Rather, she thinks about her days as having 24 hours that she can balance between her personal and work lives, and her weeks as seven days that can also be carved up. 

Working across different timezones for Microsoft, she still works more than a 40-hour week but will take time out during the day for a few hours to do something else and catch up on the weekend.

Once a quarter, she blocks out a week where she puts herself on “leave from meetings” to focus on the big picture. She uses the time to focus on strategy, as well as team development and getting across the latest trends in the industry. 

As Director, Specialty Technology Unit at Microsoft, this approach to work is one Wise shares with her team, encouraging them to find what works best for them and being honest about how it’s working out for her.  

“I’m transparent about my challenges and success, and this gives them permission to do the same,” Wise tells Women’s Agenda.  

Microsoft’s approach to hybrid work and flexibility is bucking the trend of the push to get employees back to the office Monday to Friday. Team members can choose between working remotely for less than 50 per cent of their normal work week, or they can work remotely 100 per cent of the time if they have manager approval. 

The flex work policy is centred around recognising individual needs and promoting work-life balance. It also aims to support employees to work during the hours that are best for them in delivering according to expectations. It supports wellbeing and adaptability, but also productivity in recognising that people have individual approaches to getting their best work done. 

A blog post published more than four years ago by Kathleen Hogan, Executive Vic President and Chief People Officer, outlining the approach to flexibility still stands – again bucking the trend of some other tech firms to increasingly get people back to working in more traditional ways. “Moving forward,” she wrote in October 2021, “it is our goal to offer as much flexibility as possible to support individual workstyles while balancing business needs and ensuring we live our culture,” 

Increasingly, we’re seeing how workers want the best of both worlds when it comes to remote working and time spent in the office. Microsoft describes this as the “hybrid paradox”, noting figures from its 2021 Work Trends Index, a study of more than 31,000 workers in 31 countries, finding that 70 per cent of workers wanted flexible work to stay, but more than 65 per cent craved having more face to face time with their teams. 

For Elena Wise, staying flexible on how and when she works enables her to get the most out of her time, and to be constantly thinking about the future. She’ll dedicate headspace for planning, thinking and learning, and try to block out Mondays as meeting-free days – unless she needs to travel or there’s an urgent issue. “I use this time to get on top of key actions for the week ahead, and to upskill on some of our latest AI training, which really helps given how quickly the technology is moving.” 

With a career spanning some of the world’s largest organisations and biggest markets, including AMEX, PayPal and Google and ten years spent in Japan, Wise has developed her work style to be able to respond to needs across international borders. 

Asked how she establishes herself in new cities and markets, she recalls making her first international move and being given the advice always to give such a move at least six months because wherever you go, you’ll need time to adjust culturally and there will be times when you just want to pull the pin. “Patience is key,” she says. “Building relationships and trust is crucial and learning from different perspectives enriches your experience.” 

Wise says she spends time meeting people one-on-one both in work and social contexts, joining local business chambers, clubs and expat groups, and notes the importance of staying connected with current past colleagues and contacts. 

Wise is a pioneering woman in tech, now one of Microsoft’s most senior leaders in Australia and having spent years in senior leadership positions, including as country manager and GM Japan of PayPal and Country Manager of Google Technical Services in Japan and Korea. 

Looking broadly across the tech industry, she wants to see more companies pushing the focus beyond diversity and hiring to focus on inclusion, and understand women’s needs and perspectives. 

“There is a need to provide flexibility and tools for women to work in ways that suit their personal and professional goals, and not expect them to fit into rigid or traditional, often male-dominated or male-created, models,” she says. 

Wise wants to see more male allies getting involved in women’s networks and agendas to understand the experiences women have. She highlights one particularly positive experience of this at Microsoft, where she is seeing strong interest from male employees seeking guidance or support for partners experiencing menopause, which is one of the areas their Families Employee Resource Group is currently focusing on. 

“Companies in all sectors need to support women throughout their life cycle better, not just when they are having children, but also when they are caring for elderly parents, managing illness, or experiencing menopause, for example,” she says. 

Just as there is no one working style that will work for everyone, there is no set communication style for leading a successful team. 

“As leaders, we need to adapt our language and approach for different audiences/team members to help get the best outcomes – be those different genders, cultural backgrounds, or generational adjustments.”

Women’s Agenda spoke to Elena Wise to learn more about flexible work, thanks to our partnership with Family Friendly Workplaces.

This year Microsoft will be measuring their policies against the National Work + Family Standards as part of the Family Friendly Workplace Certification, having been certified for the previous two years already. Microsoft says it’s important employers pursue family-friendly workplace accreditation to demonstrate a commitment to work-life balance, gender equality, and employee well-being, and also for attracting and retaining the best talent and enhancing a company’s reputation. 

The post Take ‘leave from meetings’, block time for thinking: How this Microsoft leader thrives with flexibility  appeared first on Women's Agenda.

In the midst of hype around AI increasing productivity or stealing jobs , there is one role that many women would be more than happy for it to take on: the mental load of managing a family. 

The need for innovation in coping with the mental load of family admin is never more apparent than at the beginning of the school year. The sheer volume of work required to keep our lives in check is utterly overwhelming. It is no wonder parents are burning out.

It is baffling that when it comes to the multitude of apps, emails, WhatsApps and group chats for our home lives, many parents have no help beyond a shared calendar on the fridge.

I even commonly hear that parents just switch off all notifications on WhatsApp and push school emails to a different inbox folder just to try and ease the mental load by not reading it at all.

In my professional life, the prospect of AI to increase our personal productivity, that of our teams, and even our products was intriguing and exciting.

Faced with stark differences between what was available professionally and the lack of options at home, my co-founder and husband, Mike Fraser, and I knew that needed to change.

Technology is creating overwhelm

In my household, Mike and I share the “doing” work of parenting quite evenly, but when it comes to things like Book Week, what’s happening when, and joining all the dots, that’s on me. 

Statistics prove I’m not alone. It is disproportionately women who hold 70% of the household mental load and are burning out from the sheer volume of life admin required to manage kids. Almost 50 per cent say there isn’t enough time to get everything done.

In 2021, the AIFS survey asked 2920 people, “who in your household plans and coordinates activities relating to your children?”. It found almost no instances of the male taking this on – being the one who usually or always does it, while only 1 in 5 households shared the mental load.

Innovating to solve this, even at least partly, is important. It is why CEOs have personal assistants, and why Annabel Crabb’s The Wife Drought is still relevant 10 years after she wrote it.

Starting and then exiting same-day flower delivery business LVLY, and now launching Goldee, the AI assistant for parents, I can say with conviction that the work of managing a family is akin to running a business.

If we can innovate for even small productivity gains in the workplace, we need to do the same to give back time and headspace to the parents who are simply struggling to keep up with technology that was supposed to help them. Parents need personal assistants, too – and that’s where AI presents exciting opportunities.

How AI can give parents back time

Solutions are thin on the ground. A simple internet search on easing the mental load provides vague help such as “practice self-care” (with what free time?) and “physically writing down everything in your head and delegating” (again, with that free time?!).

As AI becomes mainstream, there is a global focus on governance and risks including gender bias within AI, noting that the technology will hold the same bias as its programmers. The kind of products being developed using AI often reflect the dominance of men in the technology space. I believe it is important that the huge gains to be had using AI are also focused on reducing inequalities.

We don’t claim that the AI we’re developing at Goldee will make the mental load completely vanish (sorry!). But AI tools can and should be created so that  any parent can easily take the lead and start forwarding kid-related activities to an AI personal assistant for busy families. This is the kind of innovation that will help  shift the weight and make the invisible load visible.

As with productivity tools in the workplace the hidden volume of work, appointments and organisation, and all those tiny to-dos that normally get carried around in the woman’s head will be extracted and put into an action list, ready for anyone to help with.

Importantly, AI created by women to solve our unique problems means we will have tools to stop us from feeling like it’s easier to just keep doing everything ourselves.

That means more time for doing things we enjoy, more time to connect with our partners (rather than fight over who did what), and more time to spend with our kids rather than on your phone trying to find that piece of info. And that’s an AI-driven future all parents can get on board with.

Goldee is currently in limited release and available to parents with an invite code – parents that would like to be invited can head to Goldee.ai to get their invite.

The post How a new AI assistant for parents can help carry women’s mental load appeared first on Women's Agenda.

I leaned in so hard in the following years that I amassed a fifty-thousand-dollar higher education debt enrolling in and completing a Masters degree. Many weekends were spent volunteering and I recommended the book to younger women colleagues. I put my hand up for various workplace committees and regularly worked over the Christmas and New Year period to allow colleagues with families some time off, often acting in more senior roles without any additional pay.

I applied for promotions across a number of sectors, was assertive and indicated my interest in appropriate opportunities to superiors. I attended interviews and had careers coaching. I engaged a professional resume company and removed my do-it-yourself photograph from LinkedIn.

Working full-time and juggling part-time studies was a struggle. I took comfort in the notion that all my efforts would eventually pay off. As a member of Generation X, I swallowed the story, hook, line and sinker that hard work and persistence was enough. My track record would hold me in good stead.

So, what happened after many years of leaning in? Well, nothing really. There were no ‘taps on the shoulder’, no promotions, no head hunting by recruiters and negligible financial rewards. The resume now packed with various accomplishments possibly had the opposite effect – it was suggested to me that I might wish to remove some of my experience, lest I have more qualifications or expertise than those on the hiring panel.

It is important to note that I am a middle-class, cis, straight white woman. If this was my experience, what was happening to women of colour, those from the LGBTIQ+ community and women with a disability? Or women who belong to several of these communities? In 2018 Michelle Obama made a game-changing comment. Whilst on her book tour for Becoming (which I also devoured), she mentioned that leaning in is not always enough, that it doesn’t work all the time. Finally someone had said it. I could let myself off the hook.

There are a range of other factors that can impact on women’s career progression. From ableism, racism, sexism and ageism, along with cronyism and nepotism, plus a healthy dollop of office politics and strategising, it can be damn near impossible at times. I was deemed ‘too young’ for my first fifteen years in the workforce and am now precariously heading into the ‘too old’ category.

My advice to younger women in the workforce? Ensure you have a life and an identity that is not wholly centred around whatever it is you do to pay the bills. You are so much more and don’t need validation through your employment. And only lean in if you really want to, not because you think you should.  

The post I took Sheryl Sandberg’s advice and leaned in. It didn’t work. appeared first on Women's Agenda.

But then she tried writing on a topic that was a little more meaningful for her. And that topic was meaningful work.

“Unlike other books I had tried to write before, I couldn’t stop with this one. I got obsessed,” she said.

Nina Mapson Bone is the Managing Director of Beaumont People, the President and Chair of Recruitment, Consulting and Staffing Association of Australia and New Zealand and Chair of the Development Committee of the North Foundation.

Now, to that impressive resume, she can add ‘author’ after launching her new book Meaningful Work: Unlock your unique path to career fulfilment.

The book features six inspirational stories on how others have applied the theory of meaningful work, developed by Beaumont People’s world-first research, into their career and working lives. It also gives readers advice and exercises to find meaningful work within their own lives.

Mapson Bone held a book launch event on July 20. Five of the people featured in her book sat on a Q+A panel for people to learn more about what meaningful work is.

World-first research

Before beginning her development of the concept, Mapson Bone found there was no research anywhere in the world that defined what meaningful work is.

This inspired her and her team at Beaumont People to take action. They conducted research and produced the 2023 Beaumont People’s Meaningful Work Insights Report.

The researchers found 70 per cent of respondents strongly agreed they would ‘leave an organisation’ if they didn’t feel safe physically, mentally and emotionally. This figure increased by nearly 10 percentage points from data in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

What’s more, 58 per cent of respondents strongly desire to make a difference and contribute to society, up from 52 per cent in 2019.

From this research, Mapson Bone realised meaning and purpose in work is important to Australians, but perhaps they didn’t realise it themselves.

“I was trying to think of the best way to get this message out,” Mapson Bone said.

“And I thought writing a book is an easy way to get the message out.”

In her book, Mapson Bone defines ‘meaningful work’ as the importance one places on work in the context of their societal and cultural environment.

“Meaningful work is unique for every individual,” she said.

“But there are factors to break down to see what it means for you.”

These are the individual, job, organisational and societal factors. Assessing your personal interests, abilities and goals, the quality and quantity of your work, the leadership and culture in your workplace and your ‘needs and wants’ in your career help you find meaningful work.

Mapson Bone said many people aren’t able to figure out what meaningful work is for them. Some get stuck in a cycle where they leave a job they dislike after a short period of time, but end up in the same place as they were before, because they don’t know what they want out of their working life.

Her research and methods of assessing meaningful work helps people answer this all-important question.

“Nobody’s job is meaningful all the time,” she said.

“But it’s about getting the balance right.”

‘It can change your life.’

Meaningful work can change overtime based on how your values and circumstances change. This is certainly the case for Pamela Bishop, the Chief Operating Officer at Blooms the Chemist.

Bishop began working in a pharmacy in Ireland when she was 17 years old and has worked in the industry ever since, joining Blooms the Chemist when she moved to Australia. But the idea of meaningful work has shifted since she was a teenager.

“What’s important to me now is different to what was important to me then,” she said.

And at 17, after finishing high school, what was important to her was hanging out with her friends, shopping and her boyfriend. 

Even though Bishop values different things out of her work now, she has learned a lot from working in the same industry for 17 years, and with the one company, Blooms the Chemist, for her whole working life in Australia.

One of those things is, if someone is considering leaving their job, they must figure out if they are leaving the job or if they are leaving the company. If the company is good, but the job itself is unfulfilling, Bishop said people need to have a conversation with their boss to figure out how to make their job more meaningful and more fulfilling.

“It’s not an easy conversation and it requires lots of courage,” she said.

“But if you do it, it can actually change your life.”

‘It’s not what I do – it’s why I do it.’

Courage is extremely important in establishing an individual’s meaningful work, something that Mimi Naylor has always had in her working life. 

In fact, it was the reason she was fired from her first job at age 16.

Naylor, now the founder and clinical director of Talkshop Speech Pathology, was volunteering in a residential home. One day, she spotted one of the residents, who had been sitting down all day. His legs were purple and swollen.

Naylor lept into action without thinking. Within two minutes, she had him on the floor doing physio exercises to get his legs moving.

“Out of the corner of my eye, I see this stern look from my supervisor,” she recalled.

Even though she lost her volunteering gig for doing work “outside of her job description”, it was a very important turning point for Naylor.

“From that experience, I found I needed to be there and help when someone needed help. That was meaningful work for me,” she said.

“Meaningful work is the ability to be completely myself, helping and connecting with other people and allowing them to express themselves.

“It’s not what I do – it’s why I do it.”

Naylor now owns and runs her own private speech pathology, where she can work the way she wants, pursuing a career in helping people, just as she helped that man when she was 16 volunteering at the residential home.

“If you’re passionate about something, then pursue it. If it’s in your heart, then why stop?” she said.

‘We are all juggling so much.’

Sometimes, circumstances in your life, social stigmas and other workplace barriers can make prioritising meaningful work challenging.

Shirley Chowdhary has had an extensive career in a range of industries, from journalism to finance to work in the non-for-profit sector. In 2019, among many other accolades, she was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of its 100 Women of Influence. She sits on the board of the Australian Associated Press, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and other organisations.

But after taking a 10-year career break to raise her children, Chowdhary faced a number of obstacles finding a job.

“Even after listing all the things I’ve done, it’s the 10-year gap after having kids that resonates with people the most,” she said.

“Most recruiters can’t look beyond what they see in front of them.”

So when she was looking for work after taking time to raise her family, finding meaningful work was impossible when simply finding a job was proving difficult.

But Chowdhary learned a lot about herself and what meaningful work is to her during this period of time. 

“I’ve learned the best lessons from the jobs I disliked the most,” she said.

“We are all juggling so much – whether it be kids, ageing parents or whatever it may be – that you can’t always prioritise meaningful work.”

However, going through periods of work without meaning allows you to find what meaningful work is for you, Chowdhary said.

“Now I am in a privileged position that I can (prioritise meaningful work),” she said.

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You’ve probably heard about the “great resignation” which saw large numbers of people resigning from their jobs in the US in 2021 and 2022.

We didn’t see resignations over and above what is normal in Australia. However, we did see workers resisting the post-COVID return to the office.

To better understand these trends, we conducted a study of 1,400 employed Australians in 2022 to see how they were faring two years after the start of the pandemic.

And the answer is: not great.

Australian workers are in poorer physical and mental health since the pandemic across all ages and stages. And prime-aged workers – those between 25 and 55 – are reporting the greatest burn-out.

Some 50% of prime-aged workers in our survey feel exhausted at work. About 40% reported feeling less motivated about their work than pre-pandemic, and 33% found it more difficult to concentrate at work because of responsibilities outside of work.

They also see fewer opportunities for advancement than older workers and are more likely to feel like they don’t have enough time at work to do everything they need to do.

It’s perhaps no surprise 33% of this prime-aged workforce is thinking about quitting. These workers may be showing up to their jobs but they are definitely burnt out. They are the “quiet quitters” and they are sounding the alarm bell.

Why are workers burnt out?

The pandemic, particularly lockdowns, took a significant toll on the mental health of the Australian workforce. Although we’ve been desperately waiting for life to return to “normal”, pandemic-related disruptions remain.

Our previous research during the pandemic showed women and parents were particularly vulnerable. We found mothers stepped into the added childcare and housework driven by pandemic lockdowns. We discovered fathers also did more housework and child care over the first year of the pandemic.

The consequence of all of this added work was poorer mental health – worse sleep, less calm, more anxiety.

We also showed this intensified women’s economic precarity, leading to reduced contributions to superannuation and fear of jobs being lost without the skills to re-enter employment.

Women are increasingly concentrated in industries such as nursing, childcare workers and primary school teachers, all of which were particularly impacted by the pandemic. Young prime-aged women were particularly impacted during the early period of the pandemic and lockdowns.

The pandemic was unforeseen, severe and detrimental to our working lives. Many Australia workplaces and workers continue to be impacted as the pandemic continues. Higher numbers of workers are taking sick leave, which may in part be driven by exhaustion and other COVID-related reasons.

Where do we go from here?

Australian workers in our survey have some clear solutions. They found access to flexible work particularly valuable for their working lives. In our study, we found flexible workers had more energy for their work and a greater motivation to do their jobs. They reported more time to complete their tasks.

Around 40% of all flexible workers reported feeling more productive since the start of the pandemic, compared to around 30% of non-flexible workers.

And 75% of workers under the age of 54 reported that a lack of flexible work options in their workplace would motivate them to leave or look for another job.

Flexible work is working for many in the Australian workforce. Australian employers would do well to identify ways to expand its reach to a larger segment of the workforce or risk suppressed productivity and loss of their workers.

2 important take-aways

As we rush to return to pre-pandemic “normal”, our report identifies two critical points.

1. The Australian workforce is burnt-out and exhausted. We need to acknowledge the trauma of the pandemic is lingering and identify clear solutions to support this exhausted, fatigued and overexerted workforce.
2. We must understand pre-pandemic ways of working didn’t work for many. It especially didn’t work for mothers. It didn’t work for caregivers. It didn’t work for people living with chronic illness. It didn’t work for groups vulnerable to discrimination at work. It didn’t work for people forced to commute long distances. So, going “back to normal” means continued disadvantage for these groups.

This means creating new ways of working, including flexible work, is essential to ensuring the Australian workforce has the energy for tomorrow and the next major challenge we will face.

Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, The University of Melbourne; Brendan Churchill, ARC Senior Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Sociology, The University of Melbourne, and David Bissell, Professor of Human Geography, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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But is this really the case?

In Australia, we work 3.2 billion hours a year in unpaid overtime, have 134 million days of accrued annual leave, and 3.8 million of us don’t take lunch breaks. We seem to have become ‘rest resistant’. We are addicted to being busy, and it’s preventing us from getting the rest we need to perform at our best.

The truth is that filling every moment of our day with activity can actually be hampering our productivity. It can leave us feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and burnt out. We need to learn how to take back control of our time, so we are not constantly operating at 100 per cent plus capacity.

Build in a 15% buffer at work

Operating at 85% capacity ensures we maintain our energy resources long-term and avoid suffering from burnout. When we leave a 15% buffer in our day, we reserve adaptive capacity for anything urgent and unexpected that may pop up. This way, we’re not caught off-guard, and we have time to address the issue without having to play catch up later with the tasks we set aside.  This can be as simple as protecting 15% of my time in my diary (about 1 hour per day), or not pushing myself so hard, like taking short breaks throughout the day.

Our capacity is a product of our time, energy, and attention. While energy and attention are a little harder to quantify than time available, it’s our margin that will have the biggest impact on them. As little as a 15% margin gives us the space and additional resources to avoid burnout and take care of ourselves.

We need space to think

The irony is that if we are to be more productive, to come up with good ideas and reach good decisions, we need to slow down and do less. The three steps to create more thinking space are:

• Decelerating — slowing down or stopping, taking time out just to pause and be. 
• Decompressing — letting off the pressure. A great way to release pressure in the brain is by writing things down, removing the need to hold everything at the front of the mind. 
• Deciding — now that I have stopped and taken stock, what are the most important things I need to be doing next. 

It’s a bit like spring cleaning, we generally get better results if we take everything out and put back only what needs to be there.

Avoid burnout 

In the short term, it may seem like working non-stop, staying up late, and filling every waking moment with activity is the key to productivity. However, in the long term, this approach can lead to burnout, exhaustion, and a decline in overall well-being. Time is our most precious commodity, and it is essential to use it wisely and create a life by design.

Before telling ourselves that creating more free space is impossible, it is important to challenge that thought and consider what steps we can take to build more margin into our lives. By becoming more conscious of our own working styles and the volume of work we need to complete, we can become more aware of our capacity and what’s possible to achieve in the time we have available.

This article was first published by SmartCompany.

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At the time, these two men were criticised for being out of touch with what the average worker was juggling, and dismissive of the ways in which working from home can lighten the load for those of us with caring responsibilities, health concerns or just generally busy lives.

And yet more of these powerful and privileged men seem to keep coming out of the woodwork with similar opinions delivered in a similar supercilious manner.

Closer to home, Investa Group Executive, Michael Cook, has recently shared some advice specifically for women: ‘every ambitious young woman who is concerned with closing the gender pay gap for themselves, should be dropping everything and racing into their CBD office.’

And a couple of weeks ago, Lord Alan Sugar, English billionaire and Celebrity Apprentice Australia CEO tweeted that ‘A large percentage of people who work from home are lazy gits’

Why do these men keep imposing their views on the rest of us?

Perhaps it’s simply because they can. But I’d venture a guess that most of them genuinely believe that working from home is unproductive, despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary. Rather than looking at the data, they are instead choosing to assume their own experiences and preferences apply to everyone else.

Elon Musk enjoys working 80 hour weeks in the office so assumes this is the only way to be successful. Boris Johnson has a hard time concentrating when he knows there’s cheese within arm’s reach, so assumes no one else could possibly stay focused under such conditions. Michael Cook got to where he is while working from an office, so assumes there is no other path to the top.

Vested interests play a role too of course. At the time Boris Johnson made his statement, he was economically motivated to get everyone back into Britain’s CBDs. Michael Cook leads a commercial real estate organisation – need I say more?! And Alan Sugar as the Celebrity Apprentice CEO has a vested interest in being publicly controversial and abrasive – it’s good for ratings.

What should we do with this unsolicited advice?

It’s difficult to take advice delivered in such a condescending manner seriously, especially when your own experience of working from home doesn’t align with what they are saying. So personally, I’m quite tempted to simply ignore it.

But would I then be guilty of dismissing their perspective just as quickly as they are dismissing the business benefits of enabling people to work from home? I suppose I would. So instead of ignoring it, I’m going to take a good hard look at myself and consider whether their perspectives have any applicability to my own work life.

The first question to ponder is whether I am, as Elon Musk suggests, ‘pretending to work’ on the days I work from home? I’m actually willing to admit that there is a bit of pretending to work going on. I sometimes hang out on online news sites when I could be calling a client, and I occasionally arrange kids’ swimming lessons when I could be writing a report. But I did these things when I worked full-time in an office too.

None of us can be productive for eight hours a day, our minds need a break every now and then. At home when my mind starts wandering, I have a lot more options for how to take a mini break than I do in an office. I can go for a walk in the local park, play with the dog, water my plants, or do some dinner prep. All choices that aren’t readily available in the office, and that are much better for my overall wellbeing and productivity. So I don’t think pretending to work is an issue I need to address.

But what about the cheese?! I, like Boris Johnson, do enjoy a tasty piece of cheese, and tend to keep a few varieties in my fridge. Does said cheese stop me from doing my work though? No more than the biscuit tins in many of the offices I have worked in. In fact, when I need a snack break, I usually have a much better range of healthy options at home than have ever been available to me in the office. Another win for my health and wellbeing.

And now for the final question, so eloquently posed by Lord Sugar. Do I consider myself a lazy git? The answer to this one is a definitive no. I am not a lazy git. Nobody I know who works from home is a lazy git either. Like most people, I care about doing the right thing by my colleagues and clients and delivering great work. That is not to say I don’t think there is anyone out there taking advantage of work from home policies. But I truly believe they are the exception rather than the rule, and that it makes very little sense to force everyone back to the office full-time based on the desire to supervise these few exceptions more closely. There has to be a better way to manage and inspire performance.

So, if you do some self-reflection, and conclude you are not a lazy git pretending to work from home while actually feasting on cheese all day, then I think you too can safely ignore the advice of these men. And just get on with being productive from wherever you are working today.

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If it’s the latter, did you stop to consider that these two descriptions might in fact belong to the same person? There are many career-driven people in the workforce who prefer, or need, to work part-time, and who are looking to continue to grow exciting and challenging careers while doing so. And the unfortunate reality is that this is an extremely challenging thing to achieve in today’s workplaces. 

The problem with part-time work

Part-time work has the potential to change lives. Done well, it can drive hugely positive outcomes for individuals, families, workplaces and society. Yet most people and organisations don’t yet realise its power. They still think of it as an inconvenient, but obligatory perk they can offer certain people in certain circumstances. And what’s worse, they often view those who want to work part-time as less committed than their peers. Or even less capable.

Because of these misconceptions about the structure and the people who prefer to work part-time, workplaces rarely put any resources into setting part-time work up for success. And when it then doesn’t succeed, the biases are reinforced.

The result is that there are not enough part-time roles out there, and that employees who do manage to access them tend to experience part-time work as a temporary holding pattern. Their arrangement is ‘tolerated’ by their employers until the time comes when they are ready to step back into full-time work. Part-time work effectively becomes a career handbrake, and something that can’t be sustained over the long term.

Why should anyone care?

At this point you might be wondering why this matters. Surely it’s a bit of a niche issue? And if parents choose to work part-time, and are in a privileged enough position to be able to do so, then maybe they should be prepared to deal with the consequences? Well, the first reason we should care is a purely economic one. 

Data released by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) in June this year shows that at every age, less than 50% of women in the Australian workforce work full-time. It’s not just working mothers who need part-time roles either. Being a mother is, of course, a compelling reason to seek part-time work, but there are many other equally valid reasons. Such as being a father. Research shows that a third of young fathers in the UK say they would take a pay cut to work less and spend more time with their families.

There are also many other talented and experienced people in the workforce who can’t, or prefer not to, work part-time for other reasons. Such as:

• People with disabilities that preclude them from working full-time,
• People running small businesses alongside their day jobs, 
• People wanting to take a phased transition to retirement,
• People on visas limiting their working hours.

This is by no means a niche issue. And if so many people are at risk of not being able to achieve their full potential in the workplace, think about what this means in terms of wasted talent and the impact on our nation’s productivity.

The second reason we should care is workplace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). The consulting firm Timewise warns that if a company’s DEI programs aren’t underpinned by a commitment to flexible working that includes part-time, they will struggle to be fully inclusive. ‘This will not only have a negative impact on their gender pay gap, but is also likely to impact their employer brand’.

And the final reason we should care is talent attraction. Given the talent shortages that organisations everywhere are currently grappling with, it seems like madness not to create job structures that allow employers to access the full spectrum of talent within the workforce.

What next?

The message couldn’t be clearer. We need to create more part-time roles and, importantly, set them up for success. This will require all of us to change our assumptions about part-time work and those who want, or need, to take it up. And it will require more organisations to step up to the plate and take this important form of workplace flexibility as seriously as they are now taking remote working.

The post Why we need to squash our prejudice against part-time work appeared first on Women's Agenda.

The disruption of the COVID pandemic has led many of us to reconsider our relationship to work, as well as our spending priorities.

Some are eager to return to pre-pandemic “normality”. Others have found working from home to be liberating and are keen to preserve their newfound autonomy.

Still others, such as health workers, are simply exhausted after two years dealing with the ever-changing demands of the pandemic. One manifestation of this exhaustion has been the rise of the “anti-work’ movement”, which rejects the whole idea of paid employment as a way to organise necessary labour.

A less radical response is increased interest in the idea of a four-day working week. A growing number of companies – typically in technology or professional services – are embracing the idea.

Unlike the end of paid work, a four-day week is well within the realm of economic feasibility. But how much, if anything, would it cost in terms of lost production and lower wages?

How did we get to a five-day work week?

In 1856, Melbourne stonemasons became the first workers in the world to achieve an eight-hour working day. It’s a landmark we commemorate with a public holiday in most states and territories (called Eight Hours Day in Tasmania and Labour Day elsewhere).

It took almost a century before the eight-hour day became the norm, and for the six-day week those stonemasons still worked to be reduced. But finally, in 1948, the Commonwealth Arbitration Court approved a 40-hour, five-day working week for all Australians.

A five-day week brought us that great boon, the weekend. Thanks to steady increases in productivity, all this was achieved even while living standards improved steadily.

Increases in leisure continued over the next few decades. In 1945 Australian workers were granted two weeks’ annual leave. This was extended to three weeks in 1963, and to four weeks in 1974. Sick leave, long service leave and an increased number of public holidays all reduced the number of hours worked per year.

But the standard work week remained fixed at five days.

In 1988, the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission cleared the way for the working week to be cut from 40 to 38 hours.

Unionised workers in industries such as construction were able to negotiate slightly shorter hours – 36 hours a week – that made a nine-day fortnight possible (by continuing to work eight hours a day). So while they were still doing the same daily hours as in the 19th century, they were working about one-third fewer days a year.

All this progress came to a halt with the era of microeconomic reform (often called neoliberalism) beginning in the 1980s.

There has been no significant reduction in standard hours since. The actual number of hours worked has ebbed and flowed according to the state of the labour market, but without any clear trend. Employers have consistently favoured longer hours for their core full-time workforce, while workers and unions have pushed for better work-life balance.

Benefits and costs

Some Australian workers already work a nine-day fortnight. (There are no solid numbers on how many, but Australian Bureau of Statistics data suggests it is fewer than 10% of the workforce.) For these workers shifting to a four-day week would reduce their total hours worked by a little more than 10%.

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that reducing working hours, if implemented correctly, can be partly offset by an increase in output per hour. Large-scale trials in Iceland reducing weekly hours from 40 to 36, for example, found no drop in productivity.

However, despite some optimistic claims, there is insufficient evidence to show there will be no reduction in output in all circumstances.

A plausible guess is that reducing hours by 10% will be associated with a 5% reduction in output.

If this cost were shared equally between employer and employee, workers would have to forgo wage increases of 2.5%. This would correspond to somewhere between two and five years of real wage growth based on recent history in Australia.

The cost to employers would reduce their profits. But over the past 20 to 30 years the share of national income going to the owners of capital as profits (instead to labour as wages and salaries) has increased considerably. This cost would be just a fraction of those gains.

Making the transition

For most Australians working a standard full-time job – a little more than seven hours a day, Monday to Friday – moving to a four-day work week could occur in two stages.

The first stage would be to be shift to a nine-day fortnight with no change in total weekly hours. So the average working day would increase by 50 minutes (from seven hours 36 minutes to eight hours 26 minutes).

The second stage would be to shift to a four-day week with eight-hour working days (a 32-hour working week).

A lot of more detailed questions would still need to be resolved.

Should we choose to extend the weekend to three days, or stick with a five-day week – having different workers taking different rostered days off? Should schools continue to operate five days a week? How will working from home fit in? Will there be even more pressure than there is already to deal with work-related demands on notional days off?

These problems, and others, do complicate the shift to a four-day week. But they are not insurmountable.

The real question, 70 years after the arrival of the weekend, is whether we are ready to trade in some of our increased productivity for a life with more free time for family, friends and fun. Or we do we want to keep on working so we can consume more and live in bigger houses with room to store the stuff we buy to make ourselves feel better about working so much.

There’s a lot of evidence that experiences give us more happiness than material goods. But experiences require time as well as money. A four-day week would be one way to get that time.

John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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As children return to schools across the country, the outlook for teachers is bleak.

The spread of Omicron will make chronic staff shortages worse and has added to teachers’ responsibilities. They must now be COVID wardens, while supporting the many students whose mental health has suffered during the pandemic – not to mention teachers’ concerns for their own health.

All of this is piling pressure on teachers who already had unmanageable workloads. In a national survey for the 2021 NEiTA-ACE Teachers Report Card, many reported very high workplace stress.

Teachers said their workloads were “massive”. Their work-life balance was “less than ideal or non-existent”. They felt “overworked, burnt out and undervalued”.

Teachers are increasingly dissatisfied with the unreasonable demands created by their work conditions.

A typical week includes piles of marking, planning learning for an increasingly diverse student cohort and responding to parent emails and phone calls, which can take hours.

Administrative and compliance tasks also consume teachers’ time. They must collect, analyse and report on student performance data. They are expected to document all student misbehaviour, welfare and well-being concerns as they struggle to keep their classrooms safe, inclusive and enjoyable places to learn.

Then there are the endless meetings, staff briefings and professional development, while delivering an over-prescriptive and crowded curriculum so students meet national achievement standards.

One teacher in Perth told us:

“The expectations are impossible to live up to. We want to help our students and do all that is asked of us but often I face hostility and distrust from students and their parents or carers.

“After teaching for over 15 years this all has a cumulative effect. I’ve struggled with feelings of disillusionment and burn-out. Sometimes I think that my well-being goes unnoticed or is dismissed as unimportant.”

One of us wrote last year about the emotional labour of teachers who have to manage, suppress or feign their emotions as part of their work. They “put on a brave face” and ignore their emotions to get through the daily ups and downs of school life. But it can be exhausting.

Many teachers who have since contacted us are sick of pretending they are “doing OK”. They are deeply concerned that school administrators are pushing them to be unrealistically positive, despite evidence to a federal parliamentary inquiry that workloads and stresses are eroding teachers’ well-being across the country.

With tears in her eyes, one very experienced teacher in Canberra described a particularly violent student bullying incident at her school. The police were involved and many staff were traumatised.

However, her school’s leaders required her not to talk about the incident, despite the stress it caused. More than a year later, the staff have had no opportunity to debrief with one another about it.

The teacher said the leaders’ priority was protecting the school’s “brand”, rather than to help staff confront the obvious challenges they faced. They were expected to cultivate a “positive attitude” and “be quiet” about “any negativity”.

What is toxic positivity?

Toxic positivity has emerged as a significant force in the lives of teachers in Australia. Education administrators are reshaping workplace values and practices to maintain employees’ positivity, happiness and optimism in the face of irrefutable evidence that everything is not great.

Positivity in a workplace setting is not inherently toxic to our mental health. However, psychological researchers are calling out the dangers of being persistently optimistic when our experiences are clearly and objectively anything but positive.

This happens in schools when administrators urge teachers to look on the bright side or find the opportunities in challenging work conditions. In doing so, schools sideline the issue of workplace stress by policing negative comments and ignoring difficult issues raised by staff.

Administrators are consumed by the positive spin. They offer staff professional development facilitated by “wellness consultants” who teach self-care strategies, such as doing yoga, to maximise well-being and minimise negativity.

Is this sort of positivity ethical?

In a recent research article, we theorised about the ethics of positivity in education. We criticised the “positive movement”, typified by “happiness scientists” and self-help literature, which purports to make us all “lastingly happy”. We liken this pop psychology to the snake oil charlatans of the past.

We found that during a teacher’s university training positive emotions are seen as a highly productive way to build relationships with students. They are regarded as an important signal that a teacher is being ethical and professional.

Positive emotions can support teaching and learning practices and help teachers maintain their energy. However, we argue when relentless positivity takes hold in schools to deny negative experiences or stressors, there can be unethical and dangerous consequences for teachers. These include demoralisation and emotional fatigue, which contribute to teachers leaving the profession.

We need collective care for a shared problem

Teachers are experiencing what we term “collective emotional labour”. Forces such as the COVID pandemic and chronic staff shortages have put enormous pressure on teachers collectively. This means they need to work on their emotional well-being as a co-operative network, rather than as individuals.

Individual strategies of self-care to support workplace stress are exactly that, an individual concern. When it comes to teachers’ shared concerns, they need meaningful collective strategies of support and care.

School administrators and teachers should come together to put aside the platitudes of “keeping positive”. They need to find space and time to share and respond to their emotional concerns.

Teachers will then feel they are being heard and that their emotions are valid because their school culture is open, understanding and realistic about their experiences and stress. This is by no means the cure-all for the troubles of schools and the profession. But it is an essential starting place in these times of collective uncertainty and stress.

Saul Karnovsky, Lecturer & Bachelor of Education (Secondary) Course Coordinator, Curtin University and Brad Gobby, Senior Lecturer in Curriculum, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Flexible workplace policies designed to improve gender gaps in employment and pay might actually make things worse for women.

Flexible work has been on offer to both men and women in many companies for decades. However, it is usually women who are in non-standard employment such as part-time work, often to meet the demands of children, sick parents or partners needing extra care.

Flexible arrangements might support women in maintaining a work-life balance. But policies that make it easier to transition to a part-time job or take leave may actually be weakening their position in the labour market and their lifetime earnings potential, therefore widening gender gaps in pay.

This highlights the need for equal policies for women and men.

COVID-19 and the labour market

The world changed under COVID-19 and the movement towards more flexible work may be one of the silver linings of the pandemic.

This International Women’s Day (March 8), we are in a unique position to tap into the learnings from the COVID-19 lockdowns, during which many men and women were working from home and sharing housework, home-schooling and childcare responsibilities.

Research shows Australian fathers stepped into more involved roles in the household during the lockdowns and have maintained higher levels of involvement in housework and childcare as things return to normal.

Job flexibility and gender pay gap

New research from the Melbourne Institute suggests flexible work conditions such as part-time hours could be a driving factor in the career decisions of women, but not men, and a key reason why the gender divide in employment is not narrowing.

Gender differences in labour force participation, wages and working hours in Australia are very similar to those in the Netherlands, so a study from there offers valuable insights for policymakers in Australia.

Researchers (including one of us, Jordy Meekes) used data from Statistics Netherlands to analyse how men and women respond to job loss.

The study found women remained unemployed for longer than men. When they did find new jobs, women also experienced a larger reduction in working hours than men, which reduced their annual earnings.

It appears women tend to put more emphasis on job flexibility than men, an explanation for why it is hard for women to return to the workforce. Women may even be willing to pass up job opportunities in favour of the flexible work conditions they rely on to balance work and family life.

Women remain largely responsible for the organisational and physical work of making sure kids are completing homework, lunches are prepared and attending numerous after-school activities.

Since work and school schedules are seldom aligned, someone has to do the juggle. To keep the family humming, mothers spend more time on housework and care and less time on employment after the birth of the first child.

Part-time mothers

The career penalty for women that comes with having a child in the current system is felt long beyond the period of maternity leave.

It is commonly acceptable for women to return to work in a part-time capacity. And it is often women who are culturally and socially expected to use flexible conditions to leave work and care for a sick child, for example. Less so for men.

The Melbourne Institute study found men who worked part-time in their previous role took longer to secure another job and were more likely to have to take a pay cut than men who worked full-time.

Men who previously worked part-time earned on average 10% less in the new job. This finding suggests employers attach a penalty to part-time work for men, explained by the fact it is relatively uncommon for men.

Equal policies for women and men

Our beliefs about gender norms are shifting but this is not reflected in workplace and government policies on paper or in practice.

A review of existing policies is an important step in determining how suitable workplace policies are to support all employees.

Having written policies to support diversity and inclusion or flexible work practices is positive but it is not a sign of success. Particularly if, in practice, only a small number of employees can avail of the benefits – and at what cost?

The COVID-19 lockdowns, while challenging for many, have given us an insight into what flexibility could truly look like for men and women alike.

Leah Ruppanner, Associate Professor in Sociology and Co-Director of The Policy Lab, The University of Melbourne and Jordy Meekes, Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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This response is commonly known as reverse culture shock or re-entry syndrome, where the period of re-adapting to ‘normal’ life is just as overwhelming as the culture shock first felt with the initial change.

Clinical Psychologist Dr Kimberley Norris likens this phenomenon to Antarctic expeditioners returning from confinement.

Returning to a new ‘post-covid’ world and way of living will take time to adjust to and we need to support ourselves to re-familiarise ourselves with the outside world.

While returning to life and managing a new work life balance is a topic with many opinions, options and thought streams, there are a few core avenues everyday Australians can explore to manage any feelings of anxiety that arise.

Shifting expectations

The first step of finding a healthy work life balance is to let go of previous views of what this looks like. The world we live in post-COVID has changed, as has our relationship with work, our colleagues and ourselves. Elements of the daily routine that worked pre-pandemic may not have the same effect, or may no longer be possible.

For example, taking public transport to work and listening to a podcast may have been a morning and afternoon ritual pre-COVID, but social distancing, wearing PPE and altered passenger behaviour has changed that experience.

Be open to finding a ‘new normal’ — a shift in expectations here can make a significant difference to allowing you to settle into a day-to-day routine that looks a little different than what you’re used to.

Identify helpful working from home practices

The transition back to the office doesn’t have to be a black and white approach, but rather a strategic move to learn from the experience and incorporate feedback on what worked (and what didn’t). The key to unlock the best course of action is open communication.

Many workplaces have already begun discussion about the benefits and constraints of working from home, but if not, workers can offer to talk to the team and provide feedback to management on everyone’s experience.

Outline which practices will help improve performance and productivity and offer to help management develop strategies to implement them. This will not only help keep those beneficial WFH practices, but also open up dialogue around general wellbeing with the team. I encourage everyone to be mindful of potential concerns their broader management team may have, and approach these with a view to settling on a solution that works for all.

In the Smiling Mind State of Mind 2020 Survey of 1,000 Australians, 17.9 percent of respondents reported work as their greatest barrier to positive wellbeing. With this in mind, we need to ensure healthy relationships with work are fostered in 2021 – especially as we brace for another year of uncertainty.

Get moving

Physical movement is inherently intertwined with good mental health. Getting out and active isn’t something we should perceive as a ‘nice to do’  — it’s a must.

Encouragingly, our research has revealed that an understanding of the importance of good mental and physical health is high in Australia, with 87.8% of respondents noting mental and physical health are of equal importance (Smiling Mind State of Mind 2020 report).

With the shift back to the office, workers will need to find a new routine for physical exercise without the luxury of access to the home gym.

There are so many ways people can get active at work. Look for opportunities throughout the day such as walking up to grab a hot drink or taking a stroll around the block at lunch. Connecting with nature has a dual effect so local parks are a great destination to reset and refocus the mind.

Introduce mindfulness into your daily routine

Mindfulness meditation is a great way to create a healthy differentiator between work and home as it allows people to actively shift their mindset to the task at hand or to ‘switch-off’ — something that’s notoriously difficult for many.

We hear from many Australians that they struggle to meditate because they’re not sure if they’re doing it ‘right’, or are pressuring themselves to reach an unattainable standard of mindfulness. The beauty of meditation is that anyone can get involved, no matter their level of proficiency.

There are a number of guided meditation tools available that Australians can take advantage of for those who are new to the concept or inexperienced, including on our Smiling Mind app.

Book a holiday

It might sound simple, but this one’s important.

With overseas flights out of the question and hurdles to domestic travel, many Australians have put holiday plans to one side, instead opting for various COVID restrictions to ease. This can result in long periods without a break, leading to exhaustion, overwhelm and burnout.

Holidays are crucial for work-life balance and a healthy state of mind. They allow us to ‘switch-off’ from work, and direct attention to loved ones or a fulfilling passion.

As discussed earlier, expectations need to be flexible. It may not be possible to visit the annual family retreat, or it could cause additional stress due to flash border closures, such as we have just seen in Perth. Not every holiday needs to be the ‘trip of a lifetime’ — it could be a long weekend in the rural regions taking in the scenery and connecting with nature, or taking leave to complete a DIY home renovation.

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