In my last column, I had covered the 30-year decline in women@work in India. A lot has been tried in the last few decades and let’s accept that these efforts have failed to bring more women to work. Now is the time for radical experimentation and the pandemic has provided a glimpse of hope in the form of ‘flexible working arrangements’.
COVID-19 has had a large and sweeping impact on women’s employment in India. Unsurprisingly, more women lost jobs and fewer looked for new work when the recovery was underway. In a cruel twist, women’s employment was higher in sectors such as retail, hospitality and tourism and these sectors bore the maximum brunt of the pandemic.
Amid such terrible news, the pandemic-induced job disruptions triggered the largest employment experiment of recent times – ‘work from home’. For close to two years, companies experimented with a new grammar of a work desk. Several experiments were at play ranging from all teams fully remote, some teams offline, and the rest virtual, optional work from office, to the more recent hybrid work arrangements.
There have been mixed feelings and results. Some studies claim an increase in productivity, others report an eventual decline in collaboration; there is the obvious fallout of employee engagement and the arguments that some roles and tenures were better suited to remote vs others.
On balance, this giant experiment kept the lights on in media companies, advertising firms, telecom, banking, factories, and many a startup fairly successfully. Broadly speaking, companies, managers and employees figured it out. It is therefore not ludicrous to think that a significant number of employees can work remotely (fully or partially) in a highly functional manner.
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Women in employment have been bruised badly by the pandemic. Speaking of urban India, less than 7 per cent women work today. Sadder still is that the number of women seeking employment is declining too.
As we stumble into what feels like a post-pandemic world, it’s important to think about a gender-positive return to workplaces. I am convinced that flexibility (of both hours and location) can be a game changer for urban women.
A fortnight ago, I met the founder of a high-growth baby diaper company and asked her how their return to office was. She told me other than the factory staff the team is fully remote and it’s worked so well they don’t feel the need for a physical office space.
Recently one of my employees got married. His wife works at a tech company and her company has offered a fully remote option, she’s taking it as she saves on the commute and can spend that time on her interests outside of work.
I run a startup and when I reach out to recruiters to hire talent, it’s refreshing to hear the recruiter ask me: Is it a WFH role? Is there any flexibility? Obviously, candidates care and ask these questions of them.
Many of you will have these stories to share. But solving for a gender-positive recovery will need us to codify flexibility. It cannot be left to the agency of an individual or manager. For wide-reaching impact, we need to define flexible work arrangements, set up standards to offer them, and figure out ways to assess performance.
There was talk of a flexible workplace or remote working act. Currently, the labour laws and codes don’t cover this in a sensible manner (there is some mention of this in a draft model order but it is not highly actionable). Several countries have passed regulations regarding flexible work – Spain, Finland, UK, EU – however in our context, I feel the Singapore approach is worth studying.
Singapore has not taken a rights-based approach, instead, they have created voluntary standards for employers and employees. They’ve done this via consultations with the industry and employees to define flexible working in a terrific granular manner. Enlisted are four broad areas in Singapore voluntary standards.
1. Getting companies to define FWAs (flexible working arrangements): Everything can’t be flexible or fully flexible. So they’ve asked companies to define Flexi-load (part-time e.g. 5 hrs a day), Flexi-time (hours staggered across the week e.g. Mon-Wed) and Flexi-place (remote days defined) roles. They’ve defined this differently for larger companies vs smaller ones.
2. Explaining to employees how to ask for FWAs: Clear process to look for FWA opportunities in a company and how to set up the chats with managers.
3. Training and structure for assessment for FWAs: Transparent process with objective criteria focused on removing bias vs offline employees.
4. Signaling around FWAs: Creating a logo or badge that companies can use to display their adherence to the FWAs as employers of choice. They can then sign up for grants and workshops to enable these as well.
Fundamentally this works for Singapore and every other country that wants to codify this because the employer sees benefit in being able to attract talent that they would’ve otherwise missed. There is enough recognition of the diversity dividend in India and there’s every reason for this to work here too.
The need is for stakeholders – employees and employers – to create voluntary standards. Let a flexible workplace be a badge of honour. In 2022, let’s have a competitive list to judge Best Workplace for Flexible Working with separate Gold vs Silver vs Bronze standards.
There are some economists who fear that more remote or flexible work arrangements will increase the pay gap between men and women. Our start point in India is to create an environment that enables willing women to work. There are always trade-offs, getting more women into the workforce is the larger challenge today and we have the results of a two-year experiment to create an enabler like never before.
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Simran Khara is a startup founder. She is an alumnus of ISB, Hyderabad, London School of Economics (UK) and Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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