Tag Archive for: remote working

OP-Ed: 9 Ways Working Moms Can Successfully Work From Home with Their Children Present

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working momsWith the pandemic (hopefully) coming to an end and corporations getting back to business as usual, many U.S. workers (including working moms) aren’t quite sure they want to head back to the office in person, at least not full-time. Instead, some experts predict a Great Resignation is on the horizon, with many U.S. employees indicating they’d rather quit their jobs than go back to in-person office life as they knew it pre-COVID-19.

If you’re a working parent considering making your home your new permanent workplace, you’re bound to have some moments when your work and home life intersect. While it’s ideal to have your kids in child care or to have someone present and watching your kids while you work, sick days and school holidays will likely mean you’ll need to simultaneously juggle caring for your kids and caring for your work obligations at least some of the time this coming year. Here’s how to handle working from home with your kids present long or short term.

1.     Set Expectations. First, set expectations with your kids about the day’s activities and what you are doing and why. Ask them for what you need and explain the boundaries.

2.     Distract Wisely. Give them age-appropriate distractions; it can be helpful to only allow screen time at these moments to keep their attention longer. Have a reward system in place to reinforce good behavior.

3.     Plan Ahead. Try to set up calls on days or times your kids aren’t there or during normal nap times. Perhaps arrange for grandma or grandpa to stop by right before your call and read a favorite book to your child. Or ensure your calls are with another understanding parent if your kids are present. If you expect your kids to interrupt you, proactively let the person on the phone know in advance that it may happen, and explain the situation and how you’ll handle it.

Concentrate on your highest priority work to-dos and those that require the most intense level of attention first. Start your day before your children wake up. This valuable time will be free of interruptions and will have your full attention. If you only have time to work on a few things, make sure they’re the ones you really care about or that really need to get done.

4.     Get Active Early. Depending on your schedule, play with your kids early in the day. Kids hate waiting, especially for our attention. Instead of making them more and more frustrated as you make just 1 more conference call, give them the attention they need at the start of the day and get them moving with fresh air and exercise, if possible, early on. Take a walk outside with your kids first thing in the morning when you wake up. When you finally do need to sit down and hammer out a few tasks, they won’t be so antsy, and you’ll be able to fully concentrate.

5.     Think Outside the Box. Consider an alternative schedule, especially if you have a partner who is also working from home. Mom may take the 6:00 am to 2:00 pm shift with the kids, then “go to work” in her home office, and dad works 2:00 to 8:00 pm. Or divide up the day. Think about working in 2-hour shifts, switching off with your partner or another caregiver.

6.     Consider Your Space. Designate areas of your home for specific tasks, and create visual cues that let your kids know you’re off-limits while you’re in those spaces. Your garage, the basement, a bedroom — these can all serve as work areas. When you physically separate from your kids and take yourself out of their line of vision, you’re less distracted, and your kids are less confused about your accessibility. As the saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind.” A red stop sign or a cutout of a hand on your office door is a clear indicator even to young children that work is in session and reinforces that you’re not available at the moment.

7.     Create Structure. Set your kids up for success during important meetings by creating structure. For preschool and elementary children, set up interesting activity centers in their playroom with model clay, craft paper and markers, or books they can interact with while you’re away for a short time. For older children, make a list of 10 activities they can do when they feel bored and put it on the refrigerator as a reminder for the times you’re off-limits. Use times you’re completely off-limits to have them dedicate effort to traditional schoolwork or online learning.

8.   Feed the Beast. Plan ahead for food needs. Cut up fruits and vegetables in advance and put them into containers labeled “Meeting Snacks.” Make mini quesadillas with protein and veggies, cut them into triangles, and set them out right before your meeting starts. For older kids, set out ingredients for sandwiches or salad before you head into a session with a client or coworker so it’s easy for them to put together a snack while you’re away.

9.     Be Honest. Be transparent with your business partners about the fact your kids are in the home with you. The more honest we are about how our home and work lives intersect, the more we normalize that experience for others, and, ultimately, push employers toward considering our whole-person needs as they create policies and culture.

Above all, give yourself grace. Accept that when you’re trying to do two jobs simultaneously, you’re bound to sometimes be less than perfect at both of them. Take breaks with and without your kids. Definitely don’t add even more to your proverbial plate — the errands, the vacuuming, that toothpaste you still need to buy — it can all wait. And, remember, if you eventually find yourself longing for a little more separation between your work and home life, that’s okay, too.

Whitney Casares, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.A.P., is the author of The Working Mom Blueprint: Winning at Parenting Without Losing Yourself. She is the Founder and CEO of Modern Mommy Doc and host of The Modern Mommy Doc Podcast.

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OP-ed: Using Technology and Remote Work as the Great Equalizer

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Silvina MoschiniSilvina Moschini explains how she leverages technology and remote work to hack the gender employment gap and empower women.

I didn’t major in computer science or engineering. My background is in communications and marketing. But, I discovered the power of technology early in my career and I realized that in it lies the opportunity to innovate, disrupt and solve problems.

I had the opportunity to work for tech giants like Compaq and was fortunate to be part of the 1990’s dot-com explosion, leading communications for one of the most successful Latin American startups of that era. Patagon was acquired by Banco Santander, a Spanish bank. The dot-com bubble eventually burst. Shortly after, I was recruited by Visa International as Vice President of Communications for Latin America, leading their FinTech division-the moment when I discovered that my life’s calling was to become an entrepreneur.

The leap to entrepreneurship

After leaving the corporate world, I took a leap of faith and founded a consulting company whose mission was to provide digital transformation for large corporations. As a self-employed entrepreneur, I had the opportunity to live anywhere I wanted, so I moved to Verona—my favorite place in Italy. I had a thriving business and was working with a team of professionals based in all corners of the world. But, I was facing a challenge: I needed more visibility and collaboration with my remote team, because as their leader, I lacked the tools to gauge progress in an effective and transparent way.

Necessity is the greatest driver of innovation, and it was clear to me that technology was the answer to my problem. So, I made it my mission to design and develop a solution that would provide transparency and visibility to help me keep my team accountable while allowing me to make decisions in real-time, and pivot as needed.

In 2012, TransparentBusiness software as a service was born and I began to pioneer the future of work, dedicating myself to transforming the way people work. What started as a solution for my company became an award-winning remote work and enablement tool that is now used by thousands of clients across the world.

From solution to ecosystem

During the initial years, I spent most of my days explaining the benefits of remote work, which often fell on deaf ears. Many business leaders were skeptical about this work model that relied on accountability and transparency instead of in-person, in-office oversight. However, I also began to see a shift, as millennials started to become an integral part of the workforce. The on-demand economy and companies such as Uber, Netflix and Airbnb who were disrupting their industries emphasized the importance of continuous innovation. And, each day the companies we spoke to become more receptive to remote work models.

But, I also knew that the future of work needed more than great software. It needed to connect the dots with the talent that was in search of remote work opportunities. And this is how our Talent as a Service offering was born, starting with Yandiki, a talent marketplace where companies could source creative talent on-demand to scale their teams globally, using TransparentBusiness technology.

The female quotient

After about three years, we made a game-changing discovery. All our data demonstrated that women were outperforming men in all the performance metrics that we were measuring through our platform. We dove deep into the data and conducted more thorough research of the women who were in the marketplace as freelancers, full-time consultants, and full-time professionals. We realized that we were attracting women with excellent professional qualifications who had been in search of remote and flexible job opportunities. They were thriving on our platform because it offered them the flexibility that they needed to balance work and life and rejoin the workforce without having to leave their loved ones.

SheWorks! was created to empower women to find better career options, and to hack the employment gender gap, because 51 percent of women with children abandon their jobs due to lack of flexibility. We officially launched the company at the Global Women Principles’ Summit at the United Nations Headquarters in 2017, reinforcing our commitment to not just be a part of the narrative, but effect change by helping them find employment and opportunities.

The pandemic effect

The global pandemic threw the world into a crisis that was unprecedented. The loss of life and the economic windfall was felt in every corner of the planet. Technology once again emerged as a lifeline, helping people stay connected to their friends and family, enabling children and young adults to continue their education, and empowering companies to continue to operate. Overnight, the world shifted from physical to virtual environments, and working from home became the norm for millions of people.

Entrepreneurs know that out of crises come opportunity, and many sectors thrived in this new normal. At TransparentBusiness, remote work was our way of doing business for almost a decade, so we were prepared and fortunate to have the skills and the tools to help clients of all sizes and from all industries navigate through this time of uncertainty.

As we look beyond the pandemic, we can say that the great work-from-home experiment of 2020 made one thing clear: Remote work is here to stay. Business leaders and employers alike realized that productivity and profitability did not decrease when employees worked remotely—in fact, sometimes it increased. And, this levels the playing field and opens many new opportunities for women.

Technology as the great equalizer

Women were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. They faced the burden of childcare, lower-paying jobs in sectors that experienced closures, and overall lost 5.4 million jobs since the pandemic hit, nearly 1 million more job losses than men. Fortunately, as we look beyond the pandemic, I am optimistic and see a silver lining.

Remote work was normalized during the pandemic, and this in the long term will benefit women. As children return to school and we transition away from crisis mode, women will be in a better position to pursue remote career opportunities that allow them to have flexibility at home. More importantly, they will be able to compete for jobs globally instead of within a four-mile radius of their home, opening a world of opportunities.

And, all of this is made possible by technology and the digital transformation that we have experienced in the last decade. Technology is the great equalizer because it enables us to learn, work and create. As we look to the future, it’s important to leverage not only remote work but remote learning. The digital acceleration brought about by the pandemic created many new job opportunities. However, for women to thrive in the digital economy they will need to develop new and highly demanded skills to compete globally.

Leaving the world better than how I found it

I grew up in a very competitive household. My brother is a professional polo player and my sister excelled at equestrian sports. As a young girl, I strived to find my place in my family. Although I wasn’t into sports, I had a competitive spirit. My dad always fueled that fire, encouraging me to be independent and to pursue my dreams. And, he taught me one of the most important lessons in life: True independence starts with financial freedom, and the ability to make your own money. This lesson instilled in me a sense of self-reliance that became a positive obsession that drove my career and entrepreneurial journey.

As a Latin American woman and a technology entrepreneur, I have faced many challenges. But, I have never given up and work daily to build the castle that I’ve always dreamed of. And, more importantly, I have made it my mission to help women do the same through SheWorks! and more recently through Unicorn Hunters, an initiative that I co-created to help women entrepreneurs access capital because women-led startups received just 2.3% of VC funding in 2020, and what’s alarming is that this wasn’t due to the pandemic. The figure peaked at 2.8% in 2019.

Helping women access economic empowerment has been my life’s work, and I plan to continue to give back in any way that I can. My journey has been challenging, but also rewarding and I want to leave the world better than how I found it.

Silvina Moschini is the Founder and CEO of SheWorks!, a cloud-based digital talent marketplace that was created as a way for professional women to find flexible global employment opportunities. Ms. Moschini has made a point to provide women who want to grow their business with the same options as men through digital transformation.

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Remote Working Hacks: From And For Executive Moms

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When interviewing female executives for her first book, Pulitzer-winning career columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Joann Lublin, became intrigued by the strong representation of executive moms.

“I was surprised to observe that more than 80 percent of the women, irrespective of where they had landed in their jobs, had kids,” she recalls. “And when I looked at those who had become public company CEOs, the percentage was even higher.”

With a career focus on leadership and executive women, Lublin interviewed 86 prominent executive mothers for her recent book, Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Navigate Work and Life, to gain insight into juggling both managerial roles and families.

We spoke with her to glean insightful hacks from successful executives for managing the remote workplace, as it exists in 2021.

Not the Remote Office We Anticipated

While remote work is part of the solution towards gender equality, forced remote working in the COVID-19 context has been a curveball of mixed gendered impacts.

“I don’t think any working mother in America expected that the multiple roles that we were already playing—the first shift, the second shift, and what I call “the third shift,” the mental load—would all be exacerbated by the fact that now the kids would be stuck at home,” says Lublin, “and because we have gendered role expectations, mom would be seen as the primary teacher, caregiver, parent and all of the above.”

Lublin points out that mothers with children under 12 were nearly three times as likely as fathers to have left their jobs between February and August of 2020. As of November, research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis reported that when it came to parents with children under five, “while nearly all fathers returned to the labor force, mothers regained virtually none of their lost ground”.

“The solutions have to be both personal and societal. On one hand, women have to stand up and insist that parenting is not a solo art. To the extent there are two parents in the home and they’re both working, this has to be a co-parenting arrangement,” says Lublin. “By the same token, they need to speak up and make their needs known to their employers, who in turn not only must trust their employees to get the work done while showing maximum flexibility, but also need to be checking in frequently with their employees.”

Here are six hacks for managing the 2021 remote working office:

 

Set Your Availability

Whether company or individual-driven, Lublin observes the trend and importance of setting hours when you are unreachable.

One Gen-X executive, who has been working remote for years, agreed 7-11 am as her protected hours with her company, reserved for her yoga, exercise and morning routine with her children.

This executive also began scheduling outside interruptions to her day (eg. home maintenance) only during the fringe hours when she would normally be on her commute.

Coordinate Your Co-Parenting

One executive and her husband were each starting their own companies, now both at home with their four and six year old children.

“They initially winged it. It all happened pretty suddenly and you think, we’ll just sort of take one day at a time,” says Lublin. “That was not working.”

The solution the two former Nike executives turned entrepreneurs found for successful co-parenting was to create a  spreadsheet each Sunday night, where they blocked off work engagements and agreed three-hour shifts of rotating parenting responsibilities for the week. While they also learned to allow for flexibility within a plan, this helped them to both dedicate time to family and their work endeavors.

Another way to manage the overall household, says Lublin, is to involve older children. One executive rewarded her teenage daughter for supporting her six year old in doing her schoolwork from home.

Embrace “Work-Life Sway”

Lublin addressed the elusive idea that is “work-life balance” in a chapter called “Manager Moms are not Acrobats” in her first book, Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World.

“That quote came from an executive who strongly believed that this idea of work-life balance was an impossible ideal,” recalls Lublin, “that we could no more achieve work-life balance than we could stand on one leg for that wonderful yoga pose for 24/7.”

Early in her recent research, she came across work-life sway, an approach which encourages ebb and flow between life and work, immersing in whichever you are in right now.

“The idea of work-life sway is that when we have to be a 110% in the moment for work, we will give our all and then some,” says Lublin. “But if life invades or intrudes, if the water heater overflows or the toddler comes running and dumps the contents of her diaper on your lap, you won’t get flustered or totally fall apart or give yourself a guilt trip. You will sway to being present in the other part of your life. The whole concept here is to go with the flow.”

She cites an executive who left her office immediately when she received a video from her nanny of her daughter taking her first steps, and was then home in time to witness the second and third steps.

Release The Guilt

Lublin notes that Melanie Healy, now a Board Member, Investor and Strategic Advisor to many organizations, not only inspired the chapter title mentioned above, but also encouraged her to focus on ditching working mother guilt as “a complete and fruitless waste of our energy.”

If you sit down to eat dinner at 7pm with your children because the day was full until then, as an example, then celebrate that you’re sitting together for dinner rather than guilt yourself about the time.

Unlike many boomer moms, Healy did not hide the personal importance of her work, and instead involved her children in work decisions. She would share with them why a work trip was important to her as much as why their school and extracurricular events were important to her.

Another executive mother with young kids gave her children the power to invoke family time in the evening on demand.

Take Self-Care Time

“The book points out is that self-care is not selfish care,” says Lublin. “If we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re going to burn out.”

From taking two hours to herself on a Sunday when the other parent has the kids to taking a sabbatical, executives found time for personal regeneration to prove essential, even when they resisted doing it.

After a sabbatical, one executive mother decided no longer to be CEO of her company, and instead became Chief Visionary Officer to reduce the amount of operational work she was involved in.

Leverage Job-Share or Reduced Schedule

Turning to personal experience, the first time she proposed a four-day work week with a 20% cut in pay and benefits at WSJ, Lublin was declined.

At that point, she had one child under four years old and was just back from maternity leave with her second. But later that year, WSJ published a front-page story about moms returning to work after maternity leave only to throw in the towel. Norman Pearlstine, Managing Editor at the time, reached out to her.

“I could really relate to that,” she told him. “You know, I’ve got two kids under four. I’m working full-time and I’m dying. I really can’t do it. It’s just too much.”

He invited her to re-propose her reduced schedule and not only did she receive the four-day week work, she also kept full pay and benefits—with the condition she could not work on Friday at all or the deal was off.

Not only did the reduced hours not diminish her productivity, as her bosses had trusted, but she was promoted to management a few years in. Her reduced schedule helped her effectiveness and set a newsroom precedent that allowed other women to job-share.

Lublin advocates that women consider job-sharing as a strategy for advancing in management.

Recognize that Parenting Builds Your Leadership

Lublin feels that parents learn delegation, multitasking and other skills that help them become better leaders. “I think women in particular are able to hone certain skills that make them more effective bosses,” she observes, “particularly, they learn the importance of being an empathetic listener.”

She reflects that being a highly successful reporter did not prepare her to be a successful boss, but parenting was complementary and did help.

“Having children before I moved into management taught me how important and how good it is to be a great mentor,” Lublin concludes. “To be a good human being is to give back and pay it forward.”

By Aimee Hansen

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