Why our ‘flexible’ WFH schedules feel so inflexible

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Tet Salva — an organizational strategist at the software company Asana — went into consulting because she thought it would offer flexibility. 

As the mother of four girls — now six, eight, 11 and 15, respectively — Salva liked that the field allowed her to work either remotely or at home while bringing in income she needed to support her family. 

Then the coronavirus pandemic happened. 

Now, all of Salva’s colleagues and peers are also working from home, everything has changed.

“There is no break. It is one thing after the other,” she said. “We feel the pressure to instantly respond to messages from colleagues.”  

The pandemic has allowed many workers to set their own hours. Of course, mandatory meetings creep up on everyone's calendar. But when it comes to getting the actual work done, those hours are up to you. The result? Your colleagues are, in many ways, at the mercy of your “flexible schedule” and you’re at the whim of theirs. 

In other words, when everyone has a flexible schedule, none of us does. And that lack of true flexibility has been taking a toll on workers. 

“A lot of organizations are acting as if it's business as usual. They are giving lip service to, ‘Yes, there's a pandemic going on, but I still want you to meet those same pre-COVID goals,’” said burnout expert Jennifer Moss. “We’re basically putting people in a situation they are highly unfamiliar with and they’re just dealing with a massive shift in their work day to day. That just [makes] people feel exhausted.” 

This exhaustion — and perceived lack of control — is particularly tough for working women, many of whom have taken on additional household chores and child rearing responsibilities in the pandemic. In a post on LinkedIn asking workers to weigh in on how working from home during the pandemic has affected them, more than 300 people weighed in. While the responses were mixed, one trend was clear: Working women in particular are feeling pressure to always be responsive to requests from colleagues.

“It is getting to the point that many of us and our teams are no longer ‘working from home,’ but rather ‘living at work,’" wrote Etty Burk, a New York-based talent management executive. “Discipline, good boundaries and support are needed to avoid burnout and have a better work-life balance.”

Eve Rodsky — the author of Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live) — fears that at this point in the pandemic, it’s getting more challenging for working women to set boundaries. She stays up at night thinking about what a “return to normal” work will mean for women. 

70% of top male earners in the U.S. have a spouse who stays home. That is not the case for most top-earning working women, making any return to normal all the more challenging. 

“What I am seeing is this “Frankenstein” model of cobbling together so many short-term solutions, like examining paid leave,” she said. “But [companies are] not understanding that it’s more than ‘flexibility:’ It’s a look at policies interventions in the broader context of culture change.” 

Several workers wrote on LinkedIn that the culture of a team really matters. It’s one thing to feel pressure to set your own boundaries while working from home. It’s quite another to have a manager who models those boundaries for the larger team. Companies that don’t encourage such behavior from managers run a risk of losing top talent: In a recent IBM survey of more than 14,000 people worldwide, one in four said they are planning to change employers in 2021, citing the need for a more flexible work schedule or location as a top reason.

Salva from Asana left her previous employer for that very reason. Now, she is glad to have landed somewhere she feels comfortable getting work done on her own terms. 

“I felt I had no control over my job,” she said. “If I wanted to be an effective caregiver and, therefore, an effective employee, I needed to take my sanity — and my power — back.”  

What’s Working

Mental health at work. Disclosing a mental health condition to your manager is challenging. How that manager responds may be even more critical. Follow the person’s lead in terms of what they want to share and be sure to normalize the conversation. [HBR]

Direct to the president. For the first time, a Gender Policy Council charged with creating a “plan to take a government-wide approach to gender equity and equality” will report directly to a U.S. president. The Council will first focus on the caregiving crisis facing millions of working women during the pandemic. [NYTimes]

• RELATED: Nearly 3 million women have left the labor force since the start of the pandemic, and one in four are considering downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce, writes author Dan Schawbel on LinkedIn. He breaks down why childcare is a critical part of getting women back to work.

An AI revamp. Amid controversy over the departure of AI ethicist Timnit Gebru, Google has appointed Marian Croak, a Black executive, to oversee its artificial intelligence research. The move follows several years of criticism on the way Google has approached AI ethics, fairness and accessibility. [LinkedIn News] 

What’s Not

Talent is everywhere. Companies looking to address racial diversity in the workplace may want to consider being more geographically accessible to potential employees of color, suggests new McKinsey data. Of the total population of Black private-sector employees in the U.S., 60% are located in just 10 states, including biggies like Florida, Texas, New York and California. [LinkedIn News]

Man incorrectly explains...mansplaining. After the male leader of the Tokyo Olympics resigned over a comment he made about female leaders talking more in meetings than their male counterparts, researcher Adam Grant looked into the data. Countless studies show the opposite: Women tend to speak less in meetings when surrounded by male peers. They are also punished in some cases for speaking up in the first place. [WaPost]

Who’s Pushing Us Forward 

#ConversationsForChange. How can we fix the economic disparities that often begin in the workforce? As part of our monthly series #ConversationsForChange, author and activist Ibram X. Kendi joined us live to talk about what can be done to address racial inequalities in education, economics and beyond.

What topics do you want to discuss next time? Let me know in the comments below using #WorkingTogether