There are still managers in Australia who think work-life balance is "a joke" - are you one of them?

In an industry notorious for long hours and office-bound weekends, work-life balance is now slowly moving up priority list of financial services firms, according to delegates at the recent eFinancialCareers Melbourne roundtable. Although policies are patchy and often poorly implemented, progress is being made, agreed the 20 in-house HR professionals from local and international financial institutions who attended the event.

Representatives from several firms said work-life balance programmes, even when they do exist, are not always applied across all employees or departments. "There's a perception that front-office revenue generators shouldn't get flexible working, and that it's more for support staff. That's inconsistent," said one of the panellists, all of whom asked not to be named in this report.

Another attendee added: "If the culture in the team is all about 'getting work done', then it's hard to enforce work-life balance. A few managers, particularly the older ones, still think it's a joke."

And some employees feel fearful of broaching the subject. "In a partnership environment like ours, there are people who won't ask because they think it might put their promotion opportunities at risk."

The roundtable agreed that for meaningful change to take place, it must be driven from the top. "As we're only in the early stages of developing strategies for work-life balance, it needs to gain its legitimacy from the leadership of the organisation."

But change is coming

Most roundtable delegates said their firms have recently developed new work-life balance plans. For example, one organisation has issued laptops to all staff members, regardless of seniority, in a bid to make working from home more viable.

Another employer gives staff extra time off at summer to help them make the most of the season. "It helps to instil a culture of respecting family life. Work-life balance is a big focus for us. We can no longer just pay lip service to it."

This company's support of work-life balance has leaked out into the job market and is helping to motivate some candidates to send in their CVs. "We're getting something of a reputation. During interviews people are mentioning specific policies of ours that they've heard about. We're finding that work-life balance can be important both as a recruitment tool and a retention tool."

Roundtable delegates from non-banking financial firms said work-life balance is particularly important to them because they can't complete on remuneration with the large banks and have to attract talent in other ways. An attendee from an insurance company remarked that in a recent anonymous employee survey, 80 per cent of respondents said they were satisfied with their work life balance. "We think that's a great result," she added.

Culture shock

Some HR teams are not only expanding their work-life balance programmes on paper, they are trying to affect their company's culture to ensure a greater uptake. After all, it's no good having a lot of options, if not many employees are signing up to them.

For example, one HR department is attempting to change the perception that flexible working arrangements are never suitable for experienced front-office staff. It has appointed a working group to examine specific functions within senior roles and determine if anything can be done to improve flexibility.

"We'll then be reporting back to the leadership. We are doing a lot of research first so that we can present them with something solid, which points out how certain parts of a particular role can be made more flexible."

And just as the idea that work-life balance is "only for back-office people" needs challenging, so does the belief that it's "only for mothers". As one panellist put it: "This should be for everyone. Five years ago we were having difficulty getting it accepted from a male perspective, but that's starting to change now. We recognise that for working families especially, there must be flexibility on both sides."