The hundreds of employee engagement surveys that we conduct every year is showing an interesting, albeit concerning trend: highly engaged organizations often have emerging employee issues and concerns around decreasing work-life balance. On the one hand, this is a form of “collateral damage”. Highly engaged employees, by definition, tend to give more of themselves, and sometimes work-life balance suffers as a result – through the employee’s own engaged behaviours. Because work-life balance has little influence on engagement per se, it (too) often gets lower priority: however, this approach is fraught with danger. Highly engaged and high performing organizations can fall into the work-life balance “cultural trap”.

1. WORK-LIFE BALANCE: CONFESSIONS
OF A REFORMED WORKAHOLIC
Monthly Webinar Series
February 25, 2016

2. 2
Topic Agenda
Item Time
(min)
Introduction/Why the Topic? 5
Role of Work-Life Balance in Employee
Engagement
10
Work-Life Balance: Who’s Problem is it? 10
Does your organization suffer from cultural
work-life imbalance?
5
Steps to Improve Work Life Balance Culture 5
Q&A 10
Norm Baillie-David
SVP Engagement - TalentMap
Agenda
Monica Helgoth
VP Engagement - Western Region

3. 3
15 years in business
7,000+ employee engagement surveys
since inception
1,000,000+ employees surveyed
500+ employee engagement surveys
annually
Only 1 Focus
TalentMap by the Numbers

4. 4
Sample Clients & Benchmark
Award Programs Technology & Engineering Not-for-Profit & Association
Financial Services
Health Sciences
Other

5. Why the Topic?

6. Role of Work-Life Balance in
Employee Engagement
6

7. Overall Engagement: 87%
WORK-LIFE BALANCE CAN BE A CASUALTY OF
HIGH ENGAGEMENT
7
1
3
2
5
6
5
7
6
7
7
8
11
15
10
6
6
7
6
8
10
9
11
10
12
11
13
13
18
93
92
92
90
87
85
84
84
83
81
81
77
72
72
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Organizational Vision
Values
Executive Leadership
Work Environment
Immediate Management
Customer Focus
Teamwork & Colllaboration
Performance Feedback
Continuous Improvement
Professional Growth
Information & Communication
Compensation
Work/Life Balance
Accountability
% Frequency
Unfavourable Neutral Favourable

8. PRIORITIZING OPPORTUNITIES: WHERE DOES WORK-
LIFE BALANCE FALL?
Improving
engagement should
be focused on
dimensions
exhibiting a
combination of low
performance scores
and strong drivers
Focusing on the
lower dimension
scores exclusively
may not fully
address what is
needed to target
and improve
engagement
“Maintain:
Keep doing well”
“Leverage &
Expand”
“Medium/
Low priority”
High
Performance
Low
Performance
Weak Driver of
Engagement
Strong Driver of
Engagement
High need for
improvement
coupled with
powerful drivers of
engagement
Opportunities
For
Improvement
8

9. AND THUS, TOO OFTEN IGNORED 9
COMPENSATION
WORK ENVIRONMENT
PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK
PROFESSIONAL
GROWTH
WORK/LIFE BALANCE
INFORMATION &
COMMUNICATION
TEAMWORK
INNOVATION
CUSTOMER FOCUS
IMMEDIATE
MANAGEMENT
CMT - CORE
MANAGEMENT TEAM
ORGANIZATIONAL VISION
2ND LEVEL MANAGEMENT
SAFETY Strong
Engagement
Driver
Weak
Engagement
Driver
Worse Than
Benchmark
Better Than
Benchmark

10. +/- TM Benchmark
30
27
33
31
29
44
21
19
17
26
23
23
49
54
50
43
48
33
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Overall Work/Life Balance
The amount of work required of me is
about right.
I am able to maintain a balance between
work and home.
My job is not too stressful.
I have control over my workload.
I often feel compelled to work outside of
the office during evenings, weekends,
vacation, etc.*
% Frequency
Unfavourable Neutral Favourable
-10
-9
-19
-8
-6
n/a
WORK/LIFE BALANCE: WHAT ARE TALKING ABOUT? 10
Data is rounded to the nearest whole number
* Custom question(s) not included in overall average.
Question has been reverse coded. “Favourable” being
“Strongly Disagree/Disagree”.

11. WORK-LIFE BALANCE:
WHO’S PROBLEM IS IT?

12. (TOO) OFTEN SEEN AS THE EMPLOYEE’S PROBLEM

13. “TECHNOSTRESS”
Mondieepa Tarafdar, Qiang Tu, et al: Crossing to the Dark Side: Examining Creators, Outcomes and Inhibitors of
Technostress. Communications of the ACM, September 2011 Vol 54, No. 9

14. “TECHNOINVASION”
“The situation where professionals can potentially
be reached anywhere and anytime, and feel the
need to be constantly connected.”
“these same technologies make (employees) feel
compulsive about being connected, forced to
respond to work-related information in real time,
trapped in almost habitual multi-tasking, with
little time to spend on sustained think.”
Most importantly – not being connected causes
professionals to lose their sense of importance to
the organization.

15. INTERESTING EXPERIMENT
National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention*
• 700 professional, skilled tech workers divided into 2 groups
• Worked long hours (>50 per week)
• Some worked remotely, but pressure to be visible at the office
• Group 1 – Treatment Group
• Given greater control over when and where they worked
• More supervisor support for family and personal lives
• Group 2- Control Group
• Conditions unchanged
*Published in American Sociological Review. Nanette Fondas, HBR, June 10, 2014

16. EXPERIMENT RESULT
16
Over a six month period:
• Significant reduction in work-family conflict – that chronic sense of being pulled
in two different directions
• Parents reported working one hour less per week than non-parents
• Other workers did not have to increase workloads to accommodate parents
• Treatment group reported they felt they now had adequate time to spend with
families
• Felt more in control, less overwhelmed.
No surprises here: First ever study to offer evidence based on randomized trial
that workplace interventions improve employee work-life conflict.
In other words:
ORGANIZATIONS (AND MANAGEMENT) CAN IMPROVE WORK-LIFE
BALANCE.

17. BENEFITS ARE OBVIOUS
• Reduced Hypertension
• Better sleep
• Lower consumption of alcohol and tobacco
• Decreased marital tensions
• Better parent-child relationships
• What about productivity?
• Treatment group almost doubled average hours of work at home (almost 10 to
20 hours per week)
• Adjustments in management thinking about when and where work gets done
and support for employees’ lives outside work led to:
• System-wide flexibility (relieving pressure)
• Without burdening those who work conventionally
• Without placing onus on individual workers to figure out how to achieve
balance

18. DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION
SUFFER FROM CULTURAL
WORK-LIFE IMBALANCE?
18

19. SIGNS YOUR ORGANIZATION SUFFERS FROM
WORK-LIFE CULTURE IMBALANCE
19
• “Face-time” – people feel they will be judged poorly by their peers and/or
supervisors if not physically present
• Peers and supervisors equate presence with productivity and output
• Performance is recognized by work quantity, not quality:
• “He’s great. He’s always here late”
• “She’s very responsive – she’ll answer an e-mail day or night”
• “He’s not a team player – always leaves before 6:00”
• Meetings/calls at odd hours:
• “because it’ shows you’re committed”
• Disorganization, lack of consideration for others’ time, last minute requests
• At 3:30 Friday afternoon – “I absolutely need this by Monday morning”
• Meetings never start on time – because being there on time would be interpreted
as not being busy enough – and the senior person always arrives last.
• Lower productivity and procrastination:
• “I’ll be here till 8:00 anyway, I’ll get it done later.”

20. POOR WORK-LIFE BALANCE CULTURE
20
• Self-preservation - Employees deflect tasks and avoid accountability.
• “I’m already overloaded this weekend – sorry.”
• The “Badge of Honour” (I’m really guilty of this one!)
• How are you? “OMG – I’m so busy!”
• In meetings: “I’ll look at this over the weekend…..”
• “It’s just part of the (enter name of business here) business”
• “I’ve been divorced twice! He/she couldn’t accept the ‘lifestyle’”
ENTER YOUR BEST “QUOTE IN THE QUESTIONS OR CHAT SECTION”

21. SAW ON LINKED-IN TODAY… RECRUITING FOR A TECH
FIRM!

22. STEPS TO IMPROVE WORK-LIFE
BALANCE CULTURE
22

23. Organizational Traits
• Fun
• Ambition
• Flexibility
• Openness
• Cooperation
• Informality
• Flat organizational structure
• Trust
• Responsibility
• Support
• Pride
*bold indicates commonalities with employee engagement
Management Actions which
Created the Culture
• They were understanding of
employees’ needs and concerns
• They made themselves available to
employees
• They were supportive of employees
when they encountered challenges
• They demonstrated trust of their
employees
• They gave their employees feedback
on their work
WHAT DOES A POSITIVE WORK-LIFE BALANCE
CULTURE LOOK LIKE?
23

24. STEP 1: THE POLICY FRAMEWORK
24
While “culture” begins at the top, leadership must demonstrate
it takes work-life balance seriously by instituting a number of
policies and practices around:
• Work hours and job design
• Restricted hours, minimal work required during off-
hours
• Organizational culture
• Minimize negative norms such as “no one leaves until
7:00 p.m., no internal meetings after 4:30 p.m.,etc”.
• Incentives which encourage balancing work and non-work
domains
• e.g. “Use it or lose it” vacation policy, incentives for not
claiming sick/personal days, etc.
• Enablement: provide managers and employees at all levels
with surge capacity.

25. STEP 1: POLICIES AND PROGRAMS (CONT’D)
25
• Increasingly: flexible work/telecommuting arrangements
• pay attention to equity and fairness, as some jobs lend themselves better
to this than others and inequity is often a source of strife
• Becoming a “must” in the GTA.
• Wellness and benefits:
• Gym memberships with “use or lose” provisions
• Child and elder care provisions
• Paid paternity leave
• Adoption assistance
• IMPORTANT: Policies should provide opportunities for those who want to
improve and set a positive example to others – not enforce standardized work
habits.

26. STEP 2: ADDRESS THE TECHNOLOGY
CHALLENGE
26
Google study identified two types of workers in terms of
how they deal with competing demands:
• Segmenters: able to cleanly separate work and personal
activities
• Integrators: work looms constantly in the background.
They not only find themselves checking email all
evening, but pressing refresh again and again to see if
new messages have come in (demonstrate
compulsiveness inherent in Technostress), BUT
• 69% of integrators indicated a desire to achieve a better
separation and become better “segmenters”, and
couldn’t do it on their own.
Google’s Strategy:
• Help employees disconnect by designing environments which make it easier
for employees to disconnect: “Dublin goes Dark”
• Charity fines for those who respond to off-hour e-mails
“Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance (and Much More)” Laszlo Bock, March 27, 2014 –
Human Resource Management

27. STEP 3: ADDRESS THE CULTURE
27
• Steps 1 and 2 begin to send the signals that work-life balance is an enabler of
employee engagement, productivity, and profitability.
• To change the culture the following steps need to be taken to address root causes:
• Base performance on output, deliverables, and quality. De-link ANY inference to
performance based on physical presence.
• Recognize and reward performance of individuals who work from home or
outside the office (of course, if performance warrants)
• Lead by example:
• Be aware others are watching how long your are in the office
• Be open about working outside the office on a regular basis
• Devalue the “badge of honour” comments
• Manage external pressures through negotiation of reasonable deadlines and
pressures, at every possible instance.
• My own favourite: Always arrange for major deadlines on Fridays. NEVER
Mondays.
WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR IDEAS TO CHANGE WORK-LIFE BALANCE CULTURE?

28. STEP 4: KEEP AT IT! SHOUT IT OUT!
28
WATCH EMPLOYEE MORALE SOAR,
PRODUCTIVITY RISE,
RECRUIT BETTER CANDIDATES
AND MORE!

29. Event Format Topic/Location Date
HRPA –Ottawa
Dine and Learn
Presentations Engaging the Millennial
Generation: Separating Fact from Fiction
March 10, 2016
HRPA- Thunder Bay ½ day
Workshop
Engaging Millennials in the Workplace:
Common Myths, Challenges and Solutions
March 15, 2016
TalentMap Monthly
Webinar Series
Live Webinar Keeping Employees Engaged in a Troubled
Economy
March 24, 2016
OMHRA Spring Workshop Conference/
Trade Show
April 13, 2016
Society for Industrial and
Organizational Psychology
Spring
Conference
April 14-16, 2016
HRMA Conference and
Trade Show
Vancouver BC
Conference/
Trade Show
Vancouver Convention Centre West April 26 -27, 2016
UPCOMING TALENTMAP LEARNING SESSIONS

30. THANK YOU!
QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION
30
Monica Helgoth
VP Engagement – TalentMap West
mhelgoth@talentmap.com
1-888-641-1113, x515
Norm Baillie-David
SVP Engagement
nbaillie-david@talentmap.com
1-888-641-1113, x504
FOR A COPY OF THE PPT OR RECORDING:
http://www.talentmap.com/webinar-past/
Louie Mosca
Director of Sales – TalentMap East
lmosca@talentmap.com
1-888-641-1113, x501