Work-Life Balance? Prove it. Empathy? Show it.
Before you try to convince me about hybrid work or coming back to the office, let me share the very personal story that my husband and I are currently full-time caregivers for his mother.
And I know that mine is one of zillions of stories about people taking care of parents, children, other family members, their partner, or themselves. Which is why we need to take another look at our RTO (Return To Office) policies. And this is in addition to remote work considerations for people with disabilities, diagnoses, and condition who might prefer or not be able to commute.
Mamma moved into our house around 2 weeks ago after 2 weeks in the hospital.
She is re-learning to walk, and her brain is getting better every day, but there are still words and names she doesn’t remember. The hardest one is still “remote control,” telecomando in Italian.
She just turned 69 years old, but she was disabled before her bad fall. When she is “better” or “back to normal,” she will still be someone who needs our help — a little bit — every day.
I don’t need sympathy. I need flexibility.
I need to work from home so that every time she makes a sound, I can adjust her blanket, help her to the toilet, or get her a snack.
Which is greater: your need for me to be in an office? Or anything Mamma needs right now? There’s a clear winner here for me.
What are your company values? Work-life balance? Prove it. Empathy? Show it. “Innovation can happen anywhere”? Yes it can.
That includes my desk at my house.
How do you prove that you value work-life balance? Can you still “value” that while asking people to move away from their family or support system? How do you show job candidates and your workers that you have empathy for them? That you see their worlds through their eyes without your prejudices or assumptions, and you care?
Or are these just talking points in an HR PowerPoint?
I don’t care if you think that offices are better for spontaneous chat or “advancing my career” or whiteboarding or checking how each other smells or whatever.
Mamma is the center of everything right now, and I’m beyond lucky that both my husband and I can work from our home. Smartworking, as Italy calls it.
She’s making incredible progress given where we were not quite a month ago. And I believe that part of that progress is that she is showered with love all day. We talk to her. We move her around. We cook every meal for her (more my husband on that one as she’s always hated my cooking).
I can’t imagine what life would look like right now if both my husband and I had to keep going into an office.
If we were gone 10 hours a day including the commute. We’d have to hire a full-time caretaker to bring Mamma to the toilet, cook her food, keep her company. Is that the same? Would she be healing as well as she is if she had a babysitter but not her own family around her, day after day?
Empathy moment: how would you feel if you were recovering from something quite grave, and your family and main caretakers didn’t stay with you all day? Would you feel loved? Valued? Would you feel like your closest family were really invested in your progress?
We’re still getting work done.
OK, not as much as we were getting done before all of this happened. I’m lucky that my manager suggested taking whatever time off that I need. But I’m a contractor, so time off is unpaid. I’ve been working as much as I’ve had energy to work.
But I’m getting it done because I have a partner, my husband, that helps me get it all done.
If we are lucky to live this long, someday, this might be you. You might be old, sick, injured, recovering from surgery, etc. You are living with your closest family. Now imagine them leaving you each day, every day, because work says they need to be in the office OR ELSE. And they chose the office over you because they had to, right? They can’t lose this job.
Why are we doing this to people? To families? While pretending we care about work-life balance and empathy? I have no patience for this shit today. Our leaders need to stand up and stay something!
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