Is it Possible to Juggle Everything?

March 2022

It certainly feels good to finally say good-bye and good riddance to all those pesky mask and vaccine mandates. I don’t know about you, but most people I know are more than anxious to resume what we formerly thought of as a normal way of life.

Yet, before we can all just pick up our laptops and hop back into the saddle with our old business-as-usual routines, we must face the fact that the work environments some of us are returning to are now staffed with fewer team members. According to an analysis by the National Women’s Law Center of the latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics Report—from February 2020 to January 2022—"while men have recouped lost jobs, women are still in a big hole.” Although women regained 188K jobs in January 2022, women are still short more than 1.8 million of the jobs they’ve lost since February 2020.

 Perhaps even more important to consider is the fact that some of the staff who remained on board may be overly weary from all they’ve been through. It may not be as easy as you might think to simply hire more people and carry on from where we left off before the pandemic. This may be especially so within those government-designated “non-essential” industries like hospitality, dining, travel, beauty, fitness, retail, and others where the preponderance of non-management personnel and entry-level managers were women.

 You may recall how, as the pandemic wore on, some businesses that remained open were barely able to hang on. Many of them had little choice but to cut back on staff. Some women volunteered to be laid off in exchange for collecting unemployment, which for many—thanks to federal stimulus dollars—paid more than their tips and paid wages. Meanwhile, those who chose to stay on board often did so in exchange for a pay cut or with the knowledge that they would likely lose the upward momentum they had come to enjoy before Covid descended like a dark, angry cloud and chased away the customer-base.

 Despite the increased governmental and corporate focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, responsibilities on the home front—for child-care, eldercare, children’s education, and care for infirmed family members—still tends to fall on women. For many families, the pandemic caused the lowest wage-earning spouse to voluntarily resign from work to care for children and/or family members who were in desperate need of assistance. The preponderance of those lower wage earners were women.

 Meanwhile, women who were the primary breadwinners in the family, or those who simply couldn’t afford to stay home without a paycheck, elected to work remotely. Most of these women quickly discovered it was especially challenging to simultaneously perform business tasks along with the family management duties that they previously paid others to perform. As time went by, some women found juggling business responsibilities along with homeschooling, childcare, and elder care simply wasn’t worth the effort or the income to justify doing both jobs, so they ultimately quit working.

 Some women who might have preferred to continue working lost their jobs due to their inability or reluctance to articulate their value to the organization. As I discussed in my book Women on Top: What’s Keeping You From Executive Leadership?  even women in mid and upper level management have challenges with doing this. Meanwhile, men tend to be more adept at stepping forward to help higher-level decision makers understand, “Hey, I’m really good at X. I can help you achieve Y. You need me here.”

 During the pandemic, those who stepped forward to make their value known to higher ups were the ones who were least likely to be laid off in the first place when organizations had to make downsizing decisions. They were also the ones to be hired back first when these organizations had empty slots to fill.  Hence, men have regained their lost jobs while many women still remain sidelined.

  For a bit more research on the subject:

In March 2021, McKinsey & Company published a report that found working women were disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, stating, “The pandemic had a near-immediate effect on women’s employment.” At the time, one in four women were considering leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers versus one in five men.

 The article went on to cite three specific groups of women who were experiencing the greatest challenges: black women, working mothers, and women in senior management positions. For each of these groups, exhaustion and burn out were the two most prevalent challenges cited—although senior-level women claimed to consistently feel exhausted more often than any other category. 

 Black women were found to feel somewhat more excluded than working mothers or women in senior management.  Black women were also found to feel slightly less pressured to work more hours and were only perceptively more burned out or exhausted than working mothers. The report did not delineate how Black mothers vs. non-Black mothers rated their respective feelings of burn out, exhaustion, or pressure to work more hours.   

 In a more recent McKinsey & Company report of Women in the Workplace 2021, it was posited that after a year and a half into the pandemic, women in corporate America—across the board—were even more burned out than they had been the year before, and increasingly more so than men.

 Looking forward:

 While women still have some catching up to do in the senior ranks, succeeding in the executive ranks requires both the desire and a willingness to do what it takes to meet the demands of senior level roles. Not every woman wishes to make such investments. We need to be realistic about this fact. But at the same time, we need to make sure that we give those women who do possess “the right stuff” every reason to want to put her energy, her attitude, and her unique gifts to work in our organizations.

 Now that the pandemic seems to finally be behind us, we must pay attention to the current workforce situation and trends and accommodate them as best we can. That means we must continue allowing as much flexibility as possible regarding how and where people work. It means making employee engagement and wellbeing top priorities. It means creating and maintaining a sense of belonging that extends to everyone.

 Keep in mind that to create and maintain a WOW factor workplace, every member of the team must feel valued, energized, and excited to be there. Everyone should always be encouraged to define and pursue their personal passions and priorities. When that happens, the best, most talented people will line up to get in. At the end of the day, that’s what really matters. For more insights on how to make this happen in your organization, check out my book The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a Best Place to Work Culture.

 Now is the time for employers, Human Resources professionals, and leaders at every level to focus on helping all personnel to identify, develop and leverage their own unique strengths to maximize their personal potential.  And be sure to keep in mind, it’s not always possible for even the most talented magicians to juggle everything.