Debate Saying the unsayable about


(wo)men at work By Ciaran Fenton


J


ulie Meyer, in an otherwise excellent primer on how to be an entrepreneur (Welcome To Entrepreneur Country,


Constable 2012), ducks the issue of so called work-life balance. She writes movingly and auto- biographically about the value of a father-daughter relationship but I can’t see anything in the book that doesn’t promote working 24/7, whether you are male or female.


April Dembosky’s excellent article in the Financial Times (Marissa Mayer and the Motherhood Penalty, July 18 2012) which analyses all the nuances of her appointment as CEO at Yahoo! and in particular the issue of low income mothers unable to afford the support to “have it all” – is silent on, precisely, right thing to do.


what is the


Lucy Kellaway, no slouch when it comes to swimming against the tide of accepted orthodoxy, takes a neutral stance when she writes (in Jobs, Motherhood and Varieties of Wrong, Financial Times 29th. July 2012) that “there is no best way of combining motherhood and jobs. Above all, there is no balance. Instead, it’s a continuous, fluid game of survival, the rules of which are unclear, shifting and different for everyone”.


But perhaps Lucy Kellaway organisations to is


onto something when she points to the individualistic nature of the issue. There is an opportunity for


respond


accordingly, if only for good business reasons.


26 entrepreneurcountry


Men can’t carry and give birth to babies. There, I’ve said the unsayable. Writing this is dodgy territory in the workplace, I know. Some men may feel offended and discriminated against. I’m a man in my 50’s, married with two children. I don’t.


In the 21st century organisations are increasingly becoming merely coalitions of micro-businesses; employees are becoming more like professional services firms on legs; they sell their services for cash and ‘soft benefits’ for increasingly brief periods; the beloved social contract of the 20th century is now null and void; no one expects a job, let alone one for life.


Writing this is dodgy


territory in the workplace, I know. Some men may feel offended and discriminated against.


Surely this conundrum can be turned into an opportunity for


business. As


“soft contract”; could assess


part of the


organisations the individual


circumstances of each employee and do a deal accordingly; a man who wants to be home early to help take care of a new born could be accommodated as best as possible; a woman who has given birth could come to an arrangement which suits her particular circumstances.


Organisations cannot exist without families and it is time for them to integrate family life into their ‘people strategies’. The problem of course is that ignoring family life is far easier in the short-term from a business perspective; a dog-eat- dog mentality which vilifies soft issues survives in a Darwinian environment. It is far easier to role out


engagement programme’


an inane ‘employee than


it is to engage in the messy, challenging and expensive task of getting to know each individual and their individual needs, male or female.


However, at a time when the Augean Stables are being cleansed from dictatorship to


parliament; from bank to


newspaper; from church to family, perhaps now might be the time to say the unsayable to business: you can’t survive without families and I defy anyone to contradict that reality. Moreover, I suspect that those who do will make more money and that leaders of this ‘individual revolution’ will be the men and women currently in their 30’s and 40’s who are the future and come from a generation less neutral than mine nor the writers above.


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