Maybe It’s Not All Gloom and Doom for Work-Life Balance
Featured Guest Blogger June 22nd, 2009
Adria B. Martinelli has practiced employment law in Delaware since joining Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor in 2001 as a senior associate in the Employment Law Section. She is also a regular speaker on employment-related topics, and trains individual employers in various areas of employment law, including sexual harassment, performance evaluations and documentation, and exceptions to at-will employment. Adria serves as an editor of the Delaware Employment Law Letter and writes for the Delaware Employment Law Blog. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.
Much has been written in the legal blogosphere lately related to the topic of work-life balance. Law 21, which describes itself as “Dispatches from a Legal Profession on the Brink,” recently posted a well-written and thought-provoking blog on this topic that concluded that “we’ll soon be closing the book on one of the legal profession’s most-used and least-understood phrases of the last decade: “work-life balance.””
Most commentators in this area seem to agree that—at least in the legal profession—any discussion or concern about work-life balance is a thing of the past. A past when the economy was good, attorneys were in great demand, and law firms competed for the best and brightest by offering whatever they could to attract them. This included at least engaging in discussion of the now-verboten work-life balance topic.
Few would disagree that economy drives this discussion. Law firms (or any employers, for that matter) are rarely going to promote work-life balance because of their generosity or genuine concern for the well-being of their employees. However, they will consider it when they believe it ultimately benefits their bottom line. In good economic times, some employers bought into the notion that promoting work-life balance (or at least uttering the words during the hiring process) would make them competitive in recruiting the top candidates, and that retaining these qualified employees would also mean saving on the bottom line by not having to retrain new employees to replace those who might decide to leave the workplace as a result of inflexible work policies.
What is overlooked in the current gloom-and-doom forecasts, however, is that “flexible” (or reduced) work-schedules can also benefit the employer’s bottom line in a very direct way. Typically, reduced or flexible schedule means reduced compensation. In the legal world, reduced work-schedules usually means the attorney is “off,” or at least seriously derailed from, the partnership track. Nobody wants to share the partnership pie in these trying economic times for firms. The old model of the most desirable associate being one who was willing to do whatever it takes in terms of billable hours, in exchange for partnership on a 7-, 8-, or 9-year track, is no longer such an appealing one.
At the same time that people are declaring the end of work-life balance, law firms are delaying start dates for new associates, paying associates a portion of their salary to take a year off to spend time with their family or pursue non-profit endeavors, and some are apparently considering reducing attorneys to four-day work weeks. While these employer-driven, sometimes mandatory reduced schedules with accompanying reduced pay is certainly not ideal for many, it beats layoffs. In the end, it continues to redefine the model of the perfect lawyer. When the economy heads north again, I believe this rethinking of the old standard will help, not hurt, the work-life balance cause.
Interesting read… My first job gave me extremely flexible hours, and I loved because of it. Striking a balance is necessary in these hectic times.
Interesting indeed. A colleague of mine works for a big company here in Texas, and the employees were recently given the option to adjust their work schedules to their liking, believe it or not. One of the available work schedules I thought was interesting was the reduction of the wrok week to four days, with an extra hour of work each day. I thought this was a great idea: three day weekends to spend time with the family AND no traffic on the way home!
Nice post, thanks!