November 16, 2023 • 30 mins
Have you ever felt the strain of juggling roles as a worker and a caregiver? Ever wondered how your work-life balance impacts your overall health and well-being?
This episode of 'The Hearth' is an eye-opener on work-family harmony and the stressors that could be affecting your overall health. We dig deep into the common workplace stressors and how they relate to cardiovascular disease risk, sleep quality, depressive symptoms, and more.
In the second half of our conversation, we pull back the curtain on some startling figures about wage trends and how they've changed since 1979.
We delve into the all-too-common conflicts between work and family duties and debunk some media stereotypes about working mothers. We round off the episode by exploring strategies for enhancing job quality and striking that elusive work-family balance.
From fostering healthier psychological work environments to setting clear performance expectations and making a case for affordable childcare – we unpack it all.
Tune in and let's rethink work-family harmony together!
If something you heard today brought a smile to your face or a spark to your heart, and you’d like to connect with me, here are a few ways you can do that.
One is my newsletter, it’s where I put most of my time and energy when I’m not working with clients or on this podcast. Sorry social media! It’s a mix of real life stories, tips and tricks and of course updates on what’s happening with the podcast. Whenever something is going on with me or in my business, it always comes out there first.
Another resource that I have for you is my Guide to Doing Work Differently. The guide takes you through four inquiries into how you can build a more sustainable and equitable work environment for yourself and your team. It's a great place to start.
Last, if you’ve got a burning question, a comment, or a situation you’d like my eyes on, you can email me at candice@fortressandflourish.com.
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to know when the next episodes come out, and if you’re feeling generous, leave a review. Reviews help other like-minded folks find their way to this resource.
Learn more about Candice and her work here.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
The hearth is for you if you're a business leader
with a team.
Here we have conversationsabout how to keep growing.
When you feel you've reachedyour capacity, when what you're
doing is working but you'restarting to see the cracks, when
there's a gap between whereyou're at now and where you want
(00:26):
to be, here we find ways totransition through the struggle
of survival toward creating athriving business that supports
you and your team as wholehumans.
Your host is me, candiceElliott.
I'm a business strategist andmentor who specializes in
(00:49):
working with business owners whoare going through periods of
growth.
Especially when you're addingmore people to your team, the
practices and systems thatworked when your team was
smaller just don't seem to fitanymore, and when you're caught
in stress and reaction, it'stough to reimagine the way that
(01:14):
you created your world of work,both your own personal one and
the one that you created forothers.
I help people align theirvalues and business practices to
build practical, sustainable,thriving work ecosystems and no,
(01:35):
this isn't just some workutopia talk.
To do this, I bring forward mydecade-long professional
background in human resourcesand organizational development,
working with growing businessesacross many sectors, and my
decades-long search for meaningand wholeness, which includes
(01:59):
researching the history of workand how it came to be what it is
today, practicing atrauma-informed approach to
business and integrating work,life and spirituality into a
meaningful whole.
Let's take this journeytogether.
(02:25):
Hello brave souls, welcome backto the hearth, to this week's
episode, where we are going tobe talking about work-family
harmony and how we can supportpeople both as workers and as
(02:46):
caretakers.
In some of the research thatI've been doing, there are 10
workplace stressors that come upas key factors.
One of those is unemployment,another is lack of health
insurance, another, exposure toshift work, long working hours,
(03:09):
job insecurity.
There's also work-familyconflict, which is what we're
focusing on today Low jobcontrol, high job demands, low
social support at work and loworganizational justice.
So I've already touched onquite a few of these this season
.
We've talked about workinghours and schedule control.
(03:32):
We've talked about job control,job demands and social support
at work.
We've also talked about dignityand fairness in the workplace.
So we're kind of working ourway through this list.
So work-family conflict is oneof the things that is higher in
(03:54):
the US than in other countries.
It's an increasingly importantissue and is linked to negative
health outcomes mental,behavioral, physical.
It includes cardiovasculardisease risk, sleep quality,
(04:17):
depressive symptoms, burnout,issues of workplace safety,
obesity and addictive behaviorslike smoking and alcohol use.
Work-family conflicts are alsorelated to employee productivity
, turnover, absenteeism,well-being and engagement.
As if you've been listening tothis season so far We've talked
(04:41):
about quite a bit.
So how did we kind of get tothis place?
There's a woman, dr Joan CWilliams, who has done quite a
bit of research in this area,and so I've pulled a lot of
information from one of herreports, and then there are a
(05:01):
bunch of other reports too, andwe'll link all of them.
So something to kind ofunderstand is that currently,
the typical American middleincome family puts in an average
of 11 more hours a week thanthey did in 1979.
Additionally, in 1960, only 20%of mothers worked and only
(05:30):
18.5% of mothers were unmarried,and so we have this huge shift
in the number of mothers who areworking.
Currently, I believe it's 70%of children live in a household
where both parents work.
(05:50):
At that time, back in the 50sand 60s, the design of work was
created around this idea of amale breadwinner and a
stay-at-home mother, andcompanies shaped jobs around
(06:11):
that ideal, and even though itdidn't work for families that
didn't fit that mold.
At that time, it still was themodel that was used for most
families and it is the modelthat really continues to this
day, even though that is notwhat most families look like at
(06:34):
this time.
I'm talking about families, butwe also have other trends that
are happening where people are.
There are less people who aregetting married, there are less
people who are deciding to havechildren.
There are people who arewaiting a lot longer to do these
things, and some of that isimpacted by the unsustainability
(06:55):
of these workplace systems thatwe all have to live in.
If we look at low-wage earners,in 1979, they were making about
$27,000 a year.
Now, if you adjust forinflation to 2008 numbers, which
is a little some years ago,what you find is that low-income
(07:22):
earners are actually earningless.
They're earning the $19,000instead of $27,000.
You find that the same thing ishappening with middle-income
earners where, relative to 1979,middle-income earners are
earning less than they didpreviously, but you find that
(07:43):
high-income earners are earningmore, and this is backed up by
all different kinds of analysesand studies, and it is something
that is actually continuing toexponentially increase and get
worse.
I mean, I did a compensationanalysis last year that
completely confirmed this.
We had high inflation, pairedwith organizations trying to
(08:08):
figure out how they're going toget through, paired with an
update to compensation thatresulted in these kinds of
changes happening.
So it's baked into the way thatwe're making decisions about
pay.
So we've got kind of all thesedifferent converging trends that
are happening, and it's nowonder that 70% of people report
(08:33):
some interference between workand non-work responsibilities,
and the conflicts that arereported are time-strain,
missing work or familyactivities, the spillover of
stress from work to home or viceversa from home to work.
(08:53):
The main causes of this areunexpected overtime, job
pressure perceived as overloador intense workload, job stress
and then also psychologicaldemands of the job, such as
working fast or having a lot ofinterruptions.
When you look even further intowho is experiencing work-family
(09:18):
conflict, 90% of mothers reportwork-family conflict and 95% of
fathers do so.
There's a real conflict thathappens between parents,
basically, and work, or theyexperience a conflict between
(09:42):
their work responsibilities andtheir family responsibilities.
In sort of the popular media orhow we think about mothers and
work, there are kind of thesetwo extremes that often are the
ones that are talked about.
One is the highly educatedmother who opts out of the
(10:04):
workforce in order to care forher children.
The other is the woman who ison welfare, who has a whole
bunch of kids and there's a lotof judgment against her like why
she having all these babies ifshe can't afford them?
But really neither one of theseis accurate for most families.
(10:26):
Most families are fittingsomewhere in the middle there.
For example, in my family, Ihave a master's degree, I own a
business I now have at the timeof recording this, I'm about to
have my second son and I havealso benefited from all of the
(10:49):
social support that there isavailable to mothers.
I mean parental leave.
We have been on CalFresh, whichis food stamps in California.
We have had different kinds oflike rental support through
COVID and all kinds of things.
So most families findthemselves in some kind of a
(11:09):
middle right.
Me and my husband have had tohave like really tough
conversations about how much Iwork, how much he works.
There has been conflict betweeneach of our work and each of
our family.
You know our family life and itcreates stress and you know we
(11:32):
both of us have mental healthchallenges and physical health
challenges, and so we'renavigating all of that right and
it's not made better when thereis suddenly a whole bunch of
overtime that needs to happen oryou know a variety of different
(11:54):
things.
We have a lot more control overour schedules than most people
do, especially because I havethe flexibility as a business
owner to be able to shift myschedule.
But not everyone has that.
So these archetypes of theprofessional woman who decides
(12:15):
to leave her career because shewants to take care of her kids,
and then the welfare mom who'shaving all these babies and
can't support them most families, most women who are mothers, do
not fit into either one ofthose stereotypes.
So the problem in the publicsphere is that, rather than
(12:37):
looking at what is actuallyhappening in families, we're
basing decisions off of thesetwo categories that are really
slim margins on the two ends.
So what happens in theseinstances I mean a part of this
is that we lose key, highlytrained workers because the
(13:01):
workplace does not allow forthem to hold all of their
responsibilities Right.
The mothers who stay at homefull time to care for their
children but are doing itbecause there aren't enough
childcare subsidies or becausethey literally can't earn enough
(13:24):
in order for it to make sensefor their children to be taken
care of.
I mean, that's a huge strugglewithin my own family.
The cost of childcare in myfamily is the same as our rent.
Our rent is $2,800 a month andit's right up there, and it's
likely that that will increaseactually, before it decreases
(13:48):
when the kids go to school, andso my husband, who is the lower
wage earner.
We have had really toughconversations.
Does it actually make sense foryou to be earning less than
we're paying our nanny in orderto be able to take care of our
kids so that you can work?
We've had that conversation alot of times and it's.
(14:10):
Every family makes their owndecision, and ours has been that
he will continue to do his jobbecause it's important for him
to be involved in our communityand to have things going on
outside of our family life.
But in many families that's notthe decision that's made.
(14:30):
So you have both highly skilledbut also skilled workers who are
pushed out of the workplace,not just because of conflict
between work and family and theway that work is designed, but
also because of a lack of publicsupport for the increasing
(14:52):
costs of childcare and thedisparity between back in the
60s, when there was a person athome to take care of children or
elderly, versus now, wherethere isn't.
And then the increasing costsof everything not keeping up
(15:15):
with wages.
In conversations that I havewith employers, often what comes
up is this feeling of needingemployees to work more, like.
I need my employees to worklonger hours, I need them to be
available all the time.
I need all of these things fromthese people in order to be
(15:38):
competitive in the marketplace.
But that is out of sync withthe reality of people's
responsibilities outside of workand it doesn't allow people to
both participate fully in theirwork and participate fully in
(15:59):
their family.
And it's because our systemsare built on an outdated
business model that does notactually fit the way that our
society works, and so there's amismatch between work and life
that leads to expenses forbusinesses.
(16:20):
But these are hidden costsbecause we don't really see them
right.
It's absenteeism, like whenpeople are late for work or they
don't show up for work, or likethe whole quiet quitting
phenomenon that we've beentalking about.
Attrition, so like turnover,when people leave jobs, like the
(16:41):
whole thing that happened atthe pandemic, where everybody
quit and started doing otherwork, and then also decreases in
productivity.
You know just so people are notas engaged in the work that
they're doing and so they're notas productive.
And so there's this case to bemade for workplace flexibility,
(17:04):
and that if you're able tocreate flexibility for your
people at the microeconomiclevel, that means, like in your
business, you're actually goingto end up being more competitive
in the long run.
And even though you may havesome costs that come up front,
you're not dealing with all ofthese hidden costs that are
(17:27):
happening that are really at thecore, at the root of why both
people and businesses arestruggling.
So some steps you can take,because I always like to leave
us with some action items.
So we've talked about thisbefore this season, but there's
(17:50):
this term that's called jobquality, and this comes from the
job strain model that I'vereferenced in the past.
But when we're thinking aboutjob quality, we should be
thinking about both employees'conditions at work and then also
(18:11):
conditions that facilitateemployees' ability to manage
dual responsibilities, such aspaid work and family or personal
obligations.
So that means that as you'redesigning a job which is what
you do when you create a jobdescription or when you add a
new position to your company orwhen you reorganize things is
(18:34):
that you think about people'sresponsibilities, both at work
and outside of work, and how canpeople have autonomy related to
how their work is being doneand the ability to kind of shift
between these different worlds,right?
I mean one way is the abilityto shift between the different
(18:56):
worlds.
Another way, which is more howI have gone in my work, is how
to integrate the worlds.
How do you integrate the workand the family In a way that is
sustainable for everyone?
So, when you're doing thisdesign of jobs, or like design
of culture in your company, athing to think about related to
(19:23):
job quality.
It's not that job quality isinherent in a certain set of
tasks, right.
It's not.
Like you know, my job qualityis better when I am the roaster
of the coffee at the coffee shopversus the barista who's making
(19:44):
all the drinks, right?
Or the reverse.
What changes the quality of ajob is the rules of the game and
the everyday practices thatsort of reinforce expectations
and assumptions.
And so the same people doingthe same jobs, who are able to
(20:09):
gain control over their time andthe timing of their work and
then to be able to participatemore fully in their community,
their family, their participatein activities with their
children, take care of theirelderly, that this can happen.
(20:30):
It's not like you have tochange jobs in order for you to
get this right.
You can keep doing the job thatyou have, or you can keep
people doing the jobs that theyare doing, and then you can also
create shifts aroundexpectations that help to
decrease the amount of conflictthat people are experiencing
(20:52):
between work and home life.
So some of the things to kind ofthink about.
Within that realm, there's thisinteresting study that was done
by Joel Goh and others, butit's called Workplace Stressors,
(21:14):
mortality and Health Costs.
So it looks at how workplacestress is related to both
mortality and health and thenalso what are some ideas for
mitigating the health costs.
So one key thing is to foster ahealthy psychological work
(21:35):
environment by preventingstressors in the organization of
the workplace that can lead towork-family conflict.
So what does that mean?
I mean one that we talk about alot is like scheduling or
unexpected needs that come up.
It could also just be extremedemands on time, right?
(21:59):
So thinking about what iscausing stress for my employees
in my particular workplace andyou can even ask people this you
can do a survey and you can askwhat is stressing you out about
work Like what are the thingsthat are difficult for you about
this?
(22:20):
You can make it anonymous sothat nobody is outing themselves
for anything, but you cancollect data and find out.
Is the Slack channel workingfor people?
Are they stressed out bygetting text messages or
whatever it might be?
Are they stressed out by thecontent of their work?
(22:43):
I had a particularly difficultproject that I had to work on
today where I was updating asafety plan with a plan for if
there's an active shooter, right, and it just like it was a very
stressful thing to do, but Imean that doesn't mean that I
(23:03):
don't want to do it.
I want to do it.
I wanna make sure that there'sa plan in place if there is an
active shooter.
But the process of doing thatproject was really taxing on me,
right.
So that doesn't mean that Idon't want to do it or that I
don't have the skills to do it,but it did mean that I needed to
(23:23):
take a little bit of time afterI finished it and it did mean
that it took me longer to finishit than I thought it was going
to, which is fine for me becauseI can manage my own workload,
but if it were a thing where andyou know there was a lot of
(23:44):
time pressure put on it and whenit needed to be done, that
would have just increased thestress even more, the
psychosocial stress even more.
There are some things that youcan do around, you know,
schedule control.
So just clear, consistent,well-defined schedules and
(24:06):
performance expectations.
So improving the design of thework processes and the culture
so that you're supporting aresults orientation, like
getting to the results, notfocusing on all the minutiae and
the details of how you're goingto get to the results unless
(24:28):
there's, you know, mentorship,feedback, training.
That needs to happen.
And then also the removal oflow-value work.
So if you have work that ishappening in your company that
isn't valuable to your clientsor isn't valuable to your
company, you can look at what todo about that right, can get
(24:49):
rid of it, you could automate it.
There are a lot of differentoptions if that's the thing
that's happening for you.
And then another thing is tosupport supervisors to learn how
to support their employees whenwork-family things come up, so
(25:16):
that the supervisors are able tohelp employees better manage
both their work and their familyroles.
So like, for example, maybesummertime comes around and you
have a mother who's working foryou and it's going to be her
responsibility to drop the kidsoff at their various summer
camps and pick them up, whichmeans that you know she's not
(25:40):
going to be able to come to workat the time that she normally
does when she's dropping themoff at school, because camp is
opening later than school andshe's not going to be able to
stay fully through to the end ofthe day because there is no
school aftercare program, right?
So it's figuring out ways towork with people through these
(26:00):
challenges rather than just, youknow, punishing them for being
absent.
So this, in this way,especially with supervisors,
it's helping to provide directsupport to people who are, who
have responsibilities outside ofwork, people who are
(26:22):
experiencing physical or mentalhealth issues and people who are
caretakers.
Within that realm, you can belooking at your paid time off,
sick pay and leave of absencepolicies and the culture that
there is around taking time off.
You can, as a CEO or a manager,start to model the ways that
(26:44):
you are caring for.
You know, if it's your family,then family or elders, or you
know time away to decompress,time away for illness or
sickness of different types.
And then the last sort of pieceof this that business owners
uniquely have a place to well, avoice business owners have a
(27:07):
voice is with elected officialsand to write elected officials
and to lobby for high quality,affordable childcare and
updating our basic laborstandards.
I mean our last, you know,family forward workplace policy
(27:31):
was the Family Medical Leave Act, and that happened in 1993,
almost 30 years ago.
There's another again I'mrecording this in the earlier
part of 2023, I believe there issome legislation that may be
passed between now and when thisepisode actually comes out, and
(27:52):
, if it, if it does, then that'swonderful, but there's a lot
that we can do to support thecaretaking and work roles of
individuals who are alsoemployees.
All right, thank you so much forjoining me today.
I know that I shared a lot ofinformation with you just now.
(28:15):
If you have any questions orcomments or if you wanna just
chat about anything that Ibrought up today as it relates
to your work, please feel freeto reach out.
I would love to talk to youabout it.
Okay, take care and I will seeyou next week.
I'm gonna do that.
(29:03):
One is my newsletter, where Iput most of my time and energy
when I'm not working withclients or with my family, or
working on this podcast Sorry,social media.
The newsletter is a mix of reallife stories, tips and tricks
and, of course, updates onwhat's happening with the
(29:23):
podcast.
Whenever something's going onwith me or in my business, it
always comes out there first.
Another resource that I havefor you is my guide to doing
work differently.
This guide takes you throughfour inquiries into how you can
build a more sustainable andequitable work environment for
(29:46):
yourself and your team.
It's a great place if you'relooking for somewhere to get
started.
Last, if you've got a burningquestion, a comment or a
situation you'd like my eyes on,you can email me.
All those links are in the shownotes.
Take care, brave soul, catchyou next time.
The hearth is for you if you're a business leader
with a team.
Here we have conversationsabout how to keep growing.
When you feel you've reachedyour capacity, when what you're
doing is working but you'restarting to see the cracks, when
there's a gap between whereyou're at now and where you want
(00:26):
to be, here we find ways totransition through the struggle
of survival toward creating athriving business that supports
you and your team as wholehumans.
Your host is me, candiceElliott.
I'm a business strategist andmentor who specializes in
(00:49):
working with business owners whoare going through periods of
growth.
Especially when you're addingmore people to your team, the
practices and systems thatworked when your team was
smaller just don't seem to fitanymore, and when you're caught
in stress and reaction, it'stough to reimagine the way that
(01:14):
you created your world of work,both your own personal one and
the one that you created forothers.
I help people align theirvalues and business practices to
build practical, sustainable,thriving work ecosystems and no,
(01:35):
this isn't just some workutopia talk.
To do this, I bring forward mydecade-long professional
background in human resourcesand organizational development,
working with growing businessesacross many sectors, and my
decades-long search for meaningand wholeness, which includes
(01:59):
researching the history of workand how it came to be what it is
today, practicing atrauma-informed approach to
business and integrating work,life and spirituality into a
meaningful whole.
Let's take this journeytogether.
(02:25):
Hello brave souls, welcome backto the hearth, to this week's
episode, where we are going tobe talking about work-family
harmony and how we can supportpeople both as workers and as
(02:46):
caretakers.
In some of the research thatI've been doing, there are 10
workplace stressors that come upas key factors.
One of those is unemployment,another is lack of health
insurance, another, exposure toshift work, long working hours,
(03:09):
job insecurity.
There's also work-familyconflict, which is what we're
focusing on today Low jobcontrol, high job demands, low
social support at work and loworganizational justice.
So I've already touched onquite a few of these this season
.
We've talked about workinghours and schedule control.
(03:32):
We've talked about job control,job demands and social support
at work.
We've also talked about dignityand fairness in the workplace.
So we're kind of working ourway through this list.
So work-family conflict is oneof the things that is higher in
(03:54):
the US than in other countries.
It's an increasingly importantissue and is linked to negative
health outcomes mental,behavioral, physical.
It includes cardiovasculardisease risk, sleep quality,
(04:17):
depressive symptoms, burnout,issues of workplace safety,
obesity and addictive behaviorslike smoking and alcohol use.
Work-family conflicts are alsorelated to employee productivity
, turnover, absenteeism,well-being and engagement.
As if you've been listening tothis season so far We've talked
(04:41):
about quite a bit.
So how did we kind of get tothis place?
There's a woman, dr Joan CWilliams, who has done quite a
bit of research in this area,and so I've pulled a lot of
information from one of herreports, and then there are a
(05:01):
bunch of other reports too, andwe'll link all of them.
So something to kind ofunderstand is that currently,
the typical American middleincome family puts in an average
of 11 more hours a week thanthey did in 1979.
Additionally, in 1960, only 20%of mothers worked and only
(05:30):
18.5% of mothers were unmarried,and so we have this huge shift
in the number of mothers who areworking.
Currently, I believe it's 70%of children live in a household
where both parents work.
(05:50):
At that time, back in the 50sand 60s, the design of work was
created around this idea of amale breadwinner and a
stay-at-home mother, andcompanies shaped jobs around
(06:11):
that ideal, and even though itdidn't work for families that
didn't fit that mold.
At that time, it still was themodel that was used for most
families and it is the modelthat really continues to this
day, even though that is notwhat most families look like at
(06:34):
this time.
I'm talking about families, butwe also have other trends that
are happening where people are.
There are less people who aregetting married, there are less
people who are deciding to havechildren.
There are people who arewaiting a lot longer to do these
things, and some of that isimpacted by the unsustainability
(06:55):
of these workplace systems thatwe all have to live in.
If we look at low-wage earners,in 1979, they were making about
$27,000 a year.
Now, if you adjust forinflation to 2008 numbers, which
is a little some years ago,what you find is that low-income
(07:22):
earners are actually earningless.
They're earning the $19,000instead of $27,000.
You find that the same thing ishappening with middle-income
earners where, relative to 1979,middle-income earners are
earning less than they didpreviously, but you find that
(07:43):
high-income earners are earningmore, and this is backed up by
all different kinds of analysesand studies, and it is something
that is actually continuing toexponentially increase and get
worse.
I mean, I did a compensationanalysis last year that
completely confirmed this.
We had high inflation, pairedwith organizations trying to
(08:08):
figure out how they're going toget through, paired with an
update to compensation thatresulted in these kinds of
changes happening.
So it's baked into the way thatwe're making decisions about
pay.
So we've got kind of all thesedifferent converging trends that
are happening, and it's nowonder that 70% of people report
(08:33):
some interference between workand non-work responsibilities,
and the conflicts that arereported are time-strain,
missing work or familyactivities, the spillover of
stress from work to home or viceversa from home to work.
(08:53):
The main causes of this areunexpected overtime, job
pressure perceived as overloador intense workload, job stress
and then also psychologicaldemands of the job, such as
working fast or having a lot ofinterruptions.
When you look even further intowho is experiencing work-family
(09:18):
conflict, 90% of mothers reportwork-family conflict and 95% of
fathers do so.
There's a real conflict thathappens between parents,
basically, and work, or theyexperience a conflict between
(09:42):
their work responsibilities andtheir family responsibilities.
In sort of the popular media orhow we think about mothers and
work, there are kind of thesetwo extremes that often are the
ones that are talked about.
One is the highly educatedmother who opts out of the
(10:04):
workforce in order to care forher children.
The other is the woman who ison welfare, who has a whole
bunch of kids and there's a lotof judgment against her like why
she having all these babies ifshe can't afford them?
But really neither one of theseis accurate for most families.
(10:26):
Most families are fittingsomewhere in the middle there.
For example, in my family, Ihave a master's degree, I own a
business I now have at the timeof recording this, I'm about to
have my second son and I havealso benefited from all of the
(10:49):
social support that there isavailable to mothers.
I mean parental leave.
We have been on CalFresh, whichis food stamps in California.
We have had different kinds oflike rental support through
COVID and all kinds of things.
So most families findthemselves in some kind of a
(11:09):
middle right.
Me and my husband have had tohave like really tough
conversations about how much Iwork, how much he works.
There has been conflict betweeneach of our work and each of
our family.
You know our family life and itcreates stress and you know we
(11:32):
both of us have mental healthchallenges and physical health
challenges, and so we'renavigating all of that right and
it's not made better when thereis suddenly a whole bunch of
overtime that needs to happen oryou know a variety of different
(11:54):
things.
We have a lot more control overour schedules than most people
do, especially because I havethe flexibility as a business
owner to be able to shift myschedule.
But not everyone has that.
So these archetypes of theprofessional woman who decides
(12:15):
to leave her career because shewants to take care of her kids,
and then the welfare mom who'shaving all these babies and
can't support them most families, most women who are mothers, do
not fit into either one ofthose stereotypes.
So the problem in the publicsphere is that, rather than
(12:37):
looking at what is actuallyhappening in families, we're
basing decisions off of thesetwo categories that are really
slim margins on the two ends.
So what happens in theseinstances I mean a part of this
is that we lose key, highlytrained workers because the
(13:01):
workplace does not allow forthem to hold all of their
responsibilities Right.
The mothers who stay at homefull time to care for their
children but are doing itbecause there aren't enough
childcare subsidies or becausethey literally can't earn enough
(13:24):
in order for it to make sensefor their children to be taken
care of.
I mean, that's a huge strugglewithin my own family.
The cost of childcare in myfamily is the same as our rent.
Our rent is $2,800 a month andit's right up there, and it's
likely that that will increaseactually, before it decreases
(13:48):
when the kids go to school, andso my husband, who is the lower
wage earner.
We have had really toughconversations.
Does it actually make sense foryou to be earning less than
we're paying our nanny in orderto be able to take care of our
kids so that you can work?
We've had that conversation alot of times and it's.
(14:10):
Every family makes their owndecision, and ours has been that
he will continue to do his jobbecause it's important for him
to be involved in our communityand to have things going on
outside of our family life.
But in many families that's notthe decision that's made.
(14:30):
So you have both highly skilledbut also skilled workers who are
pushed out of the workplace,not just because of conflict
between work and family and theway that work is designed, but
also because of a lack of publicsupport for the increasing
(14:52):
costs of childcare and thedisparity between back in the
60s, when there was a person athome to take care of children or
elderly, versus now, wherethere isn't.
And then the increasing costsof everything not keeping up
(15:15):
with wages.
In conversations that I havewith employers, often what comes
up is this feeling of needingemployees to work more, like.
I need my employees to worklonger hours, I need them to be
available all the time.
I need all of these things fromthese people in order to be
(15:38):
competitive in the marketplace.
But that is out of sync withthe reality of people's
responsibilities outside of workand it doesn't allow people to
both participate fully in theirwork and participate fully in
(15:59):
their family.
And it's because our systemsare built on an outdated
business model that does notactually fit the way that our
society works, and so there's amismatch between work and life
that leads to expenses forbusinesses.
(16:20):
But these are hidden costsbecause we don't really see them
right.
It's absenteeism, like whenpeople are late for work or they
don't show up for work, or likethe whole quiet quitting
phenomenon that we've beentalking about.
Attrition, so like turnover,when people leave jobs, like the
(16:41):
whole thing that happened atthe pandemic, where everybody
quit and started doing otherwork, and then also decreases in
productivity.
You know just so people are notas engaged in the work that
they're doing and so they're notas productive.
And so there's this case to bemade for workplace flexibility,
(17:04):
and that if you're able tocreate flexibility for your
people at the microeconomiclevel, that means, like in your
business, you're actually goingto end up being more competitive
in the long run.
And even though you may havesome costs that come up front,
you're not dealing with all ofthese hidden costs that are
(17:27):
happening that are really at thecore, at the root of why both
people and businesses arestruggling.
So some steps you can take,because I always like to leave
us with some action items.
So we've talked about thisbefore this season, but there's
(17:50):
this term that's called jobquality, and this comes from the
job strain model that I'vereferenced in the past.
But when we're thinking aboutjob quality, we should be
thinking about both employees'conditions at work and then also
(18:11):
conditions that facilitateemployees' ability to manage
dual responsibilities, such aspaid work and family or personal
obligations.
So that means that as you'redesigning a job which is what
you do when you create a jobdescription or when you add a
new position to your company orwhen you reorganize things is
(18:34):
that you think about people'sresponsibilities, both at work
and outside of work, and how canpeople have autonomy related to
how their work is being doneand the ability to kind of shift
between these different worlds,right?
I mean one way is the abilityto shift between the different
(18:56):
worlds.
Another way, which is more howI have gone in my work, is how
to integrate the worlds.
How do you integrate the workand the family In a way that is
sustainable for everyone?
So, when you're doing thisdesign of jobs, or like design
of culture in your company, athing to think about related to
(19:23):
job quality.
It's not that job quality isinherent in a certain set of
tasks, right.
It's not.
Like you know, my job qualityis better when I am the roaster
of the coffee at the coffee shopversus the barista who's making
(19:44):
all the drinks, right?
Or the reverse.
What changes the quality of ajob is the rules of the game and
the everyday practices thatsort of reinforce expectations
and assumptions.
And so the same people doingthe same jobs, who are able to
(20:09):
gain control over their time andthe timing of their work and
then to be able to participatemore fully in their community,
their family, their participatein activities with their
children, take care of theirelderly, that this can happen.
(20:30):
It's not like you have tochange jobs in order for you to
get this right.
You can keep doing the job thatyou have, or you can keep
people doing the jobs that theyare doing, and then you can also
create shifts aroundexpectations that help to
decrease the amount of conflictthat people are experiencing
(20:52):
between work and home life.
So some of the things to kind ofthink about.
Within that realm, there's thisinteresting study that was done
by Joel Goh and others, butit's called Workplace Stressors,
(21:14):
mortality and Health Costs.
So it looks at how workplacestress is related to both
mortality and health and thenalso what are some ideas for
mitigating the health costs.
So one key thing is to foster ahealthy psychological work
(21:35):
environment by preventingstressors in the organization of
the workplace that can lead towork-family conflict.
So what does that mean?
I mean one that we talk about alot is like scheduling or
unexpected needs that come up.
It could also just be extremedemands on time, right?
(21:59):
So thinking about what iscausing stress for my employees
in my particular workplace andyou can even ask people this you
can do a survey and you can askwhat is stressing you out about
work Like what are the thingsthat are difficult for you about
this?
(22:20):
You can make it anonymous sothat nobody is outing themselves
for anything, but you cancollect data and find out.
Is the Slack channel workingfor people?
Are they stressed out bygetting text messages or
whatever it might be?
Are they stressed out by thecontent of their work?
(22:43):
I had a particularly difficultproject that I had to work on
today where I was updating asafety plan with a plan for if
there's an active shooter, right, and it just like it was a very
stressful thing to do, but Imean that doesn't mean that I
(23:03):
don't want to do it.
I want to do it.
I wanna make sure that there'sa plan in place if there is an
active shooter.
But the process of doing thatproject was really taxing on me,
right.
So that doesn't mean that Idon't want to do it or that I
don't have the skills to do it,but it did mean that I needed to
(23:23):
take a little bit of time afterI finished it and it did mean
that it took me longer to finishit than I thought it was going
to, which is fine for me becauseI can manage my own workload,
but if it were a thing where andyou know there was a lot of
(23:44):
time pressure put on it and whenit needed to be done, that
would have just increased thestress even more, the
psychosocial stress even more.
There are some things that youcan do around, you know,
schedule control.
So just clear, consistent,well-defined schedules and
(24:06):
performance expectations.
So improving the design of thework processes and the culture
so that you're supporting aresults orientation, like
getting to the results, notfocusing on all the minutiae and
the details of how you're goingto get to the results unless
(24:28):
there's, you know, mentorship,feedback, training.
That needs to happen.
And then also the removal oflow-value work.
So if you have work that ishappening in your company that
isn't valuable to your clientsor isn't valuable to your
company, you can look at what todo about that right, can get
(24:49):
rid of it, you could automate it.
There are a lot of differentoptions if that's the thing
that's happening for you.
And then another thing is tosupport supervisors to learn how
to support their employees whenwork-family things come up, so
(25:16):
that the supervisors are able tohelp employees better manage
both their work and their familyroles.
So like, for example, maybesummertime comes around and you
have a mother who's working foryou and it's going to be her
responsibility to drop the kidsoff at their various summer
camps and pick them up, whichmeans that you know she's not
(25:40):
going to be able to come to workat the time that she normally
does when she's dropping themoff at school, because camp is
opening later than school andshe's not going to be able to
stay fully through to the end ofthe day because there is no
school aftercare program, right?
So it's figuring out ways towork with people through these
(26:00):
challenges rather than just, youknow, punishing them for being
absent.
So this, in this way,especially with supervisors,
it's helping to provide directsupport to people who are, who
have responsibilities outside ofwork, people who are
(26:22):
experiencing physical or mentalhealth issues and people who are
caretakers.
Within that realm, you can belooking at your paid time off,
sick pay and leave of absencepolicies and the culture that
there is around taking time off.
You can, as a CEO or a manager,start to model the ways that
(26:44):
you are caring for.
You know, if it's your family,then family or elders, or you
know time away to decompress,time away for illness or
sickness of different types.
And then the last sort of pieceof this that business owners
uniquely have a place to well, avoice business owners have a
(27:07):
voice is with elected officialsand to write elected officials
and to lobby for high quality,affordable childcare and
updating our basic laborstandards.
I mean our last, you know,family forward workplace policy
(27:31):
was the Family Medical Leave Act, and that happened in 1993,
almost 30 years ago.
There's another again I'mrecording this in the earlier
part of 2023, I believe there issome legislation that may be
passed between now and when thisepisode actually comes out, and
(27:52):
, if it, if it does, then that'swonderful, but there's a lot
that we can do to support thecaretaking and work roles of
individuals who are alsoemployees.
All right, thank you so much forjoining me today.
I know that I shared a lot ofinformation with you just now.
(28:15):
If you have any questions orcomments or if you wanna just
chat about anything that Ibrought up today as it relates
to your work, please feel freeto reach out.
I would love to talk to youabout it.
Okay, take care and I will seeyou next week.
I'm gonna do that.
(29:03):
One is my newsletter, where Iput most of my time and energy
when I'm not working withclients or with my family, or
working on this podcast Sorry,social media.
The newsletter is a mix of reallife stories, tips and tricks
and, of course, updates onwhat's happening with the
(29:23):
podcast.
Whenever something's going onwith me or in my business, it
always comes out there first.
Another resource that I havefor you is my guide to doing
work differently.
This guide takes you throughfour inquiries into how you can
build a more sustainable andequitable work environment for
(29:46):
yourself and your team.
It's a great place if you'relooking for somewhere to get
started.
Last, if you've got a burningquestion, a comment or a
situation you'd like my eyes on,you can email me.
All those links are in the shownotes.
Take care, brave soul, catchyou next time.
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