Minding the little things

By VICKI JAYNE

Achieving work/life balance has become something of a high-wire act for increasing numbers of people.

Busy juggling the competing needs of family, work and personal health, few of us even find enough time to wonder who stole all that spare time the electronic workplace was supposed to deliver.

The good news is that more enlightened companies are now recognising that the bods who bowl into work for a designated time every day do have a life outside the office which cannot just be put on hold. Pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp and Dohme is one.

"When we employ people, we don't just get them from 9 to 5," says managing director Alister Brown.

"We get the whole person - with families, personal issues, good times and bad times. We don't want to artificially separate work and the rest of life."

MS&D has been quietly evolving its work/life flexibility programme for about four to five years and last year picked up an Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) Trust Award for its initiatives.

"These include a number of family-focused provisions, ranging from parental leave kits and school holiday programmes to an eldercare kit for those with concerns about looking after their old folk," Mr Brown says.

"There are provisions for breast-feeding mothers in the workplace, kids are made welcome and families are generally included in the organisational culture - through ongoing communications or specific functions and services.

"It can come down to little things. If we're sending one of our people to an overseas business conference, then we send something to their family at home - flowers, chocolates or whatever - just to say that we appreciate we've taken a family member away for a while."

Likewise, if something has gone wrong at home, then it is accepted that workers will need to take time out.

"Our attitude is that it's a bit pointless having someone at their desk when they have a personal crisis going on elsewhere.

"We allow people that flexibility and support. At times, it's us supporting them and at other times, we'll want them to support us."

That sense of social commitment is one of the programme drivers. But the warm fuzzies have a pragmatic business bent.

MS&D wants to attract top-notch workers and then give them the flexibility they need to deliver their best performance, says Mr Brown.

"Firstly, our aim is to differentiate ourselves as an employer because we want to attract and keep the very best people who are out there. So we want to be seen as a stand-out company by those we want working for us.

"Secondly, we're building a more productive workplace.

"In the end we're rewarding people for performance, but what's important is that we allow some flexibility as to how they achieve that. Different people maximise their performance through a different balance of work and life."

The company started formalising its ideals for achieving a work/life balance in the mid-90s.

"Initially we thought it was a matter of offering people programmes.

"While we put these in place and they did have some value, we weren't getting the culture change we were after."

That prompted a series of focus group meetings to get employees' feedback on what they wanted out of the WorkLife project.

"What came out of that was the concept that work is an important part of people's lives and that it should be meaningful and enjoyable. So to keep us on track, we have people in the company who are custodians of that idea."

A cross functional "WorkLife team," whose members include people from different departments with varied personal situations, meets monthly to explore possible changes and their business impact.

Long-service leave and sabbaticals are under review and there are even plans to steal a march on political processes by introducing paid parental leave.

"There's a series of issues being looked at," says Mr Brown.

"They're currently reviewing our car policy, which has always been pretty regimented - you can have what you like as long as it's a Honda Accord.

"But that doesn't suit everybody and we recognise there's room for flexibility."

And from a business viewpoint, the company can chalk up some pretty positive results.

Staff turnover has gone from 22 per cent in 1996 to 11 per cent last year - a "tremendous saving" on the bottom line, says Mr Brown.

At the same time, MS&D's growth rate has moved from negative 56 per cent to plus 35 per cent - quite a turnaround given the generally parlous state of the pharmaceuticals market in New Zealand.

"Three years ago, we set a fairly ambitious strategic plan because our company was being destroyed by Pharmac policies.

"We recognised that we had to take a different direction here and we've delivered well on that so far. Ours would be the highest industry growth rate here."

That in a business where many of the parameters, including product, are givens.

"I figure the only thing we can influence locally is the quality of the people we have and how well they work. So that's one of the things we concentrate on."

Those are the tangibles. The intangibles show up elsewhere - such as the internal survey MS&D's global parent undertook of all its 65,000 staff which included questions on work/life balance.

The New Zealand responses stood out from the rest, says Mr Brown.

Not that he's planning to rest on his laurels. "You never really finish.

"It's more a journey than a destination, so we have to ask, where next - what more could we be doing?"

* Vicki Jayne can be contacted at vjayne@iconz.co.nz