The Foreign Service Journal, April 2020

46 APRIL 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL became our most trusted mentors and champions of Balancing Act. Early SAs were strategic-thinking, seasoned leaders such as Dana Shell Smith, PamQuanrud, Rob Goldberg, Ann Ganzer, Marie Yovanovitch, Mark Pekala and Roberta Jacobson who had access to the most senior principals in the department like the under secretary for management (M), the Deputy Secretary (D) and even the Secretary of State (S). We would secure annual meetings with these top officials, invite them to the federal Work-Life Month events each October in tandemwith HR and lobby them for smart policy changes. We knew we were gaining traction when the bureau used the white papers we drafted on our recommendations in their own internal papers. But as we researched the issues, we quickly uncovered a bigger problem at State: There was a significant lack of data or none available on, for instance, the number of employees who asked to telework, or who took leave after the birth of a child (and howmuch leave) or who quit over work-life issues. So when we struggled finding this information, we began collecting our own data in membership surveys we designed that became a critical annual endeavor for Balancing Act. We then analyzed the data and presented it in membership reports. Our HR contacts came to rely on this data, too, and requested more information on our proposed solutions as a result. We wea- ponized the data to make the business case for our asks because we realized that no one was going to agree to the asks for reasons of morale alone. At one meeting with a former M, we showed the data on howmuch money State loses (more than $1 million dollars a year) by not having an emergency backup-care program in place, as other agencies do, for employees who have a sudden lapse in childcare or eldercare. M said yes on the spot, and every employee now has five days of coverage a year per dependent for emergency backup care. It was a huge early victory for Balancing Act, and we knew that in making the business case for smart solu- tions we had found a successful formula. Lesson 3 Be strategic in your asks. Tie them to broader goals. “There are two things I don’t accept as answers: ‘It’s too hard’ and ‘It’s never been done.’”This is what a former M said to us when we presented the leave bank idea that had originally met stiff resistance to him. Balancing Act agreed. We also felt that much of the bureaucratic inertia that resisted our innovative mindset stemmed from a lack of understanding of the importance of getting workplace flexibilities right. So our BA boardmembers sought the advice of academics in the work-life modernization space. We contacted academics like Stew Friedman at The Wharton discovering viable approaches and solutions as we worked to bring about change. Here, presented in terms of lessons learned, is our story. Lesson 1 Band together. Find allies to collectively advocate. Given the stonewalling that routinely met individual requests for flexibility, we knew we had to expand our forces. We also felt that there was a gender dynamic at play because many of these issues disproportionately affect women and mothers, though we recognized that men and fathers struggled, too. In addition, many of our single colleagues felt that their work-life priorities were ignored or being sacrificed due to a lack of adequate backup support for parents taking leave. We decided that it would be more difficult for leadership and HR to dismiss a larger group who sought change. Six months later—in early 2012—we formally launched Bal- ancing Act at State, as an employee organization under the leader- ship of Amy Coletta Kirshner and Anne Coleman-Honn, and we’ve never looked back. With more than 1,300 members today and countless advocacy wins for workplace flexibilities, Balanc- ing Act put work-life balance on the map at State. The group was the engine and driving force behind the creation of the voluntary leave bank, the emergency backup-care program, the pregnancy/ adoption guide, centralized job shares and numerous FAM changes such as allowing employees to telework on medevac. But how did we get from seven to 1,300, and how did we get HR to support our ideas and asks? Lesson 2 Crunch the numbers. Use data to make the business case …and get senior buy-in. First, as a group we got smart on all FAM and Office of Manage- ment and Budget policies related to the human resources issues we struggled with. These included telework, leave, lactation and childcare, among others. Each of us became a subject matter expert (SME) on one of these topics so we could divide and con- quer the various problem sets. We built a close relationship with the work-life division in HR’s employee relations office; they were supportive of the new energy we brought, yet also skeptical of how much change senior leadership would entertain. Knowing how our top-down bureaucracy operated, we also agreed that we needed senior leaders to help guide and champion our efforts to get buy-in from the seventh floor. We approached senior leaders we admired and respected, asking them to sup- port our work. We called them senior advocates (SAs), and they