For years, parents have been calling for more autonomy to decide where and when they work. Parents want to construct their working week around opportunities to care for their children. When people were sent home to do their jobs in March 2020 many of those requests were granted. Now that the pandemic may be coming under control, many employers are asking employees to come back into the office full time.
Generally, workers are split on how they feel about going back to the office in person. Some are happy to get back together with other people, and others are less enthusiastic. But especially parents are fighting back. People have proved that they can do their jobs outside the office. If employers cannot accommodate parents’ desire to spend more time with their children, they risk losing talent as workers seek out new roles with more flexibility.
Many parents feel that the family dynamic and bond was strengthened during the period, when they could work from home. And especially young parents are thinking about quitting their job due to the personal cost of going back to the old way of working.
Especially since we know now that it is often possible to work from home, many people consider the hours commuting and putting in face time in the office a waste. Arguing that there is a real business need for full-time office-based work will be hard when many businesses have managed full-time remote for almost two years.
Large numbers of female staff are quitting after maternity leave in many countries because the working practices are incompatible with family life. Employers need to take a longer-term view.
The law firm Baker McKenzie has given their workers a minimum of two days and a maximum of three days a week in the office. The idea behind doing so is to provide parents with some of the flexibility they have become accustomed to during the pandemic. This can also balance some of the gender inequalities, where men are putting in many hours in the office, while working mothers put in just as many hours at home but aren’t physically in the room so the male employees get a larger share of the informal opportunities, promotion, and bonuses.
It is important to find a way forward, since many employees feel that if their companies are not accommodating their needs, they are willing to resign. A recent survey from the job-search site FlexJobs showed that 58% of people who had been working remotely during the pandemic said that they would look for a new job if their employer did not allow them to continue working remotely.
A good approach is to look at what work each individual does on a day-to-day basis and decide based on that what work arrangement is best for each person. Some industries place a lot of value on face time, and this culture is hard to change. However, to accommodate the rising desire for employees to work remotely, postings for entirely remote positions have rocketed during the past two years, according to data from LinkedIn. Twitter even announced in May 2020 that employees would be allowed to work from home forever. There is no reason for employees of industries with unchanging working cultures to not look for opportunities in different industries, where working remotely is possible for them if they are unhappy.
