By Dr. Bonnie Tiell, Dr. Marlene Dixon, Dr. Kristi Sweeney, Dr. Nancy Lough, Barbara Osborne, and Dr. Jennifer Bruening
Bonnie Tiell, DSM, is Assistant Professor of Sport Management at Tiffin University. Marlene Dixon, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Sport Management at the University of Texas. Kristi Sweeney, PhD, is Assistant Professor at Xavier University. Nancy Lough, EdD, is Associate Professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Barbara Osborne, JD, is Sports Administration Graduate Coordinator and Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina. Jennifer Bruening, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut.
Athletic Management, 18.5, August/September 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1805/stoppingthepull.htm
Intercollegiate athletic administrators and coaches face extraordinary demands on their time and energy every day. For most members of the profession, achieving a normal balance between home and work life lies somewhere on the continuum between difficult and impossible.
Conflicts are often unavoidable: whether it’s an administrator facing the illness of a family member coinciding with hosting a tournament, a coach who wants to start a family yet still move up the coaching ladder, or an athletic trainer who wants to be devoted to both her athletes and her own kids and finds there aren’t enough hours in the day. Many feel the dilemma is driving talented young coaches and administrators, especially women, out of the profession.
The cover story in the August/September 2005 issue of Athletic Management (“Coaching with Kids”) provided some examples of how individual athletic departments are helping staff manage family duties alongside career demands. In this article, we’d like to present some additional ideas on work-life balance, based on research we have recently conducted, which includes survey responses from 900 athletic directors and senior woman administrators about their institution’s benefits and work-life climate.
IN THE CULTURE
Athletics tends to attract people who are competitive and passionate about their work. This leads to a dynamic and productive environment, but one in which work-life balance is a low priority. As one administrator in our studies put it: “There is too much pressure to practice more, play better, and out-recruit your opponents.” Another commented that sometimes, “Working in athletics is like a contest to see who can put in the most hours, even if those hours don’t result in significant benefits. How much you work becomes like a badge of honor.”
For this reason, an important step in bringing work-life balance to the profession is changing some of its climate and culture. It’s a huge task, but a necessary one if anything is going to change.
It all begins with supervisors who can communicate the mindset that taking time off from work is not only acceptable but occasionally encouraged, and that face time in the office will be secondary when evaluating the quality of one’s efforts. In many cases, this culture shift needs to contain more than words and sentiments. For example, one specific idea is to mandate that staff take Monday mornings off after weekend road trips to allow employees to catch up with personal and family obligations. This would mean all staff members: coaches, sports information staff, athletic trainers, and so forth.
Another idea is to implement four-day work weeks during the summer or during a coach’s offseason. Some schools also have a four-day work week during the winter holiday break. When things are very busy, a department could mandate that no administrator can work more than a set number of hours over a two-week period—if they do, they should make an appointment to see a senior-level administrator and discuss ways to lighten their load.
Small things also add up. Ask about your staff’s family life, and what they did over the weekend. Be conscious of a parent who needs to leave the office at 5 p.m. sharp to pick up kids at daycare and don’t start a conversation with them at 4:45. End your staff meetings as scheduled. Tell your track coach you appreciate him opening up the indoor track at 8 a.m. for the community, but that maybe a student can do it instead. Don’t ask employees to work late without some prior notice. If a coach is looking devoid of energy for more than a few days in a row, ask what he or she needs to re-energize.
Athletic administrators should also assist coaches in finding ways to work more efficiently and eliminate unnecessary hours. For example, postseason individual meetings with players do not need to drag on for two weeks to meet the scheduling needs of each and every student-athlete. If coaches plan ahead by knowing the students’ schedules (a task that can be delegated to an assistant, team captain, or work-study student), they can minimize the time spent waiting in between meetings. Two elements are important to reap the benefits: the planning of the meeting times, and the planning structure of the actual meeting.
You’ll also need to teach your coaches and staff how to say “no,” especially to that spur of the moment “oh, by the way” subcommittee meeting the morning after a long road trip. This is difficult for many, who see their willingness to go the extra mile for the organization as part of their character. Therefore, coaches and administrators need to know that if they say “no” to a request or opportunity, it will not be viewed as a lack of dedication to their work.
Along the same lines, administrators and coaches should take a hard look at all the “extras” they do in their job. These can range from organizing the department’s holiday social, to implementing the student-athlete-of-the-month honor, to lining up a guest speaker on nutrition for a team. Sometimes these tasks can be delegated to others. And, if not, they should at least be acknowledged and evaluated as part of the staff member’s job. Activities like these are often what drives and inspires a work unit, but they aren’t always documented or considered in compensation and promotion decisions.
Perhaps the largest change athletic directors can make in the culture of their department is to accommodate the on-off ramp that some employees desire in their careers. Tradition has it that coaches and administrators move up the ladder, from assistant to associate to head coaches or department leaders. Success at one level lets you step to a higher one, in a continuous flow. But more and more, people want the opportunity to step down off the ladder for a period of time, with the option of stepping back on the rung they left.
To avoid losing good staff members, administrators need to discover ways to accommodate such desires. At the University of South Alabama, for example, when an assistant volleyball coach requested fewer responsibilities so she could devote additional time to her newborn, the administration let her move to a part-time position and allowed the volleyball program to add a half-time position. The coach’s valuable services were retained on a part-time basis and a new individual moved into her full-time role.
In some cases, making these accommodations means fitting the pieces of the personnel puzzle together in a different way, which may require a new level of strategic planning. But the reward will be a staff that’s appreciative of and dedicated to the department. It will also mean that your employees feel more energized, because they are doing exactly what they want to do without fear of losing their proverbial place on the career ladder.
EASING WORKLOADS
Another key to managing the work-life struggle is examining workloads. Like changing the culture, this may entail thinking outside the box. Some of the best solutions entail a type of job sharing, whereby staff members perform duties based on what is the most efficient use of time instead of what is in someone’s traditional job description. For example, if one staff member is in charge of game management for men’s basketball and another for women’s basketball, they will probably both want to be present at a men’s-women’s doubleheader. But two game managers are not really needed, and they should be able to divvy up dates of doubleheaders. They might also be encouraged to trade event supervision duties throughout the season—if an important family event comes up for one, the other can cover the game that night in exchange for a night off the following week.
Coaches can also job share, especially if they aren’t hung up over who is head coach and who is assistant, and instead divvy up responsibilities according to what works with each one’s schedule. There have been instances in one small college’s athletic department where travel has been split up among a competent staff of two or three people who were equally respected by team members. Of course, good communication is essential for any arrangement like this to succeed.
Another way to ease the workload is to add staff members who are not looking for much compensation. The field of sport management is very hot right now, and finding interns or graduate assistants is not hard. Other majors might also be interested. These people can be very helpful in the areas of game management, marketing, and compliance. Many colleges are formalizing internship positions and utilizing graduate assistants for the business side of athletics in addition to the traditional coaching ranks. Work study programs are also utilized to help coaches and staff delegate tasks such as laundry detail, van clean-up, video exchanges, or handling camp registrations.
The key is for each student to have a contact point in the department who can formalize the experience, provide guidance, and make it meaningful for both the student and the institution. While it does take precious time to coordinate the experience at first, once the process is in place it becomes easier to secure, train, and monitor students in intern positions in subsequent years.
It is even possible to find help for free, using volunteers in your community. In most places, there are community members who would be happy to step in as a part-time coach, game announcer, or statistician. Often, all you have to do is ask. While many community members will volunteer purely out of altruism, they can be thanked for their efforts with non-monetary gifts such as game tickets, team apparel, and social opportunities at university-sponsored events.
FAMILY FRIENDLY
For many young coaches and administrators, the most difficult time to stay employed in athletics is when they are new parents. The strain of working hard and taking on the ultimate job of being a parent can quickly lead to burnout.
That’s why it is key to help employees through this critical time in their lives. The first step is to allow a lot of flex-time, which is easier than ever thanks to modern technology. With a BlackBerry device, cell phone, and home computer, e-mails can be answered away from the office, travel arrangements can be made over the Internet, and weekly or daily practice plans can be generated from home.
Another idea is to allow employees to bring children to work and on road trips. Some athletic directors are now offering a benefits package that pays for a childcare provider to accompany the team when it travels.
Along the same lines, some departments are adding daily childcare (on- or off-site) to benefit packages to help retain talented coaches who want to start a family. Essentially, the cost of the benefit is less than the cost of a national search for a replacement hire.
Some schools have even allowed employees’ entire families to travel to playoff games at the university’s expense, regardless of the person’s position. This allows coaches, athletic trainers, and other athletic personnel to maintain a sense of balance during periods of intense work.
POLICIES NEEDED?
One small but important way an athletic director can provide a supportive climate for all of the above ideas is to produce a written statement in support of family commitments. It helps to bring many voices to the table when putting this statement together, and then to publicize it well.
In our research, we found that athletic departments often do provide assistance with work-life conflicts, but that it usually occurs informally or on a case-by-case basis. A policy that is official and understood by all would ensure that employees needing help with this issue know where to turn and what to expect. It also provides coaches and administrators with a framework for dealing with personal dilemmas arising from work constraints.
Such a policy could outline what the department finds acceptable in terms of telecommuting, children at events, and flex-time. It could even spell out a commitment to helping staff navigate the on-off ramp of their careers. For example, a policy might state that an assistant coach who wants to go part-time would be assured he or she could return to a full-time slot (within a certain number of years) if so desired.
A written policy also makes clear that work-life balance is a priority for the athletic department, which returns us to our key ingredient: changing the culture. When both written and spoken words communicate that a department cares about its staff members’ lives, not just their work, those staff members feel more fulfilled in both. This eventually leads to a more efficient, devoted, and energized team of employees. And who doesn’t want that?
Sidebar: Turning it Off
Many employees are using new technologies, like laptops and BlackBerries, to be more efficient with their work, which seems like a great idea. However, for telecommuting to be truly effective in helping work-life balance, it must be viewed as a substitute for traditional work hours, and not merely as a more convenient way to extend those hours.
In other words, coaches and administrators must not only be well-versed in how to use the technology, but also disciplined in turning it off. And employers must be realistic in their expectations of employee availability.
Athletics personnel working four evening games in a row should not be expected to answer an e-mail from home at 8 a.m. the following morning. Nor should they be expected to check cell phone messages every hour. The technology is there so they can use it at home to make their job easier, not so that they can be on call at all hours of the day and night.
Sidebar: Shorter Seasons?
Looking for a more radical idea to shift work-life balance in athletics? How about shortening the athletic seasons? A change in either the overlap of sport seasons or the length of the seasons at a national level would definitely increase the odds of lessening the workloads for athletics personnel.
Most administrators, athletic trainers, and sports information directors work all sports, and it is not uncommon for these individuals to be called on to do “double duty” when one sport’s postseason games overlap with the regular season of another. Recommending shorter seasons for ice hockey and basketball, for instance, are possible solutions. A shorter recruiting season in the summer is also worth exploring at a national level.
In addition, today's coaches feel the pressure to recruit constantly, which has led to more work hours. Long seasons coupled with a lot of time spent recruiting leaves little space for a personal life.
The Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) is starting to address this issue seriously. According to Shannon Reynolds, Chief Operating Officer for the WBCA, the association’s Recruiting and Access Subcommittee successfully proposed NCAA Division I legislation last year to further restrict coaches’ access to recruits during the school year. Coaches of men’s teams have 130 days of access and coaches of women’s teams now have 85 contact days, which occur in restricted periods. Opponents of the legislation cry foul in the name of equal opportunity, but those invested in the long-term retention of women coaches see the move as progress.