CEO and founder of Grokker, the on-demand video wellbeing solution, personalized to match employees' interests, abilities and goals.
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Before the pandemic struck, how often did you worry about working parents quitting their well-paying jobs due to being overwhelmed by the physical and emotional demands of overseeing K-12 remote schooling? It's unlikely that you envisaged employees being forced to choose between supervising their children's education and getting their work done. You probably didn't think much about how different learning styles are disproportionately affected by online instruction, let alone its impact on your workforce. Yet now, for employees and employers alike, these are the issues du jour.
Every school district is deploying a different reopening strategy: some with all-remote classes, others with in-class instruction and still others with a hybrid model. We're reading about the many primary and secondary schools reopening only to close abruptly as a result of Covid outbreaks — a figure already estimated to number more than 600 schools and growing.
And while school districts figure out how best to safely return our children to school — and request the public's continued patience and support — working parents, who make up 32% of the U.S. workforce, are struggling. In addition to adjusting to the disruptions of living and working during a pandemic, parents are sending their kids off into a school year that's anything but normal, predictable or remotely sensitive to their needs.
Harsh Realities In The New Normal
Balancing the demands of working and managing distance learning during this extraordinary time is a feat, to say the least. In August 2020, Sequoia surveyed 513 people-first companies, asking for their observations of the working parents they employed and the strategies they implemented to support them. Not surprisingly, 46% of employers rated their employees with children 12 and under as less productive and engaged today than pre-Covid. Fifteen percent said the same about parents with children over 12. The challenges are not insurmountable, but they do, however, require employer understanding and support.
Not surprisingly, the primary concern for parents with kids in the physical classroom is the potential for coronavirus exposure and illness. What if they receive notification of an outbreak in their class, and their child has to quarantine for two weeks or becomes infected and falls ill? Conversely, parents of distance learners worry about their children's emotional and social development while experiencing stress from overseeing virtual learning activities and being responsible for 24/7 child care while still working full-time jobs. And in both cases, there is the looming concern about what happens if someone else in the family gets sick.
In any scenario, the inability to procure safe and affordable child care is forcing working parents to make tough decisions about their jobs. According to the University of Oregon's Rapid Assessment of Pandemic Impact on Development project, 47% of families lost their child care arrangements after the onset of Covid — and the demand continues to outweigh the available supply as 70% of working parents with young children do not have any potential caregivers. Almost one-fifth of working-age adults cited Covid-19 as the reason they were not working as the pandemic had disrupted their child care arrangements. And then there's the gender gap when it comes to child care; "women ages 25-44 almost three times as likely as men not to be working due to childcare demands."
The harsh reality of trying to keep up with work while being unable to find child care, wrestling with the mounting daily safety concerns of Covid-19, monitoring your children's social, emotional and academic progress has left working parents feeling disproportionately overwhelmed and even guilty. In fact, according to a recent Care.com survey, 66% of working parents said that "juggling work and child care responsibilities during the pandemic has caused their productivity to suffer." This sense of stress affecting working parents is nearing a boiling point. So what can employers do to help them cope?
Start with compassionate leadership. It's not just working parents who are feeling the burn. The pandemic has transformed everyone's routines and impacted multiple areas of our lives. Publicly recognizing this simple truth is the first step employers can take to normalize the challenges we're facing. This emotionally validating and inclusive approach is best taken in a twofold fashion. First, acknowledge the pandemic's difficulties and listen to your workforce; ask them how they're doing and how their families are doing. Second, encourage managers to share, commiserate and provide friendly, personal guidance based on their own experiences as parents and caregivers. Employees need to feel heard and seen, that their needs matter and that they're not alone.
Implement family-friendly guidelines. This directive is easier said than done, but it's where the rubber meets the road. What can you do to help your working parent employees when and where they need it most? Some ideas include allowing employees to:
• Work from home until normal school and child care conditions resume.
• Work flexible hours or days.
• Take time between shifts.
• Extend their lunch breaks.
• Job-share, reduce hours or take more time off.
• Establish meeting-free times.
Empower your employees to take care of themselves. More than ever, employees need digital tools to help them balance work-life, manage stress and connect with others. Self-care can quickly go by the wayside when family priorities beckon or when there's simply too much going on. Providing your workforce with holistic well-being resources, like workouts, meditations, healthy recipes and sleep support, shows you care while making a material difference to employees' health and happiness — on their terms.
Doing more to ensure working parents maintain the powerful trifecta of productivity, engagement and a positive employee experience is what's required by employers to create a supportive workplace in the new normal.
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