The women in your company are exhausted, burnt out, and probably leaving.
An overwhelming majority of those who have left the workforce during the pandemic are women. Here’s why that matters and 7 things you can do to help.
I am one of the more than 2 million women who left the workforce last year.
After just a few months of juggling dual roles as a marketing executive and a full-time mom of two kids under five, and for reasons unrelated to COVID-19, I became a newly-minted stay-at-home parent.
During my time at home, I shared stories with other parents in my circle, many of whom had relied on school and daycare for childcare while they worked. I recall talking with one woman, a former head of school for a local elementary, who had left her position in early summer. Her husband also worked, and she just couldn’t keep up with her job and her kids, she said.
Her story was not unique--the trickle of women stepping back from their jobs ballooned in August and September, as school started and COVID-19 became not only a tragic global health crisis but also a long-term logistical challenge we would all have to grapple with. With nearly half of US school districts now virtual-only though, the reality is that many primary caregivers, a majority of which are women, cannot balance both the unchanged expectations of work productivity and providing full-time childcare, leading to nearly 1 in 4 women considering leaving the workforce.
While women leaving has clear-cut financial consequences for families, their departure hurts company performance as well. A Pepperdine University study tracking 215 companies revealed that those with the strongest track record of hiring and retaining female executive leaders had 18-69% higher profitability. But, with a staggering 54% of female executives currently identifying as “exhausted” and 39% identifying as “burnt out”, women’s exodus from strategic planning sessions and board rooms is likely to have a far-reaching impact on companies’ bottom lines.
What business leaders can do
While women have experienced a disproportionate impact, changing the way we approach work benefits the entire organization and can lead to a greater sense of wellbeing throughout teams.
Though lack of availability of childcare is likely to remain a problem for months to come, much like the shift to remote working that happened in early 2020, business leaders can adapt the work environment to better suit the continued disruption that COVID-19 has brought to all of our lives. Here are 7 things that savvy employers can do in 2021 to adjust expectations and reduce stress for their teams:
Don’t just offer flexibility. Work with your employees to prioritize and adjust workloads. Define which tasks are mission critical or have the highest impact and find what can be deferred or canceled. Ask your team member for an honest assessment of what’s reasonable to expect from them in terms of output.
Cut out non-essential meetings and reduce the duration of essential ones. Defining agendas ahead of time, making sure to keep meetings on track, and setting meetings for less time than you think you’ll need will encourage more efficient meetings and free up schedules.
Suspend or cancel stress-inducing performance ranking programs. Programs like forced-ranking are controversial in a “normal” year for their negative impact on morale. When used in the midst of a pandemic, they can appear thoughtless, more seriously amplify inequality and bias, and make team members who are already anxious and overworked feel unappreciated.
Model having balance yourself. During COVID, work is interrupting family life, not the other way around. Challenge the idea that children walking through Zoom backgrounds or dogs barking means a team member is less committed. Let your team know you’ll be unavailable during a particular time of day to manage household affairs yourself.
Reject “always on” culture. Now more than ever, when our workplace is also our home, work-related emails and phone calls in the evening and on weekends interfere with necessary time to recharge.
Create goodwill in your community. Safe participation in a community initiative can create camaraderie, show that your company’s values are still important, and instill a sense of purpose for your team.
Check-in often. Circumstances change, and regularly meeting to check on workload and stress levels and adjusting accordingly can go a long way toward retaining team members.
While we are likely to be continuing to deal with the pandemic and its long-term effects for quite a while, making adjustments to better retain team members is a worthwhile and business-savvy investment you can make today.
