Mummy To Twins Plus One
Workers especially women will be at risk of being overlooked for promotions and career opportunities if they keep working from home!
A business lobbyist has warned that women will suffer if remote work continues and urges a return to the office.
“Workers – especially women – risk being overlooked for promotions and career opportunities if they keep working from home, the business lobby has warned, as NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet comes under increasing pressure to set a date for a return to the office.” Sydney Morning Herald.
Really? Why wouldn’t your hard work and ability allow you to get promoted regardless of where you are?
Why are promotions dictated by location and the fact that you need to be in the office and present? Does this mean that if you don’t turn up to get your name marked off a roll you will go nowhere at work? Silly if you ask me.
If you are always in the office there is no guarantee of getting promoted, you could be seen by management, do all the important jobs, do well and still not get promoted or even a pay rise!
How you perform and do your job should be the only indication of any future promotion. How you build the team, how you further the business should be the only indicators you need to look at for awarding a person regardless of sex a promotion.
And it brings me to this eternal question that shouldn’t be an issue in 2022, women are still listed as the group or the segment in society that is hard done by, the ones that will miss out on jobs, the ones that will miss out on promotions, the ones that will get the raw end of the deal.
As this is consistently still happening, I think we need to ask why we are letting it happen? Businesses and Government need to ensure that everyone is treated equally, and sex is not an issue regarding jobs and where you work to do your job.
Why are women the main group that gets mentioned? Why is it that women are still deemed lesser than? Why are articles saying that this will apply to all and not say ESPECIALLY WOMEN?
Working remotely has been wonderful, and it is horrible that this flexibility has come due to a global health crisis.
Being able to work remotely has allowed me to be there for my kids, has allowed me to not spend hours a day on public transport, to enjoy the small things, to exercise and to be with family after work has ended. Oh, and to have a better work life balance that enables me to be more relaxed and recharged to do my job and have a better quality of life.
Personally remote working is a must for a family as it allows more freedom to help kids, get to after school activities and to fit work around your family schedule. In fact more work is happening due to not being in the office – there are less interruptions and more time to power through tasks and do more.
How is this flexibly not good for women? How is returning to the office good for women or anyone that wants or needs flexibility?
It is not just women that are savouring this world of working from home. Everyone has benefited. Working remotely means no commuting, more time with family, time to exercise, allows you to drop kids at school and pick them up, how about reading at your local school if your kids are younger, and the ability for those that live further away from the city to have a job that pays well and still be there for family.
I have always wondered why business didn’t embrace remote working years earlier. If you did work remotely, it was always seen as something that gets offered to people that have been at a company for years and years, or a new hire that requests it and it is a special arrangement, or a jet setting consultant that zips between contracts and is always on the go.
I will let you in on a secret…remote working is for everyone, not the young, not the jet setting consultant, it is for the person that can do their job at home to allow them the ability to work and have a better lifestyle. Easy. Simple don’t you think? Everyone wins.
Oh, and if there are not many people turning up to work anymore, the company can lower their costs. How about getting rid of the office in the city and just renting a shared office space? This will allow people to have meetings, connect each week with colleagues. See working from home will save the business money! So why are we pushing for everyone to come back?
The push to return to the office is I believe twofold, businesses have spent a tonne of money on their offices and want them to be used, and if people are not coming into the city other businesses will suffer. Workers need to frequent the area and surrounds to spend their money to have other functioning businesses.
However, with the drive to get all bums back on office seats many employees are not going to return. The last two years have proven that remote working can happen, remote working works, and companies have the data to show that employees went above and beyond. Businesses didn’t suffer from work not getting completed, in fact more work got done.
If you have seen any of the latest job advertisements from the major job boards, LinkedIn, Seek and Indeed, many roles have been listed as “On-Site”, some are listed as “Hybrid”, and a few are listed as
“Remote”.
With the on-site roles many of these jobs can be done remotely and previously were offered as totally remote roles. The Hybrid roles are saying that they are flexible and offer work from home but if you drill down, it is only a day working from home a week, which is not acceptable if you ask me. Some fully remote roles are still demanding you come into the office most of the week! Why would that be the case if it is a work from home role?
Businesses that are looking for staff need to offer fully remote roles, and not demand you come into the office at all. You can catch up for functions every month if need be or each quarter to connect with the team. If companies are not thinking about making remote working a permanent fixture, they are going to be hard pressed to find any staff in the future.
All the smart, talented people will decide, no, I don’t want to be in an office. I believe that it is going to be an employee market, and the worldwide experiment of flexible remote work has worked so why should we go back to the old way we did things?
If companies don’t offer flexible remote working, they will be left behind. Yes, the talented employee will work elsewhere that offers them what they need and want.
Do you want your business to not tap into the brainiest and talented people? It will be interesting to see what will happen in another year with remote working and the mandate to get back to the office. Smart companies will see that they need to offer flexibility in order to grow and to compete. Businesses that don’t offer work from home options will be the dinosaur and talent will go to the company that is pushing the boundaries.
Many are conflicted about the return to the office, some are thinking a few days is great, others don’t want to go back at all. Where do you stand? Are you keen to go back? Or do you want to keep the flexibility of working remotely?
As I write this, I am travelling into the city for my weekly catch up with my team. Yes, I am communing to the city. It is a very long day for me, I get up at 4am to catch a 5am something train that gets me into the city for 8am or sometimes 7.30am. I get up early so that I can do a full day of work in the office and then leave around 3pm to catch a train home (I get home around 6pm or 7pm).
My train takes two hours just to get to the city and that is just one way, travel for one day takes over five hours to just be there for that day. I choose to use my time on the train for me, (with a full-time job and three kids I seem to never get alone time, being on the train on my own is wonderful) I write my stories, watch my shows, research, and maybe even have a sleep if I feel like it. It is my time that I can think, have quite uninterrupted time on the quiet carriage and then when at work I power through my day. The rest of my week I work from home and on the odd days that I cannot come into the city, I work from home too. I am pleased that my work is flexible but worry that there might be a management change that demands I turn up each day to the office.
Travelling to the city for one day is doable for me, however due to family commitments and where I live it is hard to do more days. I worry that many will be forced back to work when it really doesn’t help their lifestyle and can in fact make things harder if you have a family.
We should not be listing women as greatly affected by not being in the office, in fact the opposite is true. Remote working has allowed more freedoms and the ability to work at a well-paying job. It is rubbish to frighten people that if they are not physically present, they will never get a promotion…just disgusting. You can still be in the office and do everything right and be overlooked.
What are your thoughts?
