The Working Week 20: Cali Williams Yost
In this week’s Working Week, Wayne talks to Cali Williams Yost, founder of Work+Life Fit, Inc, a company dedicated to helping busy individuals manage the way work fits into their lives.
A former New York City commercial banker, Cali believes that it is the fit - not balance – between work and life that really makes the difference and that there are countless work+life fit possibilities from which to choose between the extremes of “all or nothing.”
First, however, Wayne takes a brief look at the challenges facing HR as we re-evaluate the way we work in the 21st century and has a few words about Charles Helliwell’s ‘tough love’ response to a reader who says they hired an idiot as their replacement.
2:50 - Cali has been reading two articles on Management-Issues.com which caught her attention. The first reveals the workplace wish list of American employees while the second suggests that HR departments are failing to address the strategic or people challenges facing their organisations.
4:17 She suggests that one reason for HR’s woes is that there has been a real structural shift in what they (HR) are being tasked to do these days.
Meanwhile, the workplace wish list suggests that half of us are actively or passively looking for new jobs – a figure Cali says is about right based on her own experience of organisations.
4:50 – So why the discontent? Healthcare, salary and bonus are the top factors, while many people feel that they are working harder without seeing any improvement in their pay and benefits. So they will look elsewhere.
5:44 - Cali believes that flexibility and compressed work strategy is a career and business management strategy – it’s not a perk. It’s interesting that people do want this yet report that workload increases at the same time. They are looking for a way to put boundaries around their work and the rest of their life and for flexibility. People are really looking for a new way of managing work and the rest of our lives.
7:32 - Another point is that people feel that they are not being treated with respect. This is a key area in which employers can improve employee satisfaction. It also links directly to managing flexible working.
8:38 - Cali adds that the HR professionals’ workload has shifted significantly. HR needs to shift to being more of a strategy partner and HR professionals need to start being facilitators who can help to craft business solutions. This requires a different skills set and less focus on rules and regulations and being the monitor of all things policy related.
10:22 - The HR professional needs to use the talent management strategies to help companies to meet customer needs, deliver quality services and staying up on innovation. The talent management strategy is one way of doing this.
10:49 - Wayne wonders whether this means removing the metrics and measurements that HR has depended on until now.
11:07 - Yes, according to Cali it will require re-thinking everything from compensation to career pathing and recruitment and retention strategies. All the things that require standardisation and conformity like compensation bands to make them work.
11.45 - Finally, Cali addresses the issue of how you compensate a team where some people work from home a couple of days a week, others work as consultants, others in different time zones etc. And then how do you train managers to manage these types of teams. It’s a whole different way of looking at the workplace and it will require a revolutionary change with a more strategic approach from HR.
