The Talent Exodus — Recovering an Inclusive Workforce Starts with Bringing Women Back to Work on Their Terms
By: Brea Starmer
Tags: Inclusion, Working Moms, Freelancing, Gig Economy, Future Of Work

In America, work isn’t working for everyone.

People are feeling disenfranchised, their attention divided, and feel they lack control. Folks are tired. I should know: I was laid off seven months pregnant and forced into a freelance career I hadn’t planned.

Across industries, regions, and demographics — and well before the pandemic — 96% of workers said they needed flexibility at work, but only 47% were getting it. As a result, there is a great full-time employee (FTE) escape underway, especially with a critical demographic: mothers and women of color.

The opportunity is here: this highly skilled talent is now accessible in new and interesting ways. Organizations that think creatively and inclusively about how to engage us get to skip the war for talent.

“I believe that every organization in every industry needs a Gig Economy strategy. Not having one in 2020 is like missing the internet trend in 1990 or the mobile revolution in 2010.” — Paul Estes, Author, Gig Mindset

We Can’t Do It All

Half of the workforce would change jobs for greater flexibility. More staggering than that is the 83% of working moms who say they would leave their current jobs for an opportunity that better aligns with their work-life needs.

Brenda Fisher had built up nearly two decades of experience at large tech organizations when she found herself the only mother in a 70-person, almost entirely male team. Despite her success as a Senior Product & Marketing Manager, her employer gave her no flexible options, so she stepped out of the traditional workforce to pursue a work arrangement that would allow her to meet the needs of her family.

“I didn’t feel supported as a working parent and was not able to ‘show-up’ in the way that I wanted for my family,” said Brenda, “nor was I able to do my best work.”

The employer red flag of this decade: your highly-skilled employees are looking for a way out of your old-school working model.

The pandemic has magnified the stressors that have been building. We’ve all read the headlines about the “shesession” taking place as women leave the workforce to homeschool our nation’s children. As more people, especially caretakers, reach the breaking point, we continue to see the pace of workplace attrition accelerate.

Where are these workers going? And what does it mean for your organization? Let us take a look at three trends contributing to the ‘Great FTE Escape’ and what brands need to consider.

1/ Freelance: the $1.2 trillion workforce movement

America has a storied reputation as the land of dreamers and changemakers. We are industrious, innovative, and entrepreneurial. After decades of movement toward employed work, the mid-2010s began to see a steady rise of Americans moving toward freelance work.

This is how Brenda, the Senior Product & Marketing Manager, reentered the workforce. After taking a summer to re-evaluate, Brenda began consulting with a company that she says allows her to “show up authentically as a parent and do the work I love — but for less than 40 hours per week.” These new and innovative models of work are catching on.

Freelancing continues to build steam, in part, by creating opportunities for those who can’t participate in traditional employment.

Caregiving responsibilities, shuttered sectors, and personal health concerns have created a booming pool of potential freelancers. By the end of 2020, freelancers were predicted to number more than 64.6 million, a nearly 13.5% jump from 2019.

And by 2023, freelancers like Brenda will make up at least 50% of the workforce. The primary reasons cited for leaving the traditional workforce: non-inclusive culture, caretaking needs, and a desire for more flexibility.

In the coming year, senior-level managers are expected to be among the fastest growing groups to move to independent contracting. This will continue to increase the value of the freelance talent market, currently upwards of $1.2 trillion.

Common categories of highly-skilled freelance talent include data analytics, strategic planning, web development, and media production. These professionals are available in a myriad of ways: through curated digital talent platforms, consulting and staffing firms, and sometimes through progressive procurement initiatives to build direct supplier relationships.

It’s safe to say this trend is making a mark. According to a Harvard Business School and Boston Consulting Group survey, nearly 80% of respondents believe the workforce will be “more fluid, shifting between multiple employers and ramping up/down with much higher frequency” in the future.

2/ Talent drain: Women leaving the workforce

The U.S. economy is losing women across industries, sectors, and levels. ALL of the job losses in December were women. Most of those were women of color. Let us all sit with that for a moment.

The ongoing fallout of the pandemic has left half of working parents without childcare, leading 1 in 3 mothers to consider leaving the workforce. Last September saw 865,000 women drop out of the workforce — 4x more than men — as second-shift (caregiving) and third-shift (homeschooling) responsibilities fall disproportionally on women.

The effects of this fall-out will be felt for a generation.

As half of an entrepreneurial power-couple, Sarah Peck didn’t enter into motherhood expecting to be the “default parent.” The Founder of Startup Parent split childcare drop-off and pick-up duties, bath time, and weekend morning shifts with her husband, who serves as CEO of a benefits corporation. Then, the pandemic hit.

Many dual-working or single-parent households are “propped up by invisible hands that form the backbone of our economic system — grandparents that take kids to school, second nannies, aunts, uncles.” However, Sarah and her partner have no family nearby. “We had six months without childcare — no backup nanny or family members around” to fill the 45-hour-per-week childcare vacuum for their toddler and preschooler. To compensate, both Sarah and her partner took significant steps back from work for half a year — an irony, given that her work at Startup Parent is focused on helping parents navigate the challenges of working while raising young children.

Her intimate proximity with the pre-pandemic challenges of working parents offered a unique lens through which to observe how shuttered childcare and closed classrooms put an added crunch on parents.

Sarah Peck

“I’m not sure whether people realize that crippling parents and caretakers cripples the entire economy,” she said, noting that the scale of loss from parents unable to work is neither temporary nor limited to individuals. With as many as half of daycare centers expected to remain closed for good, she worries that many parents who were already struggling to secure childcare will be unable to return to work long-term. “It was already tremendously tough to be a working parent in a society that has little civic infrastructure to support working parents and workplace norms that provide cruelly little support to working parents,” she said. “Without caretaking, the economy crumbles.”

Similar warnings about the reverberating economic impact of losing working parents are being echoed by many economists and business leaders. The talent drain is a devastating threat to a decade of progress in closing the economic gender gap, with women of color facing the greatest impact. Latinas bear the lion’s-share of the burden, forced to drop out of the workforce at three times the rate of white women and four times the rate of black women.

In combination with the rise of remote work, flexible freelance is uniquely positioned to divert the talent drain and keep high-impact women, particularly moms, sustainably engaged in the workforce.

3/ Mental health: retaining productive workers

Ask any ten people who are working remotely how they like it and you’re likely to get as many different answers. Some people are living their best life in this set-up while others feel like they are suffocating. Collectively, we are all suffering with the grief of 2020.

At first glance, it may seem that certain personality types are better positioned than others. For example, in normal circumstances. introverts who prefer a calm, peaceful environment “might initially enjoy working from home” compared to extroverts who “tend to enjoy a busy, lively environment,” says John Hackston, head of thought leadership at The Myers-Briggs company, a leading psychology resource provider. But these are not normal circumstances, and the presence of others, particularly kids, at home makes navigating work-from-home productivity and mental health a challenge for people across the spectrum.

This is just one example of how workplace health has shifted out of the scope of traditional programs and benefits. Subsidized health care and gym memberships will not fulfill the outstanding mental health needs of workers today.

On the one hand, we can celebrate that the topic of mental health has largely been released from its former stigma. In fact, as so many people navigate acute life changes simultaneously, discussions about mental health have become bolder not only in social forums but in the workplace as well. This is not surprising given the nearly three-fold increase in reported mental health symptoms, now impacting up to 40% of Americans.

Of those on the proverbial frontlines, middle managers may be the most overlooked cohort. The first point- of- contact for struggling coworkers, they absorb the role of team therapist, adding mental and emotional strain on top of own home and work stressors. Without change, burnout and mental health crisis is ineluctable.

Mental health is now the responsibility of employers.

Dr. Renee St. Jacques

“Employees need a culture of psychological safety in the workplace to operate at their highest, which is something organizations have not previously had to consider,” said Dr. Renee St. Jacques, executive coach and psychologist at Lions + Tigers. “This new world of work requires emotional intelligence - a muscle that leadership and organizations can invest in and build. Truly, our work is only as good as our skill of working with other people."

Beyond the immediate crisis, history suggests that brands will need to prepare for post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS) and the prolonged effects of grief, loss, anxiety on their workforce.

I know that I’m likely talking to exactly those middle- and upper-managers who are bearing the weight of the pandemic’s emotional fallout. As a business leader, mother, and voice for the underserved, I can fully empathize. Still, we need to be asking of our organizations:

What support structures are in place to absorb a crisis? What are the longer-term changes we must make to create a sustainably healthy environment for workers at all levels? How will we empower workers to identify healthy practices?

There are examples of companies leaning into this space. Emirates Airlines deployed intentional programming to help their staff cope with being in isolation when not flying. The company offers everything from group chats and guided meditation to personal counseling for employees who need it.

Brands that take on the task of cultivating new, creative, and holistic ways to equip employees are better positioned to maintain resilience and productivity in the face of uncertainty.

What’s at stake for your brand

The freelance movement. The talent drain among women. Sweeping mental health concerns. As these trends actively shape the future of work, companies will need to consider new and different approaches to tapping talent.

It’s especially critical that brands act quickly to retain and reengage women. “If not soon reversed, the decline in the participation rate for prime-age women could have longer-term implications for household incomes and potential growth,” warned Lael Brainard, governor of the Federal Reserve.

The broad and indiscriminate nature of the pandemic has created a critical mass of awareness.

People, both as employees and as customers, are looking for brands to show up differently. Brands are expected to be empathetic, human, and connected to what’s going on in people’s lives.

To-date, brands are largely failing to take note of the flexible talent revolution. Most virtual board rooms remain closed to a growing pool of high-impact, diverse talent now inaccessible through traditional W2 employment. Brands have the opportunity to rethink their people processes with flexibility as a key construct.

We know brands are capable of revisioning the way they work. As Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, recently said, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months” as businesses rapidly “adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything.”

In the future of work, innovative organizations will compete and thrive thanks to policies to care for their full-time team, while leveraging the skills and talents in the freelance market, mostly focused on enabling flexibility for both. This strike-force combination will build a more inclusive and impactful future for all of us.

There is no going ‘back to normal’. The future of work is already here. The question is, will your brand try to recreate the past or lead into the future?

Coming up in the Future of Work series

Coming up next in this Future of Work series, we’ll unpack the strategic advantage of adopting a flexible talent model. Later on, we’ll explore best practices, further guidance on flex work solutions, boosting meaningful inclusion, and brilliant companies that are working from different angles to make the future of work possible. Onward!