An article in today's New York Times, After Baby, Boss Comes Calling, discusses the "opting back in" movement (whereby women and others who have opted out of the workforce seek to ramp their careers back up) and the steps that many leading organizations are taking, as a talent shortage looms, to support this re-entry process.
One of these organizations, the law firm of Heller Ehrman, is even considering tossing away the revered (and reviled) billable hours metric in the name of flexibility and balance for employees.
The law firm of Heller Ehrman, for instance, created a group called the Opt-In Project, which has spent the past year studying the way the firm does business. At the end of the month, the group plans to unveil a proposal to abandon the idea of billable hours that is deeply ingrained in the profession. "We can't afford to keep losing all these people," says Patricia Gillette, founder of the project. "The way we curently reward spending more and more hours at work makes no sense in a world where people demand balance.
Those of us who have grown up in professional service firms understand what a huge step this would be. For many firms, billable hours is the centerpiece of all performance measures and serves as the basis for a host of decisions, including pay increases and incentive awards. Kudos to Heller Ehrman for being willing to look for a better way!
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