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- Liz
Broderick
TELSTRA BUSINESS
WOMAN OF THE YEAR
Presentation to AMASC INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S
CONFERENCE
Balancing career
and relationships/family
-
- Right from the
beginning my mother worked, and I grew up thinking
working women had the same rights as working men. So it
came as a great shock to learn that it wasn't always so.
Incredibly, it wasn't until 1966 that the bar on married
women as permanent employees in the Federal public
service was abolished. In fact the Victorian equivalent
was only abolished in the 1970s!
- Today I'd like to set
the scene by talking about women's participation in
business here in Australia. I would then like to tell you
my story. It's a story about building an eCommerce
business in a very male dominated culture, a culture
where people are very resistant to change. I hope that my
story might illustrate some of the challenges in changing
mindset and integrating work, personal life and family.
And when I talk about family, it is family in the
broadest sense. As the population ages, we will
increasingly have care-giving responsibilities for
elderly parents and family members with long term health
needs or disabilities. We will also wish to have
relationships or involvement in our local community, and
where that is not possible, to look for community within
the workplace.
- We are seeing
significant change occurring in the workplace &emdash;
although many would argue not quickly enough. As Hugh
McKay wrote recently in his article entitled "Australia
at a Turning Point".. He says:
- "My reading of the
mood of Australia suggests that a good deal of
re-thinking is going on…..First, a significant and
growing number of Australians will, indeed, look for ways
to close 'the values gap'. There is increasing talk about
the need to 'restore balance'; to 'get my life under
control'; to live 'the way I want to live'. When Tim
Fisher walked away from the Deputy Prime Ministership,
you could hear the cheer all over Australia: people were
saying, 'Good on you, Tim,' because they saw his decision
as a symbol of how to get your priorities
straight."
- He goes on to say:
- "This quiet
revolution will be led by women (who are increasingly
reaching levels of authority and influence in business
and the professions and, looking around them, are
concluding that 'this is no way to live'). But men are
getting the message, too, and, gradually, the balance
between work and personal life will be restored by enough
Australians to affect the way our society
functions."
- If there is one
message I can leave you with today it is this: that a new
and different paradigm for success is starting to emerge
&emdash; and it's based around balance. Some may argue
that one person's balance comes at another person's
expense. I want to demonstrate to you that one person's
balance can have significant positive impact on other
people's working lives. But we need to change the mindset
that says only full time workers are committed to work. I
liken it to the situation of a committed couple. Just
because you are not physically with you partner every
hour of every day does not mean you are any less
committed to the relationship!
- A change of mindset
requires organisational leadership, individuals with
perseverance, and people who are willing to push the
boundaries. It requires each of us to persist in working
towards our own balance in both your work and personal
life.
- The Australian
scene
- So now to the
Australian scene. In Australia, women are entering the
workforce in increasing numbers. The traditional family
model of one working partner is disappearing rapidly.
Overall 74% of mothers of children under the age of 15
are in the paid workforce &emdash; 37% are part timers
and 37% are in full time work. Almost 70% of families
have both parents in paid employment of some kind. This
includes single parent families, usually headed by a
mother.
- So wake up Australia,
modern Australian families have working
mothers!!
- I'm not sure if any
of you have been following the work of John Elkington on
triple bottom line. In his book Cannibals with forks: the
triple bottom line of 21st century business he asks "is
it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?" He proposes a new
way of measuring the success of businesses &emdash; one
not based solely on economic prosperity. Sure, he looks
at profitability (economic prosperity), but also focuses
on the environmental and social impact that the business
has &emdash; that is, he looks at a triple bottom line.
And it is that third line of the triple bottom line,
social responsibility, that underpins our discussion
today.
- Flexible work
practices are sustainable work practices. If we fail to
maximise the social value of a productive, happy,
balanced and diverse workforce, our social bottom line
plunges into the red.
- A national survey on
employment security and working hours conducted by the
ACTU in 1999, had some interesting findings. They
surveyed a cross section of employment sectors, which
involved 7,000 employees. , What they found, was that
only 44% of respondents claimed to be happy with work and
family balance and that this was more so for females than
for males. In the 12-month lead up to the survey, they
actually found that 65% of all people surveyed believed
they experienced an increase in the amount of work, work
stress, and pace.
- So what is driving
this increase in stress? Globalisation has led to intense
competition and changes in job demands, it's also led to
travel and the need to be accessible 24 hours a day, 7
days a week . We expect more of ourselves, we expect to
be more successful, and to achieve and earn more. And
these expectations are natural tendencies, particularly
for business people. Managing our own expectations and
those of our workplace is always going to be the key to
achieving balance.
- And while technology
helps us to adapt to flexible working, it can also eat
into our time outside of work &emdash; the mobile is
always on, the email inbox is always crowded, we can dial
in, log on, and drop out of our families and our lives.
The limits and boundaries between work and the rest of
life are beginning to disappear. Each one of us must
persevere in finding information management techniques
that work for us, working out where compromise is
necessary and where persistence is strategic. We must
seek and get help when we need it .
- The Legal
Profession
- The legal profession
is more guilty than most in terms of long hours, high
stress, and a lack of work/life balance, let alone
work/family integration. It is an industry I know very
well having worked in it for nearly 20 years.
- You may have heard of
the new best seller "Hell has Harbour Views" by Richard
Beasley. It follows the career of Hugh Walker, a lawyer
who started his professional career acting for the Aussie
battler &emdash; he was the defender of the abused, voice
of the poor etc. That was until Rottman, Maughan and Nash
dangled the office with the harbour view in front of him.
But with that office came the 24.3hr day and gradually
Hugh falls into the trap that befalls many lawyers
&emdash; lots of money but no quality of life!! Take for
example the following statistics about the legal industry
set out in Simon Tupman's book "Why Lawyers Should Eat
Bananas".
- • 75% of lawyers
in Australia suffer from work related stress. The 3 main
reasons given are:
- • too much
work
- • not enough
time for family or other life
- • excessively
long hours
- • Lawyers have
the highest incidence of depression among 105 leading
occupations
- So it all sounds
pretty grim.
- With such a limited
and inflexible culture in which to address issues around
work and family, it is little wonder that the Law Society
of NSW report found that female solicitors continue to be
under- represented in the private profession and over
represented in the corporate, government and community
sectors, where working conditions and leave arrangements
are, arguably, better fitted to family responsibilities.
While 65% of female solicitors work in private practice,
only 7.2% of female solicitors are partners. Moreover,
the partnership figure represents a decline, from a high
of 10% in 1990.
- My
Story
- So where does my
story fit in.
- The dream I have
pursued throughout my career has been about delivering
legal services in a different way. I started out as a
mainstream lawyer but I saw that access to legal services
could be made easier, cheaper and more transparent
through the use of technology. The business I have built
is about giving people choice. It's about bringing
transparency to an area of business often shrouded in
mystique. Part of building the business has involved the
transformation of workplace practices - born (quite
literally) from my own experience of legal practice and
how to improve the harmony between our work and other
lives.
- On finishing school,
I decided to combine a law degree with a Computing
Science degree. I wasn't sure where this would take me
but I dreamed technology would inexorably creep into law
firms and I would be ready for the wave of opportunity it
would create. Most people thought I was mad. Law would be
the last thing to change. But dreams are important and
they can take you places.
- In the late 1980's,
after working for 3 years in London I decided I had to
make a choice about where I wanted to build my career.
Whilst the lure of the large deals and high salaries in
London was attractive, my bond with my family and my love
of Australia brought me home. December 1986 was a
freezing winter in London. It was dark when I got up to
go to work and dark when I came home. I hungered for the
feel and brightness of Australian sunshine so my parents
suggested coming home that Christmas for a family holiday
in Noosa, where we stayed for a month. The time I spent
with them that Christmas convinced me I was missing out
on a lifestyle I treasured, so I raced back to London,
resigned, and returned home to sunshine and family. The
relief was immense.
- That was 1987. I soon
found a job as a lawyer in the Research Department of
Blake Dawson Waldron (BDW)a large Australian based law
firm. The Department had been newly created and hence was
in a state of flux. This offered me with enormous
opportunity to take the job and make it what I wanted
to!
- By 1991, BDW
appointed me head of a separate group known as the Legal
Technology Group. It was envisaged that this group would
be staffed by lawyers and computer professionals and
would respond to the growing demand for new types of
service - service that was underpinned by technology. We
would develop a suite of online legal services aimed at
major corporations. Mind you, at this stage, the group
comprised only my assistant and me - but no other firms
were taking any such initiative and we were on our way,
pioneering new territory. It was exciting.
- Whilst the decision
to pursue a "non-mainstream" area of legal practice has
brought rewards it wasn't all plain sailing. At the time
I started practising, being a lawyer in a non-mainstream
area meant you were not offered partnership nor could you
expect to be mentored to the same degree as a mainstream
lawyer. Running a legal business requires all types of
lawyers and I didn't think it was fair only one type
should be rewarded.
- I pursued partnership
for 2 years. The challenge was to convince the existing
partners of the value of what I was doing &emdash;
certainly it was not mainstream, but I was still
practising law. This required a degree of cultural change
- for lawyers to think differently about the practice of
law and to anticipate how delivering legal services might
change in the future. For me this was a very difficult
time. Part of me believed that the way legal services
were delivered in the future would change and that buyers
of legal services would start to have a choice. In the
routine and standardised areas of law, they could buy
less expensive but comprehensive online legal advice.
However, in the more complex areas of law they could
continue to buy the traditional, highly personalised
service from a real lawyer (as opposed to a computer).
This change had already occurred in many
industries.
- However, there was
another part of me which thought changing the culture was
just too hard and that I should go back to being a
mainstream lawyer where the career path and job function
was well mapped out. But I returned to something I had
learnt at school &emdash; if at first it doesn't work,
then keep on trying. So I hung in there and I'm glad I
did. After much agonising by the partnership and one
false start, I was promoted to partner in July of 1995. I
was the first legal technology lawyer from a non
mainstream area of practice to become a partner of a
major law firm within Australia. A dream come
true.
- But you know, it was
a dream that almost wasn't.
- About 5 years after
the group was established one of my lawyers dropped by to
tell me she was pregnant. The same afternoon another
senior manager gave me the same news. What they didn't
know was that I was also pregnant. Three weeks later a
fourth lawyer joined the queue. I knew that if I couldn't
accommodate them on some flexible basis during their
maternity leave and return to work, they would quit
either to become a full-time parent or join a less
demanding and more family friendly environment than a
major law firm. If that happened, our Legal Technology
Group would melt down and we'd lose the valuable
knowledge and expertise of all the key players. We had to
get family friendly and we had to do it quickly. I now
had a perfect and solid business reason to construct a
work environment that offered staff the flexibility they
required and enabled some degree of integration of family
life.
- After the initial
jokes about what was happening in the Legal Technology
Group, we sat down as a group (both full time and
part-time staff) to develop a new way of working. We
needed to ensure that whatever we did, our business would
continue in a profitable manner and there would be no
diminution of service to our clients. It was also
important to ensure that the full time staff did not feel
that they had to pick up the pieces. There followed a
period of uncertainty, of trialling different ways of
working and of great flexibility on behalf of the firm
and members of the group. We were desperate to make this
work.
- We brought two
lawyers in from other offices to cover us over the
maternity period. But we had to work out how our business
could continue and meet the demands for flexibility that
each person required. I knew exactly how my staff felt
because I also felt that flexibility was the key to
sustaining the business we had built.
- We developed a system
whereby the ultimate responsibility for matters rested
with the individual whether or not they worked full or
part-time. And, if a "flexible worker" needed to come in
on a non-designated work day, the arrangement was they
could bring in the kids. They also agreed to carry a
mobile phone when away from their home and to access
their email account at least once a day.
- We established a
telephone protocol where only calls of a certain nature
were transferred to the "flexible worker" and other calls
were dealt with elsewhere in the group. I wanted to
ensure that each of our "flexible workers" maintained
their previous position and level of seniority. I wanted
them to remain just as committed to the firm as they had
been previously.
- We realised early on
that we needed support staff who shared the vision for a
new way of working and could multi-skill. We had one
wonderful junior secretary whose most relevant
qualification was three years' nannying experience. She
made sure the children loved coming into work by making
it a great adventure. Interestingly enough, the children
are now at an age where they can be productive and carry
out basic tasks and they do it with relish.
- Even though these may
seem like small steps, I have found that workplace
flexibility builds a supportive and productive
environment like nothing else. For me it has also bred a
loyalty among my team that money could never buy. Never
have I lost an employee after maternity leave. They've
all returned. I don't think I can emphasise enough the
impact that this has had on the business.
- And all this inside a
major law firm!!
- It would be great to
be able to say, we set out to make things better for
women in law &emdash; to change the law firm culture of
long hours, hard work, stress and often limited control.
That is in fact what is happening, but at the beginning
we were just trying to solve an immediate business
problem &emdash; the problem of having half the legal
team on maternity leave!! Only when we found a solution
were we able to see, that the patchwork of initiatives we
had implemented, were applicable elsewhere within the
organisation &emdash; and importantly not only for women,
but for men too.
- I think the presence
of more women in senior positions in business is bringing
about a change in the way professional services firms and
corporations are run. Most women recognise the importance
of building community and a shared vision within the
organisation. Many of the working and parenting
initiatives that we established did just that. And it's
not just about building community within the
organisation. Extended communities which include clients
and key suppliers and other market players also have been
integral to our success. To make this happen one of the
initiatives we set up was the formation of a Working and
Parenting Forum.
- The Working and
Parenting Group is open to all members of staff, their
partners, clients and friends. The vision was originally
to provide a forum for working parents to exchange ideas
and to hear from leading experts on Work/Family issues.
It has expanded somewhat over the last year to cover the
broader issues of Work/Life. For the first time this
year, the firm has allocated an expense budget for this
group. This has included
- • monthly
parenting forums, Children and Literature, Raising Boys,
How Dangerous Men Think &emdash; inside the mind of
paedophiles.
- • key annual
events (Easter party),
- • practical
parenting courses, Barbara Holmes spoke on Balancing
Responsibilities for Caring for Older or Special Needs
Dependants and a Career
- • Child
development and behavioural seminars, Overweight and
Eating Disorders in Children and Adolescents
- • Carers' Room
(for use in emergencies), and
- • Child Care and
Elder Care kits available on intranet.
- I have spent a lot of
time inviting inspirational people in to our organization
to tell their story. What has occurred to me recently is
that within most organizations there are many individuals
with fascinating and inspiring life stories. By telling
their stories you can help organizations find that sense
of community, a sense of belonging which seems to be
missing in so many organizations today. But I think to
get to this stage you need to view people as individuals
with different life experiences rather than just "suits"
or "workers" and in large organizations there is a
reluctance to do this. To give you an example of this
…
- The programs we have
instigated have played their part in promoting and
retaining employees, which has led to a conservative
estimated saving of $1,755,000 per annum in the cost of
recruitment, selection and training. During the past five
years, staff turnover has decreased from 28% to 17%. In
particular, turnover of staff significantly reduced at
senior associate level to well below industry standards,
which is the very level when people are most concerned
about losing their life to work.
- At Blakes our
commitment to social responsibility is resulting in a
social bottom line that is getting healthier all the
time. But we should never be complacent about this issue.
There is still so much work to be done!!
- There is no doubt in
my mind that the future viability of Australian business
rests, in part, with our ability to introduce and offer
widespread support for flexible workplace practices.
There is a growing trend for people to question the
wisdom of a life devoted to work. These days, people are
more aware of the importance of achieving a balanced life
and they are less prepared to kill themselves for the
sake of career advancement. For these reasons, I think
flexibility in the workplace is perhaps the single most
important issue facing Australian business. And looking
at it globally, highly trained and skilled knowledge
workers are in short supply. Why do these workers return
to Australia after overseas postings or stay in
Australia? They don't come for the global deals. They
come because this is where they want to live, where they
want to bring up their children, where they want to
integrate work and life. Australian business must support
people in this decision. Not to do so is to ignore our
unique point of difference in a global
economy.
- I hope that in the
next 2 to 3 years I won't be needing to argue the case
for flexible working conditions, that it will be part of
our mainstream culture, the way things are.
- But, at the end of
the day, it's not just about business! It's about the
future work-life environment we want for our children and
our country. It's about parents and non parents alike.
It's about recognising the reason people choose to live
in Australia and understanding our unique point of
difference. It's about leaving the world a bit better off
after we go.
- Humans have a limited
lifespan but significant social impact lives on!! Let
each of us do our bit to make sure the next generation of
Australians are not forced to choose between their work
and their family!
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