Consulting: How do you implement something like this?

Davis: The team needs to sit down before the project starts and communicate with one another about how they prefer to work. We had one recent example, for instance, of a partner who starts work really early. We all discussed and made a deal: No one on the team was going to answer an e-mail from him before 8 a.m. We made a similar rule for those who like to work really late. And we've really worked hard to protect weekends. The open communication part is worth amazing amounts and is probably the biggest reason we've had success. What we've also done, which is a little costly, is train PTO facilitators to run each team. Those facilitators do interviews with the team members to find out their preferences and priorities and anything they may not want to disclose in front of the team. These are internal BCG folks we pull off consulting assignments for three to six months. These facilitators go through extensive training and then the facilitating aspect. What we find is that they come back as better managers after the fact.

Consulting: What's been the hardest part of rolling out the PTO program?

Davis: The hardest thing is getting the partnership and partners to want to do it and believe that it will make a difference. Some people, truth be told, have to be convinced. A few of them actually think we're wasting time and we're wasting money on facilitators. We've done this office by office and team by team and we've rolled this out to about 65 percent of BCG by now and the results are astounding. We see the difference and we have the data to back it up. Where we've rolled this out we've already seen the needle move on our internal surveys on conditions of quality of work/life balance.

One on One with BCG's Joe Davis

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