bend.
We still expect women to work like they don’t have kids and raise kids like they don’t work.
Amy Westervelt
Sometimes we’re so used to something, we forget to interrogate why we’re going along with it in the first place. A great example of this is the work hours that most workplaces accept as normal.
Emily Ballesteros is a burnout management coach, and in late 2019 she made a TikTok video about why the eight-hour workday no longer makes any sense. In the video she explained that the forty-hour work week was a concept introduced into car factories back in 1926, and while it made sense for manufacturing, it makes no sense for most other industries.
“There are so many industries that are project-based where you don’t need eight hours, and just having someone keep themselves busy for eight hours, you’re losing so much productivity,” she said.
Her other point? The work week was designed for men who mostly had wives at home and who had relatively short commutes to work. Now, almost 100 years later, our workforce looks entirely different, and those rules that everyone has accepted as standard—well, they’re simply outdated and make no sense.
Of course, many forward-thinking companies have been acknowledging this for years, but it took the pandemic for some businesses to start experimenting with doing things a different way. I can only hope that when the world completely goes back to “normal,” these companies don’t go backward too.
RULE #13: MOVE WITH THE TIMES
I’d like to think our business has stood the test of time for a couple of reasons. Perhaps the one I’m most proud of is that lots of our people have been with us for a long time. Amber was my first ever employee, and she’s still with us sixteen years later. Our CEO, Olivia, has worked alongside me on and off for almost twenty years (she was with me in my previous company too). We also have a slew of leaders who are close to clocking up a decade with the organization, which I’m so grateful for.
Given that we’ve worked together for so long, we’ve really grown up together. We’ve been by each other’s sides at our weddings. Amber was my bridesmaid, and my daughters were her flower girls. I was proud to be the emcee at Bec’s wedding, and I traveled to Bali for Liv’s wedding. We’ve consoled each other through break-ups and celebrated with each other when the right partners came along. We’ve comforted one another through miscarriages, cheered whenever one of us fell pregnant and supported each other through our childrens’ births.
When we first started the business, I was in my mid-twenties, as were a lot of my team members. We hadn’t yet started our own families, and life was a lot less complicated. As my babies came along, I started to study and think deeply about what I wanted the experience to be for my colleagues as they also entered this life phase. Through my own experience of having to figure out how I was going to continue to get my needs met and also now meet the needs of a baby, I was acutely aware of how hard it was. Had I not been my own boss, I could easily have dropped off the career ladder and chosen a different path. I didn’t want that for me, and I didn’t want it for my people. I had so much to give, and I felt the tug of having to be a role model to my children as much as I so dearly wanted to be a role model for my people.
I started to experiment with leaving the office early and with different forms of childcare, and as I experimented with this flexibility, it became clear to me that the number one priority for us to be able to retain our amazing people and also continue to grow our business was to create a flexible environment. And as time went on, I started to see how flexibility was needed not just for the parents in our organization but for the non-parents too.
I cache all of these learnings with a deep understanding of how privileged we are to even be having these conversations and how much privilege has played a part in our success. I also want to say how committed I am to using that privilege to make life better for others who haven’t been given it.
When it comes to the businesses I’ve been privileged to start and build, I’ve always tried to hire great people and then trust them to do their jobs. Giving flexibility is one way of expressing gratitude to our people, but it’s also a nod to the fact that the way we work has changed. Our ability to work in open-plan offices where it can be hard to focus for long periods of time has diminished. If you once commuted for hours a day to an office, you’ve likely just earned those hours back. The pandemic, while teaching us a ton of other valuable lessons, has shown us this for sure.
Flexibility means different things for me and my people. And as I said, it’s not just the parents who need flexibility. We have a lot of people in the team who need more than just clocking in and clocking your needs at certain times.
My general manager, Amber, is from New Zealand. When we first met, she was living in Sydney and we worked together there in our office (which translated to a tiny little room at the front of my tiny little apartment). After many years of being in Australia, she started to feel the pull back to New Zealand, especially as she and her husband started trying for kids themselves. She wanted to be closer to her sisters and brother and the nieces and nephews that were coming along in fast succession.
Amber moved back home, and there were a few years there where she worked with a local company in Auckland. I missed her immensely during that time and asked her to come back into the business. I knew a big move wasn’t in the cards, so if I wanted her back on the team, then we’d all just have to find a way to make it work. She initially started working on a schedule of three weeks in Auckland and then a week in the Sydney office, with a bit of leeway on either side if there was a major event on, or if there was no pressing need to be in either place. When Amber had her first baby we flexed again, having her drop down to part-time when her maternity leave ended and cutting out a lot of the travel until she was ready to ease herself back in.
When my chief of staff, Lucy, worked in Australia, she commuted each week from Melbourne up to our Sydney headquarters. Until circumstances changed globally, she divided her time between Los Angeles and Melbourne and Sydney and went wherever the business (and I!) needed her most. This meant she often faced intense periods of work when she was in LA or Sydney when it was needed, but she then pulled back when she was home with her family in Melbourne. This nomadic way of living and working is not for everyone (and given the different time zones, it often meant Lucy started early and finished really late, and worked through weekends and over public holidays), but if you’re looking for flexibility, excitement and autonomy, then this is the gig for you.
The rest of the team have full flexibility too. When the pandemic hit, our flexibility was taken to the next level, and it’s stayed that way since. Our people now choose if they want to come into the office, and that generally means they feel more in control of their time and their work. Mostly, with the exception of a few company-wide meetings, they choose what hours they work as well.
When it comes to flexibility in the workplace more generally, I regularly see one of two things happening. I see companies insist on policing their employees’ time, when people are really crying out to manage their own time so they can blend their two worlds of work and play. The other thing I see is companies that like to think they have a flexible culture when in reality their practices are far from that.
A business might have a written paternity leave policy but make jokes about any man who actually takes it. They might say they support working mothers yet roll their eyes at the mother who has to log off twenty minutes early to pick up her kid from daycare. They may say that flexibility extends to non-parents, too, but then there’s an expectation that if overtime needs to happen, it’s the twenty-somethings or the single people who should do that work. It feels to me that we’re still operating in a structure that was built for our parents’ generation, and if we want to build the best teams, attract the best talent and love the work we do, that’s going to have to change. The structure needs to move with the times, and our leaders need to flex too.
I truly believe that the companies that don’t respond to how their employees want to work and that don’t do things differently are going to be left behind by other employers who are happy to be more progressive. Being generous with flexibility can be really hard work for employers. It certainly has been for us, but I’ve always been adamant that if we don’t lead the way on it, then nothing will change.
RULE #14: NORMALIZE PREGNANCY
In April 2021, luggage and travel company AWAY appointed Jen Rubio as its new CEO. Ordinarily, this story wouldn’t have much significance. After all, Jen was a co-founder of the business and had been acting as CEO for two months, which made her the obvious choice. But the fact that Jen was eight months pregnant at the time of her appointment makes the story a little more interesting.
“It’s not lost on me that our board and investors, who have nearly $200 million invested in this company, encouraged me to take on the CEO role at eight months pregnant. I know this kind of support is not common in many companies—we need to change that,” Jen wrote in an Instagram post.
Despite laws against pregnancy discrimination, in the past 10 years, there have been almost 50,000 claims filed in the United States. This is an extraordinarily high statistic that needs to be spoken about more and addressed in our workplaces. If you’re an employer, it’s important that you understand what constitutes discrimination, and if you’re an employee, it’s important to document every conversation and every interaction if you feel there’s a chance you might be discriminated against.
I can vividly remember so many occasions of various team members over the years sharing their pregnancy news with me. I can tell you exactly where I was when they told me, and I can remember exactly how they told me. Each time I’ve jumped up and down in excitement with them, and on the few occasions people have felt worried about how they were going to manage and what the future might hold, I’ve sat them down and made a plan, promising them that we’re in this together and we’ll make it work. And somehow it has.
RULE #15: THE UNWRITTEN RULE
Back in 2014, Joe Biden—then vice president of the United States—sent a note to his team around the time of Thanksgiving. He wrote:
To My Wonderful Staff,
I would like to take a moment and make something clear to everyone. I do not expect nor do I want any of you to miss or sacrifice important family obligations for work.
Family obligations include but are not limited to family birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, any religious ceremonies such as first communions and bar mitzvahs, graduations, and times of need such as illness or a loss in the family.
This is very important to me. In fact, I will go so far as to say that if I find out that you are working with me while missing important family responsibilities, it will disappoint me greatly. This has been an unwritten rule since my days in the Senate.
Thank you all for the hard work.
The note was recirculated in the media around the time of his election to president, and I love it because it sends a clear message about the culture he wants to create in his team. It gives permission for his employees to bring their whole selves to work and prioritize their family obligations, setting the scene for what’s acceptable and what’s not.
I’d be willing to put money on the fact that any leader who adopts a similar philosophy will most likely get the best from their people just as soon as that first communion or bar mitzvah is over.
RULE #16: WHOSE KID IS THAT?
Last year I was working away at my desk and was super focused on a phone conversation. I had my head down and eyes closed, concentrating hard on whatever it was I was talking about, and wasn’t aware of what was going on around me. When the call was over and I’d put down my phone, I looked to my right, and there was a little girl quietly sitting there who looked about three years old. She didn’t belong to me (surprisingly), and I was pretty sure she didn’t belong to any of my team members either. “Oh, hello!” I said. “Who are you?” Our creative director, Cecilia, jumped in and said that the toddler was her best friend’s daughter. She explained that her friend had to go to an appointment with her husband and needed someone to watch her little girl for a few hours.
I freaking love that Cecilia knew this would not be a problem at all in our office. I love that no one on the team batted an eyelid and that everyone played their part to make that little girl feel welcome. What I love the most about this is that Cecilia knew we wouldn’t mind her friend’s daughter being dropped off one bit and didn’t even think to ask—her friend was in need, and she did what she needed to do. Plus, Cecilia is a grown-up and knows that she can catch up on any work she needs to get done whenever she pleases. Turns out she didn’t need to play catch-up because that kid was so well behaved and just colored the whole time anyway. (And on that note, where do I find one of those types of kids? Asking for a friend, of course . . .)
RULE #17: LET THEM CHOOSE
While working from home is an incredible experience for some people fortunate enough to have the room and the resources to design a space they love, for others it’s tough. For people living with roommates, carving out a quiet space to work can be hard. For people with children at home, this also delivers a unique challenge (and I’m on good authority with this one—our schools were closed here in Los Angeles for thirteen months, and I had five kiddos virtual schooling at home). Not only did we parents have to work hard to keep the kids away from our work calls and meetings, we were passed another full-time job of ensuring they did their schoolwork. At one point, I calculated that I needed to be across 37 different software platforms in total, all of which required passwords and logins, just for the children to do their work. I struggle to remember my Apple ID on a good day, so this bit was hard for me.
As we found our stride and adjusted to the new way of working during the pandemic, I could see that my team, and many members of our community, were relishing the freedom that comes with remote work. For the vast majority of them, to be given the chance to skip the commute and stay at home in their UGG boots and pajama pants, only having to think about what to wear on top each day, was a wild, readily embraced concept.
But while the introverts among us thrived in the “virtual-first” model, there were also people on my team who I could see were not loving this new-found freedom as much. Sure, they liked their PJs for maybe one or two days a week, but they also missed talking about the latest Survivor episode with their co-workers and having a physical space to go to when they wanted to escape from home for a bit. Generally we’re finding that most people who live near our headquarters will come into the office on a Tuesday because that’s the day we have our all-hands weekly meeting. Some will come in every day. Some will choose to come in a handful of days per week. Some who moved interstate during the pandemic simply dial in. It’s their choice.
RULE #18: LEAVE LOUDLY
I need to leave work early to see my therapist about my anxiety over leaving work early.
Unknown
Women and men—listen up! I want you to start being proud of when you’re leaving the office or finishing up for the day to go do whatever it is that you need to do next—be it picking up a kid from school, going to visit an elderly parent, or going to the gym. Be proud that you’ve given your all and now you deserve the opportunity to do the other stuff that matters to you too. And please, please, I beg of you: don’t skulk out silently feeling guilty, leaving everyone wondering where you’ve gone. No one wins from such martyrdom. Stand up, be proud, and for goodness sake, leave loudly.
RULE #19: FLEXIBILITY WORKS BOTH WAYS
What we’ve learned over the years is that we do need to have some rules and that we also need flexibility on the side of the employee. It must work both ways. If I’m going to create a culture where people don’t lie about going to the hairdresser or going to see their accountant on a Thursday afternoon; or they work from home when they want; or they leave early for a school pickup, that doesn’t come without some compromise. There are of course the occasional times when I expect people to answer an email at night or on a Saturday if it’s really urgent. It’s when your employer is expecting you to write back to that weekend email every single time and be in the office ten hours a day that you have a problem.
For the most part, flexibility in my company works because my team members are grown-ups and they’re able to self-regulate, and I’ve found that when I’m flexible with them, they’re happy with me. When they’re happy, they’re happy to work hard. We all win.