Blog Post #2 Family Commitments and remote work

    The article “The pandemic changed how we work. Now, mothers want it to stay that way” written by Kiernan Green for the CBC describes the challenges families with young children are facing as they try to juggle childcare and working full time.

Before the Covid 19 pandemic, Brianna Shereck was struggling with getting ahead at work as a marketing coordinator in Victoria’s tourism industry and being able to care for her two preschool-aged kids so much so that in 2019 she missed 5 weeks of work because they both kept getting sick at daycare, 5 weeks that she could have spent working had her former employer allowed her to work remotely from home. Following the pandemic, she was let go from her former job working in Victoria’s tourism industry and is now working completely remotely for a Saskatoon-based retirement firm, when asked if she would consider going back to a traditional office environment, she replied that neither she nor her husband who also works remotely could go back to traditional work while their kids are so young.

In 2022 the number of Canadians working from home fell from 25% at the start of the year to just over 17% by the end of August according to Statistics Canada’s labour force survey. (Green, 2022)
The Women in Capital Markets Network is a non for profit organization that promotes diversity and inclusion in Canadian financial institutions conducted a survey through February and March of 2022 and found that flexibility at work was a critical need for those caring for children under the age of 6 years old, 67% of the 417 people surveyed (82% of that 67% total) were women who stated that they found remote work allowed them to have the flexibility to do their jobs without having to sacrifice productivity at work.

A study conducted by the C.D. Howe institute titled “Uneven odds: Men, Women and the Obstacles to getting back to work with kids” showed that having young children made the search for employment more difficult for mothers than fathers. Mothers with children under 2 years old were 6% less likely to reenter the workforce than those with kids that were 7+ years old. For men, the age of their kids was irrelevant to their reentry into the workforce.
To even up the playing field the first step according to Hutchings is to avoid remote complex hybrid work options that are too difficult or complex to use and the second should be equal parental leave time for mothers and fathers as when mothers have more leave than fathers it implies that women are expected to take more time off at a higher rate than men. (Green, 2022)

This article applies to every workplace and every industry in Canada as 68% of women aged 20-54 are employed full-time as of 2021 (Government of Canada, Statistics Canada, 2022). Many Canadian Millennial and Gen Z women are choosing not to have kids because of the costs of raising them including childcare during working hours. If workplaces want to be more inclusive of women especially those with kids embracing more remote, hybrid and flexible working options will allow a higher level of productivity and will use less sick time and vacation days spent taking care of their kids.

This personally relates to me as I am a woman in my 30s who made the choice to not have kids because the costs of raising one has become astronomical and know several women who decided to leave the workforce just as their careers were taking off because they didn’t have the flexibility at work to raise a child and work full time. I think that if more workplaces were more flexible with working hours and working from home there would be more women with young kids in the workforce.

 

 

 

Green, K. (2022, October 10). The pandemic changed how we work. Now, mothers want it to stay that way. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/mothers-remote-work-pandemic-legacy-1.6607205

Government of Canada, Statistics Canada. (2022, September 26). Unmasking differences in women’s full-time employment. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2022001/article/00009-eng.htm 

Comments

  1. Anonymous15 March 2023 at 08:46

    Being able to work from home has changed our lives, especially for those individuals with young children. Parents can now be at home and can spend less time juggling work schedules, use less sick time and potentially cut child care costs as well. The traditional work style is now something of the past as employees and employers alike move forward with more flexible work options and even hours. It was interesting to see that in a survey more than 50% of individuals wanted flexibility at work if they were also caring for a child so that their productivity didn’t suffer. It was also noted that women had a harder time re-entering the workforce after having children than men did. In order to cater to have better inclusivity with employees raising children a business must consider offering work from home options, flexible work hours and offer paternity leave to both men and women alike.

    Written by: Amanda Gibson

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kirandeep23 March 2023 at 10:10

    Hii Jenn,
    I think remote work in family is one of the prevailing issues. It may cause a blending of personal and professional lives, increasing work-related stress while reducing personal time and space. Additionally, family members may feel that they are always "on call" or available for work, which can make it difficult to maintain boundaries. I think this issue is one the major reasons for generation gap .

    Kirandeep

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog 5: Stress in the workplace and the 4 day work week

  Stress in the Workplace and the 4 day work week The article titled “A four-day workweek Reduces Stress Without Hurting Productivity” written by Jan Donges and Sophie Bushwick for the publication Scientific American explored a recent study done in the UK regarding shortened workweeks, their impacts on employees’ mental health and on businesses' profitability. According to a study that was conducted by a group of independent researchers in collaboration with the advocacy groups 4 Day Week Global and 4 Day week Campaign, a four day workweek led to significantly improved well-being among employees and the change didn’t affect productivity levels at the businesses. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many workers experienced increased stress and burnout which made it difficult for businesses to meet their goals let alone succeed. The six-month test period ran from June to December 2022 and involved 61 different U.K. companies with approximately 2900 employees. According to the partici...
Read more

Blog Post #3: Artificial intelligence and reducing bias

The article for the Wall Street Journal titled “Rise of AI puts the spotlight on Bias in algorithms” written by Isabelle Bousquette explores the recent hype around generative AI such as chat GPT which has emphasized the ongoing challenges that businesses all around the world are facing in order to keep bias out of the algorithms their AI uses. Bias has been a persistent issue, often in part because the AI has been trained on skewed information by using non-representative data sets since these AI algorithms are built by people who have their own biases that are reflected in their work. While many companies are investing large sums of money to reduce bias in their algorithms, they are often only backing systems, processes and tools that do so proactively. The costs of retroactively limiting bias for established systems are quite high and the situation is less than ideal as it’s significantly more difficult to remove bias later on from an AI algorithm than it is to address the bias fro...
Read more

Blog Post 4: Toxic Workplaces

In the article titled "Almost a Year After Toxic Workplace Allegations, Ubisoft Employees Reportedly Say 'Nothing Has Changed' written by Rebekah Valentine for IGN on May 4th, 2021, she describes how the French publication “Le Télégramme” has reported that Ubisoft has made little progress in addressing the harassment and toxic workplace allegations across its studios and departments, despite public-facing actions taken by the company. The report highlights that many of those accused of harassment and abusive behaviour still held positions at Ubisoft, including Nadeo studio lead Florent Castelnérac and former Singapore studio lead Hugues Ricour. The report also notes that "nothing has changed" in Ubisoft's Canadian studio, despite the appointment of the new studio head Christophe Derennes to replace Yannis Mallat, who left the company following allegations of creating a toxic and abusive workplace. Ubisoft has taken action in an attempt to address the allega...
Read more