Make Sure Everyone Benefits

 

In 2010, roughly 4% of workers telecommuted, according to Census data. By 2019, that number had crept up to just 5%. But in May of last year, during lockdowns, 35% of the workforce was working at home every day, according to a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Now many employers are trying to be more intentional about their policies so that more employees can actually benefit.

Lockdowns forced companies to embrace flexibility

For many companies, what began as a contingency plan has become the norm. “This is something that’s going to have a life long after Covid, long after the vaccine,” says Jill Chapman, a senior performance consultant with human resources provider Insperity. “Remote working and the idea of flexibility, it’s not like we weren’t talking about that before the pandemic.” It’s that the pandemic has forced companies to adjust. As Chapman puts it, “It’s like the future of work just showed up one day and that day was March 14.” Now many employers are trying to be more intentional about their policies so that more employees can actually benefit. Lockdowns forced companies to embrace flexibility.

The potential drawbacks of increased flexibility

That wasn’t an uncomplicated transition, though: Some found themselves working from the kitchen table or sharing limited internet bandwidth with other members of the household.

And for parents, particularly mothers, the challenges have been even greater. Working from home has often meant juggling the responsibilities of the office with taking care of children and managing their remote learning. This pressure is one reason why more than 2 million women have left the labor force since last February and why they accounted for all 140,000 jobs lost in December.

More than half of men (57%) said that working from home during the pandemic has positively affected their careers, compared to just 29% of women. Working mothers are also at a heightened risk of being stigmatized during the pandemic, according to Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at Stanford University, and a co-author of the 2020 Women in the Workplace Report. The report found that mothers are twice as likely as fathers to worry that their performance will be judged negatively due to caretaking responsibilities.

How companies can make new arrangements work for more people

Support from company leadership can help mitigate these issues for their employees. According to the Women in the Workplace report, workers who believe that senior leaders are supportive of their flexibility needs are less likely to consider downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce.

The impact the pandemic is having on working mothers could be lessened “if companies made work sustainable for working parents, and implemented measures to prevent mothers from being unfairly judged,” Cooper wrote. Examples of policies she says would help include adjusting productivity targets, creating firm boundaries between personal time and work time, and implementing better paid-leave policies.

More trainings can also help flexible environments work for everyone. All employees received the training, which didn’t just focus on issues of race, but also on the LGBTQ community, military veterans, and working mothers.

For Chapman, working through the pandemic has boiled down to two words: agility and flexibility. “We don’t have to be married to the things that we have done for the last 50 years,” she says. “In 2020, we threw out the playbook and now everything is up for discussion.”