It’s counter intuitive, yes – but flexibility is the key to not only having productive employees, but to close the gender gap in the office and in the home.
Data shows that women’s representation in the workforce has increased by about 10% in the last few decades, and nearly matches that of men. But while we are making progress in narrowing the gender gap at work, women still carry more weight when it comes to household responsibilities and childcare. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women still spend “more than twice as much time preparing food and drink, almost three times as much time doing interior cleaning, and four times as much time doing laundry as [do] men.” There is no denying that the women you hire will most likely have more responsibilities outside the office than men do. But as the traditional structure of a 9-5 job has evolved and changed, particularly in the startup environment, it has become easier to offer employees more flexibility. Why would we do this? Because enabling employees to do their job – and do it well – results in healthier companies.
Tricia Dempsey is the founder and CEO of Agile Resources, an IT staffing and consulting firm in Atlanta. Dempsey says that some of her top performers have been her female employees, throughout the 400% growth experienced by the company between 2007-2011. But she learned early on that in order to encourage and sustain this level of performance, it was vital to be flexible with the needs of her employees. If they needed to move their hours around or take work home, she allowed it on the basis of trust and understanding, and focused on the quality of completed work. This had a profound impact on her employees’ performance. Many worry that employees will take advantage of such flexibility. To that, Dempsey explains that by maintaining clear communication and a strong focus on results that matter, employees only demonstrated a stronger commitment to performance that bettered the company.
Can one be flexible and fair?
The clear question on flexibility is how to ensure fairness with it. The purpose of flexibility is to give every employee the ability to balance his or her responsibilities, wherever they may lie. After all, targeting your policy of flexibility to women with families only promotes the idea that they are exclusively responsible for the household. Instead, all employees should be given the opportunity to make use of flexibility and show that it improves their performance. We might even find that when this opportunity is given to all, men and women begin to strike a similar balance when it comes to responsibilities at work and at home.
To read more about Tricia Dempsey and her company, click here