When I was balancing motherhood and a career 25 years ago, it seemed as though there was much less of a focus on family in the business world. Today, it's refreshing to watch my children navigate the same journey, working just as hard but in a new world that’s more family-focused than ever.
Over the past two years, it’s been exciting to watch employees have the opportunity to spend more time with their kids while working from home. With more control over their time, people are feeling happier, healthier, and less burnt out while still staying productive. As a result, younger generations of workers are becoming more like my kids when it comes to business: family-first.
The hybrid model is here to stay, and as leaders intending to take our businesses down that road, we need to keep our priorities family-first now that we know we can. Family-focused is a great start, but our focus can change with each circumstance - from minute to minute, day to day, and year to year. Family-first means everything you do - each minute, day, or year - is for the value of your family. Leaders today have an opportunity, and responsibility, to ensure a family-first world can continue.
What changed?
After losing nearly a million people to COVID-19 in the U.S. alone, our eyes have been opened to a new vision of health, well-being, and priorities. In March 2020, when office closures first swept the country and forced everyone to work from home, it was a challenge. Few people had ever done remote work before. The initial scramble of learning how to work the same job from home while also getting kids to study for school alongside them was burning many out.
Over time, though, life stuck at home started feeling more manageable. A 2021 Canadian study found that despite a reported increase in conflicts and mental health struggles that came with being forced to work from home, more parents reported increased positive interactions with their children, including more quality time. Nearly half felt they had grown closer to their families. As people settled into sheltering at home, many discovered they could put in the time to forge a successful career and experience the joys of watching their kids grow up or spending more time with their families. Once they knew they could have the best of both worlds, few were willing to give that up.
Change brought opportunities
By late 2021, companies expected to continue offering flexible hybrid models, and employees still preferred hybrid work. Technology continued to improve the hybrid work environment, telemedicine, and distance learning, while demands to keep improving were rising. As technology got better and faster and provided more options, we became more capable than ever of supporting work from anywhere. Federal, state, and local initiatives have started to target expanded access to technology through funding for high-speed broadband, supporting greater opportunities in rural and underserved areas. The pandemic brought tragedy, but our resolve in the face of it brought new energy in solving old problems.
As leaders, we need to continue this trend by talking less about balancing work and life and more about setting new priorities. The pandemic forced us to reevaluate, but now we have a choice. We need to appreciate that people can have both a healthy family life and a thriving career and implement the necessary mechanisms of a hybrid model to allow family-first decisions without sacrificing performance. Remember not to overfocus on putting the hours into a job but rather getting the job done. We have enough experience now to trust that employees can be as productive at home as they are in the office environment. By taking advantage of the benefits and finding solutions to the challenges, hybrid work models can enable new ways of putting family-first more often going forward.
Work still matters
Work is just as important as it has always been - maybe even more important because it can now be a family-first activity. Before the pandemic, a career-first mentality often meant we had to sacrifice the joys of being with family, but now we can do our job while having more options in how we prioritize.
At the same time, since work is accomplished as a team, achieving a family-first way of living for everyone requires a collaborative-first mindset, too. For leaders to implement family-first strategies, they must be able to extend them to all employees. That necessitates teamwork and a sharing of ideas and experiences.
When implementing hybrid models, explain to those workers who might resist the call back to an office, even only part-time, that being there isn’t about a lack of trust or unnecessary impositions. The real purpose of coming into an office is to give the gift of your presence to those who work with you. This is also the gift others around you give back in valuable interactions, in both direct and more casual, indirect ways. Some days, you need to come to the office because others need your gift - your knowledge, your foundation. A sound economic world requires the fluid exchange of our gifts, and being selfish with yours makes it so that your coworkers might not be able to make their own family-first decisions.
While I intend to work for a very long time, at some point, I will retire. You may think you want to work forever now, but most likely, you’ll want to retire one day, too. All we have after our careers are family and friends. Remember, we work to live, not live to work. With so much happening in the world, the potential of a hybrid work model to make family-first living possible brings excitement and energy for the future. With the right technology and high-speed broadband to power it, leaders who embrace this excitement will go a long way to inspire it in others.
