I speak from my Doctorate level research and personal experience when I say #remotework is a helpful tool for upward mobility, especially for #workingmom. The research shows women are progressively starting to make more money & economically, we can’t afford to live in one-provider households anymore. We live in a society where having a dual income is critical to afford to have a family in the first place.
Where I was lucky when I had my boys, I could convert to #workfromhome I still had to suffer backlash for it. I had men & women I worked with accuse that taking my vacation was to look for a new job. When I told them it was to have my baby because maternity leave would hurt my family’s finances too much (yeah, no one tells you maternity leave when you are the breadwinner is next to nothing), I was met with more backlash. I had those in upper management, and those at the same level called me a bad mom for not quitting my career and being a stay-at-home mom. Working from home allowed me to develop #worklifebalance & invest in myself through remote education or #distancelearning while being there for my sons and providing for them. Someday I hope mom shaming goes out of style. So, as my family and I celebrate my youngest son’s birthday, I reflect on how my research can help other moms be able to be supported while we wait for more policies to be put in place to help support us.
There is a consistent leadership-focused narrative being repeated falsely in the media. The false narrative is that “People don’t want to work anymore”. To those who keep repeating this narrative and truly believe it the answer is, “no they just don’t want to work for you”.
In the past concepts like quiet quitting would have been viewed in a leadership paradigm as what is called disengagement. However, post-COVID that’s not what is truly happening. There is a quote in the Disney movie, “Remember the Titans”, that always comes to mind when talking about leadership in business. “Attitudes Reflect Leadership”. So, when employees rage quit or quiet quit these are reflections of a hostile work environment as COVID has taught the workforce that works should not become a person’s whole life.
Unfortunately, the media narrative has been that management is tightening the ropes and trying to force everyone back to the office to keep the abusive behavior going. This has caused a lot of companies to feel like there is a talent shortage. Which is just not true. The issue is that companies need to work on their goodwill or their reputation within the workforce. No one wants to work for companies that are continuing to do the following remotely or in person. So, let’s stop doing the following four things.
Stop promoting abusive people into leadership!
Unfortunately, there is a type that is consistently promoted in leadership as people who can push employees to do more. This recruiting method gives upfront success with long-term failure. We need to develop leaders who lead with empathy and have more of the teacher personality, not a bulldozer. This is even more the case in remote workplaces.
Stop hiring leadership that thinks their job is just to lead.
Especially in remote work the phenomenon of shared leadership develops. So, if companies want to keep to a traditional ladder method of design having managers that just manage is not doable anymore. We need leaders that are willing to roll up their sleeves and be in the trenches.
Stop hiring Leadership that doesn’t understand business and leadership is a science.
I have had my fill of colleagues, students, and managers who don’t understand developing quotes involves math and project management methodologies. Also, leadership that does not understand leadership science people are only statistically productive for 3-4 hours in an 8-hour business workday. The rest of the time is administrative and collaborative. So, when people take breaks that are part of work. People in the workforce cannot reasonably be expected to do the productive side of labor all day long. Having this attitude stifles creative problem-solving and increases burnout in the workforce.
Stop perpetuating the attitude of overtime being a good thing.
Wanting employees to want and do overtime work all the time is a bad thing. Let’s ignore the glaring fact that overtime consistently or as if it is expected is a big contributor to burnout. Baring that constant over time needed says two things to employees. One the company doesn’t value you enough to hire enough people to get the job done during normal hours. Two it tells employees that you see them as cheap labor and do not respect their time. Three it tells them that the company expects that the employee has got to give up having a life for the company. The days when the concept of workplace families and overall hustle culture is gone past COVID. They have been proven through research and experience to foster toxic work environments and kill company culture both in-person and remotely.
Now that we have talked about what businesses need to stop doing. Let’s talk about what they need to start doing. Aside from my usual advice on issuing a remote first workplace methodology to help promote a work-life balance the following 4 things we need to be started by companies to repair their brand with the workforce.
Start developing more comprehensive leadership and followership training programs.
This will help make the whole workforce feel supported and when there is layoffs or redistribution of talent companies and hire more from within. This also allows companies to not make it so only leadership gets salary bumps and feels appreciated.
Start hiring leadership with a teacher/coordinator personality instead of bulldozers.
Again subject matter experts and those who are more of coordinators or prefer support roles are the new type of leaders that the post-COVID world is demanding. Leaders let their team shine rather than use their team to reflect how they are as leaders. Teams are not power objects.
Start developing a positive corporate culture of work/ life balance.
Investing in an organizational culture that supports work/ life balance helps cultivate a happy workforce that doesn’t make a revolving door for new hires. It helps keep your organization together and have a more complex team. It also helps prevent burnout, workplace PTSD, and workplace violence.
Star is upfront and honest with employees and helps cultivate the workforce.
Often in businesses if someone complains about leadership companies try to find ways to get that person out of the company. Rather than asking why this person is complaining and looking at the behavior companies try to protect leadership. Instead, companies need to work to cultivate both leadership and workforce and investigate additional training needed. Otherwise bad work culture keeps being spread and the trust the workforce has for companies will continue to erode.
As business leaders, we need to remember that our teams are our greatest resource. And if we don’t work to strengthen the trust employees have in the companies they work at we will have no workforce. Trust needs to be earned and focusing on rebuilding workforce trust will help re-energize the workforce in this post-COVID world.
There is a lot in the media about companies pushing for remote workers to return to the office. Companies demanding remote workers who were remote initially in their contract and those who are applying for remote work come in person, even in a hybrid capacity. When employees push back the toxic leadership narrative is, “People don’t want to work anymore”. This is only partly true. The truth is workers especially after COVID have learned about this method of toxic leadership and are just not willing to work for companies like that. This constant pushing is going to give leaders the business management equivalent of a hemorrhoid.
There are three main reasons why companies are trying to force people back into the office:
Real Estate. The real estate side was a big issue at the start of the Pandemic. However, now in 2023, there are numerous articles of companies making moves in physical locations and scaling back office space. Yes, this can create a growing pain for big cities but once things level out it will be an opportunity for change to have a more socio-economic diverse community and housing affordability neighborhoods in bigger cities and encourage similar changes in smaller ones.
Companies either need a change in talent focus (hiring more IT specialists versus physical laborers or salespeople), a reorganization (reorg), or need a layoff. So, to avoid not paying unemployment many companies choose to force people back into the office. This way people who don’t want to work in person have to quit and thus won’t get unemployment benefits. This also allows companies to not look as bad in the media and to board members. An early example of this behavior was in 2013 when Yahoo did the same thing in an effort to, “Improve collaboration”. Which has been statistically disproven then and since COVID. But, it later showed evidence of the above-noted reason and the company dwindled from there.
The last reason is just insidious. Since most companies promote people who are good at their job but may not have specific leadership training and the company doesn’t provide said training these leaders scare away talent. The reason these leaders scare away talent is that they don’t know how to lead and mix up fear with respect. Because of this many of these leaders develop toxic leadership skills that are in many cases downright illegal and cultivate a hostile work environment. Yes, you can have a hostile work environment in a remote workplace. And because remote workplaces provide more transparency and the ability to document bad behavior HR and Companies want to protect themselves and exploit workers and toxic leaders by dragging everyone back into the office where the narrative can be controlled. And where legal proof can be dispelled.
These reasons are not reasonable and limiting remote work hurts companies more than it hurts anyone else. Companies lose out on savings on overhead, commercial space, energy costs, among other expenses. Also, many cities like San Francisco have additional fees and taxes so remote workplaces allow for a lot of business savings.
The issue isn’t if people want to work or not.The issue is that companies are being narrow minded and doing things they shouldn’t. And rather than change positively, many companies are trying to turn back the clock.This insistence on pushing for Return to Office or RTO is the equivalent of pushing too hard, and you won’t like the after-effects.
Work Cited
Han, S. J., & Hazard, N. (2022). Shared leadership in virtual teams at work: Practical strategies and research suggestions for human resource development. Human Resource Development Review, 153448432210933. https://doi.org/10.1177/15344843221093376
We have heard many terms like Quiet Quitting, Acting Our Wage, and major pushes for Return To Office, otherwise referred to as RTO. However, what hasn’t really been discussed is why companies are pushing RTO. Well, as discussed in this video, there are several reasons, but the top three reasons for this push and the reasons are pretty cringy.
I will have a more detailed article posted up on this topic later in the week. Remember sharing is caring and to like and subscribe. As always remember Remote Is Here To Stay.
After all the chaos with natural disasters, I just wanted to relax for my birthday and enjoy work and life balance luxuries like going to my kids’ award ceremonies, eating cake, and drinking apple cider. How do you like to spend your birthday while working remotely?
My husband and I are big fans of “The Big Bang Theory,” and we joke around that my astronaut story is me finishing my dissertation this term. I am super excited about it, and I do understand with my ADHD, my hard work in academia has been all I want to talk about lately. However, I invite everyone to share what they are excited about and passionate about. So, what’s your Astronaut story?
Remember sharing is caring, especially since Remote is here to stay.
So, I have written about the fact that I am a working mom of two here in California, and I have been blessed to work remotely as a Subject Matter Expert or SME in the financial industry for over ten years. And no, I don’t mean I have worked remotely during COVID, and it felt like 10 years. I have worked remotely as a Subject Matter Expert in the financial sector for over 10 years. Remote work gave me the luxury of having a work/ life balance that many women have not been granted.
It struck me today when I was reading an article from The Verge.com, and they were talking about the best gifts for work-from-home employees. And the first few lines of the work read something to the effect that when Dolly Parton wrote the song “9-5,” she did not contemplate remote work. The author isn’t wrong, but I think Dolly would have liked the freedom of remote work. And to be fair remote work has been a concept that we have had the tools to do on a large scale without suffering productivity since the 80s, so maybe she did. I know I need my cup of ambition to work from home.
I am ADHD and Dyslexic, so what my husband and I call Squirrel moments…I love Dolly Parton she wrote one of my favorite Whitney Huston sons, “I Will Always Love You.” I also love her movies. Ha-ha, I joke with my hairdresser that I have never done my hair because it just isn’t natural, as a paraphrase from one of my favorite lines from “Steel Magnolias.”
Back to the topic, remote work is a crucial tool for women to get back into and stay in the workforce. Part of the inspiration for my research and advocacy of remote work is that it brings more diversity into the workplace. One group is a particular woman.
According to the MIT Sloan School of Management article published in April of 2022 (and I will paste it in the comments.), women are less likely, statistically speaking, to be promoted. According to the research of Prof Danielle Li, women in the workplace receive consistently higher performance ratings than men but are 14% less likely to be promoted.
Unfortunately, a big part of the problem is that there is still the old belief that if women get pregnant, they will leave their job. Or that women are less reliable in the workplace because they have kids or are traditionally otherwise primary caregivers. Now where women are, according to Caregiver.org, 75% of the US are caregivers to children, the elderly, or disabled persons. However, the PEWs report of October 2022 reads that women are more likely than men to adjust their careers for their family it is not because they are less devoted to their job or less capable but because there is no infrastructure to help them balance work and family. In 2012 PEWs published a report that showed 79% of Americans said women should return to a “more traditional role,” but when the same people were surveyed about what to do about kids with working moms, only 16% said that having a mom that works full time is good for kids?
This is stressed even more when we think about how over 1.1 million women had to leave the workforce during COVID to address the loss of childcare. And don’t get me started on the topic of maternity leave.
As a working mom, I have worked remotely for over 10 years. And no, I don’t mean I have worked remotely during COVID, and it felt like 10 years. I have worked remotely as a Subject Matter Expert in the financial sector for over 10 years. Remote work gave me the luxury of having a work/ life balance that many women have not been granted.
Remote work is not a fix for all the infrastructure issues to support women in the labor force. Still, it creates opportunities for women to balance and provide those tools and leadership perspectives that the economy needs while supporting their families. It also lowers stress for remote workers. As leaders, we must remember a basic economic concept that women raise families and economies.
But if you want real items that are good gift ideas this Holiday season for the Remote Working Mom or Woman in your life, I suggest the following:
https://amzn.to/3ujd9cf, especially if they have a micro-managing boss or their company doesn’t use Boss Ware ethically.
That’s it for this post. If you want more info on the research behind this post, check out the links below and my Consulting firm’s website. And remember sharing is caring, so like and subscribe. Also, references are below on the research cited in this article.
I made a post on my Youtube Channel @wickedbofthewest on this topic check me out at the links below.
When the phrase Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) is uttered most of us think of the term shell shock and think of our brave service members and how this disorder affects them. However, as detailed in the article, McMenamin (2021); published on the BBC PTSD is a growing issue in the workplace both in person and remotely. The issue detailed in, McMenamin (2021); are not that people are coming into the workplace having PTSD but, rather people are developing in the workplace. Welcome to the growing term and phenomenon of Workplace PTSD and Workplace CPTSD.
The issue is both employees being abused in the workplace and developing workplace PTSD and those who have been suffering from what is called Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) where employees are being abused from one company to another. There are also employees trying to recover from workplace PTSD from previous abuse because they cannot afford to take time off to recover. The worst part about this phenomenon is that it isn’t new.
The article, Staglin (2022); which was published in Forbes comments on the fact that this has been a long-term issue with no name in the business industry. There is something to say about the trauma that can be found in emotionally labor focused jobs like customer service and sales jobs. Also, there is something to discuss in remote work and essential onsite workers during the pandemic seeing some truly disturbing things and dealing with stress on unparallel levels.
Whereby some trauma is uncontrollable. However, there are a lot of examples as detailed in, Petereit-Haack et al., (2020); of this being a more pervasive issue due to management being toxic and not knowing how to lead. Which from my personal experience has been a significant factor in leadership also becoming traumatized by stress at work, promoting toxic people by other toxic leaders, and a general lack of understanding from leadership the difference between fear and respect.
Toxic workplaces where things like racism, agism, disability shaming, bullying, gaslighting, screaming among other Human Resource No, no’s also can contribute to PTSD and CPTSD in the workplaces. Some, of these behaviors can become pervasive and embedded into organizational culture. However, attitudes are an overall reflection of leadership. Although remote work allows for more diversity in the workplace and allows room to document and stop these behaviors it is not impossible to make a toxic workplace in a remote workplace. It is hard to imagine however, I have experienced it firsthand even in a remote workplace. Worst of all many companies rather cover up the abuse and gaslight workers by saying that they cannot handle the wonderful leaders they have and their methods of authentic leadership. (Which is a perverted interpretation of authentic leadership. See, my article on authentic leadership.)
PTSD and having a toxic workplace that can contribute to PTSD in the workplace is a serious issue for business. Not just for the obvious reasons of potential lawsuits for hostile work environments. According to, Bass (2019); employees who are suffering from PTSD in the workplace are less productive and have a lower morale. When depression from PTSD gets bad enough employees can become a danger to themselves and others.
So, the question becomes how should a business work towards fixing this problem?
When a manager has multiple people reporting a hostile work environment or a revolving door of employees, Human Resources should take notice and do some training for that leader.
Develop some communications training for all staff. It will help keep everyone on the same page and address these issues.
Teach leaders how to lead or prefer to promote and hire leaders with recommendations from past employees, not just employers. How your team or past employees speak about working with you speaks miles about you more than anything else in a background check.
Companies should work to give room for employees to speak out on bad behavior to address where all parties might need training. This specific type should be room to speak out without reprisals.
Remote work, which gives room for employees to set healthy boundaries and room to heal from past workplace trauma, is also a helpful tool. In-person makes it, so those who suffer from any disability or different abilities feel a need to mask their needs to blend in. This can be stressful and slow healing as employees regain confidence in their jobs. This remote is a great tool.
For additional information about workplace PTSD and CPTSD, here are some great books to check out:
Petereit-Haack, G., Bolm-Audorff, U., Romero Starke, K., & Seidler, A. (2020). Occupational risk for post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma-related depression: A systematic review with meta-analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(24), 9369. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17249369
Dr. Stephanie Diana Eubank DBA Remote Team Research (AKA Dr. Bear) 