Jenny Galluzzo joined Mita Mallick, head of Diversity and Inclusion at Unilever, for a webinar with Mathison, a job marketplace for diverse talent, as part of their inclusive leadership series about supporting working parents during Covid-19 and in the future.
You can watch the full video here.
The main takeaways are:
Our resident LinkedIn guru and Second Shift member Katie Fogarty led a boot camp for a select group of NYC members but lucky for everyone else she is willing to give her tips and tricks to maximize success on LinkedIn!
Here are three resources that offer guidance and inspiration for crafting powerful LinkedIn Summaries. Each of these resources shares examples.
For more tips on leveraging LinkedIn, job hunting and telling a powerful professional story, you can follow Katie on LinkedIn here.
A note from Jenny:
The idea of normalizing the conversation about parenting in the workplace is very important. A recent personal story written in The Atlantic highlights the importance of candor about the realities of family in the workplace and the lengths people go, ineffectually, to hide one side from the other:
“Why would people do this? Why pretend kids are of “little importance”? When work and parenting seem at odds—because our culture tells us they’re at odds—mothers and fathers feel forced to demonstrate their commitment to one (the work side) by minimizing their concern for the other (the parenting side). They do not want their bosses to think they are anything other than 100 percent committed. “
Employees cannot feel afraid of what might make someone else uncomfortable– aren’t they told by leadership to “bring your whole-self to work?” I am the boss and just this morning I was fearful about revealing a personal detail at work– I realized too late that I booked a meeting with a (female) investor too close to my son’s birthday party. I thought about pretending it was a different conflict but then decided to bring my “whole-self” to the conversation. I owned up to the mistake and the reason why I had to reschedule–it felt scary but freeing to choose to make be bold and vulnerable. Ultimately, if the investor didn’t get it then I don’t want to do business with them.
At The Second Shift, we try to create a world where we don’t compartmentalize life and work. I don’t want my employees to waste time and energy trying to figure out how to make it to ballet or to a doctor appointment with an ill parent. Better they just do their job efficiently and are responsible– I do this myself and need to trust them to be grown ups and do the same.
“Put simply, mothers and fathers ought to come clean about the nature of their lives. We can’t fix problems that we pretend don’t exist; we can’t improve the lot of parents at work if we pretend we aren’t parents.”
Sallie Krawcheck busting myths about women and money in an article on the ways women are spoken down to when it comes to money and equity. Her message– buy the latte! Don’t let society tell you to save the latte cash and you will be rich or you have to choose if you are a Carrie (buys shoes) or a Miranda (saves money). This is a distraction from focusing on the systemic issues that keep women from gender equity.
“….as infuriating as it is to be patronized, that’s not the biggest issue. All this nonsense about lattes and shoes is shifting the attention–and thus the blame–for the underlying systemic money challenges women face, to the women themselves. The pink tax, the wage gap, the debt gap, the funding gap, the domestic work (and emotional labor) gap, and–my personal crusade–the investing gap.”
Sallie and her company Ellevest are taking power back into the hands of women with skills building, investment advice and financial tools to level the playing field. Because, she says, “As Gloria Steinem has said,– We will not solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth. So, ladies, buy the f***ing latte, because I’m going to need you caffeinated when we do this thing.”
A new global talent trends study was released by LinkedIn and the among the biggest trends in the workforce is the move toward more flexibility. This is great news for The Second Shift and women! When we launched in 2015 flexibility was seen as something too disruptive and too progressive for many organizations to consider. Today things are rapidly changing as the need to attract and retain talent is a strategic initiative for hiring managers and studies the myriad benefits of a flexible work environment including:
“According to research by Werk, a people analytics software startup that helps companies improve their flexibility performance, the most in-demand types of flexibility are the ability to work remotely at times while keeping an assigned desk, the autonomy to step away for a few hours for personal reasons, and the freedom to shift hours (e.g., to avoid rush-hour traffic). “
So what’s a business to do if they want to become more flexible and are afraid of disrupting the status quo?
The Second Shift has thousands of women looking for just these types of work arrangements and we are happy to fill your open roles and provide a roadmap to hire and back-up your flexible employees!
When the issues surrounding women and families in the workforce are framed as a “work/life balance” issue it creates a dynamic where women (and men too) blame themselves for not being able to handle the stress and guilt of work and family. Caitlyn Collins makes the argument in her recent NYTimes op-ed that in her studies she sees this as an issue that is political, not social. If we focus on issues like paid leave, affordable childcare and universal pre-k we take the onus of families (and primarily women) to achieve success at work and at home with no back-up. Right now, for most women in the U.S, this is a losing battle and it forces them out of the workforce and reduces the chances for real gender parity. It’s great to have companies state their desire for workplace parity and inclusion but this is a societal and political issue that cannot be solved on a case by case and company by company basis.
“In a country where most women (too often the poor and racial-ethnic minorities) receive no paid leave at all….being able to work and raise the next generation of taxpayers and employees should never be deemed a matter of mere “luck.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has long offered one of the most generous paid leaves in the U.S. (an unfairly weighted honor considering the dismal competition) However, they announced last week that they are reducing the time they offer from one year to six months. Before we excoriate them on social media it’s worth a deeper look at the reason why: one year of paid leave was too hard on their current employees and did not have a positive lasting impact on the advancement and retention of talent.
Among the myriad debates about parental leave is the argument about what length of time is most effective. The norm in the US is twelve weeks unpaid leave– though California Governor Gavin Newsom recently proposed offering six months. The Gates Foundation found that while three months is too short, one year is too long. The longer leave was difficult for employees to hand off work and it was hard to re-assimilate back into a changed organization. Six months seems to be the de-facto timeframe that is not too short for families and not too long for companies.
There are more factors than what timeframe is best for families including:
financial assistance for childcare
gender-neutral parental leave
flexible schedules
paid sick days.
Acknowledging that the issue is not just about time off, the Gates Foundation is also giving a $20,000 stipend to help with childcare costs. You can read more about this story in the New York Times Upshot. To find out how The Second Shift works with companies to provide fill-ins for workers out on parental leave please reach out to info@thesecondshift.com. Let us help you support your current workers, and look good doing it.
I wish The Second Shift existed when I was going out on maternity leave. As an admittedly type A personality, I plan everything, including the step back in my career that I took a year in advance of getting pregnant. In my role as a sales manager, I was responsible for a national team and was on the road almost every week. I was thrilled with my achievements and moved quickly up the corporate ladder. But I knew I wanted to start a family and this was not a schedule that would work once I had a baby.
So I left management, took a step back and moved to a new company as an individual contributor. I followed all of the advice I had given my direct reports over the years: I was super buttoned up with my notes, follow-ups and pipeline. Once I got pregnant and maternity leave was imminent I became me even more diligent. Pregnancy brain be damned–my turnover documents were super thorough. As my belly was expanding I prepped all of my clients about my coverage plans. I had ALWAYS hit my goals, and I was not about to let having a baby tarnish my record.
The team covering my leave was an incredible but overworked account manager and a sales manager who was already tapped out with too many internal meetings. So even with all the prep work, I came back to crickets… No meetings scheduled, a non-existent pipeline and revenue numbers below 50% for Q1. Not having a maternity leave fill-in wasn’t just a bad business decision for me, but for my company as it meant lost revenue for multiple quarters. It wasn’t the fault of my back-up team, they were already stressed about their own jobs and responsibilities. They should never have been made to cover my work– I should have had a backfill. It was a devastating and unnecessarily stressful “welcome back” for a sleep deprived and emotional new mother.
….If there had been a The Second Shift I likely would not have chosen to take a step back in my career path and leave my sales management role. I would have realized there were other options for my growth.
….If there had been The Second Shift I would have found the perfect member to fill in during my leave. We could have worked together to prepare ahead of my birth and she could have been there to assist me during my transition back. I would have felt supported and my team would have not resented me for the extra work they shouldered while I was gone. Work could have continued on successfully and my sales numbers would have reflected the positive effects of an unbroken workflow with no loss of momentum.
The Second Shift offers you options and takes the burden off parents, families, and co-workers. And I am proud to be a part of this team that supports and encourages female growth and keeps women engaged in the workforce.
I visit a lot of offices. I have moved offices 3 times in the past 2 years; so I can speak with authority about offices and I can say for sure that the move to open office spaces does not increase my personal productivity. In fact, I have clocked it: If I stay home and work from 7-10am on a sprint I am getting the same amount of work done as I do in my office during a normal day. That 3 hours of work time is not broken up with meetings and deciding what to have for lunch and coffee runs and chatting about tv shows and the news. In an open office space find it hard to concentrate on a specific task for very long because of the ambient noise and interruptions. Plus, I am not a fan of headphones or going into another space to work.
I realize I may be in the minority and I know I am adverse to change– I still use a Filofax for goodness sake. But everywhere you go today there are open office spaces with distractable perks like ping-pong and plentiful snacks and blow-out bars. I understand it is meant to provide creativity and foster a collaborative environment… but I don’t buy it and the research is now backing me up: in open offices workers spend more time talking to each other online than they do in person. So there.
Another study shows it takes more than 23 minutes to get back on track when you are interrupted. Which basically means proves that when I work in my pajamas in my bed without speaking to anyone except my friends on Morning Joe I am actually way more productive than if I went to work this morning.
Look, I definitely understand the counter-argument and working remotely does have its challenges: you miss a lot not being around the conversations that take place outside of scheduled meetings among co-workers. You may lose out on opportunities that come up on the fly. And while it may be personally more productive for me to work remotely, it may be less productive for my co-workers to have to catch me up on what I missed.
There are, however larger, less personal business cases for why remote work should be encouraged:
Okay, time to get up and get dressed and go into work for a meeting. I have been at this computer for 2.5 hours and gotten my entire list of “to do” tasks completed. So now I can go to my actual “office” without the pressure of deadlines and enjoy myself and my co-workers.
From Jenny Galluzzo: Co-Founder/ Luddite/ Possible Curmudgeon?
