In order to truly get the diverse teams we are looking for, we need to pivot on our definition of success, and value part-time work.
What if we were more creative? What if we rethought what success looks like? It's possible we could be ~even better than we are now~
— Sarah Mei (@sarahmei) October 6, 2015Success isn't working 50 hour weeks. Success is making a meaningful contribution at work, and then coming home to dinner with the kids, grandparents, or others in your community. Also, the freedom schedule an exercise "meeting" with yourself every day (The fact that I have had to disguise healthy activity as a meeting, is in itself, ridiculous).
One of the biggest problems is that most good jobs are full-time, or more than full time. When one person in a family works full-time, the other takes up the "slack" (again, calling child/elder care slacking is also ridiculous). If we really want more women in leadership roles, you have to be able to let the men work part-time. In fact, this also applies to same-sex partners.
Having quality time in the afternoon with my kids is important to me, and of course, the kids too. It's not much of a relationship when all you are doing is hurrying the kids out in the morning, trying to get them to eat dinner, and getting them to bed.
And part-time work can't just be "inessential". Everyone wants to be able to do thier best at the job, and make a siginficant contribution. Part-time work should have no impact on an individuals' chances for a leadership role.
According to Bright Horizon's Modern Family Index survey of parents:
- 77% won't speak up about work-life balance
- 68% won't speak up about feeling burnt-out
- 56% of working parents aren’t happy at their current job
- 98% percent of working parents say they’ve experienced burnout
- Nearly two-thirds (62%) of working parents feel their employer simply doesn’t care about them
These are some pretty terrible feelings for a lot of people, and obviously something needs to change in our workplace culture. Truly valuing part-time work would be a great first step.
Love this! I've been doing some more thinking about work hours - I left a comment on a github PR for some random company's handbook, that came through my twitter feed a few times. Their handbook originally said they expected 45-50 hours of physical presence in the office; the PR (from someone internal) changed it to 40-45, which I think is still ridiculous... clef/handbook#59 (comment)
You might want to say that part of "valuing" part-time work is offering benefits. If companies were to offer full benefits for any employee working, say, 20 hours or more, that would help a lot of people feel comfortable dialing back the hours a bit (even if it still means dialing back the salary). Getting a full-time salary for less than 40 hours - that feels like an impossible dream, but this is the first step towards getting there :)