Flexibility's price tag: Gain time, lose career footing

Flextime, telecommuting and part-time employment are popular employee enticements. But, are these attractive benefits also drawbacks for corporate warriors who choose to utilize them? Often they are, according to research conducted by Philip Reckers, an accountancy professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business. Reckers and his coauthors found that those who work flextime and part-time hours were less likely to be picked for the best assignments and their career prospects took a hit. What's more, the negative impact was greater for men than for women.

Some 83 percent of Americans said they wished they had more time to spend with family, according to a 2003 survey conducted by Widmeyer Research & Polling of Washington, D.C. In the same study, 60 percent said they felt pressured to work too much, and 27 percent of participants said they'd trade a pay cut for more time. Considering such statistics, it's small wonder that flextime, telecommuting and part-time employment are popular employee enticements.

But, are these attractive benefits also drawbacks for corporate warriors who choose to utilize them? Often, they are. Scholars who studied performance evaluations of subordinates at large public accounting firms found that flextime policies didn't necessarily enjoy management acceptance. Employees who worked part-time or flextime hours were less likely to get plum assignments going forward, and their career prospects took a hit.

Of the two arrangements, employees working part-time hours were more harshly judged than those working under flextime. What's more, the negative impact of part-time and flextime work schedules packed more wallop against men than women. These were the findings of Philip Reckers, an accountancy professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business, who worked with Eric N. Johnson from Indiana University and D. Jordan Lowe of Arizona State in conducting recent research. Together, the team documented how risky alternative work arrangements — or AWAs — might be for an ambitious worker.

Rush hours

Anyone who's ever talked to a certified public accountant between January 1 and April 15 knows that for many CPAs, the demands of "busy season" trump family time. "Public accounting is a job where, historically, it's not unusual to work 60 or 70 hours a week," Reckers says. "That kind of work environment puts tremendous stress on people's lives, particularly when both spouses are working."

In their recently published paper, Reckers and his colleagues reference a 2006 survey conducted by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. According to that study, 70 percent of men who left public accounting cited work-life balance as the deciding factor in their decision to leave, the survey found. A daunting number of hours may be the norm at accounting firms, but work-life balance issues are gaining importance in employee retention all over the business world.

When the Association of Executive Search Consultants queried 1,300 executives in May 2006, 87 percent of survey respondents felt that work-life balance issues were a critical component of career decisions. More recently, Spherion Corporation, a staffing firm, tapped research giant Harris Interactive in December 2006 to explore contributing factors in voluntary quits. Investigators found that, overall, 21 percent of U.S. workers made a voluntary job change in the past year.

Approximately 39 percent of workers in the 18 to 29 age group jumped ship. Nearly a quarter of those who walked — 23 percent — cited "time and flexibility" as their main reason for leaving. Reckers and other business watchers will tell you that today's recent college graduates value work-life balance far more than the generations that came before them. And, who can blame them? Compared to Europeans, for instance, Americans are workaholics.

When activists first organized "Take Back Your Time Day" in 2002 to protest overwork, they chose October 24 as the annual event date because that's the day when most western Europeans could quit working for the year if they'd already put in as many hours as their U.S. peers. Not surprisingly, Big Four accounting firms are meeting these trends and concerns by offering flextime and other options to their beleaguered workers.

The firms proudly advertise such programs heavily. "You hear what the firms say publicly about work-life balance, and then you hear what your former students say about their actual jobs," Reckers notes. Hype and reality simply don't jibe, he says. "Even partners, after a beer or two, would admit that work-life balance programs are largely window dressing."

Revealing review

Reckers and his colleagues conducted their investigation among managers at two Big Four firms and two second tier firms. For the study, they solicited managers' views on AWAs, as well as simulated appraisals of hypothetical employees. Some of the fictional employees being evaluated were men, while some were women. In some cases, the employee worked reduced hours. In others, the employee enjoyed a flexible schedule.

The team also examined whether the reason behind the worker's decision to adopt an AWA made a difference. That is, some hypothetical workers took AWA jobs to accommodate child-care issues, and others did so to pursue further education. Thinking it might be hard to get honest viewpoints from audit managers with direct questions, the researchers took an indirect approach.

"If you ask people how they'd evaluate a subordinate in a formal review, they often don't tell you the truth because they recognize that a performance evaluation may be politically loaded," Reckers says. According to him, negative marks on formal appraisals can be a hassle, as unhappy workers may complain or contest such assessments. But, there are other ways to determine if a manager views an employee favorably, and one is related to the structure of public accounting work itself.

"In public accounting, you go from one engagement to another," Reckers explains.

Generally, workers form teams to tackle specific assignments, and workload coordinators will ask managers which employees they'd like on their teams for upcoming projects. To simulate that process, the researchers asked managers if they'd pursue the employee being evaluated for future jobs. In essence, they asked, "Would you work with this employee again?" "That's a revealing question," Reckers says.

If managers like an employee, they'll keep that person in their work groups, he explains. "If someone is on flextime and viewed as not carrying their load, they don't want him." Results indicate that audit managers were, indeed, thinking along those lines. In particular, when managers voiced less than favorable views of AWAs, part-time and flextime employees earned lower scores on their desirability as teammates.

In addition, the researchers asked managers to assess the likelihood that AWA workers would be assigned to "less challenging work in the future." Assuming that star employees get the high-visibility projects, this question aimed to measure potential career success. As it turns out, full-time female workers were viewed as having less promising career prospects than their male counterparts overall.

But, once they opt for flextime or reduced hours, it was the guys who really got clobbered. "Managers may tolerate flextime or part-time work with a woman — maybe," Reckers says. He figures this is because someone higher up on the corporate ladder or a human resources type has talked to the managers "long and hard" about discrimination and related issues. "But if you're a man and you take flextime, the perception is that there's something really wrong with you," Reckers adds.

Time bombs

According to Reckers, several factors contribute to the negative career outcomes AWA workers seem to have at the large public accounting firms. For one thing, the tradition of "heavy leverage" plays a part, he says. He's referring to the structure of accounting-firm partnership, where workers at the bottom "work a lot of hours so that the guys at the top can make more money." With that tradition, corporate culture values the good corporate citizen, "who should never ask, 'When do I get to go home?'"

Rather, Reckers notes, good corporate citizens work "long hours, evenings, Saturdays, Sundays if needed, and they never, ever complain." In such a workaholic culture, flextime and part-time arrangements can have what Reckers calls "unintended consequences." One is resentment among the employees left to pick up the slack when Joe goes home early to coach his daughter's Little League team. Plus, there's the inconvenience management faces when making sure there are enough workers to get jobs done.

As Reckers points out, demands of today's workloads may keep even tolerant managers from comfortably honoring a part-timer's schedule. There are historic pressures operating, too. "A lot of public-accounting partners are in their 50s and 60s," Reckers reminds us. "They grew up in a different era and, to a degree, they figure workers should be willing to toil 60 hours a week because that's what they had to do 20 years ago."

For these and other reasons, Reckers says that employees who aren't willing to work grueling hours are viewed as less loyal and committed. "That's an incorrect interpretation today," he adds. An employee's willingness to work such hours has more to do with societal changes than corporate loyalty. In these days of dual-income families, no one is managing the home front full-time, and all employees are likely to value personal time more highly. They need it to keep up with simple life-maintenance chores.

Reckers and his team believe that such realities — combined with their study results — spell possible trouble ahead for firms trying to attract and retain skilled professionals. According to the scholars, their findings underscore the need for members of the U.S. public-accounting profession to pursue fundamental cultural change. The rhetoric of work-life balance must match up with a new reality, the researchers write. It's time for "AWAs to be viewed as an acceptable career path for men and women seeking more balance between their work and non-work lives."

Bottom Line

• Work-life balance has become an important issue to attract and retain skilled employees.
• In public accounting, overwork is the norm, and 70 percent of those who exited the field cited work-life balance as their reason for leaving.
• Public accounting firms offer alternative work arrangements, such as flextime and part-time hours, to accommodate employees seeking work-life balance. Such programs are widely touted and ostensibly valued.
• Publicly, accounting firms push work-life balance programs, but taking advantage of such program can hurt an accountant's career.
• Research shows that those who work flextime and part-time hours are less likely to be picked for the best assignments and work their way up in the Big Four arena.