Yogi Berra once joked: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Let’s hope we have more of a plan for working from home this school year. We’re at an inflection point. The future of remote work will be shaped by how we respond to the challenges of the coming months.
Forest Road by Diana Taliun
When offices closed this spring, there was an intense period of adaptation: expanding IT infrastructure, creating or upgrading home workspaces, and reassigning household responsibilities. Working parents had to develop systems for kids, who themselves needed to be productive at home. Given the immediacy of the transition, expectations were low, and all around, we gave each other a pass.
Over the ensuing months, employers realized benefits from a remote workforce, namely lower rent and office expenses. Workers enjoyed not having to commute, and some were finding they could be equally productive from home, and in a few instances, more productive.
But now, after a long summer, we enter a new period. The start of school is about to stress an already fragile latticework. For many parents, working from home has been rough all along and they are feeling the cumulative strain. School could make working untenable altogether.
Ben White and Catherine Boudreau, reporting for The Politico:
A senior Wall Street executive deeply immersed in these talks told The Long Game that the calculus is now quite different, a fact that may be alleviating the worst fears of a corporate real estate meltdown and dashing hopes of a big cut in carbon emissions. The fact is: Many workers are desperate to get back to the office.
“What we’ve all found out the hard way the last five months is that we are working harder and it’s more intense and there are no breaks, or community. And it bleeds into weekends and you are kind of on 24/7,” the senior executive said, asking not to be named to discuss internal matters. “We are having rolling nervous breakdowns.”
In the legal profession, Whittney Beard and Malina Nangia write (subscription required):
We are currently in the middle of a child care crisis in this country. And parents are not alright. [E]mployees, especially those who have younger children, and, yes, disproportionately the moms, are operating in pure survival mode. … And what’s so surreal about it is there has been no national dialogue—no reckoning with the expectation that parents continue to be fully productive at work while also caring for children who need near-constant supervision, direction and teaching.
They cite a recent member survey by Cleo suggesting that one in five parents are considering leaving the legal workforce because of COVID-19. I’m not aware of data showing this, but undoubtedly many parents also planned to return to the workforce by now, but instead put their job search on hold because of COVID-19 and increased household responsibilities.
So how do we succeed this fall? It comes down to having a new mindset: both employers and schools need to change their assumption that working parents can be constantly available.
Employers need to understand that workers will be called upon to help with childcare and school responsibilities, sometimes randomly and without notice. Think “flex-time” but without any predictable schedule. Expect the work to get done, but give employees complete freedom to chose when it gets done.
By equal measure, schools need to assume that parents work during the day — that means all parents in the household, not just the man in a “traditional” two-parent arrangement. This translates into keeping kids busy during school hours. It means not scheduling events during the workday, such as meetings, supply pickups, or other activities requiring parental involvement. Like with their work, parents need more freedom to chose when they get school stuff done. And, please, fewer emails!
But even with autonomy over their schedules, working parents still have limits. Employers need to expect less productivity. In the law firm world, that means lower billable hours. For schools, they need to expect less, not more, parental involvement.
Finally, children may have to take on some responsibility too. Calling for this will be controversial. But many high school and middle school kids are certainly up to the task. And even some older elementary school kids can learn how to work more independently. Teachers must set these expectations.
If employers and schools get this right, we may begin a new and permanent arrangement where working from home is truly the norm. Employers reduce their overhead, employees enjoy greater autonomy, and the environment gets a respite.
But if we see a repeat of last spring — with parents and students struggling — we’ll see a backlash. Parents will leave the workforce, seek new schooling and childcare arrangements, and adjust in ways likely to hurt the professions and our economy overall.
We’re at a fork in the road. Let’s think about which way to go.