Liz Morris

Men are NOT turkeys

I know it's the wrong time of year to be talking turkey - but my local department store is already advertising back to school gear before we have even started the summer vacation! Anyway it is the turkey’s destiny to be dinner. Or is it?

And what does this have to do with men, parents and work?

The phrase came up on a recent visit to the International Centre for Women Leaders at Cranfield University.

Despite the fact that the unencumbered man with a 'non-working Nigella-esque, Kidston-pinny-clad, 1950s-style housewife at home' is now a shrinking minority (less than 15% of the workforce), the middle and top layers of most organisations seem to be an homogeneous coagulation of pale, middle class, males.

For a while it looked as things were changing and maybe the dip in numbers of senior women will be reversed in 2010.

 The business case for gender diversity is strong eg McKinzey Quarterly , Cranfield University , Columbia University and Catalyst , but few women progress into upper management or the boardroom.

The argument for so few women at the top has most frequently been stated as an issue of supply. “Women just don’t want to do it” or “It will take time to fill the pipeline. There just aren’t enough good women yet.”

It is known that the haemorrhage of female talent from organisations’ talent pipelines is linked to the onset of parenthood. Almost half the workers in the UK are female and more than 80% will become pregnant during their career. But while more than 85% return to work, only a few will have the same career progression as a comparable man.

It is also known, that in most societies around the world a woman’s work ethic is similar and often stronger than a man’s. Yet the outmoded male-bread winner stereotype persists regardless of the normal household being close to once hailed feminist ideal of a dual-earner / dual-carer family. The exception to this ideal is that both partners are not equally able to fulfil their career ambitions, personal development or a desire for active and involved parenting.

The work of Cranfield and other research has shown that the problem is not one of supply but one of demand. I can understand why the men in the middle and at the top would not want to increase the pool of competition. A basic rule of marketing is to be unique and raise the bar for new entrants. Why open the floodgate that could cost you your livelihood? Why would turkeys vote for Christmas?

Why? Because the organisations that have embraced gender diversity have flourished. Becoming a turkey is a process of socialisation. Training for turkey-dom is both conscious and unconscious. There is a tacit acceptance in many organisations and families that it is a man’s destiny to be top turkey.

Socialisation by its very nature involves us all, women too, after all we do make up half the workforce .

What are we doing as working partners and mothers to ensure we are not complicit in this socialisation processes?

We need to let our men be fathers and not turn them into turkeys.

Or maybe there’s a problem, the fear of loosing our role as mother hen?

Underwear and Work-Life Balance

What colour are yours?

 

And, why is it anyone else’s business but your own, the girls at the gym / lads in the locker room and perhaps a significant other?

 

 

On a bright sunny spring Thursday, in a packed room at the London office of a well known big 5 consultancy, a senior HR figure from a huge multinational showed a 21% productivity gain in a pilot group of employees where fathers were actively engaged. The employee survey showed that dads felt they had been able to “come out” as fathers. She continued “It was as if they suddenly had permission to reveal frilly boxers, and be sure that there would be no impact on their career”.

 

The surprising comment raise some barely disguised titters from what could have been a stuffy British audience. However, it was more surprising that these workingmen seemed reluctant to admit the existence of a family outside the workplace, or was it?

 

Research shows that colleague approval ratings for male colleagues go up when they become fathers. (Sadly, the same research showsthat the opposite is true when female workers become mothers)

 

But, coming out is only half the story. The high productivity gains were not because of an excessive Hawthorn effect caused by studying each other’s Embroidery Anglaise frills. Neither did it come from social cohesion because team members were getting to knew each other better. The productivity gains came from men being given permission to flex their working hours and location and so remove the conflict between work and active parenting.

 

 
These results and others shared by representatives from many industry sectors in the room that day, show that organisation can successfully challenge and potentially reverse the self-perpetuating unconscious gender bias.

 

Despite evidence that the male breadwinner / female carer stereotype still live and kicking, and approval ratings of men can decrease when they take up flexible working, organisations can implement flexibility in a non-gendered way. And, doing this will increase productivity and performance and in turn, will start to build greater equality in the workplace that will benefit individuals, families and organisations.

Just for girls? Or does work-life balance affect men as well?

Historically much work-life balance research, policy and legislation has focused on helping women cope with the dual demands of work and family life. It is well documented that in most countries outside Scandinavia, a working woman, particularly a mother, has a far greater household and family burden than a working man; generally around 70%.

But, what about men?

With the dramatic increase in the number of women in the workforce the dual-earner/dual-carer household has become the norm. This is a global phenomenon. What differentiates countries now is weather or not both partners are likely to work full time and how they manage to balance two careers with caring responsibilities.

Family Types across OECD countries

 

Source: www.oecd.org

The dual-earner / dual-carer family model, once hailed in the mid 80s as the ideal middle-class relationship allowing both partners to enjoy maximum personal fulfillment and financial rewards, is now a global fact and includes countries as different as China to Canada.

What is less well publicised is the growing tension that fathers experience, between rising expectations to be active and involved parents versus their ability to achieve this in a work environment that see time spent at work as a measure of commitment.

In their study across 10 different European countries chosen across 5 different socio cultural categories:

• Scandinavian or Dual-earner
• Conservative or Family Support
• Liberal or Market-Oriented
• Conservative–Latin Rim
• Post-Socialist

Hobson and Fahlen (2009) found that more than 75% of fathers across Europe said that it was important to find a job that allowed them to reconcile family and work responsibilities. They also found that with the exception of Poland, all nationalities wanted to reduce their hours to achieve better work-life balance.

Why does this matter to organisations?

At any one time, a large number of the workforce are parents. Currently more than a third in the UK, and more than 80% of the workforce will become parents during their working life. Most will be part of dual-earner / dual-carer households challenged with balancing the dual demands of career and family. 

It does not stop here, with an aging population many will also have elder care responsibilities and there is strong evidence to show that men are just as much affected by the requirement to balance elder care with work as women.

The assumption of a care-free male worker, supported by his dutiful wife caring for children and elderly parents is now outdated.

The source of Work-life conflict may be different for men than women. But which is worse? To wither emotionally from lack of contact with your loved ones or burnout through juggling the dual burden of work and home?

Work-life balance affects men as well as women and what’s more it can reduce performance by up to 30%.

On the positive side, some of the larger, more progressive organisations realise this. A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be speaking at the same conference as Caroline Waters OBE, HR director of the year. She has been able to demonstrate a 21% increase in performance at BT through direct action to engage all parents and carers at work, both men and women. She is not the only one, I have interviewed business leaders, from enterprises large and small, who can demonstrate a clear link between supporting men achieve a positive work-life balance and their bottom line.

 

The Diversity Agenda: Alienating straight white men?

Thinking organisations now realise that the diversity and inclusion agenda is far more than avoiding costly discrimination claims. The equation proclaimed is simple:

But, in our dash to increase diversity and we excluding the very people that still make up the majority of the workforce and tend to occupy most middle and senior management positions?

The theoretical business case for diversity may well be compelling but is it time we reframed the debate?   The diversity agenda has either ignored straight white men or worse, identified straight white men as the problem.

When talking about diversity many business leaders will say that the sticking point of culture change is middle management. In many ways this is understandable. In our ambition to drive down cost and ramp up productivity we ask our middle managers to keep operations running whilst battling the constant white water of restructuring, right-sizing, process redesign, mergers, takeovers and technical change. It is not surprising that adding yet another layer of change can lead to entrenchment or fatigue.

As many change management practitioners known the perceived message of change is often one of  “You are not doing your job right” and the most frequent strategy used to avoid the guillotine of organisational efficiency is to increase one’s value by working longer and harder. Whilst long hours are known to increase fatigue and stress and decrease productivity, many will experience the short-term psychological benefits of feeling more in control.

A key difference between the diversity and the efficiency or effectiveness driven change is an inability to increase perceived value by controlling the visible markers of diversity: gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age and to some extent religion. It is this key difference that can serve to entrench differences and draw up the battle lines for a zero sum game based on bias.

In my research I often interview middle managers, the majority of which are still white men.

“It’s not that I feel alienated as such” says Rob, a mid-fourties middle manager with a large national organisation “But this is more than just another change initiative which as usual I’m being asked to implement with little or no support when I’m already working 60 hours a week to hold it all together. It feels like there’s a huge party just about to happen to which I’m not invited because of what I am and the way I look”

Reading this my feminist friends might make vain attempts to hide a rye smile or two. But, as John Kotter points out, if we are to move forward we need to create a compelling vision of equality and inclusion that engages all employees.