More flexibility for working mums after this is through?

[Therollockingrogue]

Do you think there’ll be more sympathy and support for working mums, perhaps a little more flexibility from employers when we’re on the other side of this?
Perhaps we may learn some more effective ways of working, and how to accommodate working parents ?

No. Because women are being forced into a situation which is impossible and unsustainable - which is WFH and caring for a dependent. They cannot be done simultaneously.

I hope so but doubt it. We've had very little sympathy from work and told it can't effect our work.

Strange as the people it's coming from have their own families. Makes you wonder at what point of the pay grade you loose your empathy.

@LajesticVantrashell
Good point.
But more working from home, video conferencing, etc etc?

I actually think, sadly, that a lot of employers will be more opposed to working from home and flexible working because they'll feel like they tried it now and productivity dropped - but it's not a fair comparison because a) a lot of those employees are also doing childcare, which isn't normally an acceptable thing to do while working from home but can't be helped at the moment and b) it's a global pandemic and so people aren't acting entirely normally in lots of ways

@stickman12 that’s shitty

I think there will be more flexibility for all, including parents, including mothers and fathers. And this is what's needed.

And I disagree re productivity drop, most people work harder from home and those taking the piss will be easily picked upon now and they'll say goodbye to their jobs, no loss. All my colleagues with children, male and female, are working extra hard effectively doing shifts (work/looking after the kids) so there's no loss of productivity here either.

I usually work from home - it is my normal, however much harder doing it with a house full of people. It really is not representative of normal working from home conditions.

I am a massive fan of flexible working for everyone regardless of age, sex and parental status. However, many companies don't quite trust their staff to do the work. I think it's wrong, but while this may well hopefully lead to these dinosaurs being dragged into the 21st century, if people working for them (again regardless of age, sex, parental status) don't demonstrate that it can work (yes I know it's unusual circumstances but we all know how these people work) them it could mean fewer opportunities for flexibility.

I always stated that I needed my entire admin staff in the office - however, the last couple of weeks they've all been working from home and they are showing me that they can achieve as much as they can in the office and so when we get back to normal I'm going to be more flexible.

I'm normally more effective working from home - which my employer knows, because I do it fairly often anyway. However, right now I'm trying really hard but I'm just not as effective as in the office because I'm also caring for a two year old. I'm working early and late (just waiting for VPN to connect now) but it's just not possible to do everything I could do if I wasn't caring for a very young child. As I said, my employer knows this isn't my WFH 'norm', but if we'd never tried it before I wouldn't blame them for thinking 'well, that doesn't really work'.

Perhaps we may learn some more effective ways of working, and how to accommodate working parents

I think the key is having better managers. Those that don't actually do much when WFH need to be pulled up and performance managed. Any manager worth their salt knows when an employee is still working to the normal standard.

No. Because women are being forced into a situation which is impossible and unsustainable - which is WFH and caring for a dependent. They cannot be done simultaneously

This. While I do think there might be some more openness to WFH, which is good for everyone - but many women are going to be set back by having had to take the main carer role through this crisis (how many men are browsing for homeschooling timetables?), and therefore often being the ones taking leave or being less productive, right before the rounds of post-crisis redundancies begin...

My emploers has always been anti WFH for anyone other than directors.

In a conference call yesterday, the owners admitted they were wrong. They were really impressed with how we mobilised our teams and kept everything on track.

They have realised that flexible working and WFH actually benefits them. Less office space to be rented. Less electricity to be paid for. My team were actually more productive. We were central to the business and spend alot of time dealing with people wandering in asking questions they know the answer to. They can be arsed emailing and waiting for a response.

The team have video calls and microsoft team group chats. One owner came in to a call and was impressed how positive we are. I told him, more sleep, no commute, relaxing lunch in the garden is having a positive impact.

We are being furloughed. But the owners are excited to introduce new ways of working when we are back. It's been a massive positive and we are all looking forward to coming back.

So I do think, some employers will see benefits.

I dit think they current situation is a good demonstration of the huge potential of distributed working practices. It has been rushed, it solutions have been cobbled together, parents are being expected to care for children at the same time as WFH. And as a pp says, the ability and skill of most managers to positively manage a distributed network of employees is sadly lacking - this is a different set of skills to managing a team in the same office.

There’s a really interesting podcast with Matt Mullenweg (creator of Wordpress) talking about the future of work. He talks about the 5 levels of distributed / remote working : it’s pretty clear that most of us, and our employers, are bumbling along at level 1, maybe 2 at best!