Integrating Diversity and Work/Life

Summary of Judy B. Rosener, Ph.D. Presentation

Alliance of Work-Life Professionals
1997 San Diego Conference
February 6-7, 1997

Summary prepared by David H. Rodbourne ~ Director of Programs
Minnesota Center for Corporate Responsibility

Summary of Key Points

• Diversity is multi-dimensional. Work/Life and different stages in a person's lifecycle are also dimensions of diversity. Equally important, Work/Life is not just about women with children or families. It is about all aspects of our lives.

• Organizations tend to see differences only in a pejorative framework, that is a difference is either better or worse. We need to see difference as a resource.

• Big companies, in particular, value sameness, conformity, fitting-in - despite their rhetoric about valuing diversity and Work/Life. For innovation and alternative models we need to look to small, medium-sized and start-up firms.

• What men do -- the examples they set -- is critically important. We will not change organizations - in terms of Work/Life balance or integration - until men see that there is something in it for them, until they benefit. Their attitudes are pivotal.

• There is no "one best model." Each company must develop its own model based on its demographics and its situation.

• We must change the mindset about how our organizations should operate. We need to "unlearn" patterns of behavior, rules of the road, and values that no longer fit a changing environment. We need a new mindset, a mindset that values employees.

Judy Rosener's Presentation

"Our work lives and the rest of our lives are inextricably intertwined, and it is not possible, nor is it wise to think of work and other parts of our lives as separate, as compartmentalized, or as necessarily contradictory."

There is a lot of symbolic behavior [about diversity and work/life balance] in corporations. There are great mission statements, glowing annual reports, excellent public relations, but when you go into bowels of the company -- it is not happening.

Today technology and a global environment put pressure on organizations to change. Main pressures are technological. Technological advances change the ways we can design work. The rate of change is so fast that we can't plan the way we used to. That is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because by not having to make big plans we can learn to be very adaptable and make little plans that may turn out to be big plans in the end. Increased globalization changes the way we look at people, their values and their beliefs, and we can't ignore that.

This change provides an opportunity to return to the notion that our personal and work lives are not mutually exclusive. As MIT researcher Lotte Bailyn suggests in her book Breaking the Mold, the integration of work and family is not only possible it is economically beneficial.

Identifying the problem is the easy part. The difficult part is knowing what kind of changes we want to make. The first step is acknowledging what Lou Gerstner at IBM described as the NOAH Principle --- there is no prize for predicting rain; there are only prizes for building arks. We know the problem - we view are personal and work lives as separate and not equal. As for building arks, our problem is we are looking for the one best ark. There is no one best ark. Every organization must look at its own demographics, its own problems, and design its own ark.

Valuing Diversity

Learning how to value diversity - which has not been easy for us -- is much like learning how to integrate our personal and work lives. (Notice I say "integrate not balance." Balance is a step forward from where we were, but balance implies separateness. We cannot pretend that we can shut off, when we go to work, what is happening to us at home. What we want to do is integrate.)

What do we have to do to view diversity as a resource not a problem? As Gloria Steinam said, "What we have to do is unlearn, not learn." It is not learning new things it is unlearning what is so much a part of us about work and family. Men often don't like Gloria Steinam, so I give them Yogi Bera, who said, "It takes a lot of observing to see things as they really are." The rhetoric is there in lots of companies about all the wonderful things they are doing, but when you look closely, it isn't happening.

What do I mean by diversity. You have to look at all these dimensions of diversity and how they each bring into the workplace some kinds of cultural baggage. In the center we put things like race, age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity. Those are things people can't change. In the second concentric ring - income, work background, education - these change over time. Third ring - lifecycles. Zigzagging in and out of work is, I'm convinced, the way it is going to be. You could add a fourth ring - are you line or staff, techie or non-techie, consultant or in-house. The point is -- every one of these dimensions of diversity give us a different way of looking at work and looking at our lives. But we make the assumption that there is only one way that we all come to work and that is the same way. Until we understand that we all come with very different cultural baggage we can't really appreciate the complexity of this [work/life] issue.

Cartoons often capture these issues. Cartoon --- balancing a job and a family is not the hardest thing to do, it is second - right after world peace. Cartoon --- A man gets up to leave to go home and do something with his child and they say 'oh what a wonderful father.' A woman does it and they say 'what's wrong; isn't she committed.' There is a very different standard for men and for women in terms of what we do with our families.

Cartoon --- of a meeting with about eight men and one woman. "On the issue of pay equity, we heard everyone's two cents worth except for you Mrs. Jones. A penny for your thoughts."

Creating A New Mindset

What is it we have to unlearn and what is it we have to see when we are observing?

We have two mind sets that keep us from doing what we have to do. One mindset says there is "one best model," one best way to run a company, one best life, one best initiative, we buy books that gives us the answer. That's what benchmarking is all about, and I have a problem with that because it says -- be like us. With this mindset is the concept of difference is a pejorative concept. A difference is either better or worse. Now if we have one best model, anything that is different is by definition inherently deficient. If you have a company that is successful and you say this is the way we should do it, anybody who does it differently can't be better because you can't be better than the best model. We have to think of difference not as better or worse but as added value. We have to get comfortable with difference in the way we have to get comfortable with ambiguity. Women tend to do this and be more comfortable with this.

What is this one best model? This is what the big companies value. They value sameness. They value conformance, and they reward fitting in. Obviously if you are not like those at the top - white males who have wives at home who take care of them and plenty of money to take care of their children then somehow you are viewed differently. My problem with big companies as models is that they are obsolete, they are the last to change. If we want to know what is happening, we study small, medium or start up companies. It is easy to look at the big companies, but the real innovation happens elsewhere.

Now what do we have to do to build new arks?

Winning Support From Men

Keep in mind that until men change, nothing is going to change.

Human resources has to be elevated to top management strategy. It can no longer be seen as an adjunct. We have to link the whole issue of addressing cultural diversity with human capital utilization. We have to link the waste of human capital when we undervalue women and people of color or people who do things differently with top management strategy. Until we link those at the top we are going to be going at this piecemeal. We need to change the mindset.

The stress and the dysfunctional behavior that our present "one model" causes results in devaluing our utilization of people who aren't like those at the top.

I don't think its surprising that men rarely ask for advice on how they can combine their personal lives and their careers. And I think that's the rub. They don't ask because too many men define themselves primarily in terms of their jobs, in terms of their titles, and in terms of the money they make, and they sacrifice their personal lives to the alter of work and the status it brings. Until that changes other change will be slow to come.

Margaret Mead said "its what men do that counts." She reported on a society in which men did the weaving and women did the hunting, and guess what, in that society it was weaving that was important. And the hunting wasn't. Men would be more likely to change the organization if men thought that these policies were helping them. Some policies do that.

New Models

Flex-time, for example, gives employees including men the opportunity to do whatever they want. It gives employees the feeling of control and benefits the company. A different example is a Los Angeles ad agency run by Joe Phelps who believes that a refreshed employee is a better employee. He won't allow people to work past 6 p.m., nor come in on the weekend. And he himself doesn't work late or weekends either. That is my point about what men do - when the men at the top do what they want the rest of the people to do, that is where change occurs. He also hires people who live close to their headquarters - not so they can work more but so they can have more time to do other things in their lives.

This is a new mindset. It gives employees a feeling of trust and increases their morale and reduces turnover. It makes sense and it makes dollars. And it eliminates the stigma that attaches to special categories of companies for whom programs are designed. Repeatedly, and at many companies, I hear these comments: "oh well, those women with children get this or that and that group gets this." Such comments reflect a feeling that this is some kind of game: if you get time off, why shouldn't I get time off. To change these attitudes, we have to take a look at work/family issues or work/lifestyle issues as issues that have to do with all parts of all our lives, not just those who have family responsibilities.

Women, and those men who are sensitive to this, must lead the change. But, I am also saying that we need to tap into the needs and preferences of men. Only then will we have real change.

We have to stop our love affair with "face time" and the control it represents. If we don't understand why it is that men are so unwilling to do away with face time - because it represents control and why that need for control is so germane to the way they look at all these problems - then it will be difficult to change. Men have to find happiness in defining themselves in other ways than job title and income.

We have to redefine the way we look at this issue. We have to extend the concept. We have to change the words.

I want to end with a quote that my husband says is inappropriate and in bad taste, but I think is relevant. "It used to be it was a man's world and a woman's place was in the home - well, you can kiss that shit goodbye."

Judy B. Rosener, Ph.D., is professor and former assistant dean in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. Her research includes women in management, men and women at work, cultural diversity, and business and government. She authored Ways Women Lead for the Harvard Business Review in 1990 and a 1995 book, America's Competitive Secret, Utilizing Women as a Management Strategy.

Summary of key points and edited transcript prepared by David Rodbourne, director of programs, Minnesota Center for Corporate Responsibility. Awlp3

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