Tattoos, Parenting & Killing the Macho Culture at Work

I’ve done a complete 180 in my work environment. And it’s not because of Covid. It’s because I switched careers. And now, I can wear jeans on any day, not just Friday.? I’m not obligated to start my day at 9 am, battling rush hour. And when my brain feels cluttered or God forbid, full, I can put on sneakers, headphones, and luon at any hour (not lunch) and head outside for a run. These are a few of the perks. Another was having a member of our team join a meeting while getting her latest ink masterpiece etched onto her arm.? ‘So what?’ you may be thinking, we’ve all adjusted and changed our work habits over the past two years. Agreed. The difference is, I’m never going back.?

As we inch toward ‘normalcy’ I’ve heard that a lot of other people feel the same. I’m worried about the companies on autopilot, planning to go back to “business as usual” when we get the green light. Some companies already ran the yellow. Unfortunately, there’s a mindset that still exists, in which you have to physically be seen and present to be considered a productive and valuable member of the team. Even though ironically, we’ve inflated our workday by an average of three more hours to accommodate meetings and text messages that creep in after hours.?

For many, the focus isn’t on how to heal the ailments we’ve been suffering from in our new normal - whether it be long days and heavier workloads, struggling to keep afloat, or the burnout we’re experiencing if we fail to do so. Rather, the focus seems to be on policing the potential abuse of virtual “work hours” and getting back to life as we once knew it as quickly as possible. If that sounds at all familiar, I’d say your problem isn’t remote work and productivity - it’s either, having a team you can’t trust to do what you pay them to do, or having tremendous comfort with what and how we’ve been doing things for nearly a century.?

Since March 2019, we’ve been in a mode of what’s referred to as habit disruption. Consequently, this is the perfect time to hit reset. And not to do so, according to Dr. Ashley Whillans of Harvard Business School, who researches employee incentives, motivation, and wellbeing, would be a huge disservice. It would also be a risk - since employers are in the midst of a war for talent. Workplace flexibility is now at the top of the list, along with salary and vacation, when it comes to providing employees with a best place to work. There’s no getting around it really since Whillans also believes that “now that we’ve got a taste of that, there’s no going back.”

Understandably, we can’t all work for Spotify and indulge in a “work from anywhere” program, and in some roles, it’s just not feasible. But that doesn't mean it's not desirable. A McKinsey survey in early 2021? showed that two-thirds of U.S. employees want to continue working from home at least a few days a week. The reasons are varied and include not only convenience and flexibility but also financial allure. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the cost savings from not having to commute (an average of 5-10 hours /week) is the equivalent of a 15-20% raise and with an average salary, estimated to be worth $7000 - $15,000/year. There's more.

A 2011 study on flexibility in the workplace showed a correlation between increased flexibility and job engagement, satisfaction, employee retention, and employee health.

Studies show that our output peaks at 48 hours/week and warn that the impact of long hours on our health is weight gain, increased tobacco and alcohol use, increased injury, illness, and mortality.? Unlike Europe, which has decreased their work hours by approximately 30% over the past fifty years, ours are increasing and some argue that it may in fact be smarter to work less.? Already, Spain, Japan, and Iceland have experimented with the four-day workweek? - and shown the negligent impact on productivity.

From a broader perspective, however, this has the opportunity to be about much more than working from your sofa in your PJ’s or having additional savings. As I’ve observed the changes in how we work during a pandemic, and from a female perspective, this also has the opportunity to change societal norms in the workplace that a) no longer reflect our reality and 2) impinge gender equality, particularly when it comes to women having both a career and a family.??

Nearly ten years ago, Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Why Women Still Can’t Have it All in The Atlantic brought forward the age-old discussion of work-life balance, claiming that it was the structure of our society, significantly that of the workplace, with outdated policies and “baseline expectations” dictating how, when and where we work, that remain an obstacle to women managing their commitment to their family and their profession.?

She continued, almost foreshadowing the work environment of Covid, that the inroads technology has made, can allow us to “move to a culture where the office is a base of operations more than the required locus of work.”? Equally important, this shift would allow for easier integration of work and family life. The article references that? 61% of women business owners use tech to integrate responsibilities of work and home. 44% use tech to allow employees to work remotely and have flexible schedules. (I remind you, these stats are from ten years ago).?

Despite this progress, however, work culture remains “more office centred than it needs to be.” Coupled with what Slaughter describes as a “time macho” culture that still exists - where we define one’s potential and worthiness by sacrificed sleep, more hours put in, showing up on Saturdays, and being the first to arrive at the office. Slaughter’s description outlining a day in her life, paints a very good picture of how that translates into a typical working woman’s world.?

“I never left the office early enough to go to any stores other than those open 24 hours, which meant that everything from dry cleaning to hair appointments to Christmas shopping had to be done on weekends, amid children’s sporting events, music lessons, family meals, and conference calls. In short, the minute I found myself in a job that is typical for the vast majority of working women (and men), working long hours on someone else’s schedule, I could no longer be both the parent and the professional I wanted to be.” I can relate.

This. Is. Fixable. And it’s not rocket science. We haven’t been working this way for two years, and ironically, we've been “working”. But more has to change. The policies and systems that reflect a family structure that exists less and less, especially one in which women stay home, have to be changed. We need to rethink things like conflicting work and school schedules and the accessibility and affordability of daycare. Perhaps most importantly, and what should be simplest of all, we need to talk about it. And we don’t.

Many work cultures continue to reward a work-first mentality, with family priorities not only getting swept under the carpet but practically killed (even if corporate boardrooms have “family” listed among their core values). It’s difficult for women to speak up, and so they perpetuate the misrepresentation by concealing half of their lives, fearing it will have a negative impact on both their professional image and the opportunities they're given. Slaughter expressed it as though, “The pioneer generation of feminists walled off their personal lives from their professional personas to ensure that they could never be discriminated against for a lack of commitment.”? But I'm not about putting up walls. I'm about taking them down.

I recall over five years ago, telling a colleague that I rescheduled a meeting so I could take my son to an appointment. She thought I was crazy. I probed and explained to her that if we don’t actually talk about these things, and our reality, we will never change them for the better. Some may have thought I had the liberty to do this, being related to ownership of the business. But it’s not something that should only apply to me, and so I took it a step further.

When leading an employee presentation after implementing a culture survey, (critical to keep a pulse on), I talked about the reality of our personal and professional lives and the blending, rather than balancing, of the two.? And that if I can go to my son’s graduation or school play in the middle of the day - so should everyone else have that privilege. It’s no longer one set of rules for leadership and another for everyone else.? But you need to be willing to speak up and be honest.?

Even those that we think of as role models in this space, like Sheryl Sandberg, of the Lean In Movement have been challenged. Sandberg admitted that for many years, she didn’t dare admit that she left work at 5:30 to have dinner with her family while making up for lost time later in the evening. Since then, admitted that this was a mistake and that being upfront is a huge step in the right direction.?

The challenges, of course, aren’t restricted to women. They extend to men too, as a new generation raised by working mothers recognize that we divvy up the work differently now and as a result, seek work-life balance.?

It shouldn’t take a pandemic to make us realize that we can do things differently ... and smarter, but that’s often what it takes. We've all proven that we can flex, and not break. So let's keep stretching ourselves and our thinking. Life is fluid and work should be too because it's clearly not a one-size-fits-all. Diversity needs to go beyond race, age, culture, gender, and religion. It needs to include working style and preferences. Because what's most important to remember is that work has in fact transitioned from somewhere that we go, to something that we do.