If parental leave isn’t hard enough, imagine going back to work after experiencing the completely life-altering event that is having a child. Life for new parents involves new routines, expectations, and a new identity. What was once a lifestyle that could generally adapt to the needs of an unpredictable workplace suddenly transforms into a lifestyle that has no choice but to adapt to the evolving and unpredictable needs of a tiny human. So, where does the relentless demands of said tiny human fit into the still (and unchanged) unexpected demands of the workplace? Perhaps workplaces have no choice but to wage battle against their ultimate foe: babies. Or let’s hope there is another way?
The looming terror that accompanies the ticking clock that beckons the end to parental leave is, well, terrifying. And exciting. For me, it was more terror than anything because I knew the fundamental shift in my reality and identity would not be as compatible with my workplace as it once was. What used to be the minor inconvenience of extra working hours would transform into the existential horror of completely conflicting work demands as it stacked against essential personal needs. Those 5 pm unscheduled meetings? Sorry, not possible unless you’re willing to wait an hour for me to get back home, make sure everything is in order, and hope there is someone (anyone) that can watch a baby while we have that meeting. It’s an urgent issue? Is it Dr. Stranglove-level urgent (as in impending apocalypse), or is it I -need -you-to-respond-to-my-boss’s-boss-email-from-yesterday-that-wasn’t-really-scrutinized-until-just-now urgent?
After returning to work, I remember coming back home and sitting dejectedly on the floor, thoroughly wrecked from a day of interrupted pumping breaks (timed strategically during lunch and what I had calculated to be the “slow” time of around 4 pm), many meetings and many, many emails. Some days were better than others, but the enduring common denominator was exhaustion. Physical, mental, psychological exhaustion. I was failing at work, and I was failing as a new mother. I could no longer adapt to the unpredictable work expectations, so work was incompatible with my new identity as a mother. What to do? Stay for those unplanned 5 pm meetings? Join the 5 am calls and sacrifice precious sleep (and therefore display my steadfast commitment and dedication to the company?) Or maybe I could establish the necessary boundaries that I needed in order to be the mother that I needed to be? I chose the latter and felt the effects. I felt the internal battle-in-the-mind of work versus baby, and the baby was kicking butt. My despondent work identity, bruised and wounded, had hobbled away into the shadows, angry at me for introducing this petulant baby into what had once been a tranquil and versatile world of work.
When all was said and done, what gave me much-needed reflection and solace was that I was not alone in this experience. If anything, the pandemic has served to shine an even brighter light on the issue of work versus family tensions and the effects it has had on working parents. In my thesis, my qualitative research highlighted these tensions through data obtained in seven interviews. All interviewees - women, men, managers, executives - had experience (both past and present) with parental leave. Yet parental leave is only a temporary period; what about the experiences of working parents after they return from leave? Interviewees created mental narratives around their identity as it related to working while parenting (or parenting while working?). Interviewees had to understand how to manage relationships, health, uncertainty, tasks, and responsibilities within work and family domains. Additionally, interviewees had to essentially make lemonade out of lemons, i.e., create value within a situation riddled with anxiety and doubt.
External research data included in the thesis literature review illuminated these challenges within the context of working parents' issues before and during the pandemic. The issues that arise from the topic of working parent challenges highlight the snowball-to-avalanche effect of problems that pile on to other problems. This is the journey of burnout to attrition to cost.
Increased burnout due to the pandemic:
Burnout: Working parents experiencing burnout on the rise. Nearly half of working parents of young children (0-12 years old) experience burnout often (source).
Feelings of burnout affect employees’ perception of their company. Parents experiencing burnout are 90% more likely to say productivity is more important than mental health at their organizations (source).
Double shift (work and home) - mothers more than three times more likely to handle most house and childcare duties (source). And the unpaid work women do amounts to an estimated 13% of global GDP.
Rising attrition rates:
The pandemic has been the fault line to push working parents to make changes: 1 in 4 women have considered “downshifting or leaving the workforce” in 2021 (source).
Per an HBR survey, 26 percent of American women who have become unemployed since the start of the pandemic cite lack of childcare as the main reason (source).
High cost to employers:
The estimated incurred cost to org to replace lost “opted out” talent (i.e., those resigning to take care of families) is estimated to be 150 to 250 percent of the employee’s salary (Padavic & Reskin, 2002).
Lost workforce and productivity due to employees’ insufficient child care costs American employers $13 billion annually (source).
Organizational Solutions and Applications
Functional/Policy Changes:
Increase Flexibility Options - work schedules, remote-work options, flexible roles (i.e., temporary change in one's role according to their personal needs)
Confront Bias - normalize flexibility and taking family leave for both men and women,
Support - family-support services (stipends for childcare) and family or medical leave for mental health.
Organizational Culture - establish top-down work boundaries (e.g., working hours, expectations to work after hours, etc.) and complete culture assessments via a third-party perspective. What are the declared beliefs of the organization, and how do they hold up compared to the observations and data that an outsider may find?
Performance Measures - reassess what performance means: more input (time at work, how accessible/available is the employee) versus output (deliverables and achievements). What matters more: the employee always being "on" or the final output? When burnout becomes the issue affecting performance, what could be the reason? What are the priorities of the organization and its teams?
Experimentation - Offer returnships and on-ramping programs to allow parents to return to the workspace within a supportive and flexible space.
Fostering Sense of Community - encourage peer-to-peer networks and spaces for individuals to meet and discuss non-work topics.
Access to Childcare: Offer on-site options or subsidies to bolster working parents.
Psychodynamic Changes/Work on the Blind Spots:
Holding Environment - a space that can reduce disturbing affect and facilitate sense-making (Petriglieri & Petriglieri, 2010, p. 44). Holding environments - one that is contracted to be safe and trusting - can offer employees the opportunity to find clarity and awareness rather than “live in the mind” via personal defenses and anxieties.
Psychological Safety - is the “belief that the work environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking” and fosters more positive and constructive discussions on employee needs (Edmonson, 2019, p. 8). Psychological safety offers employees and teams the chance to collaborate and work in an open, honest, and safe environment. Amy Edmonson’s research has shown a positive effect on teams that adopt psychologically safe workplaces.
Purpose - does the organization help foster a sense of common purpose? What is the difference between the expressed purpose of executives versus the rest of the organization? Purpose relates to the common resolve and reasoning behind action and behaviors. Alignment of purpose amongst all employees can add tremendous value and loyalty to the organization.
Feeling heard - humans are (like it or not) profoundly affected by their sense of fairness within groups and larger systems. Feeling part of the process and strategy for change and improvement has a demonstrable positive effect on employees.
Identity Work - is “people’s engagement in forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening, or revising their identities” (Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010, p. 137). Extending support for employees as they experience significant personal identity changes (such as parenthood) via coaching and open discussion can help employees feel they are part of a larger compassionate community while navigating immense personal challenges.
Negative Capability - is the ability to endure uncertainty and doubt through “listening, reflecting, and discussion” (Broeng, 2018, p. 433). It is a tool that allows individuals and teams to step back, analyze and act more effectively and conscientiously.
The real work of organizational change begins with awareness. How are working parents coping in the organization? What policies support working parents? What are the consequences to employees that take advantage of these policies (i.e., are they punished)? What are the real reasons behind employee attrition rates? What is the cost to the company when employees resign due to work-family tension? How is the company working towards a better understanding of the unconscious/blind spot issues that could explain and shine a light on how employees are managing?
As said in the last post (part 1), the path to success is the path of constant reevaluation and interrogation of the current norms. It is an imperfect path, but it is a path of reflection and readjustment, much like us humans. However, massive merit can be unearthed by asking what value the family domain adds to this workplace? Organizations can discover a new world of possibility and growth from that positive perspective (rather than a more defensive and hostile standpoint).
References
Broeng, S. (2018). Action Research on Employee Silence: The need for Negative Capability in Leadership. Management Revue, 29(4), 432-448.
Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Ibarra, H. & Barbulescu, R. (2010). Identity as Narrative: Prevalence, Effectiveness, and Consequences of Narrative Identity Work in Macro Work Role Transitions. 35(1), 135-154.
Padavic, I. & Reskin, B. (2002). Women and Men at Work. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Petriglieri, G. & Petriglieri, J. L. (2010). Identity Workspaces: The Case of Business Schools. Academy of Management Learning & Education. 9(1), 44-60.
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