The United States is headed for a work-life challenge unrivaled in our history. We will be starting a school year during a global pandemic. We did the same thing a century ago during the 1918 flu pandemic, but then the American family’s relationship with work was much different. Women were only 20% of the paid workforce in 1918. Work could not be brought home. Today more than 70% of women with children also have paid jobs outside the home, and technology allows many people to bring their work home. School systems will use technology to engage with large numbers of children in their homes.
For the first time in our history, working parents will have the challenge of accomplishing their work and educating their children in the same space at the same time. Leaders must find ways to help people address the new stressors of this arrangement. Leaders who make the effort will enjoy better organizational performance than those who ignore the problem.
Socially distanced, but now organizationally connected
Remote work and schooling have driven previously disinterested organizations into new, close relationships. If a family of four has two bosses and two teachers, those companies and schools are now all partners. They are sharing the same resource - the family's space and time at home.
Most homes are not equipped to serve as combined conference spaces and classrooms. But now a science lesson is happening in the living room and a budget meeting is dragging on in the dining room. A family of four could easily find themselves in four concurrent videoconferences. Children need quiet places to focus their attention on a teacher while parents do their best to collaborate with colleagues from another room. The need for professional privacy contrasts with the need to watch over children.
As a result of the space and time limitations, parents’ availability to work and childrens’ availability to their teachers are all connected. You can’t attend a work meeting and supervise a young a child at the same time. Families with working spouses must try to coordinate meetings so they’re not both on a call or videoconference. The necessity for coordination between two workers creates a necessary link between their two organizations. Physically driven together into the same workspace by covid-19, however distinct the two spouses’ industries may be, the two are now collaborators. In a very unexpected way, the pandemic-induced distancing and disconnection has created new connections between previously distant organizations. Throw schools and teachers in the mix, and life in any particular home is a complex web of time and activity demands from multiple directions.
The problem for working parents is that although they experience all of those demands, they are alone in their effort to satisfy all of them. Without proactive leadership, there is no coordination between the organizations they work for or the schools their children attend. All negotiation of space and time sharing happens in their home. That negotiation is a huge new source of work-life balance stress during the pandemic.
The stress is multiplied by the reality that the space and limitations mean working parents are inevitably less productive at home than they would be in an office, and children are less effective learners at home than they would be in a school. Work-life balance negotiation is not just about physical space or time. It is about the quality of work or learning that every family member accomplishes.
The new decision making of work life balance
Decision making about work-life balance has also grown more difficult. Before the pandemic, when kids were at school or daycare during the day, working parents’ work-life balance was dependent on one decision: how many hours to spend at work, and how many at home? There were two levers to adjust: the time to drop the kids off in the morning, and the time to pick them up in the evening. Workers switch from life to work at drop-off, and back from work to life at pickup in the evening. The day was split into two large and clearly defined chunks.
Now things are different. With the entire family in the house all day, there are no clearly defined chunks of time. Work and life are mixed together. Instead of two decision points each day there are dozens. A parent can decide to spend the next 30 minutes on a work call, then go play with the kids for 45 minutes so the other parent can reply to emails, then for 20 minutes after that the entire family will go outside to run around. Instead of a work-life balance decision resolution of hours, it’s down to minutes.
The additional work life balance decision making is another source of stress during the pandemic. The increase in decision frequency means more daily thought is dedicated to choosing to do work or to do life in any minute. The higher decision making frequency also means there are more opportunities for working parents to feel guilty about those decisions. If parents decide to focus on work, they may feel guilty about ignoring their kids, but if they choose to focus on family they may feel guilty about their work obligations.
There is also greater potential for balance guilt because the decision authority is squarely on parents’ shoulders. In the previous model, the two decision points for child drop-off and pickup were largely determined by their organization’s daily routine and the school schedule.
Now, it really is up to individual families to make choices and accept the immediate consequences. If parents work more and let kids watch more TV, it’s on them when the kids won’t go to sleep because they’re overstimulated. Or if parents put off replying to email to take their children outside to play, they deal with the ire of their coworkers even as their kids sleep more peacefully.
Leaders need to help people adjust to the new work life balance
Leaders should strive to help people work through these challenges by acting to reduce their work-life balance stress.
First, leaders must be aware of the totality of workers’ home situation. Are they balancing work with parenting? Are they sharing their quiet place for Zoom meetings with a spouse? Are they scheduling their work around a young child’s virtual circle time?
Seeking the answers to these questions may feel like an intrusion into workers’ private lives. But the work from home model is itself an intrusion into worker’s lives. The work is already in workers’ living rooms; leaders must follow it there. Leaders should inquire about their workers home situation to the degree any individual is willing to share. Some people may be eager to share in order to help their bosses understand how crazy life at home is for them. Others may prefer privacy. Leaders should respect those boundaries. But leaders must build the best possible awareness of what life is like for their people if they are going to best lead them.
Second, leaders should try to take the guilt of work-life decision making off their people and bring it into the organization. Leaders need to set expectations about what work is most important to complete and what can be allowed to be set aside. Most importantly, leaders must accept the reality that parents working from home while caring for children will not be as productive as they would be in the office. Setting expectations and focusing workers attention on the most important tasks will reduce the size of their work-life balance challenge and reduce the guilt they may be feeling about not doing it all.
Trying times call for willing leaders
Great leadership that helps people through the challenges of working and parenting from home may be the only thing we have to make life easier during the pandemic. Leaders who care for people as they struggle to manage professional and parental responsibilities will foster better organizational performance than those who demand business as usual. And they will give people their best chance to keep their cool during this extraordinary time.