Achieving success no longer means forfeiting your life.

How forward-thinking companies are helping employees have it all.

by Amanda Joyce
Spring 2005

DOLLY PARTON BELTED THE LYRICS OUT WITH BRAVADO, clad in her signature cowgirl fringe and denim: “Working nine to five, what a way to make a living.” What a way, indeed. Americans work hard, especially in client-focused fields such as accounting, consulting and the legal profession. For many workers, competition and commitment are perceived to be—or, in fact, are—vital to getting ahead, making them believe that working 70 to 80 hours a week is necessary to make partner or director.

The increasing intensity of the daily grind has led to a batch of buzzwords being knocked around boardrooms and the water cooler: “work-life balance,” “flextime” and “profession and personal life integration.” What these terms actually mean can depend on whom you ask. A simple explanation comes from Helen T. Cooke, a consultant whose firm advises companies on how to increase cohesion and productivity within business teams. Cooke says good work-life balance is actually not about finding an equal balance between the two. “The question is, ‘How satisfied are you?’” she says. “That is the trick.” She also points out that employees’ lives change as they age. What worked for someone at 25 may not once they turn 45. “You can have a person who used to do 60-, 65-hour work weeks and was fine with it,” Cooke says. “Then, there is a change in the home situation.” And, perhaps 65 hours simply becomes overwhelming. Rather than lose an employee in which the company has invested thousands of dollars, it’s important for the company to make sure employees feel they can approach their manager and come up with some sort of
new arrangement.

Flexibility, in other words, is key. It’s so important, in fact, that flexibility is the entire basis for Ernst & Young’s program. Maryella Gockel is Ernst & Young’s flexibility strategy leader. She started with the company as a CPA 24 years ago, switched to human resources 10 years ago and took on her current title four years ago. “We moved away from the term ‘balance’ two years ago because it connotes a 50/50 split,” she says. Rather, she focuses her energy on providing Ernst & Young’s employees with the flexibility they need to succeed in their careers. Gockel also points out that this flexibility isn’t only for employees who have young children to care for at home. “It can center around anything,” she says. “Training for a marathon, caring for an aging parent—it was just a mind shift for us.” With this broader definition of what brings a healthier “balance” to employees’ lives, it became easier for the company’s leaders to get on board as well.

Rick Peyser is Green Mountain Coffee Roaster’s director of social advocacy and public relations. Green Mountain had humble beginnings as a roaster and café in a small Vermont town, but as it continues to grow, it has remained focused on employee growth and development, both professional and personal. “We strive to create opportunities that benefit [the employees] themselves personally and help the company,” Peyser says. He goes on to say that Green Mountain decided long ago it wanted to be a “destination workplace.” As a result, there is a stunning array of programs and perks for employees, including free Spanish lessons, tuition reimbursement, profit sharing, health club reimbursement, meditation and yoga classes. The attention to employees’ well-being has paid off: The company was one of HR Magazine’s top small- and medium-sized places to work in 2004.

The socially conscious company also encourages its employees to have well-rounded lives by providing one paid hour a week for any volunteer activity the employee chooses. The program itself is extremely flexible: Employees can use the time for a daughter’s Girl Scout troop or a Habitat for Humanity project, or they can accumulate the hours and use them all at once for several days of paid time off for volunteer work. Peyser himself accumulated his volunteer hours so that he could go on a two-week trip to visit some South American coffee-growers. He says it was a valuable experience he wouldn’t have been able to have without the company’s encouragement. Before Peyser worked at Green Mountain, he worked at a series of companies that he describes as fairly standard in terms of benefits and incentives. “There wasn’t any reason to jump out of bed in the morning,” he says. “There was no reason for me to stay late. Here [at Green Mountain], people come early and stay late. We have a very dedicated workforce.” This is, in part, due to the fact that Green Mountain pays attention to creating harmony between work and life, Peyser says.

This harmony between a person’s professional life and personal life is not about pacifying employees or giving them everything they want. “It’s not about saying ‘yes’ all the time,” Cooke asserts. “The secret of creating work-life balance is tied directly to having a well-trained manager who can be flexible when approached by an employee.” Good work-life balance means happy employees, and happy employees mean good productivity, higher retention and good morale.

For Amelia Caporale of Newtown, Conn., flexibility is what made both her career and family aspirations possible. After working for Ernst & Young in insurance auditing for five years, Caporale was ready to have her first child. The company was just starting to implement new programs that allowed employees to go on more flexible schedules. She was one of the first to take advantage of such a program, and it’s been a success for her ever since. For the past 11 years, she has been working three, four or five days a week, depending on her client load and family demands. “I worked through the manager position, [and was] promoted to senior manager,” she says. Now she is a partner, a career goal she wanted to attain when she first started with Ernst & Young. What made it possible, according to Caporale, was the support and encouragement from her superiors. “The firm went out of [its] way to make it happen,” she says.

Caporale has three children, the youngest of whom is in kindergarten, where she volunteers every other Friday as a “class mom.” Ernst & Young benefits from the arrangement because it retains a valuable employee, and Caporale benefits because she has the time and the ability to focus on work and family needs on her own schedule. She also serves as a company mentor for other women who are balancing life and family needs. “It shows women you don’t need to leave,” she says.

Some observers think that employees are increasingly choosing personal interests and well-being over climbing the corporate ladder. Samer Hamadeh is the cofounder and president of TheVault.com, a Web site that provides not only job listings, but also message boards where employees can sound off on company culture, salaries and advancement opportunities. With his bird’s-eye view of corporate America, Hamadeh saw the boom and bust of the ’90s firsthand.

“In the late ’90s, moving up the ladder was workers’ top priority,” he says. But during the boom and subsequent bust, Hamadeh says that burned-out workers began to see their lives as off-kilter. “Everyone worked really hard, and [in the end], no one made money,” he says. “People began to wonder, ‘What did I burn myself out for?’”

Another part of the reevaluation can come around midlife, according to Cooke. “When executives reach midlife, they begin to reflect on their work, their legacy,” she explains. “They begin to think about how work fits in as part of their larger life.” Of course, it’s not just older employees. Births, deaths, retirement, changing interest, hobbies—these can all affect how a worker approaches his or her daily responsibilities. There are no cookie-cutter employees, and, as such, there are no cookie-cutter solutions. But work-life balance, flexible work arrangements—whatever term is used—is here to stay, and smart companies know it.

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Amanda Joyce is a writer living in New York City. Email Amanda at editor@executivetravelmag.com.