DEEP DIVE: Natalie Mayslich and Blessing Adesiyan on the Future of Remote Work

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0:30Blessing Adesiyan:Hello, everyone, and welcome to What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the face of motherhood. This is Margaret. And this is Amy. And today we have two guests. We're speaking to Natalie Macelich and Blessing Adesion. Natalie Macelich is the president of ConsumerForCare.com, where she's responsible for expanding, building, and delivering the company's portfolio of child care and senior care products and services. Blessing Adesion is the founder of Mother Honestly, a platform that provides financial technology and work-life infrastructure to employers and is reshaping the future of women and families at home and in the workplace.

1:09Blessing Adesiyan:Natalie and Blessing are here to talk to us today about a new joint research study between Care.com and Mother Honestly that assesses how remote work truly impacts working families at work and at home. The findings of that study have just been published as the Modern Workplace Report. Welcome, Natalie and Blessing. Thank you, Amy and Margaret. We're so excited to be here today. So tell us, why did MotherHonestly and Care.com team up to field this survey in the first place?

1:37Natalie Mayslich:I'd say that both of our companies, Care and MotherHonestly, understand that without care, working families can't work. And we're both incredibly strong advocates for solutions that make women's careers and their lives manageable. And so much of the conversation or the national conversation has been consumed with the future of work. What does it look like? But we didn't have the data to understand how remote work was impacting employees caring for their children and for seniors. And as we think about what happened over the course of the pandemic, they were the ones who were impacted the most. Millions of women left the workforce.

2:10Natalie Mayslich:And we wanted the data in order to support and understand, does remote work work? Does it make for more productive employees? Does it make for more fulfilled caregivers? And does it make for happier people overall?

2:21Blessing Adesiyan:So Amy and I both experienced this as remote workers during the pandemic ourselves. We were remote workers before the pandemic, and then we continue to be remote workers and teachers and principals and sports directors and added, you know, nine other hats to our office. nurse practitioners, all of these things. Blessing, was this strictly a response to the pandemic, this work and these surveys? Or is this something that you saw women starting to deal with before the pandemic began? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we were already complaining. Mothers were already saying this is too much. This is unsustainable, right?

3:03Blessing Adesiyan:Before the pandemic even hit. I remember at the time I was working in a Fortune 100 company in corporate America, I had already told my husband, look, I'm going to have to quit. You know, this is not going to work. He had a four hour commute. I had a two hour commute. He had kids. I was breastfeeding and pumping. It was a lot. Right. And so we knew that something had to change. And then, you know, unfortunately, you know, the pandemic happened. And then we all saw just how horrible it has been for caregivers because a lot of caregivers had to immediately wear multiple hats you know they were already wearing multiple hats but literally we were wearing it all at the same time as you all have said you know whether it's being a nurse or a chaperone or a cook cleaner everything right we forgot cook that's a good one lunch lady angry lunch lady we were doing it all i was cooking around the clock it was a mini restaurant assembly line i forgot about that I think I blocked it out.

4:07Blessing Adesiyan:Churning out burgers and pancakes every minute. But, you know, that was what it was, right? We all were going through this world where everything was thrown at us from multiple angles. And when we said, let's come together and really think about what is, how has the modern workplace evolved, right? How has working families, how have we evolved before the pandemic, through the pandemic and in this post-pandemic reality? And I think as we look at, we keep talking about the future of work, but what we're saying is, look, the future of work is here, right? Like we already are living in it. And so how do we redesign a workplace that works for everyone?

4:45Blessing Adesiyan:And this report answers that question. You know, employers before the pandemic, research shows that they were pretty clueless about the demands of people who work from home, caregivers in particular, which is who this report is really for caregivers like all of us. didn't get it. And then the pandemic happened. There was a huge silver lining, as this report points out, that if it was impossible, at least it was also visible for the first time. Natalie, can you tell us sort of how that played out in the report?

5:17Natalie Mayslich:Great point. Whereas prior to the pandemic, employers maybe turned a blind eye. I would say it's not like they didn't know because everyone's dealing with their own care infrastructure, your own care issues at home, but essentially turned a blind eye to their employees' needs. They were, during the pandemic, they couldn't, right? They were visually seeing the pets popping up in the Zoom and children popping up in the Zoom. We were all caregivers and we were bringing our whole self, including our caregiver self, to work every day. And so, whereas in the past, there was some level of plausible deniability, employers didn't have the luxury of having that anymore.

5:54Natalie Mayslich:And they needed, and if they wanted to maintain a productive workforce, they needed to help solve for their employees' wholesalers moving forward. And so as we sort of look at the report and what we set out to learn, one of our biggest takeaways was that both employers and employees agree that remote work is working. For employers pre-pandemic, their biggest concern was employee productivity. And what we've proven through remote work and our report and the findings, and even outside our report is that productivity holds. And in fact, not only does productivity hold, in some instances, employees are working more, but being happier while doing it because they have the flexibility to choose when, how, where they show up.

6:38That is pretty groundbreaking and

6:40Natalie Mayslich:life-changing result. We're living in a revolution and the revolution of remote work has already happens.

6:48Blessing Adesiyan:And I think that issue of flexibility is really key to what we're talking about. I know two women, both of whom worked for major corporations, which I will not name, although I am extremely tempted to, who, when the pandemic began, said to their employers, I now need to be with my kids from 10 to noon and from one to three, because I am their default school teacher now as well. And both of them were fired by their companies. And they said, no, you can't do that. We don't have that flexibility. You know, we're serious corporate whatever job they thought was so important that they couldn't spare them for these five hours.

7:30Blessing Adesiyan:Blessing, is that something that you see in the report, that lack of flexibility? And is that something that's just running up against the realities of what's actually going on? I will say both of these people, it was early in the pandemic. And I don't know if those corporations ended up losing a tremendous amount of staff or if other people just felt like I can't lose my job at a time like this. So I guess my kids will just have to figure out school on their own while I keep pretending that I work at this corporate office that has no distractions. Absolutely. So, you know, I think a lot of us, maybe it's my husband calls it selective hearing.

8:04Blessing Adesiyan:I feel like we all forgot what happened in those early days of the pandemic when employers really had no clue what was going on. And so they were all worried that productivity was going to go out of the window. People were not going to show up and do their job to the best of their abilities because they were tendering to kids and so many other things. So employers were really pushing for you to literally be bought in seats, right? Like show that your Slack is green and every, you know, Jabber and whatever, Microsoft Teams, everything, you know, you're green at all times. Big Brother is watching you, basically.

8:39Blessing Adesiyan:Exactly. There were multiple studies that showed that, you know, people were walking around the clock. Our study basically looked at, one, do people want flexibility? Do people want to continue to work remotely? Most knowledge workers went remote. And so is that trend going to continue? And what we found is that both managers and employees agree that this remote work, this flexibility needs to continue. 58 % want that flexibility on their hours. 49 % want more time with their family before and after work. So they're saying, you know what, we really want to continue this, right? Because it makes us happy.

9:18Blessing Adesiyan:It makes our kids happy. And we want to see this continue. So that flexibility is key going forward. But I think what is even more special about this report is that productivity also actually went up, right? So people are working longer hours because at least they have that flexibility to work from home. And so, you know, what we said was, look, remote work works. It's here to stay. It's time for employers to lean in into remote work, especially, especially for caregivers who represent 73 % of the workforce. I want to talk about some of the surprising findings from this report. We're talking to Natalie Maislik and Blessing Adicion, and we will be right back.

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13:27Blessing Adesiyan:It's a multi-layer hyaluronic powered hydration for the entire body. And right now we have a special discount just for you. Get 10 % off your first order site-wide with code FRESH at OSEAMalibu.com. That's code FRESH at OSEAMalibu.com. So there were a lot of surprising findings in this study. One that really surprised me, and I think the authors of the study as well are about to find out, is that the managers agreed that remote work works. I feel like every week I'm seeing some story like, get these employees back in seats and they don't want to. And these darn employees want their cushy suburban backyard lives and they don't want to come back.

14:12Blessing Adesiyan:And what are we supposed to do? It's set up as like managers against employees. And the managers are like, we got to stop this madness. That's not what the report says at all. Natalie, can you tell us a little bit about those findings?

14:23Natalie Mayslich:Sure. So you're right. it was incredibly surprising to read that managers and employees agree because of or in spite of all of the headlines that we're seeing that are like, get everybody back to work. As we think about those headlines, there is the what does the employer truly believe? And then there's also the reality of there's millions of square feet of commercial real estate that are not being filled to justify some of that office space. But as you think about why managers agree that remote work is working and why it's so eye-opening. I think going into the pandemic, the biggest conversation was around workforce productivity.

15:00Natalie Mayslich:Is my workforce showing up? And the answer is whether they're in office, remote, or hybrid, they do show up. And in fact, what we found through the study is that people are in many cases working more hours when they're working remotely, but they're happier doing it because they have the flexibility to choose when and how they're showing up. And so to your point on the two women who early in the pandemic were let go from their jobs because they needed to homeschool their children from 10 to 2, the reality is in a remote world, you could take those two hours to homeschool your children. But you better believe that employee is going to be on between the hours of 8 and 10 to make up for it.

15:39Natalie Mayslich:And so it's much more about ensuring that you are fulfilling on your job obligations and your responsibilities, no matter when you do it. And because we're saving so much time commuting, you have more hours in the day to get your work done, to get your family life done, and to essentially be a stay-at-home mom. You know, the one thing that's really funny to me is pre-pandemic, the conversation for working parents and working moms was working mom versus stay-at-home mom. And it was the mommy wars. I was working from home as a stay-at-home mom, and we're all in it together. And so I think that ability to be productive, to choose your hours has managers recognizing that makes for happier, better, more productive employees who show up and are excited to be there.

16:19Blessing Adesiyan:Another thing that I think plays into that, that the study underscores, it's allowed the parenting balance between spouses to maybe even out a little bit more because the out of house working parent is now at home more of the day. I live in a commuter town and I do think taking the commute out of people's lives, you know, that's two hours where I live in and out of the city. I mean, one going in, one coming out. And I really see the difference of seeing just a different group of people at pickup, at drop off, just being kind of part of the daily lives of their kids. Absolutely. Well, I'm so glad that I didn't think you took the survey.

17:03Blessing Adesiyan:So I'm glad that, you know, it's playing out, you know, on that end for you as well. So, you know, I like to remind us where we started from. When the pandemic hit, we were all worried, right? Unrightfully so. We thought this was going to be it for women. Everybody said, you know, whoa, all the gains, right? All the gender equity gains are now going to be rolled back. It's going to take years, hundreds of years even to come back to the same level, right? So there were multiple speculations. But we also feared very deeply that this would trap women into taking on even greater share or greater burden at home.

17:41Blessing Adesiyan:But our survey actually suggests that the opposite is happening. Men are taking advantage of this new flexibility, this ability to work from home, and they're channeling that into supporting their households. And what we found was that 73 % of men and women said that remote work gave them the flexibility to spend more time with their family. I mean, can you imagine that? And so this is the part that gets me excited because I truly believe that when we get men to lean more into care, then we can get our workplaces to lean more into care. Right. Because think about it. You know, we have more jobs that are CEO than women in the C-level, in the C-suite.

18:24Blessing Adesiyan:So we know that if we can get men to just understand the caregiving responsibilities that happen at home, we are going to move the care agenda forward in the workplace as well. So when we see a data like this, that proves that men are doing more in the household. They're doing more childcare. They are cleaning. They are cooking. That gives me hope. Okay. And so now the playing field is being level, so to say, at home. That was one of the most exciting part of this report. That was something I wanted to ask you about that I read in the report. 77 % of both men and women report that remote work has leveled the playing field for career advancement.

19:04Blessing Adesiyan:And I was very happy to see that. But then my note was like, but is that true? They're pretty sure this has leveled the playing field. Is it too early to see if that optimistic view is playing out or is it playing out?

19:15Natalie Mayslich:Sure. I think, look, it's very early. We are a year out maybe from the pandemic to say that it's level the playing field. But here's what we know. Blessing just talked about how the caregiving responsibilities at work are getting a lot more balanced because the out-of-home parent is now able to come in and help out, help make dinner, help with school and the homework. And what we've also heard from employees and for women is because so much of the workplace construct, the boys club of going out after work, happy hours, that women often care can't attend because they have caregiving responsibilities at home, because there's far lesser and fewer between as a result of remote work.

19:55Natalie Mayslich:The ability to build the connection happens over our Zoom calls with the social connection and the social fabric happens over Zoom now. It might happen in person, but women have more opportunities to participate than they have in the past. And so is it 77 %? Have we seen a step function in the opportunity for women? Probably. I think the question we all need to ask ourselves is not, is it here to stay? I think we have to assume and demand that it is, but it really is. How do we get that to be 100 %? How do we ensure that we have career advancement and equity between men and females moving forward?

20:30Blessing Adesiyan:That social aspect is really interesting because on the one hand, like moms want to get home to their kids. But I also know a ton of young women who work with a lot of men all day and they don't want to socialize with them. Whatever they're doing is not interesting to them. Maybe you don't feel like doing things that other people are doing because of whatever your starting set point is. And that judging your ability to work based on how you socialize with other people hurts women and minorities. And that is something that I feel like people don't understand. And I don't think I understood it when I was working the same way.

21:09Blessing Adesiyan:I mean, I've definitely worked at jobs where men were literally like going out to like clubs afterwards that I was not invited to or wanted to participate in. But even in the much more subtle ways of there may be some social separation between us that bringing it to Zoom is really interesting that you're judged more on your work during the work day and your contributions versus whether or not grab wings for three hours with a bunch of guys you've sat with all day already. We're talking to Natalie Macelich and Blessing Adishion. And when we come back, I want to hear about the future of remote work and how we're going to get it more right.

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