What the pandemic taught us about flexible work options for employees 

It was at the business school where I first learnt about the famous management theory "Douglas Mc Gregor's Theory X and Theory Y".  McGregor, who had a PhD from Harvard and taught at MIT, theorised that there were two ways of thinking of employees. 

The first one, Theory X, assumed workers were lazy, wanted to avoid work, would only work if made to do so by a watchful eye on them, and may need to be coerced in order to perform.  

And the second viewpoint, Theory Y, assumed that workers could be trusted, and that they were motivated to perform using self-direction, to achieve organisational goals without coercion or threat. 

With the Covid-19 virus and the pandemic that ensued from 2020, employers all over the world were forced to change their perceptions of employees to that pertaining to Theory Y, which allowed working remotely from home where there was no watchful eye to keep tabs on them. Instead, clear goals were set with the hope that employees would deliver.  

To everyone's surprise, work-from-home was a raging success, at least for those who had access to technology at home. Not only did the employees manage to deliver targets, some did better, and the most important revelation of all was that employees enjoyed the freedom to look after their health and families with the new flexibility given to them. 

So much so, that employees, especially parents, are now beginning to voice their preferences that there be a continuation of these flexible work arrangements even after the pandemic is over.  

A BBC article, published in October 2021, mentioned how employees with kids think that if the employers cannot accommodate the worker's desire to spend more time with their children, they risk a talent drain as workers find new roles at firms that give them the desired flexibility. 

In fact, many employees at Apple have already voiced their dissent against their CEO who ordered them to return to work three days a week, asserting that those who wanted to work remotely should have the freedom to do so. 

Employees all over the world, like those at Apple, are wondering why they must be ordered to return to work physically when all that will lead to is gargantuan chunks of time being wasted in traffic, an increase in levels of pollution and less work-life-balance, when they could clearly achieve all their targets even when working remotely.

Women with childcare responsibilities who have the option of working remotely, are less likely to leave their jobs. Photo: Salahuddin Ahmed

A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) research published in January 2021 showed that more than half of employees would prefer to work from remote at least three days a week once the pandemic concerns subside.  

A recent survey showed 58% of people who had been working remotely during the pandemic said that they would "absolutely" look for a new job if their employer did not allow them to continue working remotely. 

The pandemic has also blurred the picture for female employees.  Personally, I was pleased with the development of work-from-home as I no longer had to figure out the time management for pick-ups and care for my own daughter. 

However, over and over, I kept reading about how the pandemic was having a very negative impact on women's employment.  Many women worked in low-paid jobs, often earning less than their spouses and with no child-care at home. 

These women were the first ones who opted to give up their jobs when dealing with this problem in dual-income families. People involved in low-paid jobs like housekeeping, were also the most badly hit in the pandemic and thus a larger proportion of women lost their jobs, as women traditionally hold more of these low-paid jobs.  

Yet there were many women, especially those in managerial positions, who were also rewarded with all the flexibility they could want as they were working from home, and who basically saw this new work-arrangement as a blessing. This was the answer to many a glass-ceiling issue as both men and women were working from home.  

Some women who would leave the workforce when they would become mothers because of lack of child care at home, suddenly did not have to quit any more as they could now continue to work from home. 

Those already in the workforce also did not have to rush home to do the lioness's share of the housework at home thus leaving behind all the networking opportunities open to their male colleagues. 

So although this pandemic has brought misfortune to a larger share of the population, it brought a golden opportunity for the people, mostly women, working in the professional sectors. 

Worldwide, the reality during the pandemic definitely has been that women shouldered extra workloads while working at home along with their children who were also schooling from home. However, the important thing to realise is that this is not necessarily a long-term negative of flexible work. 

Eventually, children will go back to school, and that will take care of at least part of the challenge that women encountered working a double-shift when working from home during the pandemic. In fact, when one looks deep into the data, that is what one finds.  

One study, for example, found that women with childcare responsibilities who had the option of working remotely, were 32% less likely to say they are going to leave their job in the next year compared to those who could not work from home.

So what should the employers do to ensure that the huge benefits to employees, the economy and the environment, from learning how to work remotely, are not lost? 

Experts have suggested among other things, to focus on productivity, not face-time and hours logged: to make sure employees are not punished for remote work, employers must measure work by the work itself — not how long they spend doing it. 

Promotions too should be related to the work produced and not be dependent on how long one is physically present in the office. 

The other thing they can do is to allow at least some flexibility of working a few days  a week from home like Baker McKenzie, a multinational law firm based in Chicago, have done- a minimum of two days and a maximum of three days a week in the office for all UK workers.   

The UK has also just proposed a law that an employee has the right to ask for flexible work-hours from the first day of work. 
For employees who have understood the benefits of flexible work, developments like these seem to be light at the end of the seemingly endless tunnel, and the hope is that these enlightened work practices will prevail long after the pandemic has ended.

Rumana Anam is an Assistant Professor in the ULAB School of Business of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.