Zeroing in on the 'Work' in 'Work-Life Balance'

Matt Krentz : Global People Team Chair of The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and a Chicagobased senior partner.
01/17/2015

In the quest to help employees attain "work-life balance" efforts often focus only
on one half of that equation (life), ignoring the other half (work). Certainly it is
worthwhile to create flexible work arrangements and ways for employees to carve
out time away from work - something the Boston Consulting Group has done for
years. But our firm has also developed a more comprehensive approach to
ensuring work-life balance, one that not only protects an employee's personal time
but also aims to maximize the rewards from the work itself.
The program is called PTO, which stands for Predictability, Teaming and Open
Communication. It was kicked off nearly 10 years ago in partnership with Harvard
Business School Professor Leslie Perlow. For over a year, Professor Perlow and her
team of trained ethnographers studied BCG, shadowing project teams and
individuals wherever they went (including client sites) and taking thousands of
pages of notes. The result initially was a program that focused on allowing
employees to have more predictability in their demanding work schedules,
something that would, in turn, create better balance in their personal lives.
But over time a key truth emerged: increasing the predictability around how we
work is just one piece of the puzzle. Equally important to creating a sense of
balance and personal satisfaction, we discovered, was improving the quality and
the impact of the work and the learning experience itself. That recognition drove
an evolution in PTO, drawing on the best of traditional productivity initiatives and
work-life balance programs.
The program, while deceptively simple, has transformed the way we work. It has
two key components. The first involves establishing a period of time during the
week when our consultants are essentially off the grid. This gives employees
protected personal time--whether that is for dinner with the family or training for
a marathon or taking a cooking class. In addition to creating much-needed
personal space, establishing blocks of time when employees are offline also
encourages better time management skills and teamwork.
The second component focuses on structured, regular discussions among team
members who are working together on a client case. These conversations,
covering everything from whether the case is delivering value to the client to how
each member of the team is learning and developing, force teams to rethink the
way they work to improve productivity. And the time that is freed up through that
greater efficiency can be used by team members however they see fit--whether

that is to give them more time for their personal life or more time to double down
on work that they are excited about.
A BCG consultant from New York City recently shared her reflections on the value
of PTO with me, musing that, "At BCG, we have a very high-achieving culturewhen asked to accomplish a task, we all want to say 'sure, no problem!' and then
knock it out of the park. Though this has many benefits, it also means that we
may be reluctant to question or simplify tasks, particularly in pursuit of our own
work-life balance. However, this is where PTO can be transformational; it redefines
'achievement' in the eyes of the team. Yes, we have to deliver a great product,
but truly high-performing teams deliver great products efficiently, creating the
rest periods needed for real creativity and innovative thinking. PTO recasts the
problem at hand: not just how do we do the work, but how do we do it in a
sustainable way? That's where the magic happens."
I am extremely proud to say this "magic"-the PTO approach-is now firmly
embedded as an intrinsic part of BCG culture. And this level of commitment is
clearly making a difference: internal surveys show 10 to 50 percent improvements
in all elements of job satisfaction at the firm. Turns out that one of the best ways
to make employees' personal lives better is to rethink how they work.