Workplaces need to address the school closure crisis.
Written by HRuprise founder, Rebecca Weaver.
Uggghhhhhh omicron. As a working parent, I just…can’t anymore.
Schools are overrun with cases. Teachers are calling out in droves.
I’m so damn tired.
I never planned to be a stay-at-home mom, much less a homeschool teacher while I build a business. Yet here the fuck I am.
Here the fuck we all are.
I love my girls. And if their schools close again I will lose my ever-living shit.
(Pardon my swearing, but after almost 2 years of being a UN peacekeeper in my own house, I feel I’ve earned my fucks. So has every fucking parent reading this fucking article. Sorry not sorry.)
During the 18 months of school closure in 2020-21, I felt constantly caught between my desire to be a “good parent” and my need to get my work done.
Screen time seemed to be the only thing that captured my girls’ attention long enough for me to hold on to my own damn thoughts, much less execute on them.
Forget big-picture thinking. When the kids were out of school, my work life became a relentless series of granular tasks piling up into a mountain of unfinished work. At times I just wanted the avalanche to break over my head and put me out of my misery.
Occasionally during those 18 months, the house would get blessedly quiet.
I knew it meant the kids were up to no good…but honestly, sometimes it felt like letting them burn the house down would be worth it for a few minutes of peace.
When they went back to school last fall, it felt like a cloud lifted for all of us. We were all so happy.
And when they got fully vaccinated in December, it felt like we had all finally broken free from the darkness of Covid.
At least now, when I get the weekly notifications of Covid positive cases at the school, I can breathe a little easier knowing that my kids are not as susceptible to the disease.
But I just know that more school closures are coming.
And the bottom line is that kids NEED to be in school. Even UNICEF has argued as much.
Parents need it too. Teachers want to teach. Employers want employees at the office. Everyone wants the system to work.
But teachers deserve to be safe at work. And the current push to keep schools open at all costs is detrimental to their bodily safety.
Teachers already sacrifice too much in terms of lifetime pay and emotional labor for our kids. They shouldn’t be expected to sacrifice their health too!
With our economy suffering due to the unprecedented, unpredictable and frequent closure of public schools, on whose shoulders should it fall to fix the problem?
Currently, it’s falling on the shoulders of parents, teachers and local school districts, who are often pitted against each other in the effort to find the best solutions.
No one can agree on how much risk is the “right” amount. No one can settle on how many kids getting Covid is “too many,'' or how many mothers leaving the workforce is “unavoidable.”
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, what gives?
Not teachers. Not parents. Not school districts. There’s another stakeholder in the crisis that needs to step up: the WORKPLACE.
The workplace is the invisible fourth party in the argument over school closures. It’s one of the main beneficiaries of the public school system, and it’s a key lever in addressing the school closure crisis.
Companies that refuse to accommodate these new parental realities, whether they’re trying to protect their profit margins, productivity targets or “workplace culture” – THESE are a huge part of the problem.
Here’s the hard truth: Employers must adapt or perish. Rail against it all you want, but people are not going to work for you if you can’t or won’t support their familial responsibilities.
What does it mean, practically speaking, to support working parents?
I will bang this drum until my arm falls off: Working parents need flexible schedules.
Here are some ways to do it:
Forget your back-to-office plans. Let your people work from home. Permanently. Just fucking figure it out. This is the new normal, and the sooner you adapt, the better you’ll be able to ride out this shitstorm and have any kind of business future in the post-Covid economy.
Reconsider your standard workday expectations. Can you create no-meeting Wednesdays, or move to a 4-day work week? Can you shorten the mandatory workday to 3 hours, and allow employees to execute the other 5 hours on their own schedule? Better yet, can you start measuring productivity in projects and output rather than in hours clocked?
Ask your employees who are remote-schooling their kids about their scheduling needs. Negotiate. Consider the previously unthinkable. It will pay off, trust me!
Normalize odd working hours. Parents and caregivers will be MUCH more productive if they’re allowed to send emails and submit projects at any time of day or night. Teach your teams about “schedule send” if you’d rather not have emails flying about in the wee hours. Or simply articulate the cultural expectation that everyone will reply to emails when they’re able, and that a 1AM email does not require a 1:15AM response.
My recent podcast interview with working motherhood expert Lauren Smith Brody is chock-full of more fabulous solutions for employers, including:
Offer a childcare stipend. If you can, cover the cost of full-time daycare. If you can’t, give a discretionary stipend to cover the cost of a few hours of babysitting, airfare for a grandparent to come help out, or a housecleaner to come do the flippin’ laundry.
Offer as much paid leave as you can. Unlimited, ideally. According to Lauren, “37% of people who are ‘voluntarily’…out of work right now…say that if they had access to paid family leave, they would come back into the workforce.” Working parents need to know that if school closes unexpectedly, they won’t have to choose between their paycheck and taking care of their children.
Pay people more. Just pay them more. I’m including non-parents in this. A lot of people have caretaking obligations that don’t fall under traditional FMLA or parental leave policies. A pay raise will cover a lot of unseen hardships and enable your people to stick with you. They’ll want to stick with you, if you support them in this way.
“It’s important for managers and HR to really understand that if the childcare industry’s recovery is going to be so much more delayed than every other industry, that those other industries don’t just get to keep on recovering.”
– Lauren Smith Brody on Problem Performers
As an employer, childcare should be a top concern for you. Parents are in survival mode. Nobody does their best work when they’re in survival mode. It’s on you, not them, to come up with solutions.
The plight of working parents affects us all, whether we’re parents ourselves or not.
Childcare is foundational to our shared economic growth. Without it, 33.5 million households will have to keep at least one parent out of the workforce so they can care for the kids.
The economy can’t grow if people can’t work.
Besides, when the needs of working parents are accommodated, conditions improve for all employees. Just think how flexible scheduling could improve quality of life for childless workers! Yes, please!
For working parents right now, here is my message: You are not alone. I see you. I feel you. I am you.
And here’s my best scrappy survival advice, as a fellow parent in the trenches:
Self-care is no substitute for the systemic change we desperately need, but it can help mitigate your struggles in the short term. So as much as you’re able, take care of yourself in small ways. A walk, a bath, a book, even just a deep breath. Whatever you can do for yourself, do it.
If you’re partnered, negotiate with your co-parent about giving each other a daily break. Even just an hour of me-time per day can go a long way towards better mental health. Or trade your days “on” so you can each enjoy a day off.
If you have parents, in-laws or other members of your inner circle who might be able to help…call them. Put them on notice, so if schools close down again, you have backup help on standby. This especially goes for my single parents out there.
My biggest piece of advice is to plan ahead. Covid is a marathon, not a sprint. As hard as it is to anticipate the hypothetical horrors of another lockdown, it’ll be even worse to let one catch you unprepared.
Take care, hang in there, and let the F-bombs fly. If the worst our kids inherit from this mess is a saltier vocabulary + your example of compassionate self-care, we will have made it through this exceptionally well.
In solidarity,
RW
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: REBECCA WEAVER
Rebecca Weaver is the Founder and CEO of HRuprise, a marketplace that connects people with HR coaches to help them grow, develop, and navigate their toughest workplace challenges. LEARN MORE
