"Work-life balance" and 9 other outmoded buzzwords

How do you achieve balance between work and family? Scale back, adjust your expectations, be flexible, goes the accepted thinking. But experts at a recent conference at Madrid’s IESE Business School have better ideas.

At Building Sustainable Societies: Trends and Best Practices in Work and Family Balance, academics and businesspeople presented some of the new and innovative ways to think about getting our lives into kilter. In these crazy economic times, everyone is reevaluating what's important, making healthy working lives more important than ever. And that means ditching these 10 worst outmoded phrases.

1. Work-life balance

Everybody wants it, nobody has any clue about how to get it. That's because the idea is all wrong, according to Dr Steven Poelmans, co-founder of the International Centre of Work and Family at Madrid's IESE Business School. "I don't like the word balance," he says, since it means if you put more into one side (say, work or family responsibilities), there's less time for another. Instead companies and employees need to think about harmonising work life, prioritising things in the various parts of life as you need you to. “Work-life balance is about having a sense of meaning and purpose in life,” says Poelmans.

2. Career ladder

The problem with the career ladder is that there’s only one way to go: up. If you try to dangle one leg off by working part-time or taking a break, others zoom past you to the top. It’s an old-fashioned notion, says Brett Walsh, of Deloitte Consulting, who ranks in HR Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential.

Post-Baby Boom generations don't want the bureaucracy or the set trajectory, he says. These days we need to think in terms of a career lattice, one where there are multiple paths upwards, where people can move faster, slower and change directions, depending on their career-life fit. As employees we can try to create a web that takes into account the myriad ways in which we learn and develop. As employers and managers, we can recognise that not everybody needs to advance in the same way. In return, the benefits are increased loyalty, increased productivity and decreased recruitment costs.

3. Mummy track

The "mommy track", a term prevalent in America, describes what happens once a woman becomes a parent. Her fast track to the top becomes a mommy track, the equivalent of the career slip road. But in these days of mass customisation, it doesn't have to be. After all, says Walsh, you can customise your iPod, you can customise your car, it's time we think about workplaces that allow us to bring our individuality to work with us. By matching talents to tasks, employers and employees ditch the notion that there's only one template. With more dads taking on parenting responsibilities, the "mummy track" becomes obsolete.

4. Glass ceiling – This term evokes an old-fashioned way of thinking about the workplace and combines baggage (like “mummy track”) and the closed-minded thinking of “career ladder”. It also tacitly reinforces that women can't get to the top without changing. (Recently the EHRC said it's a concrete ceiling.)

"Mostly the women who have arrived to power positions have disguised themselves as if they were men just to arrive," says Dr Nuria Chinchilla, Director of the International Centre of Work and Family. Instead of bringing diversity into the workplace, this reinforces old-fashioned notions of the power structure. By recognising the different attributes men and women bring to the table, we create a stronger workforce, says Nuria, named "Best Manager of the Year" by the Spanish Federation of Executive Women.

5. Sandwich generation

This term came into parlance several years ago and gives a corrosive spin to the problems faced by people who look after children and elderly parents. Work-life conflict is not a fad, like metallic leggings and speed dating. It’s driven by fundamental sociological changes, says Poelmans, and its not going away. More of us are looking after parents who live longer, and juggling school and childcare that is a patchwork of cover and care. It's hard to think of a worker who at one time or another won't need time to attend to family matters. Using the phrase labels the problem – dividing those workers from “the rest of us” - without offering a solution or even constructive dialogue. Additionally, every person’s challenges, goals and demands on their time are distinct and individual. Ditching "sandwich generation" allows us to approach each person and situation fresh to think more constructively about what works in their situation.

6. Time-poor

Everybody’s day is the same length. It feels shorter when our stress and responsibilities from work follow us into our home environment and our home concerns dog us at the office, says Poelmans. The stress we feel at home undermines our relationships and reduces our ability to cope; in the office, we become less engaged and less productive. What we need to do instead: allow ourselves time to refocus between work and home. By more effectively separating our milieus, we are able to more effectively use our time – and enjoy it.

7. Sacrifice

It’s become a normal philosophy of the modern career – you have to make sacrifices. You have to choose between the school play and the corner office; working from home or playing with the big boys. It’s that kind of thinking that requires employees to be at their desk a certain number of hours, whether or not the work requires them to be there. As bosses, supervisors and workers we can challenge that notion, by looking at a person's effectiveness at their task (and promoting our own work to higher-ups) that doesn't focus on just how much misery was endured along the way.

8. Open-door policy

"Come in any time", the boss says. "My door is always open." It’s a cliché that all bosses say this; it’s also true that few employees take them up on the blanket offer. The quandary of course is that employees are afraid to ask for reduced hours, fewer responsibilities, more time with their families because of fear of fallout. Whether or not their work schedule changes, they’re afraid they’ll be perceived as not dedicated. For companies and employees to forge workable alternatives, there has to be “psychological safety”, says Poelmans. For supervisors and HR professionals, that means not just telling employees they can come to you; it also means reaching out if you sense them struggling. “Family friendly” policies in the employee handbook are important, but they need to be backed up with an environment in which employees feel they can take them up.

9. Accountability

Rather than talking about accountability, let’s talk about measurable results. One speaker at a recent conference at Madrid’s IESE Business School described an exchange with her boss about an employee who wanted to work from home. “I don’t want her ironing clothes during the day,” the boss harrumphed. “I don’t care if she irons clothes!” the speaker responded. “If she gets her work done and has time enough to iron clothes during the day, great.” Championing accountability implies employees don’t live up to their responsibilities unless monitored by management. Measuring results keeps the focus where it belongs – on projects and actions that help the business.

10. Flexibility

In the minds of some, “flexibility” has come to mean compromise and dissatisfaction for everyone - employers and employees. The solution: ditch the term with all of its associated baggage. We need to learn a new language says Walsh. That means adopting new models in our business and taking advantage of new strategies, like the ones mentioned here. After all, it's the mindset - not the job - that needs to be flexible.

Comments

[ann]

HR - I was one of those managers for 15 years and yes, it is full of incompetent idiots - especially in the US where they talk for hours and deliver absolutely nothing. What HR does teach you is that the majority of people who work in offices, no matter what the job is, would most definitely rather not be there! How sad is that!!

[Rosemary]

LM is so right! ISO certification is meaningless, costly and totally pointless, but is used by managers to pretend that nothing can be improved.

[disappointed]

HR? Give me a break...! I work(ed) for a company where the HR manager was also on the board of directors. This conflict of interest did not seem to compute with the rest of the senior staff, who continue(d) in the vein that insofar as the staff were terrified enough to stay at their desks and not question the oppressive working atmosphere, something must be working right.

HR - Hostile Renegades.

Our HR department is ok, they don't seem to mess things up. give good advice about learning and development and I have even had meetings to suggest where else in the company I might go. Friends, however report similar problems to many of you. Stuff getting sent to the wrong place etc. One friend works for a company with several different parts and HR are very hostile to her part. They refuse to talk to people about pay rises. illnesses etc and are hugely aggressive. A couple of people she works with have been fired/suspended for questioning them about pay rises due months ago!

[LM]

On the subject of useless buzzphrases, thank you for the reminder of the hugely & incorrectly over-used "paradigm shift" (though in retrospect, Bush's election was just that).

My personal bugbear from the '90s: "Meets ISO 9000 certification/Industry Standards". Fine, OK, you have a process and you've been validated as having a process. Nothing here tells me you have an effective process though. Useless, completely useless (far more useless than "best practice" which can be a best practice if you have really good people, though usually, isn't).

[LM]

I've not had this level of problems with HR, ever, in any of the companies I've worked in. Personally, I like having a recruiter to do the initial phone screen & check salary requirements ahead of time. In my experience/industry, recruiters are pretty good about pre-screening for logistics (salary/benefits/level of genuine interest in role) and leave all the job-specific stuff to the relevant business group.

[Steve Buckel]

But surely the underlying problem can not just be relegated to issues of semantics and semiotics, however outmoded the former or inappropriate the latter. Your starting point was, very reasonably, "How do you achieve balance between work and family?" Surely, the solutions offered are attacks upon the symptoms, not upon the (more important) causes.

[L]

Our HR dept sent out an email congratulating a new starter on their new job, even though they hadn't formally accepted or resigned from their formal role. They also took about 6 weeks to process an application. They sent out emails saying "sorry, but you have not been selected for an interview as your numerical reasoning results did not meet our standards", to people who had not completed, or been asked to complete, numerical reasoning tests.
Anyone else that incompetent would be fired.

[Whimsey]

One of my (many!) pet hates about HR is when they insist on muscling in on the damn interview. Look, back off and stay out of it, OK? You know ZILCH about what a particular job needs, and you only muscle in in order to make yourselves look important and essential.

As for those companies where the first interview is only with HR, well, they can take a complete hike.
It's incredibly insulting to any candiate, at whatever level, to be interviewed by someone who isn't in the department you aim to be working in. It's the organ grinder who should be conducting the interview, not the monkey.

HR ... I worked for a company where our department interviewed two people for a job. One was an absolute gem and perfect for the job. The other was a nice enough young man but clearly had none of the abilities necessary for the job. Notified HR to offer the job to candidate A and ... you might have guessed it, come the starting day and candidate B walked in the door. They'd sent the wrong letters to the wrong candidates. After this we made it a policy to notify candidates ourselves and not rely on HR. The next hire we made, we called the successful applicant, which is just as well because the rejection letter from our efficient HR department arrived two days later...

[L]

I also agree with you on HR. They are my nemesis, and some HR people I have encountered are INCREDIBLY un-professional. For example, I did work experience somewhere and they said they'd provide feedback straight away. No feedback: called "oh yes, I'll call you back this afternoon". One month later, still no feedback, so I called again and spoke to the individual's junior, who gave me the feedback. Two weeks later she phoned me back to give me feedback. Another was someone who sent a letter to an address I'd moved out of two months previously (and they had sent things to my new address in the interim) ... the incompetencies are endless.

[L]

whimsey | 15 Oct 2008 16:55:08

I was very fortunate to have my boss when I first started working (as a temp, and she pushed for me to be made permanent, and promoted straight away). I hope I have more like her, or become like her when I'm in a management position.

[Whimsey]

Diane - I quite agree. But HR do two other things two. Firstly, they exist to draw fire. ie, the senior management know they are b***cks, but they also know that everyone else will hate HR so much, they won't hate the senior managers so much in comparison.

The other thing HR does is invent increasingly burdensome performance appraisal methods, and then impose them on staff and line managers. These are, beyond all doubt, the most useless waste of time and effort ever invented. They make me want to scream, and scream, and scream. Worst of all, they then computerise them, and the only way you can fill them out is via the computer system, which is unworkable and unaccessible and incomprehensible.

It's bizarre, because companies that impose these monsters on staff and line managers then claim to be great places to work.

But I do find it curious, irrespective of their use in drawing fire and sacking people, why CEOs actually put up with HR. They must cost a fortune and are utterly unproductive, a complete burden on the economy.

[Chipster USA]

"Best Practices" - another management-speak annoying phrase which really means we're to lazy to find the right way to do this in our organization (or won't listen to the employees who do the work) and we'll copy some other company's process wheteher it fits or not. When that's a disaster we'll hire a consultant to help us find the answer. Note; the consultant has a book of his or her best practices of similar value. The only difference the managers paid dearly to hear them.

[Diane]

HR = 'Hardly Relevant' or 'Human Remains'

What do these awful people do all day? Dream up a load of bo**ocks like that written above in between bouts of 'rationalisation' perhaps?

HR are busybodies whose only real contribution occurs when they fire people. They rest of the time they spend bigging up conflicts between productive staff to justify their own existance and salaries.

[David Farmer]

Women want equality in lifestyle and to this end should be accesable to homemaking and/or a career, this I have no problem with this premiss so long as this equality according to Harriet Harman, is truley equal and allow honest caring Dads to share this same equality(not the animal farm styli)I am capable of persuing a career, have done since 1975, am equally able to do everything for my children (post child-birth) that the mother can I care can feed and cloth them show empathy and do everything in my power to keep them safe! Why therefore even with a contact order in place was i deprived of this at a crucial time for my children as they start secondary education there is no evidence before the courts that puts me in a bad light other then the word of their vengeful/spiteful mother!?!The children do not get their views aired!

[will]

work life balance = common sense.

what do you want from your career, what do you want from your personal life?

do!

rocket science

[webdunce]

Remember in the 90s the buzz words were, paradigm, vision, dichotomy...
Today they're sustainability, buy-in and resources. It's all BS. In fact, I'd recommend the book, "The Business of Bullshit" by Graham Edmonds for a funny read on business culture. No matter how we label concepts and trends, there will always be that familiar scent wafting throughout. It's just the nature of modern business. Unfortunately, we all just have to deal with it.

[webdunce]

Remember in the 90s the buzz words were, paradigm, vision, dichotomy...
Today they're sustainability, buy-in and resources. It's all BS. In fact, I'd recommend the book, "The Business of Bullshit" by Graham Edmonds for a funny read on business culture. No matter how we label concepts and trends, there will always be that familiar scent wafting throughout. It's just the nature of modern business. Unfortunately, we all just have to deal with it.

[mumoftwo]

I've had really great bosses, who have given me a high level of independence in what I do. However, when that hasn't been the case, and they've just wanted a follower rather than anything else, I've moved on swiftly. I'm now a boss myself and I find that having good people around you makes you look better anyway.

[Paul]

Absolutely agree with the comments about work/life balance. As well as creating the false opposition that Dr Poelmans correctly identifies, chasing an impossible state of equilibrium ignores the issues that impact work and life as a whole - values, talents, goals, fulfilment and so on. Post-work/life balance career management experiences are explored on http://worklifefusion.blogspot.com

[whimsey]

L - I looked for a boss like that all my life, but never found one! The level of 'good management' in bosses is horrifyingly scarce, in my experience. I did have one very good one, but, alas, he just showed up all the subsequent ones.

[L]

Lizzie: your old boss sounds amazing. I had one similar to that, who really took me under her wing, really helped to develop my career and was not shy at giving praise when praise was due (or criticism when criticism was due). It really makes a difference to your working environment having someone inspiring supervising you

[KM]

I agree Whimsey about the luxuries like flexible working that go out of the window in hard times. No one wants to ask for fewer hours when they know a company is looking to downsize.

It will be very interesting to see how this pans out.

[Mr Potarto]

I don't think these experts do have better ideas, they seem to be aspiring to a world that doesn't exist.

"I don't like the word balance since it means if you put more into one side ... there's less time for another."

You don't say? Unfortunately, Dr Poelmans never gets around to explaining how you add to one without taking away from the other. Surprisingly, (or not, depending on your view of business academics) he then moves on to lecture us for allowing work issues to slip into home time and vice versa. "By more effectively separating our milieus, we are able to more effectively use our time - and enjoy it." OK, perhaps Dr Poelmans can take the call from my daughter when she wants to say goodnight to me.

The complaints about phrases 2-5 and 10 appear to be arguing if we change the language we will change our behaviour. That may be true - Big Brother certainly believed it.

I don't even understand how the anecdote on ironing relates to 'accountability'. And the suggested alternative appears to be targets, which seem to be a very bad idea whenever they are introduced.