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Work-life issues can test managers

By Maggie Jackson, Globe Correspondent, 8/28/2005

GLOBE STAFF PHOTO/TOM LANDERS Ellen Mager of Intel Corp. says the company is serious about discouraging the meeting of goals at any cost.

When one of Chantal Hendrzak's staffers comes to her with a work-life problem, she often feels torn. She understands the need to telework or to take a day off, but worries about how to get the work done.

"Sometimes you want to respond as a friend. Sometimes you need to realize, 'I'm the boss'" says Hendrzak, manager of operations development PJM Interconnection in Valley Forge, Pa., which runs a regional power supply system. "The manager is really in the middle," she says.

Ellen Mager, an Intel Corp. engineering manager in Hudson, says her company increasingly discourages managers from meeting goals at any cost. She tries to find a better way to get the job done than ending up with overworked employees — an assignment that can be tough.

Take a minute and feel for your manager.

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I know that's difficult in an age when we're all stressed and overworked. But, chances are, your bosses are even more overworked than you are, and yet they are also under pressure to help their workers to have healthy private lives.

Some managers still don't "get it," but many want to do the right thing. They just aren't sure how.

The good news is that companies are beginning to teach managers how to be more effective on this score. It's long been known that supervisors are the gatekeepers of work-life. Flextime and other benefits don't work if managers don't let people use them. That's why about 80 percent of workers define their ideal job as one that includes a supervisor who responds to their personal concerns, according to a study released in July by Simmons College of Management and Bright Horizons Family Solutions.

But now managers are getting the training and tools needed to ensure that work-life is more than just an empty phrase.

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Intel, for instance, requires one-on-one talks between supervisors and workers at least every two weeks.

"It's important for your manager to work with you and make sure you do have a life," says Mager, who says frequent communication is crucial to making flexible work successful.

Before supervisor Gregory Pollard began one of the company's eight-week paid sabbaticals, he and Mager met several times to plan coverage for his work, which they then presented at a staff meeting.

Amit Mohindra, a compensation director at IBM, often consults the company's two-year-old Web portal for managers, which offers tutorials on virtual workers, caring for the elderly, and more. He also uses "People Oriented Work Redesign," a program that he helped to test before its July debut, in order to cut down on low-value work — allowing everyone to better control their schedules.

For Mohindra, such efforts aren't just a management fad. They make him a better boss – and father. He began working smarter nearly two years ago after his son, then 3 years old, said, "Daddy, you're always working." Now, he leaves his laptop home while vacationing, and cajoles his teams to do the same. "If they see their manager working on vacation, they think they have to work on vacation too," says Mohindra, who is based in Somers, N.Y.

The idea that bosses are role models as well as gatekeepers is key.

More than 40 percent of managers say their work "seriously interferes" with their private lives, according to the research firm ISR.

But overworked managers don't just burn out, they spread discontent by growing cranky or distant, or by micromanaging, says Candice Lange, workforce partnering director at Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. Since 2003, she's given workshops to hundreds of managers.

Support and flexibility have to start at the top, and when that happens, everyone gains. Hendrzak is now struggling to cover for an employee with a sick parent, but she knows her efforts will pay off.

"It's hard — you recognize the things that aren't getting done," Hendrzak says. But "I know when everything gets figured out, he'll turn it around and deliver tenfold to PJM."

Maggie Jackson's Balancing Acts column appears every other week. She can be reached at .

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