George Brown College professor Charlene Dunstan, photographed in her Toronto home office, says her working hours have become more flexible through the pandemic.TIJANA MARTIN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Charlene Dunstan describes her migration from the office to work-from-home with a resignation that may sound familiar to many Canadian women: “I didn’t get to choose [it], so much as COVID got to choose for me.”
A full-time professor at Toronto’s George Brown College and a single mother to two teenagers, Ms. Dunstan says that though her hours have “on paper, remained the same,” the division between work and family time has blurred significantly.
“The ‘flex’ has come in terms of how I manage the hours in my day now,” she says. Previously, the time travelling from work on transit was used to “scrub” her workday and prepare for her “second job” as a mom and part-time caregiver for her elderly parents. Now, on days when she doesn’t teach or have meetings, her start and end times can fluctuate.
“There’s a lot less separation of church and state now, and my kids and I have to navigate our space in a different way,” she says. “But necessity is the mother of invention, right?”
‘Employee-driven’ schedules
Through the pandemic, scores of Canadian women had to prioritize their dependants at the expense of their careers, resulting in a corporate exodus now widely referred to as the “she-cession.”
While there are signs of a recovery – Statistics Canada reported in September 2021 that the only age group yet to return to pre-pandemic employments levels is women in the 55-plus category – that doesn’t take into account the pay raises and advancement opportunities that may have been lost.
For many women struggling to make it work during the pandemic, flexible hours have been a must to keep up with job and household responsibilities. But could a more flexible workday or work week be key to helping women advance too?
It’s an idea being embraced more and more by organizations, employees and even governments. In a November 2021 survey of 800 managers across Canada by human resource consulting firm Robert Half, 48 per cent said they allowed their employees to set their own hours, and 31 per cent said they don’t mind if their direct reports put in fewer than 40 hours a week as long as the job gets done.
In the U.K., Parliament tabled the Flexible Working Bill in July 2021 which, if passed, would mandate flex time – including self-determined hours, job sharing and four-day work weeks – from the point at which employment contracts are signed.
Closer to home, Toronto-based HR solutions firm Humi has been bending its own relationship with time. Humi consults with outside companies on their own practices, but internally they’ve made changes too. Andrea Bartlett, director of people operations at Humi, says the pandemic prompted the creation of some “focused” pilots for staff, 40 per cent of which are female-identifying. Policies include flexible hours, an unlimited remote-work policy, early weekends (which kick off at 1 p.m. on Fridays) and a totally revamped parental-leave policy.
Core hours at Humi are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Ms. Bartlett says, but outside of that, schedules are predominantly “employee-driven.” She notes that the topic of time has consistently percolated within Humi’s internal chat channel designated for women.
Flex time at Humi has so far been an overall boon for morale and has shown zero negative impact on productivity, Ms. Bartlett says. She notes that employer attitudes will have to shift if women are to be able to thrive at work and at home.
“It’s frustrating to know how many small- and mid-sized businesses rely on employment-standard minimums for things like parental leave, which certainly doesn’t help women who have left the workplace to take care of their family,” she says.
Ms. Bartlett predicts that we will see a “drastic change” in the types of benefits and programs that employers offer for their female workforces.
“I think flex time is a start, and a topical trend because of COVID, but it’s going to [have to] become the norm.”
Redefining ‘time well spent’
As some employees begin to embrace less conventional hours, the wider working world will be forced to accept more nuance in terms of what “time well spent” actually means. For some, flex time might be an 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. day; for others, it may be unlimited time off to care for a sick relative.
Sonia Kang, associate professor of organizational behaviour and human resource management at the University of Toronto, says that flex time is, ironically, not immune to prejudice itself.
“If you connect an intervention to some group that has been traditionally stigmatized in a work environment, then the intervention itself can become devalued,” Dr. Kang says. “What we now see is that men are less likely to take parental leave or use flex time, because there’s this idea that those things are for women.”
Dr. Kang has one possible rebrand strategy: adoption by those in leadership.
“One of the most important things is to have messaging around the wide variety of things that flextime might be used for, and then also a modelling of it [by management],” she says. “Like, ‘Hey, like I’m taking this time for myself as well.’”
For her part, Ms. Dunstan says that her new work routine has had some positive results: significantly less tension heading into the workday, the ability to take her elderly father to doctor’s appointments on her lunch hour and the opportunity to enjoy slower mornings with her kids before they head off to college.
“Their job is going to school, and so it’s like now I’m around for their work,” Ms. Dunstan says. “And because we can’t delineate as much, I have to be much more mindful. I look at it as a good thing – and if Mommy’s happy, everybody’s happy.”
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