It’s not up to her to solve: The competing demands of work and family

To improve the recruitment, retention and advancement of women, we need to remove structural barriers. And guess what? Doing so will be good for the men too, AND the organisation.

This article is going to start with my dissatisfaction with current solutions being offered to improve the recruitment, retention and advancement of women, followed by my take on one of the underlying issues. So yes, it’s going to start a bit negative. But stay with me as I will then offer solutions, and explain why the solutions would also benefit men, and the organisation overall.

There are a number of structural barriers facing women in the workplace, including the military. This article is going to focus on one particular issue, and if organisations fail to address this, they will fail to make meaningful improvements in the representation of women.

This issue is the competing demands of work and family.

My current dissatisfaction

Right now, women are underrepresented in most sectors of the workforce, especially when it comes to senior leadership positions. The military is of course, no exception. My PhD focused on the social well-being and authentic leadership experiences of women in the workforce, with the case study being the New Zealand Army. My post-doctoral research further examined the experiences of women in the workplace, and then a subsequent (less formal, but much larger) research project, which examined the experiences of working parents (based on conversations with more than 500, and growing, working parents across a range of sectors in NZ and Australia, plus Canada, Singapore, US and UK).

I can tell you that there are a number of structural barriers facing women. The barrier this article will focus on is the competing demands of work and family.

What are the are the current solutions being offered to address this issue, and why am I dissatisfied with them?

Many of the solutions are targeted at the individual parent. We suggest that parents can ask for flexible or reduced hours working arrangements. Parents who utilise this should then be firm about creating boundaries and ensuring they don’t over-commit. The parents should be careful not to take on a 40-hour (or full-time) workload if they are being paid for less hours than this. The parents should not feel guilty about having a smaller workload and should not feel guilty about leaving in time to collect their children from school. Parents should redefine career success, in order to still feel satisfied with their work.

Can you see there is a huge amount of onus on the parent here?

Organisations offer support to parents, and in many cases, this is targeted at women and mums, in the way of networking groups, women in leadership programs, coaching and mentoring for women, and courses to help women to increase their confidence and manage their competing work and family demands.

Can you see how the focus on these is around ‘fixing’ the individual here?

Now, I want to be careful not to be a hypocrite here. I also provide similar advice to individual working parents, and I absolutely value and contribute towards many of the offerings I have just noted. These are good things to be doing, and they are helpful, and they are needed. But let me be absolutely clear – they are band aids.

Nothing about these solutions address the structural issue which is causing this competing tension between work and family.

And just to add my least favourite item to this list of unsatisfactory solutions currently on offer – the idea that people should get comfortable with viewing career success differently once they have children. I have two beautiful little boys; one is four and the other is one. They are my priority and I want to spend time with them. But I would be absolutely lying to myself if I said I was happy to redefine career success. A good friend of mine happily told me about advice she received from her manager. She said, ‘women can have it all [career and family], but just not at the same time.’ And I remember thinking to myself, ‘well that’s bullshit – I want to have it all, and I want to have it all right now.’ If we are being honest with ourselves, I think we can admit that none of us can pretend to be happy about changing our career goals. If we want to spend more time with our children, and still be in the workforce, we are made to feel that accepting an alternative definition of career success is our only option. But I am now convinced there is a better option altogether.

Underlying issue causing the tension between work and family

As I analysed the data from my various research projects, the underlying cause became clear to me. We live in a society where the schedules of adults are different to the schedules of children. The work timetable is longer than the school timetable. Every single parent, and roughly 80% of the population do become parents, has to think, “what the heck do I do with the kids after school” and “what the heck do I do with the kids during the school holidays”. This mismatch in school and work schedules puts working parents in an impossible situation, which is causing significant stress and misery. This mismatch in schedules plays a lead role in creating the issue this article focuses on – the competing demands of work and family.

The current construct of work, which is 9 – 5 / 40 hours was cemented in our society around a century ago, in line with Henry Ford’s car manufacturing era. Even contracts for roles that are not 9 – 5 are fundamentally based off the 9am – 5pm construct. This construct was designed when men were in the workforce and women were in the home force. The construct is based off the assumption that workers are not primary caregivers for children. But the demographics of the workforce today are immensely different, where the absolute majority of parents (both mums and dads) work. I find it absolutely bonkers that we live in a modern-day society that is still operating from a construct based on workforce demographics that are no longer relevant.

I offer a possible solution, and the hashtag is gaining momentum… #workschoolhours.

I propose, that instead of coaching, advising, training and mentoring parents how to juggle the competing needs of work and family, organisations should look at changing the construct, to remove (or at least significantly reduce), this tension. To be clear, I am not suggesting that school should be extended. I believe organisations should look to reducing the work schedule, to align with the school schedule, without reducing salaries. #workschoolhours. You can watch / listen to the full #workschoolhours talk here: https://www.ellenjoannelson.com/workschoolhours/ or check out the 2022 TEDx Auckland speaker series for June 2022.

Ok, so some of you who are reading this may be thinking, ‘Ellen, you’re crazy. This isn’t practical, and it certainly isn’t practical in the military. I’ve tuned out’. Please just bear with me and read on. I will now outline why I believe this is not just possible but can also be beneficial to the organisation overall. Further, I will share some practical ways for implementing #workschoolhours. Even just moving along the spectrum towards #workschoolhours is progress. While my goal for the world is clear – I believe that adults and children should have the same schedules, any progress along this spectrum, towards this, is a good thing.

Productivity. Firstly, can we all be honest and admit that staff don’t maintain the same level of productivity throughout the entire day? A reduction in hours does not automatically lead to a reduction in outputs. The parents in my research who are working part-time are already demonstrating this. Many of them are doing 25 – 30 hours per week, but are still achieving the same level of output as their full-time colleagues. They become super-efficient at their job.      

I’ve spoken with multiple military personnel who have been operating on reduced hour shifts during the pandemic, so that teams could be in different ‘bubbles’ to reduce outbreaks in the organisation. They were surprised that most of their outputs were still achieved, even though they were working considerably fewer hours. Probably the biggest contributor to the productivity argument is the 4-day week, championed by Andrew Barnes. The 4-day week has significant mainstream traction, with successful trials completed in numerous organisations around the globe. There are plenty of examples, including Perpetual Guardian (the ‘poster child’), where the same level of output is being completed in 32 hours. My proposition of #workschoolhours is actually pretty close to this.

Now, I’m not suggesting that #workschoolhours is suitable when it comes to deployments and field exercises. But general camp routine, and headquarters or staff type postings – let’s be honest, do you think that perhaps there is room for productivity improvements here? The military has the saying, “hurry up and wait” for a reason – time is not always utilised as efficiently as it could be.

Staff Wellbeing. We know that staff wellbeing significantly impacts their performance at work. If staff are distracted with personal issues, or stressed about home problems, they do not concentrate fully at work, and they do not perform as well. This does not make them unprofessional; it makes them human.

If staff are happier and less stressed, they are more engaged, better focused, more creative and innovative, and ultimately, this leads to improved organisational performance. There is a genuine ROI (return on investment) when organisations invest in improving staff wellbeing. If organisations were to give their staff (parents and non-parents) more time, and if organisations were to normalise parents collecting their children from school, imagine how much happier staff would be?  

Every time a parent leaves work earlier than their colleagues, to collect their child(ren) from school, they feel guilty. We can pretend to be as brave as we like, and pretend that we don’t feel guilty, but actually, we do. Further, the organisation then misses out on that parent’s contribution for meetings and activities that occur outside of school hours. Unfortunately, this issue is facing women at a much higher rate than men. If society wants to address the gender pay gap, we need to remove structural barriers that create the tension between work and family.      

Further, it is essential that dads are involved and are empowered to contribute further to the home force. If organisations made #workschoolhours, or even some partial version of this, mainstream for all staff (mums, dads and non-parents), it normalises this. No longer would parents have to feel guilty for collecting their children. It would just become expected and standard – that would make a huge difference to staff wellbeing. Non-parents would also benefit and could use that time for their personal commitments and interests, whatever they may be.

Attraction and retention. If organisations looked at reducing their hours (and my suggestion is that this is done to better align work with school), they would be able to attract and retain staff of the highest calibre. Imagine a workplace that normalised and encouraged all staff to finish at the end of the school day? There would be a lot of people, even if they were not parents, that would want to work there.

So how do we implement this?

The first thing is to talk with your staff. Sit them down and say, ‘we’re looking to reduce the workday – we want to better support parents to align with the school day, and we want to make sure the whole team can do this. How do you think we could make this work: reducing the hours, but still getting everything done?’. The final question is important. Managers I have spoken to, who are already operating with reduced hours, were blown away by the suggestions their staff made to improve productivity and get the same level of output done in a reduced timeframe. Productivity improvements don’t just magically happen; it requires some effort and takes some creative and outside the box thinking. Staff can be very clever at improving efficiencies when they are sufficiently motivated.

The second requirement is to focus on staff output (what it is you actually want them to achieve), as opposed to staff inputs (the hours they are working). This also fosters flexibility beyond the #workschoolhours schedule.

Third, look at phasing. I don’t recommend switching to #workschoolhours overnight. Perhaps just finish in time for school collection one day per fortnight. Just see how that goes. Does everything still get completed? Did the wheels fall off? Test, adjust, progress. As a simple first step, consider scheduling team meetings or O’groups to be within school hours.

Summary

There are numerous structural barriers facing women in the workplace. This article focuses on one of these barriers – the tension between work and family demands. Current solutions tend to put the onus on the individual parent to solve the problem, and the offerings are designed to ‘fix’ the parent. While these offerings are useful, they are band aids – we need to remove the structural barriers which cause this tension in the first place. #workschoolhours, or even a partial version of this, offers an alternate construct for work, which addresses the mismatch between work and school. With improvements to be gained in productivity, staff wellbeing and staff retention, this is not just a ‘lovely idea’ to support women, it is beneficial for all staff, and for the organisation.

I am sure you can probably think of multiple reasons why you don’t think this would work in your organisation, or in your unit. But do yourself a favour and put some effort into thinking about how this might work, and where this could be possible, and where there could be gains for everyone. #workschoolhours