Opinion
Bosses demanding a return to the office should stop and listen to women
By Pip Dexter
The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we work forever. Once upon a time, flexible work options like working from home were a privilege reserved for upper-rung professionals.
Now, around 60 per cent of professionals and management regularly work from home, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. And thank goodness for that.
The benefits of flexible work are particularly appreciated by women, who have indicated clearly it is non-negotiable.Credit: iStock
The ability to work from home has empowered millions of Australians to better organise their home and family life, to spend less time and money commuting, and more time with children and loved ones. It’s also reduced pressure on the housing market by allowing people to live further away from work and saved businesses millions on office leases and equipment costs.
But the benefits of flexible work are particularly appreciated by women, who still shoulder the bulk of domestic, childcare, and other care duties in the home, even as they grow as a percentage of the labour force.
Employers who loudly and proudly declare themselves to be “return to office” advocates should be aware the data suggests most women will think twice about working for you.
According to Deloitte’s annual Women@Work survey, which measures the sentiment of 5000 working women in countries around the world, genuine flexible work options are non-negotiable when it comes to attracting and retaining female employees both in Australia and globally.
A notice to all employers reading this: the world of work has changed forever, so it’s better to lean in than it is to push away.
The impact that full-time and even partial return to office policies have on women should be of concern to any employer. More than 20 per cent of Australian women in both categories say returning to the office has negatively impacted them financially and almost 20 per cent say it has negatively impacted their mental wellbeing.
Among Australian women asked to return to the office full time, around 40 per cent claim they have had to move house to make it work and have asked their employer to reduce their hours. Almost a quarter say their productivity has decreased.
The result? Forty-one per cent of women asked to return full time now think less of their employer. These aggrieved women may not be resigning right away, but how long do most people stay with an employer they do not respect or do not believe will listen to their concerns?
It’s clear that flexible work is non-negotiable. But what the survey also makes clear is that flexible work polices must be genuine.
Work-life balance is a constant struggle for Australian women, yet 85 per cent of them state they cannot talk about these challenges openly with their manager.
Concerningly, around nine in 10 women are not comfortable that if they requested more flexibility, their workload will be adjusted accordingly. There are also worries that taking advantage of flexible working opportunities limits career advancement.
Of the women currently in flexible working arrangements, almost 30 per cent report feeling like they must go into work in direct contradiction of the flexibility message being peddled by leaders. A similar amount say they feel their working pattern is either unpredictable or not flexible enough.
The reality is, if we want to have either a hope of increasing female participation at work, or male participation at home, we need to try to make hybrid work actually work for us. A cohesive and practicable flexible work policy isn’t one you can set and forget.
It requires constant engagement with employees of all levels, a willingness to try new things, and a realisation that businesswide blanket rules usually don’t work. In Deloitte’s experience, we found that a guiding set of principles that can be implemented at a team-based level in a way that works for clients, the needs of their clients, their teams and themselves.
This approach gives us the ability to sustainably maintain a commitment to flexible and hybrid work. We’ve also been trialling different ways of working, such as eliminating non-essential meetings, with the goal of taking 20 per cent of non-valuable work out of the workday.
We noticed we were having difficulty retaining women at more senior levels, and we took the time to ask why. The feedback was unanimous: at more senior levels, it was becoming too difficult to balance work and family life. Unless something changed, something had to give.
A notice to all employers reading this: the world of work has changed forever, so it’s better to lean in than it is to push away.
You don’t have to take my word for it – just ask the women in your workforce what they think.
Pip Dexter is the chief people and purpose officer at Deloitte Australia.
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