1. Ellen Ernst Kossek, Ph.D. Class Three 2009
Managing a Diverse Workforce: Managing Work-Life Relationships in Organizations
Ellen Ernst Kossek, Ph.D. Class Three
This module discusses how managing work-life relationships are a diversity and inclusion lever. .

2. Class 3: Managing Flexstyles and Work-Life Relationships.
Module Overview
Class 1: Work-Life Policies: A Strategic Lever to Manage Diversity and Work-force Inclusion.
Class 2: Linking Work-Life Policies to Organizational Culture and Effectiveness.
Class 3: Managing Flexstyles and Work-Life Relationships.
This class is the third class in the module.
© SHRM 2009

3. Module Learning Objectives
Work-life policies are a strategic lever to manage diversity and workforce inclusion and can be viewed from employee and employer perspectives with competing tensions (Class 1).
Work-life polices must be implemented and linked to the overall HRM system, organizational culture and business objectives (Class 2).
Flexstyles--different styles for work-life relationships-- are tools to manage the blurring 24-7 boundaries between work and home in a global work environment (Class 3).
The goal of this class is to introduce the concept of flexstyles. Flexstyles are different approaches to managing work-life relationships developed by Kossek and Lautsch (2008). They can be used as tools to discuss preferences to manage the blurring boundaries between work and home in a global work environment.
Helping employees to self-manage work-life issues more effectively helps foster work-life resilience and is a key managerial competency.
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4. New Ways Are Needed to Think about Managing Flexibility and Work Life Relationships
Technology ( , cell phones, text message), increasing workloads, shifting family structures, long commutes and the 24-7 global economy blur work and personal life relationships.
Paradox: Many individuals are experiencing work-life conflicts despite the growing presence of many employer flexibility and work-life policies.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
New ways are needed to think about managing flexibility and work-life relationships. Technology ( , cell phones, text message), increasing workloads, shifting family structures, longer commutes and the 24-7 global economy are transforming work and personal life relationships.
Paradox: More individuals are experiencing work-life conflicts despite the growing presence of employer flexibility and work-life policies.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
© SHRM 2009

5. Freedom to Work 24-7 Requires More Employee Self-regulation
Employees with access to flexibility like or text messaging must actively self-regulate and shut off technology to focus on one task at a time.
Although more people report multi-tasking, the faster they work, the more stressed they feel at the end of the day – and less work is actually done.
In the book CEO of Me, Kossek and Lautsch argue that individuals who have access to flexibility like remote or text messaging will not have satisfying work-life relationships unless they actively self regulate these relationships and shut off technology to focus on one task at a time.
A November, 2008 New York Times article reported that the more people multi-tasked by checking etc., the faster they worked and the more stressed they felt at the end of the day--but the less work was done. We need to focus more on one task at a time for high value work where we need to concentrate. This is also referred to as the “flexibility con”--the idea that just because you have access to flexibility doesn’t mean you will have work-life balance.
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6. Startling Statistics Home demands Work demands
Almost 80% of U.S. workers have daily family responsibilities when away from the workplace.
Not enough time for:
Children (67%).
Spouse (63%).
Self (55%).
Special groups: teens, elder care, sandwiched.
Work demands
Compulsion to work more to:
Keep up with their workloads (47%).
Succeed in their career (43%).
Make ends meet financially (37%).
Keep their job (34%).
Source: Bond et al., 2002
Trends from the National Survey of the Changing Work Force show that more employees are feeling
work-life stresses than ever before and that they are increasing.
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7. Dan, 31 year old sales manager with 5 year old
Stories from CEO of Me
“If I’m such a success, why isn’t my life feeling more manageable? If my life is so ideal on paper, why do I have this nagging concern that relationships between work and home could be improved for the better? I know I can make some changes to improve things, but I just keep doing things the same old way.”
Dan, 31 year old sales manager with 5 year old
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
Many talented employees would like to improve how they experience and manage work-life relationships.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
© SHRM 2009

8. Developing Personal Work-Life Self-Management Strategies
Many talented individuals have difficulty managing work-life relationships and need help making time for reflection and dialogue.
Can benefit from coaching and support to enact and experiment with and learn new self-management strategies.
Source : Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
To take advantage of available flexibility policies and develop career strategies that fit personal values and job demands, HR and line managers can help employees benefit from coaching and support so people can experiment with and learn new self-management strategies on how to best use flexibility and regulate work-life relationships.
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9. Abnormal Is the New Normal
We are in a new age of work and family where abnormal is the new normal.
DUALCENTRICITY (defined as having two roles that are central to our lives such as work and family) is the norm for increasing number of workers.
Employees of all demographic background want to work in different ways.
Source: Kossek, 2006: Bond et al, 2002
Ask the class to give examples of different types of workers’ varied work-life interests and desires to manage work-life relationships. The discussion should show all types of employees; young and old, men and women, lower and higher level employees, people with families, and those without families who are increasingly interested in having a life outside of work and are experiencing work-life stresses.
© SHRM 2009

10. Overwork Professional Cultures: Flexible Work Paradox
May have access to flexible work schedules on paper but unable to fully reap advantages.
At same time workloads are increasing, longer hours and visibility at work translated as career commitment.
Exempt status: no additional pay for extended hours.
Ambiguous work schedules: work as long as it takes.
How many hours comprise the standard for full time? 40,50,60,70?
Source: Kossek and Lee, 2008
Professional and managerial employees at major organizations face unique work-life challenges related to socialization into “overwork” cultures.
How many hours comprise the standard for “full-time” professional work at an organization you worked at or are familiar with? Forty, 50, 60, 70 hours a week?
What do you think about professional employees working more than 40 hours a week for no more pay while non-exempt employees receive overtime under the FLSA if they work more than full time?
© SHRM 2009

11. Professional and Managerial Workers Face Unique Flexibility Challenges
Time, energy imbalance: putting work above everything else.
Organizations reward imbalance.
Factors contributing to the culture to overwork:
New technology makes it easier to bring work home, plus 24-7 global interactions.
Pressure to continually show you add value.
High identity between work success and self-esteem.
Source: Kossek and Lee, 2008
Professional and managerial workers face unique flexibility challenges.
Source: Kossek and Lee, 2008
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12. Work-Life Is Part of Personal Career Strategy
Individuals need to develop a work-life strategy as part of their career strategy.
You will not have satisfying work-life relationships unless you have a strategy to manage work-life like managing career.
Smart, high-talent people will not find balance unless empowered to make some work-life self-care part of their working style.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
Work-life self-management is part of an overall personal career strategy.
© SHRM 2009

13. You cannot change things you do not fully understand.
Self Assessment and Reflection Is First Step to Manage Work-Life Relationships
Why?
You cannot change things you do not fully understand.
How?
Life bucket analysis
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
Ask students to refer to their life bucket exercise they prepared for class or ask them to do it now if the exercise was not pre-assigned.
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14. Life Bucket Analysis Draw Your (Ideal) Life
Divide this bucket into segments representing the major work and nonwork dimensions of your life and the amount of time and energy you would really like to devote to each.
Think about your values and vision for what your life could be.
Having completed assigned reading, let’s now debrief the life bucket analysis. Assuming there are 168 hours in any week, draw a pie chart of your life bucket analysis from last week to see how you spent your time between sleeping, eating, commuting, working, exercising, spending time with family and any other categories that are meaningful to you.
© SHRM 2009

15. Life Bucket Analysis Draw Your (Real) Life
This time divide the bucket into segments to reflect your life today. Be honest: Show your actual allocations of time and energy to the different dimensions–not what you think your allocations should be.
Compare the two buckets Is there a mismatch?
Ask students to work in pairs or small groups and compare and contrast their present and ideal life bucket analysis. How are their life buckets similar and different? How many of us are living our lives according to our values? Note any trends based on student backgrounds (e.g. gender, marital status, etc.).
© SHRM 2009

16. Everyone Has a Flexstyle
Work
Home
Self
Community
To understand how to make small changes to align your flexstyle with your ideal values from this exercise, let’s understand how you are currently managing work-life flexibility. Flexstyles are similar to a Myers-Briggs type indicator of different ways of working, and in this case it is an indicator of different preferences to manage work-life relationships.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
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17. Defining Flexstyles Flexstyle:
The psychological and physical ways we manage relationships between our job and personal life.
Step 1: Must understand your flexstyle to develop strategies to gain more control and alignment of work-life relationships.
Step 2: Must relate flexstyle to preferences and those of co-workers, managers, customers, family.
What are flexstyles? Kossek and Lautsch define them as the psychological and physical ways people manage relationships between their jobs and personal lives.
Why are they important? They help people align their life buckets and use flexibility to enable positive work-life relationships.
Step 1: Understand your flexstyle and develop strategies to gain more control and alignment of work-life relationships.
Step 2: Relate your flexstyle to the flexstyle preferences of co-workers, managers, customers and family.
© SHRM 2009

18. What matters most for well-being:
Know Your Flexstyle
What matters most for well-being:
a) Alignment between your ideal personal values for how you prefer to allocate your life buckets.
b) Control of how you manage work-life relationships (flexstyle).
Why are flexstyles important?
Good flexstyles are ones where we feel aligned and have control.
Bad flexstyles are where our values are out of alignment; we lack control and work-life relationships
always feel at odds.
Ask the class to give examples from their own experiences or from people they know.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
© SHRM 2009

19. Self-Assessment: Identifying Your Flexstyle
Statement
Strongly Agree
Agree
Neither Agree nor Disagree
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
1. I rarely attend to personal or family issues during the workday. 1 2 3 4 5
2. When I’m at home I rarely think about work so I can fully get away from my job.
3. If I work (or ever were to work) from home, I would work in a space that is designated for that purpose only.
Finding Your Flexstyle Exercise
Ask students if they have completed the self assessment assigned earlier. On this and the next slide are examples of the questions used to assess flexstyle.
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20. Strongly Agree
Agree
Neither Agree nor Disagree
Disagree
Strongly Disagree
4. In general, I don’t take work-related phone calls or s during evenings, weekends, holidays, or vacations. 1 2 3 4 5
5. With most of my family and friends, I tend not to talk about work issues as I like to keep work separate.
6. I do not think about my family, friends, and personal interests when at work so I can focus.
7. I usually handle s related to my family or personal life separately from s related to my work.
Calculate your score: Add up the total number of circles you placed in each column, and write the totals in the boxes to the right.
Here are more sample questions used to assess flexstyle.
Now total your flexstyle scores. If you have mostly 1s and 2s you are a separator; mostly 4s and 5s you are an integrator; and if you are mostly 3s or have a range of responses with no clear pattern, you are a volleyer.
© SHRM 2009

21. Flexstyle Common Assumptions
Don’t assume everyone works the same way you do.
Understand how your flexstyle aligns with other stakeholders (family, boss, peers, customers).
Identify your flexstyle to better self-manage work-life relationships.
This slide shows some common flexstyle assumptions.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
© SHRM 2009

22. Change Tools: Leverage Flexstyle Tradeoffs
Integrators:
Continually blend work and nonwork activities during the work day (and nonwork time).
Temporal, mental, and physical blending tactics.
Separators:
Keep work and personal life compartmentalized during the day.
Volleyers:
Sustained periods of higher integration of work and nonwork aspects and higher separation.
Ask students how many are integrators, how many are separators and how many are volleyers. You will find a mix of responses. Note to students that these styles can also shift at different times of year.
© SHRM 2009

23. Task-Flexstyle Tradeoffs
Integrators, Separators and Volleyers
Step1: What is good (pros) and bad (cons) about your style for effectiveness on and off the job?
Step 2: Do you work with others with a different flexstyle than you and why is your style better?
Divide the class into small groups based on their flexstyles (small groups of separators, small groups of integrators, etc.). Have students report out on these questions after 10–15 minutes.
You will find that there are some inter-group dynamics between these groups where people are experiencing different conflicts due to different flexstyles.
© SHRM 2009

24. Model of Good and Bad Flexstyles
WELLBEING/ HAPPINESS LEVEL
INTEGRATORS
VOLLEYERS
SEPARATORS
HIGH
Feeling in control; work and personal life have positive relationships.
Fusion Lover
Quality time
Firsters
(Work or Family)
LOW Overwhelmed, overworked, out of control, work and personal life often feel at odds.
Reactors
Job Warriors
Captives
Here is a model summarizing some of the tradeoffs of each style. We will explain each type of good flexstyles (the top row) and bad flexstyles (the bottom row) on the following slides.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
© SHRM 2009

25. Integrators (Good and Bad)
Fusion Lover
Experiences blending as psychologically positive, feels in control of timing and place of mixing, integration value fit,
Reactor
Experiences blending as negative, unhappy with how balancing work and personal obligation, want more control over transitions, blending and more segmentation.
There are two types of integrators--fusion lovers (good) and reactors (bad). Ask students for examples from the different groups (from integrator and then separator and volleyer groups).
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
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26. Separators (Good and Bad)
Firsters (Work or Family)
Feel in control of life and chose to place one part of their life -- work or family as highest priority.
Captives
Do not feel in control of the fact that one part of their life – either their job or family – forces them to focus on one part of their life to sacrifice of other.
There are two types of separators (good and bad); firsters (work or family) and captives.
Ask students for examples (from separator and then integrator and volleyer groups).
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
© SHRM 2009

27. Volleyers (Good and Bad)
Quality Timer
Separate to give best to each role, integrate just at key times when necessary; in control and satisfied.
Job Warriors
Lack control and satisfaction regarding when they switch between integrating and separating periods.
There are two types of volleyers (good and bad); quality timers and job warriors.
Ask class for examples (from volleyer and then separator and then integrator groups).
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
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28. Flexstyles Share Tradeoff Tenets
Choose flexstyle that aligns with values.
Some flexstyles not sustainable.
All have pros and cons.
If your life is overloaded, minor flexstyle changes won’t work because you lack control or resources.
If you are undergoing major personal or professional change, it is likely your flexstyle is out of alignment.
Here are common flexstyle tradeoff tenets.
You must make a conscious choice of which flexstyle best aligns with your values (the life bucket analysis is one way of assessing alignment).
The goal is to have the pros of flexstyle outweigh the cons.
Some flexstyles not sustainable over time or good for mental and physical health (or your family members).
If your life is overloaded, minor flexstyle changes won’t work because you lack control or resources.
If you are undergoing a major personal or professional change (e.g. divorce, marriage, new baby, illness, new job, job loss, etc.), it is likely your flexstyle is out of alignment.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
© SHRM 2009

29. Long days/Job or family creep
Integrator Tradeoffs
Long days/Job or family creep
Others’ misunderstanding about availability.
Perceptions about professionalism.
Higher switching costs and role restructuring.
Lack of buffers.
Here are integrator flexstyle tradeoffs noted in Kossek and Lautsch, 2008.
Of particular importance are the drawback of higher switching costs (process losses from trying to do two things at once; it actually takes longer to complete tasks than if we had done them one at a time).
Ask class for examples.
Kossek and Lautsch include some case examples that may be helpful.
© SHRM 2009

30. Stunted personal, community or family or social life.
Separator Tradeoffs
Stunted personal, community or family or social life.
Lack of access to cross-domain enrichment and supports.
Stunted unhealthy social life (for work firsters) or downshifted career dreams (family firsters).
Here are separator flexstyle tradeoffs noted in Kossek and Lautsch, 2008.
Ask class for examples and discuss.
Kossek and Lautsch (2008) include some case examples that may be helpful.
© SHRM 2009

31. Difficulty prioritizing--must make tough choices.
Volleyer Tradeoffs
Job creep.
Difficulty prioritizing--must make tough choices.
Increased cognitive complexity.
Role confusion.
Job Warriors special needs ( fatigue, vulnerability to breakdown of support system.
Here are volleyer flexstyle tradeoffs noted in Kossek and Lautsch, 2008.
Ask class for examples and discuss.
Kossek and Lautsch (2008) include some case examples that may be helpful.
© SHRM 2009

32. Do you need to change? Remember the Gut Test
Individual level:
Are cons of style outweighing pros?
What about your ability to control work-life relationships and values (life bucket alignment)?
Stakeholder Level: Perception is reality: Feedback from important others in life (family and work colleagues etc.).
It is important to remember the “gut test” to understand whether you need to make flexstyle changes.
At a personal individual level.
Are the cons of the flexstyle outweighing the pros?
What about your ability to control work-life relationships and values (life bucket alignment)?
Do you feel in control of work-life relationships? Are your values aligned values?
At a stakeholder level: Perception is reality. Consider feedback from others (family and work colleagues etc.) Have you had conflicts at home or work regarding your flexstyle? If so perception may be reality and it is time to consider some changes.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
© SHRM 2009

33. Take-Aways
Understand your and your stakeholders (coworkers, customer, boss, family) flexstyles and leverage them to be more effective.
People want to work in different ways- that’s not necessarily bad for organizations over the course of time but we do need to make sure we are supporting win-win solutions to benefit personal needs as well as job demands.
We close with some take-aways:
Flexstyles help focus less on who has a family or who is single and focus more on how we want to work together and the norms for availability and managing work-life relationships on and off the job.
Ask students to brainstorm the employer implications of flexstyles for the development of HR and organizational development strategies at an organization with which they are familiar. Also ask about the implications of managing flexstyles for increasingly diverse and global organizations.
Source: Kossek and Lautsch, 2008
© SHRM 2009