Trend grows for balance between work and life

Within the past fortnight Suma Chakrabarti caused a flurry of interest by dictating his family-friendly working hours before taking the job of permanent secretary to the UK's Department of International Development. Danny O'Neill walked away from the job of chief executive of Brittanic, the UK financial services group, after just nine months because he could see a potential conflict with family life. He chose to work part-time as a consultant to Brittanic instead.

Career management consultants say that they are witnessing a greater interest not only in getting the work/life balance right, but in doing it at the outset, before signing a contract. In part they cite a 'post-September 11' factor, which may be making people focus more on what it is they want out of life. But there is more to this trend.

In the financial services industry, which has been through an extended period of consolidation and insecurity, a variety of factors have come together to sway individual thinking. When investment banks such as Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs offered voluntary redundancy to reduce headcount, individuals were forced to consider their priorities.

At the HR consultancy Penna Group, Michael Moran says requests from individuals for private career counselling are definitely on the increase. While Penna used to provide this typically for graduates in their 20s who had not yet found their niche, now they find themselves advising people in their 40s and 50s.

Financial institutions are also increasingly using career management firms in-house, to handle work/life balance discussions and help focus individuals' minds on their career paths.

Fairplace Consulting recently worked for a financial services company after the announcement of an important change over the next three years. Senior management recognised a 'significant gap' between the expectations and aspirations of the company and employees' attitudes, and staff morale was very low. Fairplace was asked to research and develop separate workshops for individuals and managers and trained a team of internal staff to deliver the programmes to more than 2,000 staff in three locations.

Andrea Eccles, City director at Fairplace, says: 'Over the past 12 months we have seen financial institutions provide internal career planning for individuals. The request usually comes from the individual. They work with us, and then get an independent report they can present to the employer so they can work together to consider retraining or redeployment.' Internal career change may take 12 to 18 months, but it shows commitment on the part of the institution and as such is a great retention tool, says Eccles.

BG Careers, now a division of recruitment firm Whitehead Mann, also does similar work with financial institutions. It is currently involved in a project where all associates have open access to the career management firm to discuss career issues in confidence.

Philip Beddows, senior consultant at BG Careers, says: 'The people the investment banks want to retain must be helped to manage their careers otherwise they'll be off whenever someone else comes along and puts an arm round them.'

The specialist knowledge required by financial institutions is also responsible, say consultants, for many of the difficulties in thinking long-term. As product lines evolve, discussions are necessary to ensure that the individual is well aware of the choices available, as well as his or her marketable skills.

Fairplace's Eccles says: 'We have been refining our approach and urging the individual to look at core skills. If you've come out of M&A but were trained as an accountant, you need to leverage off those skills the market needs now, not six months ago.'

Fairplace offers an innovative product aimed at the individual, regardless of whether or not there is an employer involved. It has established an internet site (www.workingcareers.com) where individuals can purchase the right level of career support - and the tools - to help them manage their career at a variety of levels.

For packages that begin as low as 100, Workingcareers offers research, help with CVs, interview skills, access to the job market and more. There is also a call centre in Northampton that has career counsellors on hand from 7am to 7.30pm and is described by the career management firm as 'state-of-the-art'.

While internal career counselling is essentially a retention tool for the financial institutions, the arrival of services aimed truly at the individual suggests a much greater sense of empowerment for an individual's own career.

In the US, this sense of individual control has been making itself felt for some time, and headhunters have been seeking to make the most of it by building their networks with individuals as widely as possible. In Europe too, they began to wake up to the possibilities with the arrival of the internet.

Egon Zehnder has launched an 'active career management' element to its website, saying that one part of such management is building a long-term relationship with at least one, carefully-chosen executive search firm.

They say that such management 'improves substantially the likelihood of being able to maintain the right balance between personal growth, job satisfaction and excellent remuneration'.

The financial investment involved in the launch of such a service is minimal, but the potential ramifications are huge. Other search firms have similar services, but they have not been marketed in the same way.

Egon Zehnder wants to hear from the individual before they actually start looking for a job. Andrew Gilchrist, whose brainchild the service is, says: 'You don't register with a doctor only when you are ill. You get to know that doctor so that you can anticipate and not just react in extremis when you need medical help.'

The vast majority of people leaving business school will change jobs every five years, says Gilchrist. Senior appointments usually involve headhunters, so it makes sense for those with ambition to make themselves known to the people who are likely to be involved.

As corporate fees for headhunters are squeezed ever further, it also makes good sense for headhunters to target the individual.

Moran of the Penna Group says: 'The future of the headhunter is as a talent broker. It is a bit like a football agent who helps the players manage their careers. He moves them and gets their business. Headhunters have always done it unofficially and now they're trying to put a circle around it.'