One thing the pandemic hasn’t changed: Women still do most of the “office housework”

This is Working Together, a weekly series on equity in the workplace. This special edition is focused on the most comprehensive U.S. study of women in the workplace by LeanIn and McKinsey.

Female leaders have stepped up to address the growing needs of their teams amid the pandemic. But companies continue to ignore these contributions.?

Women senior leaders are 60% more likely than male leaders to provide emotional support to their teams and 26% more likely to help team members navigate work-life challenges, according to a new study from LeanIn and McKinsey. The findings come from a survey of more than 65,000 employees at 423 companies, reflecting how workers view male and female managers.?

Despite the increased importance of this kind of support at work — 86% of company leaders surveyed said that it is “very or extremely” critical — only 25% said they formally recognize this work a substantial amount in performance reviews.??

“It’s a huge red flag that what companies say they value and what really matters during these times of turbulence is not being reflected in performance reviews,” said McKinsey’s Jess Huang, a partner and co-author of the report. “It is signaling that the work is not important.”

This is the first time that McKinsey and LeanIn have surveyed respondents on how well their managers are addressing their well-being. But this kind of often-ignored work is anything but new. These tasks are sometimes referred to as “office housework.” This kind of work is essential to an organization, but it rarely leads to higher pay or promotions.?

Research shows that women, particularly women of color, take on more of these responsibilities, mostly due to the way they have been socialized to act in an office setting. And while it’s often associated with activities like taking meeting notes and planning office parties, the pandemic clear that it goes far beyond that.

Inclusion expert Ruchika Tulshyan said the pandemic has expanded these tasks to mission-critical equity and inclusion work for companies. And LeanIn’s report found that women continue to spearhead diversity equity and inclusion work at higher rates than their male peers. While one in five women senior leaders spend a substantial amount of time on it, fewer than one in ten male leaders said the same.

When it comes to performance review and promotion season, these efforts are not getting noticed, according to Tulshyan.

“The pandemic has exposed many ways that the corporate system is broken, but the performance review system hasn’t changed at all,” said Tulshyan.?

Cate Luzio, the founder of the professional women community Luminary, was not surprised by this finding. On monthly corporate roundtable calls that Luzio organizes on topics like allyship and others, she says 90% of the participants are women.?

“Who is focused on it in the company? It is still the women,” she said. “The ideas are not being formulated and raised up by men for the most part.”

Women are doing more than taking on this work inside their companies, said Tiffany Dufu, founder of the female peer coaching service The Cru. They are also actively seeking resources to get better at managing with empathy and being allies to women of color. When the pandemic began, Dufu says she saw a large uptick in the number of women who were asking for coaching on management and mental health. ?

“They are not getting this support from their employer,” she said. “Companies are slow to recognize that the personal and professional are blurred in this new world order.”?

If companies continue to discount this work, they risk losing their senior female leaders, said Huang from McKinsey. While both men and women say they are more burned out this year compared to last year, the gap between women and men who say they are burned out has nearly doubled, according to the report.?

Meanwhile, women’s promotion to the uppermost rungs at companies is flagging. Women made very limited gains in the C-suite in 2020, and they suffered a drop in representation at the senior vice president level.?

“We asked women to do unpaid labor at home and they are doing additional work in the workplace that is not being recognized,” said Huang. “Companies can’t afford in this moment to lose more women when their leadership is setting the standard for what companies need.”?

There are ways that companies can formally start to credit this work, said LeanIn CEO Rachel Schall Thomas. Paying the heads of employee resource groups — a policy that both Twitter and LinkedIn recently adopted — is a start. But companies will also need to start evaluating their managers on how they look after and support the well-being of their direct reports.

Schall Thomas admitted that the findings of the report are discouraging. But she does believe that the pandemic has delivered a wake up call to corporate America that could lead to lasting change on these issues.

“The level of disruption we are seeing now is unique,” she said. “The reality is that the deep and sustained work that needs to be done is really damn hard.”?

Now I want to hear from you: How has the pandemic changed the way you lead at work? ?Do you think the performance review process needs to change to reflect the new world of work?Let me know in the comments below.