The legacy of COVID-19 on working parents with Fairygodboss’s Georgene Huang

Or read on for the transcript

Lucinda Quigley: So, welcome everyone to this edition of the podcast. My name is Lucinda Quigley and today we’re here to talk about the legacy of COVID for working parents. Now to do that, I’m joined by Georgene Huang, who is the CEO and Founder of Fairygodboss. Hi, Georgene. Lovely to have you today. Can you tell us a little bit about Fairygodboss?

Georgene Huang: Hi Lucinda, it’s wonderful to be here and sure. Fairygodboss is the largest career community for women. We are based in New York City in the United States, and it’s wonderful to be talking with you.

Lucinda: Fantastic. Thank you. I just love the name Fairygodboss, I think it’s fantastic. So, we’re here today, as I said to talk about what has COVID meant for working parents? What has is it brought us in terms of challenges and what is it I suppose going to look like moving forward? So, it would be good to start there, I suppose, and just get your reflections around, in your role, what have you seen over the last 18 months in terms of challenges for working parents? And then also, where do you think the next maybe six to 12 months is going to take us?

Georgene: Yes, and before I answer, maybe I’ll give you a sense of where my information and sense of this issue comes from. We, as a career community for women, are not just for parents, some of the women in our platform don’t have children, but I think women disproportionately bear the brunt of caretaking whether it’s for our own families or our extended families, our friends, and neighbors. And so when we have millions of women visiting our site every month, and it’s a community of people talking about their problems, some of the stuff that you’re asking about obviously comes out. And so, I have an anecdotal sense of it by just being a member of the community and talking to these women on a daily basis through our platform. And then of course on the employer side, we work with many, many companies, over 200 companies, and employers who are struggling to retain working parents or changing their policies and practices in response to the pandemic. And so that’s where my perspective comes from and so before I answer, I just wanted everybody to understand that.

Lucinda: Great, no that’s really useful. Thank you.

Georgene: In terms of what we’ve seen from the community and the women themselves there is a lot happening. So, I’ll try to break it down into, even though it’s artificial, the personal, and the professional. And I say it’s artificial because I think more than ever those lines have blurred because we’re not in the office for many of us still, we’re working from home. Schools shut down, although they are marginally open now and I’ve seen a transition there too. And all of that has sort of thrown the world into chaos. So, when COVID first happened, I think everybody just hunkered down and said, okay, let’s get on with it. We can adjust. We can hold on to our jobs and our children are only home temporarily. Little did we know it was going to last the whole academic school year. When it became prolonged, it became very stressful because in a typical two-parent household, let’s just say, there’s a wife and husband, typically the woman earns less and has sort of a less senior job – I’m just generalizing across the statistics.

Lucinda: Yeah.

Georgene: Therefore, she was most likely the one that had to step back if there was a choice to be made at home about who was going to do what. There was simply not enough time in the day to both take care of, particularly those with young children, home-schooling, and work. And while I think some employers understood this or many employers actually couldn’t really change anything for their employees during this time, we just sort of accepted, okay some of the people we have on-staff are going to be less available or there’s going to be multitasking. But eventually, as the months wore on, I think many women left the workforce. We’ve seen the data that supports this. It was just untenable for you to be at home, being a teacher and a caretaker and an employee at the same time and do all equally well. Even if you could hang onto your job, meaning your employer was not going to let you go for your lowered productivity, women and working parents themselves decided to change the way that they spent their time because it was creating huge amounts of stress, which caused health problems, emotional problems, mental health problems. And that’s very understandable right, that women, particularly women who were working mothers, left the workforce.

Lucinda: Yeah, absolutely. I think we see the statistics, as you say, and we hear this talked about a lot. I mean, one of the things that I know I’ve heard a lot from coachees is actually when they look back at what they did before, they don’t know how they did it before, let alone how they’re doing it all now under one roof, even the running around and the commuting and the dashing to going and picking up children, maybe one or two or three. And the word I hear a lot used is intense. It’s just intense, but it’s a continuing intensity. It’s not an intensity that is rising and falling during that lockdown or multiple lockdowns. It was just an intensity that couldn’t be shifted, I suppose, that people were feeling.

Georgene: Right. And one bright spot about this, which I think you’re implying, is that maybe it was not sustainable before, but everyone did it and so there was less of a pressure valve release. I think in some ways a pandemic allowed us to say, we’re going to re-evaluate everything from the ground up – whether it’s our public health systems, our governments, our own lives, and patterns of living. So many people moved right out of cities and to different places and many of them said, I don’t want to run around and have such an intense life anymore.

Lucinda: Yeah. What about – I know that your website and your company are specifically for women, but what have you heard or seen around dads as well? Because things have changed for them as well, haven’t they?

Georgene: Yes. I think the most heart-warming stories are when you see that husbands and working dads start to appreciate, because there was no leaving, you couldn’t walk away from what was happening at home. I know anecdotally that some spouses have seen that the parents have become more equal during this time in terms of caregiving, or there’s more appreciation at the very least on behalf of one parent on how much the other parent is sacrificing. That is both from an income, job perspective, but also just how much time is spent on doing everything at home.

Lucinda: Yes. Yes. So that increased appreciation as you say, and opportunity, I think for more equal parenting, ultimately, I think is one of the good things to come out of this.

Georgene: And a lot of parents have said, wow, I want to spend more time with my children. It was wonderful. It was one of the upsides of this whole thing was that I got to spend more time with my family. I stopped doing business travel. So, I think that affected everybody at home. And there was a little bit of business travel is picking up. I’ve seen it in my own life. You become a one-parent household again during those business trips.

Lucinda: Yeah, and there’s a reluctance isn’t there, there’s a reluctance to go into that as well. Yeah, absolutely. So, what do you think is next though? You talked about that a lot of people, women in particular, have chosen to leave the workforce. What about for those who remain as working parents? What do you think are the next stage of challenges they’ll be facing?

Georgene: So I have read some statistics, at least in the United States, that women are planning on returning to the workforce and are trying to find jobs that better fit this new lifestyle that they’ve decided they prefer, which is less intensity, which is more flexibility. And I think that there’s a little bit of a mismatch in the labor market, particularly in the United States now, the number of job openings is that a historic high, and there are also a lot of job seekers. But there’s not a match necessarily between the kinds of roles that are open or the conditions of working and the job seekers preference for what jobs are available. So, that might mean in some cases that companies are insisting on returning to the work physically and a lot of working parents or working mothers might want remote work or not full-time in office work. So there’s a mismatch that’s I think prolonging the period in which women are not in the labor force. I think right now we’re at, in the United States, 1980s levels women’s participation rates in the labor force.

Lucinda: Wow!

Georgene: So, that’s how many women have dropped out and left.

Lucinda: Yeah.

Georgene: I don’t know. Dropped out is a funny word. I don’t particularly like it because it implies that there was a choice.

Lucinda: A choice in it, yes. Yeah, yeah. Left, I suppose. I mean, that’s one of the depressing things about this situation is that we’ve gone backward in so many different ways when we think about supporting women, supporting moms, in particular, to have the careers. I mean, you talk about the United States. I know there was a survey in the UK done by Working Families. They are a charity whose survey found that 41% of working moms believe that being a parent or carer is holding them back from having the career that they want. I suppose, you know if that is the case, which obviously the statistics are telling us, what do companies need to do about it? What do you think companies need to do about this?

Georgene: This is such a hard problem and I see it from the company’s perspective because I work with so many and also, I run a small business where we employ many women and many working parents. Look I think that if you want to have a diverse workforce, you have to accept that people will work different amounts and in different ways, and that is just how life is. When you are right out of school, our of any gender, you don’t have a family, you may have more to give. Although this generation is showing that perhaps we should be treating extracurricular and personal lives even regardless of having a family as just as equally as important.

Lucinda: Completely, yeah.

Georgene: That’s totally fair, but there was historically the stereotype that if you don’t have a family, you can be available more easily at all hours with no other kinds of responsibilities, and then as you become more senior you might start a family and then you become less available and less flexible. I mean, that’s the trope anyway, or the stereotype of how the workers progress in their careers.

Lucinda: They even have to earn that flexibility. You’ve got to a certain point in your career in the company and a level of, so you’ve kind of afforded that flexibility because you’ve sort of proved yourself almost.

Georgene: That’s right. That’s right and then you have a team and so you’re a manager and so you can work around your own needs by managing. I think by the way, what I’m describing, still exists to a very large extent and there’s an expectation because these norms don’t just disappear overnight. I think the pandemic was probably the biggest shakeup of this kind of system, but it still exists. Many, many companies have not actually changed that much depending on the kind of company they are. Some retailers couldn’t shut down beyond lockdown and everybody’s back and nothing has really changed. I think to answer your question though, what companies can do will vary quite a lot based on the type of company they are, and I’ve seen that reality play out.

If you’re a medical type company, look at hospitals, look at day-cares, look at education. I mean, it’s very difficult to generalize across all different kinds of companies, because some just have to physically be there all the time based on the nature of what they do. Others are full of knowledge workers, and they can be behind a computer screen and really pretty much have anybody work from anywhere. I think that’s what’s happening is that the structure of the economy and what kinds of companies can allow what is shifting workers too. People are leaving places where, okay, it’s not even really the fault of the employer in the sense that that’s the kind of business they’re in – there are manufacturers, there are factory plants – what are they going to do? Then there’s the knowledge working economy, which I think where the most change has probably occurred.

Lucinda: Yeah. But I, I think it’s interesting because I think I heard you say earlier, you know, that this has been the biggest shakeup. And so it’s almost a sense that there is a real opportunity here to do things differently for companies who can. And there are lots and lots of companies who can do things differently. If on one hand, we’re saying that, you know, there are less women in the workforce than there were, the same amounts – but it’s dropped out heavily and we need to do more to encourage women back into the workforce and we need to do more to support working parents, to be able – and carers – to have the career that they want to. So, I suppose if we narrow it down to that within those companies, within the ones who can, what do you think they should be doing?

Georgene: So, flexibility is huge for working parents because sometimes schools have outbreaks. Sometimes you just have regular school, and you want to be there for an event. People get sick. I think anybody who can work at a company where there’s no need to be physically present all the time, that flexibility enshrined in an actual policy and in the culture and the practices make a huge difference for working parents. That’s pretty much obvious because time is the one thing that we all have that’s finite, it’s all equal 24 hours in a day. So, if you can give that to your employees and to the workforce that you manage, that is, I think the number one thing that many people are looking for right now, and also allows them potentially to work all the time remotely, which means that they can choose where to live, which might accommodate their personal and family needs much better than having to be in a, for example, expensive metropolitan area where transportation is difficult, where housing is a bit away from where you work. I mean, the commute time is something that you can give back to your employees by allowing employees to work remotely.

Lucinda: Yeah. Well, and also, I don’t know how it is in the US but in the UK particularly, I think there are studies to say that if childcare were more affordable, and it’s very unaffordable in the UK, then it wouldn’t allow a lot more working parents to be able to have the careers and have a bit more flexibility. But because childcare is so expensive and so, particularly if you work in a city because you want to be close or have to be close to your office, you’re paying sometimes double, sometimes even triple the amount that you would pay in a more regional area. So, I think that’s another consideration as well as to why people might want to be able to work remotely more often.

Georgene: And closer to the family. It’s very difficult to change childcare costs as an employer or as an individual family. All you can do is hope government policies end up stepping up. Some of the Nordic countries have models like this, where childcare is very affordable. Of course, in places like the UK and US, you end up relying on a lot of family and then you have to be close to your family in order for that to work, which means, again, you have to be able to live somewhere where the commute is not a consideration.

Lucinda: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think particularly because of the separation that was enforced by COVID for a lot of families. Now, a lot of people are really prioritizing that. They don’t want to be separated from their families again. We know that more people have had increased caring responsibilities with older generations. So, we’re talking about sandwich generation now. So, there is that real desire to be able to care for both of your children, if you’ve got them, but also for elder generations.

Georgene: Yes. I do want to add that I think that is one benefit that I’ve seen some of the larger progressive employers who can do this is provide some kind of childcare or eldercare, caretaking time off and/or subsidies, some sort of benefit regarding backup childcare or pay, or subsidies for when you need an emergency babysitter or there are even other types of eldercare support too available.

Lucinda: Yeah, and its service that accompanies benefit that people are doing. It’s not a government, it’s a company benefit.

Georgene: Yes, that’s a company benefit, but it tends to be on an ad hoc needed, it’s finite obviously. You’re not providing your parents a home or your children everyday childcare. It’s more for emergency situations.

Lucinda: Yes. Yeah. One of the things I find quite interesting is in the UK, we have something called parental leave and it’s unpaid. So, it’s unpaid, but it allows parents to take up to four weeks a year for each child. It’s really designed to support school holidays, and you can use it for other caring responsibilities as well. But what I find really interesting is that so many people who I talk to don’t know about it, so it’s really badly publicized and it’s really not talked about that much in companies. So, I think there’s also something that maybe companies have a responsibility to be really clear about all of the things that are available to people. I know so many people who don’t really understand what the policy is if their child is sick.

Georgene: Yes, yes, that’s right. I think the law sometimes, the way they’re written is also not super clear and so, you wonder. I mean, the same thing happens in the United States. We have parental leave that it’s so convoluted, the federal level, the state level, depend on where you live and what amounts you might get paid, whether you’ve adopted. I mean, there are so many nuances to it. And you can see that employees don’t understand their own company’s policies – much less the government policies that may be available. So, you’re right. That can be a way that employers can help just to make what is available clear. I think I suppose probably cynically the reason it hasn’t been clear is that there’s not a huge incentive for them to make it really easy to take time off.

Lucinda: Yeah, yeah, I suppose so. So, I think that will be interesting as to how much that develops, I suppose, over the coming years, in terms of that level of communication and it’s becoming a war for talent.

Georgene: Yes.

Lucinda: If companies want to retain good talent, good working parents they need to find a way to be able to do that. What about… Go on, sorry.

Georgene: I’m interested in whether this great resignation is something that’s also… It’s been discussed quite a lot of the United States in terms of what you mentioned, the war for talent. Many, many people are leaving their jobs. Working parents were not as their values sort of shift and they’re looking for work that better aligns with what they’re looking for in terms of flexibility and remote work. Is that also happening in the UK? Because if it is okay, then it’s creating, I think a once-in-generation sort of shift in power between employers and employees, particularly the companies that have a choice.

Lucinda: Yes, and I wonder how much that is linked to the younger generations coming up and being much more vocal about how much they need from their employers. There’s lots written around how actually the younger generations coming in will be much more demanding about corporate sustainability policies, flexibility. So, it’s almost feeling like employers are being squeezed from both sides with the kind of talent who have more responsibilities, who are more experienced going, I’m not going to do this anymore. Then the younger generation is going, you need to give me all of this if you want me to come and work for you. So, it’s tough.

Georgene: Yes. I think companies more than ever before are expected to be almost like community creators. It’s more than just a paycheck. The company that you work for is supposed to represent your values, have a mission that’s beyond just profit. Someone was observing to me that it’s almost like the community center or the church of another period, some of those expectations are being foisted on an employer. You have to create community. You have to stand for something. You have to bring people together and keep them, but who is the you there? It’s senior management, it’s perhaps the HR department. So, I agree. I think it’s a really tough time for employers.

Lucinda: Yeah. I think the other thing that needs to be recognized is that those layers of middle management as well, who are ultimately squeezed in having the demands made around retaining and looking after and having wellbeing conversations while still trying to get the job done, while still probably, maybe being parents or carers themselves and really, really tough for them the responsibility of having to have conversations that particularly during the pandemic would have been very, very difficult.

Georgene: And nobody was trained for.

Lucinda: Nobody was trained for. Nobody had any extra time to do that. But yeah, I think it all feeds into that expectation of culture now that, that is coming into companies. You mentioned the Great Resignation. What about this idea of a two-tier workforce so that the people who are able to work in an office and have that sort of face time with the stakeholders and peers, et cetera are going to have better career opportunities and are more likely to succeed than those who are choosing to work remotely for whatever reason.

Georgene: Right. I think that you’re right that that’s a real, real risk, particularly for people who are deciding to prioritize working remotely or the flexibility of not coming into the office. I have heard and seen a lot of people be concerned that it will be women ultimately that get sidelined because it’ll be women predominantly that will choose to exercise that flexibility. It’s a little bit like parental leave where the moms take it, and the dads don’t. That same kind of thing may happen with hybrid work arrangements or flexibility that’s meant on paper to be for everyone but then is exercised disproportionately by working parents or mothers. I’ve seen it in my own company. Choose to come to the office if you want, choose not to and I’ve observed anecdotally, we’re small. There are a lot more men who come in.

I come in every day because I just have young kids and I can’t get anything done at work. And I happen to live close to the office, but I noticed it. It’s really difficult to deal with because you can’t tell them not to come in. You’ve just made a policy that allowed for ultimate flexibility and freedom, and you also can’t ask anybody who’s not coming in to come in. So, I think the policies around how you get promoted will have to really become much more objective. It’s human nature to build relationships with those who you’re proximate with. But if you have really clear policies about what performance and overperformance mean, it’s the only way that I can see women and people who choose to work remotely and flexibly sort of overcoming that.

Lucinda: It comes down to inclusion, doesn’t it? We talk a lot about inclusion from a race perspective or cultural perspective, but for me, it’s this point of, well, we need to include everybody regardless of the responsibilities outside of work, regardless of the days that they work, regardless of where they work and that equity of opportunity.

Georgene: Being results-oriented is a big part of that and trying to be objective about it. Now, I will say, I think the two-tier system is much more at risk in hybrid working places. I think it doesn’t exist in a remote working world as much because everybody’s on the same Zoom screen, same playing field. But then another thing has happened, I think, which is less discussed and that’s the people that you knew in real life before, and you’re working remotely that’s a different relationship with someone you’ve never met before, and you started working remotely with. That is also probably much more random in terms of who’s affected by that. But if it’s women that are re-entering predominantly in the next six to 12 months, then they could then disproportionately be impacted by that initial remote relationship building, which is much harder than relationship building in person.

Lucinda: Yes, absolutely. And I think that’s a group to remember. It’s those people who’ve been out of the business. Even if you’ve been out of the business, I mean, I know the maternity benefits are different in the US to the UK, but let’s say even if you’ve been out for six months, that’s still a really big chunk where things have probably changed quite a lot. There might be new policies in place. You’re not clear on the expectations around how should how much should you be in the office at any, and even aside to the policy, actually, what are people doing? How are people making it work? That, I think can be really difficult particularly for a first-time returning parent, who’s already placing a huge amount of expectations on themselves to then come in and have the impact that they want to in a new environment, particularly where everyone else is already up and running.

Georgene: Yes. I mean you’re a coach and so you see that so much of this depends on how facile the manager of a team is with communication and expectation setting. I mean, the bar for management of any kind middle, lower, upper has just risen incredibly in terms of intentionality, of communication, of designing systems that are inclusive, fair, objective, having a safe policy. This is a really hard time for individual managers, I think.

Lucinda: Really hard and I think even before COVID, there was always that sense. Let’s say, we’re talking about the sort of maternity transition or paternity transition. So, the bit where you go out to become a parent and then you come back. I think even before COVID, there was still hesitancy on a lot of managers’ part because they didn’t know how to have those conversations. It was still a little bit taboo. They didn’t want to make assumptions or be seen to saying the wrong thing. I think that still exists because whether it’s generational or cultural, not everybody feels comfortable having those types of conversations, but yet they now have to maybe do them remotely, which is even harder or there are other kinds of issues. Maybe mental wellbeing has been bought in because that person hasn’t been able to be with their family for 12 months. It’s just gone through the roof really in terms of the complexity managers are managing.

Georgene: Absolutely

Lucinda: On that note, I suppose, one group that we haven’t talked about, and I don’t know what your experience is here, but what about single parents? Are you seeing any particular themes or trends with single parents, and do you think there’s anything specific that companies could do to support single parents?

Georgene: In a word? I think that they just have to spend more money to support single parents. It is expensive to caretake for children. I think that they absolutely have the hardest time, and my heart goes out to anybody who had to work and be a single parent because they really did not have a choice in terms of leaving the workforce. They had to support their family as their only and primary caregiver a breadwinner. So, I think in some ways the existential part of the crisis was less for working single parents because I saw there was a choice. We’re going to keep working. I’m going to have to muddle through. There’s nothing I can do. So, the employer has to realize that, that parent didn’t have the ability to change anything about their lives. So, they have to spend money on supporting them, whether that’s mental health, backup childcare, elder care. They have to throw benefits at that person because if they want to retain them, which I think they should and then I think there needs to be an appreciation of their needs for flexibility just as any other working parent might have. I just think that person it’s just more vulnerable. So, if you’re the manager of that person or you’re the employer of that person, they’re more vulnerable and you have to treat them accordingly.

Lucinda: Yeah, absolutely. I suppose in your experience as a leader, but also with what you see, where does the responsibility lie in terms of people being honest about their situation and maybe some of the challenges that they’re dealing with, whether it be a single parent or extra caring responsibilities and how much does it come down to the manager creating or the company being able to create a culture where those things are less taboo to talk about?

Georgene: I think there’s a joint responsibility. I think that’s what your question even alludes to because if you don’t even know your employee as a single parent or has caretaking, how can you possibly accommodate them. But then expecting that a person who’s vulnerable is going to just bring up their vulnerability to you requires a lot of trusts and a creation of a space where they have the air to do so. I think what leaders and companies and managers can do is just share their own vulnerabilities. I mean, that’s all you can do is say, I’m stressed out by this that’s happening in my life or I’m seeing that this is happening across the board. You can do check-ins; you can talk about the population at large without affecting anybody’s anonymity. That’s the way I’ve seen employers and managers and great progressive HR leaders get the conversation going by sharing themselves or sharing on behalf of other people in a generic way.

Lucinda: Yes. If there was ever a time to be able to say, yeah, this is just really hard. I mean, this is the best time to do it. I mean, if ever there were a time where everybody has been made to feel extra vulnerable, it has been the last 18 months. So, I think there is an opportunity for people to really share. So, it’s that vulnerability piece, but I think the role modeling as well is really important. The continuous role modeling of being able to manage as a working parent or not manage which happens to us all. So, I suppose, if we were to think, let’s say five years’ time, I mean, who knows what’s going to happen with the pandemic. What would you like to see as a positive legacy of the last 18 months?

Georgene: I think one of the positive things that have happened is there has been role modeling around talking about what’s going on in your personal life and everyone having to adjust to that, because look, I’m a very private person. I’m sure there are very private people in the world who didn’t love doing this, but doing it allowed policies and practices to shift because you can’t change anything. You’d mentioned intensity in the beginning. How did we do it before? It’s because no one talked about it and so it was just assumed that it was okay and that really hurt the people from whom it was not okay. So, in some ways I think that I hope is here to stay, that now that we’ve brought our non-work lives into our work lives, that, that creates a more humane workplace culture just all around because being able to talk about who you are is a part of whether you’re productive as a human being and whether you can get the support when you need it.

Lucinda: Yeah. I often talk about managing the whole human, managing the whole person, but also as you just said, being able to bring your whole self to work, the hard bits as well as the good bits, which I think is what you’re saying is really important.

Georgene: I think the structural change to more remote and flexible working is also likely here to stay at least for a generation. I don’t know what Central London looks like or feels like but in Manhattan occupancy for offices is still about 33% and that’s with widespread vaccine availability, everybody back at school. There’s just been something happening in terms of how people choose to live. I can’t imagine that’s just going to go back overnight or even in five years.

Lucinda: Yes. Yeah. I agree. The last time I was in Central London, it was full of tourists so that side of things is obviously booming. But I think it goes back to what we were saying at the beginning is that people have realized that there is another way of life you can choose. Actually, there is a more sustainable way of being a working parent and I think that’s what companies need to be on board with and find a way to create a culture around is how do you support your working parents and carers to thrive ultimately in all of the different roles that they’re playing.

Georgene: Right.

Lucinda: Georgene, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been great to meet you and a fantastic conversation and to all our listeners thank you for listening.