There’s been a flurry of reports suggesting that women who continue with homeworking while colleagues go back to the office will take a hit to their careers. Yes, it’s a risk – but it’s not inevitable, as long as employers who care about talent and inclusion step up.
By Amy Butterworth, Consultancy Director, Timewise
Bank of England economist Catherine Mann’s views on the impact of homeworking on women’s careers have certainly caused a stir. Speaking at an event hosted by Financial News magazine, Ms Mann noted that many women (particularly those with family responsibilities) were continuing to work from home, whereas men, for whom it was easier, were increasingly returning to the office.
As Ms Mann noted, this represents a real risk for female career progression: “There is the potential for two tracks. There’s the people who are on the virtual track and people who are on a physical track. And I do worry that we will see those two tracks develop, and we will pretty much know who’s going to be on which track, unfortunately.”
Yes, it’s a risk, but it’s not inevitable – and it’s not just women who are affected
Here at Timewise, we’d agree that this is a risk; indeed, it’s something we’ve been highlighting for some time. As we noted back in January 2021, unevenly implemented hybrid working and behavioural bias can lead to an influence gap between an office-based ‘in-crowd’ and their more remote-based peers.
And while women with family responsibilities are disproportionately likely to be affected, they’re not the only ones. Introverts, carers, or people with mental and physical health needs may also prefer to work from home, for very valid reasons. Not to mention those who don’t have any specific circumstances, but who have discovered that a balance of in-office and working from home has dramatically improved their wellbeing, and want to stick with it.
However, the good news is, this really isn’t inevitable. It is within employers’ power to mitigate the risk, by having a proactive, flexible working strategy in place, and developing an inclusive culture in which remote and in-office workers are equally respected and represented.
So employers who care about inclusion, diversity and career progression for all (which is as good for business as it is for individuals), or who want to have a wide talent pool to choose from when recruiting (which is critical in the current skills shortage era) need to step up and make it happen. Here’s how.
Instead of making office work the default, and working from home an option that people can take-or-leave, design a deliberate, considered hybrid approach for everyone. This could include setting an expectation that all members of the team whose jobs allow have a balance of in-office and WFH time – including senior leaders. Or requiring managers to have proactive conversations with their teams about ways of working and what patterns will work best.
And remember to make it worth people’s while to come in; office time should be spent on activities where in-person collaboration is helpful, rather than sitting at a desk with headphones on to drown out the noise. Look at what tasks are best carried out at each location, and encourage people to map out their week accordingly.
To do this well, we’d recommend skilling up your HR and management teams in flexible job design. We can help.
The chances are, your performance management processes were created for the pre-Covid era – which means they may not be fit for hybrid purpose. So, for example, make sure your performance management systems focus on outputs and outcomes rather than inputs. And create processes to make sure that projects are allocated fairly, rather than just to the person who happens to be sitting next to you.
We all got used to Zoom and Teams meetings during lockdown, but when some of the team are in and others are out, you need to use different tactics to create an even playing field. For example, we suggest allocating an in-the-room buddy to those dialling in to a hybrid meeting, to advocate for them in the room and make sure their views are heard.
It’s also worth thinking about other key elements of the employee lifecycle which may need adapting to a hybrid working pattern, such as recruitment, onboarding and training.
And it’s not just about meetings; it’s also worth remembering that supporting a hybrid team requires different communication plans and management skills, so managers need to be trained to do it well.
Understanding whether this risk is materialising into a reality in your company is something you’ll need to keep an eye on. So we’d recommend putting in place a process for monitoring the progression and retention of your flexible workers.
To do this – and to do it well – will doubtless require an investment of your time and energy. But it’s worth it on so many levels – indeed, we’d argue that you can’t afford not to.
If you are serious about diversity and inclusion, and linked issues such as the gender pay gap, you need to create equality of opportunity for colleagues for whom being permanently in the office isn’t ideal. If you believe that having happy, well-balanced employees is as good for the business as it is for them, and want to attract, keep, and nurture brilliant people, you need to offer them the flexibility they say they want.
Ideally this would be broken down into the different forms of flex (hybrid, WFH only, part-time) so you can track the impact on different cohorts. This will help you take action against the type of two-track career progression that Mann cautioned about, and create flexible career paths to enable your talent to thrive.
And if you are keen to be seen as a forward-looking employer, you need to develop a new way of working, rather than reverting to pre-Covid norms. Your brand reputation – and your staff – are counting on you to do just that.
Published November 2021
