Our qualitative research into the personal work-life balance of City workers identifies clear challenges for the City of London. While the City's competitive advantage has always resided in its flexibility and "can-do" attitude, it has largely failed to adapt to changing social expectations and new ways of working. As a result, skills losses to the City, particularly among highly trained, senior women, run high and it seems that, in general, little is being done to address the problem.

Discussions with focus groups of City workers, directors and partners, revealed that, despite the widespread availability of work-life balance policies among City employers, those who choose to take them up are penalised. While other sectors of the economy have embraced flexible working arrangements, the City continues to be dominated by a long hours culture and the idea of 24/7 availability.

The research, carried out by PARENTS AT WORK in February and March 2001, was supported by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Goldman Sachs and Simmons & Simmons. The Quality of Life in the City report includes positive examples from the "leading-edge" companies who are in the vanguard of the major cultural change that may be on the horizon.

Summary of research findings

1
Focus groups identified a prevailing City culture characterised by high commitment, high reward, challenging work and responsiveness to clients reflected in the need to work long hours. It is a "macho" culture which militates against flexible working.

2
Attitudes towards work-life balance vary among City workers. For some, long hours are a positive choice. They are prepared, in the short term, to trade long hours and high pressure for large salaries and career enhancing work. Others want to work shorter hours or more flexibly, but currently find themselves unable to do so.

3
Social expectations and many City jobs have changed in the space of a generation. The work-life balance debate has extended beyond women with young children to encompass changing expectations among fathers and other younger workers. Senior jobs are perceived to have become more pressured and more demanding leading junior staff to question career aspirations more closely.

4
Barriers to working more flexibly were identified. The most important is the culture, which interprets a desire for balance as lack of commitment. Moreover, there is a widespread lack of confidence that jobs can be worked flexibly while managers are accused of adopting outdated management techniques.

5
Focus groups suggested two solutions - the need for new, non-standard role models of success and sharing experience of successful flexible working.

Challenges for the City

Based on the evidence we believe the City faces three important challenges:

1
City employers have a broad range of work-life balance policies in place, but must now move the culture forward to fully include employees who take them up.

2
City organisations appear to lag behind counterparts in other sectors when it comes to exploiting technology to facilitate flexibility.

3
Consistently high staff attrition in the face of changing demographic patterns suggests the City may be in danger of losing key skills and of being unable to replace them.

Background to work-life balance and the business arguments

So that readers can place our findings in a broader context, we have provided a short history of developments leading to the emergence of the concept of "work-life balance". We have given examples of the business arguments for and against work-life balance initiatives. And we have provided references to the literature on organisational culture and how it may be changed.

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Quality of Life in the City was supported by Goldman Sachs, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Simmons & Simmons. Our partners in the initiative were Opportunity Now and the City Parents @ Work group.

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