Work/Life Balance
Work and Life Balance:
Doesn’t That Sound Great!!
By Brian Hantsbarger, CPA
As the leader in your firm, you have decided that life/work balance is important to you and your employees.
You have decided that life is more than just working 70 hours a week. Maybe last tax season was especially stressful to you and your family. You have decided to become a “life-style” firm and to create a better balance between work and family.
Once the decision has been made to become a life-style firm, the big question is how do you transition your firm in that direction? How do you set up the structure that encourages the types of behavior that promote a better balance? How do you announce the decision that work-life balance is important to you and that your firm will be changing or modifying its direction?
Core Values
It is absolutely essential to your firm that as a management team you take the time and effort to develop the core values that your organization will not only believe in but also will operate by. Before you can move your staff in the direction you desire, you first need to decide – as a firm – what is important to you; what are the core values of your staff and your firm. Everything you do - all the decisions you make, all the programs you promote - will be based on these core values.
Shannon Vincent of the ReNew Group spoke at the 2005 MAP conference concerning defining a culture in your firm. His four key questions were:
· What are we?
· With whom do we want to work?
· What do we want to do?
· What is important and where do we want to be?
If balancing your work life with your personal life is important to your firm and you are willing to make it part of your culture, it must be part of your core values.
Perception Is Reality
Once you have agreed to make work/life balance one of your core values, the effort has just begun. Now you must make it part of the culture of your firm. Everything you do needs to take into consideration your core values. Remember it’s not what you say but what you do that counts! If you tell your staff that work/life balance is important but then set their chargeable hour goal for next year at 1900 hours, you will not be believed.
An example of how core values should be integrated into the other programs at your firm is 360 degree evaluations, named as such since each person is evaluated by those above, below and at the peer level. One of the areas on which employees should be evaluated is how balanced their work and family life is. The 360 evaluations can then be factored in when considering their bonus allocation at the end of the year, wage increases and job responsibilities.
Other examples of policies to consider include flex-time, decisions to include families in company events, mandating employees’ use their vacation time, etc.
The decision to be a life-style firm is not an easy one and should only be made if you really believe it is important to do so. With the difficulty in finding new qualified staff, the easy answer for a growing firm is to increase the hours for the existing staff and demand more from them. This can be justified by increasing their compensation in the short run. This can also create a larger bottom line for the owners.
But, the benefits of being a life-style firm are many. They include a happier staff, better staff retention, happier families, and a better overall quality of life, all of which can lead to a more profitable firm in the long run.
Brian Hantsbarger is a partner at Conner Ash P.C. He is also a member of the MSCPA Work-Life Balance Committee. Brian can be reached at bhants@connerash.com.
