Part of the Team

My husband recently mentioned that the managers of his favorite soccer team not only encourage players to marry but even offer to organize the wedding!  The rationale for all this marriage brokering is that married players are more stable and less likely to run wild. 

In other words, they recognize spouses as an integral part of the team.

Now let me say that I only have my soccer fan husband’s word for this.  But I wonder how many companies are so forward thinking? 

Back in the 50s it was pretty clear that men needed a wife if they wanted to advance.  Popular sit coms like Bewitched depicted the wife as the ‘woman behind the man’, always available to host and cook for visiting dignitaries and completely understanding about long hours and weekends.

Even today, being married is good for the male career although strangely, it tends to have the opposite effect on female careers.  I don’t want to generalize too much here but I wonder how many companies actually consider the families of their employees when it comes to talent strategy and rewards.

Looking around, not many, especially in these days of downsizing, outsourcing and doing more with less.  Although it's popular to talk about work life balance, employees are implicitly expected to pursue work life balance on their own time, which is why married employees whose spouses cover the home front still have a career advantage.

But considering employees in a vacuum, separate from their families and significant others, is a bit of an oversight if you think about it because of the influence families have on how employees perceive the companies they work for.

For example, does this conversation about rewards sound familiar?

You: Honey, my cancer cure patent just got approved!

Spouse: Darling, that’s amazing!  We should celebrate!  Are you getting a raise?  Or a bonus?

You: Er… Well, I got a pen.  But it’s a really nice pen!

Spouse: We can barely pay our mortgage and they give you a pen for curing cancer?  That's it, I’ve had it with you working nights and weekends for no money and no appreciation.  You need to find a different job! 

(OK most of us haven’t cured cancer lately but you get the idea.)

What about this conversation about work life balance?

Child: Daddy, will you come to my soccer game tomorrow?

You: I’m so sorry, sweetie, I have to work.

Child: You never come!  I hate your job!

(Ouch.  How do you think this person feels about their job right now?)

What it comes down to is this: If you pay decently and treat people fairly, families tend to have a stabilizing and retentive effect on employees.  But if your corporate culture is more of the crazy-hours-combined-with-eccentric-incentives variety, you might want to up your family values game a notch.

Alternatively, you could try employing only single people and forbidding them from ever forming personal attachments. Worth a shot.

Bottom line: Companies that want to engage their employees foster a family environment.  They express appreciation to the spouses holding the home front.  They organize family friendly events.  They encourage employees to meet socially outside of work.  They make sure employees take vacation, offer flexible work schedules and place more value on work quality than quantity.

They recognize families as part of the team.

Picture courtesy of effective-time-management-strategies.com.

Laura Schroeder is a global talent specialist at Workday, headquartered in Pleasanton, CA.  She has nearly fifteen years of experience envisioning, designing, developing, implementing and evangelizing global Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions and holds a certificate in Strategic Human Resources Practices from Cornell University.  Her articles and interviews on HCM topics have been published in the US, Europe and Asia.  She lives in Munich, Germany and enjoys cooking, reading, writing, kick boxing (well, kicking things) and spending time with friends and family. If you want to read more from Laura, check out her talent management blog Working Girl or follow her on Twitter @WorkGal.

Comments

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Unfortunately, U.S. law forbids the employer from inquiring about the family status of the applicant, so you can't hire those "more stable heads of households." Certainly, that was the preferred hiring choice fifty years ago, but it's illegal now. In fact, according to some theorists, today's enlightened employer is supposed to instead rely on the intrinsic value of the task (curing cancer) to motivate the economically-stressed worker rather than tie income to work results. We live in a new world where the old mistakes are continually repeated.

[Dan Walter]

Family dynamics have evolved faster than we have been willing or able to comprehend. Just a couple of days ago my sister and I were talking about how hard my dad worked when we were young. (For most of my childhood my dad had a professional job and my mom had the job of wrangling 4 kids and running the household.) We then realized that my dad was home from work, nearly every day, by no later than 6pm.

What will the kids of today be discussing 30 years from now, when they talk about a mom and dad who both worked and often did not get home until 7 or 8pm, or later?

A team at home can help a team at work....if we nurture it. Singleton's may actually be at an advantage in a workplace that values corporate dedication (for 2-4 years) above all else. Not sure how or if this will benefit anyone in the long run.

[Laura Schroeder]

@Jim - So true you can't ask up front. Still, you can always have family friendly policies, on the off chance you accidentally luck into a stable married head of household or two. Always assuming you want them to stick around, that is.

@Dan - Wow, few working parents today can imagine coming home at 6PM to clean children, homework done and dinner on the table.