Making Time Off Predictable—and Required

Professional services firms typically have a 24/7 on-call culture. But one management consulting company is getting better results by experimenting with downtime—even in this economy.

by

Leslie A. Perlow and Jessica L. Porter

by

Leslie A. Perlow and Jessica L. Porter

From the Magazine (October 2009)

Summary.

Reprint: R0910M

People in professional services believe a 24/7 work ethic is essential for getting ahead—and so they work 60-plus hours a week and stay tethered to their Black?Berrys. This perpetuates a vicious cycle: Responsiveness breeds the need for more responsiveness. When people are always “on,” responsiveness becomes ingrained in the way they work, expected by clients and partners, and even institutionalized in performance metrics. There is no impetus to question whether the work actually requires 24/7 responsiveness; on the contrary, people work harder and longer, without stopping to explore how they could work better.

But four years of research conducted by the authors in several North American offices of the Boston Consulting Group suggests that consultants and other professionals can provide the highest standards of service and still have planned, uninterrupted time off. They can do this even in times of recession.

In this article, Perlow and Porter outline the lessons from BCG’s implementation of predictable time off—namely, impose a strict mechanism for taking days and nights off, encourage lots of talk about what’s working and what isn’t, promote experimentation with different ways of working, and insist on top-level support.

The Idea in Brief

• People in professional services believe a 24/7 work ethic is essential for getting ahead, and so they work 60-plus hours a week and are slaves to their BlackBerrys.

• The authors’ research in several offices of the Boston Consulting Group, however, suggests that consultants and other professionals can meet the highest standards of service and still have planned, uninterrupted time off—whether in good economic times or bad.

• Here’s how: Impose a strict mechanism for taking time off, encourage lots of talk about what’s working and what isn’t, promote experimentation with different ways of working, and ensure top-level support.

People in professional services (consultants, investment bankers, accountants, lawyers, IT, and the like) simply expect to make work their top priority. They believe an “always on” ethic is essential if they and their firms are to succeed in the global marketplace. Just look at the numbers: According to a survey we conducted last year, 94% of 1,000 such professionals said they put in 50 or more hours a week, with nearly half that group turning in more than 65 hours a week. That doesn’t include the 20 to 25 hours a week most of them spend monitoring their BlackBerrys while outside the office. These individuals further say they almost always respond within an hour of receiving a message from a colleague or a client.

A version of this article appeared in the October 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review.

LP

Leslie A. Perlow (lperlow@hbs.edu) is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School in Boston. Jessica L. Porter (jporter@hbs.edu) is a research associate at Harvard Business School.

Making Time Off Predictable—and Required

The Idea in Brief

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