“Some of what you describe sounds quite macho… - Nicola?”

“Yes, I think that when you’re talking about the culture, that’s just a general trend, isn’t it? Look at shops being open 7 days a week whereas before it used to be Monday to Friday then gradually Saturday and then the weekends. I just think we need to be better, we need to be more understanding of people’s work-life balance and actually recognise that we’re actually creating demands on people and we shouldn’t be expecting responses instantly and so personally we need to take responsibility. We need to recognise the demand we are placing on others.”

“What is the one thing you would do differently having heard some of the suggestions that Mark has made around what good practice is telling us that organisations who are working more flexibly are doing?”

“I think I’d possibly, for example, say no more to things like unnecessary meetings and this whole culture of constantly having meetings and talk and talk and talk and not much action. I’d probably try and get more action orientated.”

“I think for me I’d need to be more focussed with my time so I have a tendency, every time an email comes into my inbox, to read it instantly and maybe I need to think no, I’m not going to look at my emails for a couple of hours – I’ll come back to those.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea.”

“I think organisationally, not only do organisations need to focus on their HR policies to make those as flexible as possible to maximise choice so that the individual can choose how to deploy their time but also the point that both Laura and Nicola have raised around the culture of work and as you said David, in many cases an overly macho culture or an overly time served culture, so it’s about culture as well as HR policy but what I find most interesting about this discussion is that it proves the time honoured phrase “nothing changes until you change” or “nothing changes until I change” and what can we do to improve our life balance as well as what can we expect society and our organisations to do the same.”

“Great. Nicola, Laura, Mark, thanks very much, that was a really rich discussion. We could probably wax lyrical for quite some time on it. Final question, with the one day that I’m not giving you, which is now day 5, how do you use that time?”

“I think I’d probably just sleep a bit, catch up, I need my sleep and then just spend the rest of the time with my friends and family and get out and get some fresh air and exercise instead of being trapped in the office all day.”

“Great, excellent. Nicola?”

“I’d spend my time getting all the boring household chores out of the way on the Friday so I’d have the weekend to spend more time with my husband.”

“Mark?”

“Making and then eating the most delicious risotto.”

“Great food outside, family and chores and for me, my favourite hobby, being a parent. Thank you very much”.