Future of Work Roundup: May 10th

This week’s Future of Work Roundup highlights gender inequality in the workplace, and includes what we can do to better support working moms and women at work.

Quite the twist: a lot of women find hybrid work stressful. (Quartz)

Women have long asked for more flexible work situations, so you’d think hybrid work would be the perfect solution. Unfortunately, with blurred work/life lines and the general unpredictability of the world, it’s leading to a lot more burnout.

I feel like I’m about to get some really sad stats.

• A study from Deloitte sure shed some light: over half of women feel excluded from big meetings while working hybrid, and 14% have experienced harassment – and a whopping 93% say telling someone would hurt their career growth.

The bottom line: Our new normal of hybrid work is exacerbating gender inequality, but it doesn’t have to be that way, especially as we bring this issue to the surface and recognize what leaders and business owners are already doing to change things.

Workplaces have to support working mothers. (Forbes)

Parents in particular really got the shaft during the pandemic, and women the most. Many – to the tune of about two million – had to quit their jobs in lieu of staying home to care for kids when schools and daycares were (and, frankly, still are) in limbo.

What can companies do to win them back?

• For starters, normalize caregiving responsibilities for all people. This means that workplaces should, “recognize that an hour holding a child’s hand in the pediatrician’s office is just as valuable as an hour in the boardroom, because then men will do it.”

The bottom line: The feminine urge to get back to work is strong, and companies need to get with the times to better support women so businesses can operate optimally.

We can’t just let work evolve; we have to deliberately reinvent it. (PwC)

Yes, there’s a lot of doom and gloom for women at work. So what’s the solution? It’s not just to see how things play out. Companies need to have a serious look in the mirror and decide how they’re going to fix things.

Alright, it’s time to roll up our sleeves.

• The work revolution will start with this: Re-thinking more flexible time-off policies (and extending that to everyone, not just women), having equal paternity leave for both parents, and making a particular push to extend these efforts to BIPOC hires.

The bottom line: Systemic change is hard, but if companies want to be on the right side of history (and have a diverse workforce that will ultimately benefit the growth of their org), they need to take action asap.