‘We're pushing all of these workers back into the office at the same time as back-to-school season, where we can expect to have a big upswing in viral illness'
According to new Canadian research, a projected "tripledemic” this fall of flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID-19 is going to result in a sharp increase of family-work-conflict (FWC) for employees with caregiver responsibilities.
What that will mean for employers is higher absenteeism, more sick employees, and productivity losses, as employers push return-to-office (RTO) mandates just as back-to-school season begins, creating a perfect storm of stress for workers with family duties.
The research, “I’ve Never Felt So Confused”: A Mixed-Method Study of Managing Family-to-Work Conflict During the Tripledemic, published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, examined the strategies employees took during the fall 2022 tripledemic.
Study co-author Andrea DeKeseredy, PhD student at the University of Alberta, explains how employees were forced to make hard choices.
“You had people taking medicine to mask their symptoms to get through work, because they were trying to save their sick days for when their kids would inevitably become sick,” she says.
“You had people that got to a point of complete resignation where they said, ‘I can't do this anymore,’ and they would just send their child to school or daycare while they were actively infected and contagious. And it leads to the circle where the reinfection process is never ending. People were telling us that there they were facing sickness every two to three weeks, constantly.”
Back-to-school a concern for employees with families
We’re heading into a similar situation this September, DeKeseredy warns, and it will be exacerbated by the fact that many employers are now calling employees back to in-person work full-time.
“We're pushing all of these workers back into the office at the same time as back-to-school season, where we can expect to have a big upswing in viral illness,” she says, explaining that this “unpredictability” of illness, especially for families with children, has upended traditional models of work.
Their study revealed that during 2022’s tripledemic, parents and mostly mothers missed more work for longer periods of time, and the ability for these employees to mitigate work absences was dependent upon what resources they had access to, which was “highly unequal”.
“Sickness has become a workplace labour issue. It is completely inseparable from labour at this point,” DeKeseredy says.
“[COVID-19] threw this wrench into everything we thought about the predictability of work, and we're still dealing with the effects of that.”
Rigid sick leave policies and the ‘ideal worker’ myth
It has been widely documented that the advent of remote work during the pandemic made it possible for many disadvantaged groups to work more, not only because it increased workplace accessibility but also due to reduced exposure to discrimination and bias; women and mothers, in particular, benefited from remote work.
Rachael Pettigrew, associate professor and chair of general management and human resources at Mount Royal University, says the current push for RTO as is being seen with federal and Ontario government recalls, is out of step and threatens those gains.
“I would make a bold statement and say that I think the ‘return to workplace’ is kind of an affront against women,” she says.
“There seems to be a little bit of a retraction — and some of it’s driven by people that maybe have a sense of — if people are working from home, that they’re actually not doing their job, or they’re trying to be sneaky, or the flexibility is bad somehow.”
That couldn’t be further from the truth, she insists. But negative perceptions of remote work persist, in part because of the “ideal worker model” myth, which assumes the best employees are those who can work the standard 9-to-5 workday without any issues or other responsibilities.
“The ideal worker model is this idea that the best workers are those workers who are solely committed to work, and/or have no external distractions,” Pettigrew explains, adding that that model depends on a traditionally accepted model of a one-income household and clear division of work and home duties.
With a stay-at-home partner, a person can go to work and not be bothered by a child home sick, she says. “How work is modeled today, which is still in that ‘ideal worker’ model, does not reflect reality.”
Building a culture of trust through leader modeling
Pettigrew emphasizes the importance of organizational culture and trust as a starting point for countering the absenteeism and loss of productivity that can result from family-work conflict.
By being strict about sick days or not trusting employees to take time when they need and still get work done, she says, employers risk creating a culture built around dishonesty – essentially forcing workers to lie to meet their caregiver needs.
Instead, she encourages employers to foster a sense of understanding, so employees are not afraid to ask for what they need.
“Build relationships with employees where they feel safe to tell you that they're unwell, or where you have trust that that employee is going to do work, even if they have to be remote for the day while they're caring for their child at home sick,” says Pettigrew.
“[It’s about] building more trust in employees to do the job that they're paid to do.”
She adds that modeling by leaders is also an important aspect of this culture building; employees will generally look to leadership for clues about what is acceptable, and this holds true for taking sick days, which means not showing up “when we're hacking up a lung … encouraging someone who seems really unwell to go home and finish their day at home.”
Rethinking workplace norms with cross-training
Taking recommendations a step further, DeKeseredy calls for a fundamental rethinking of workplace norms, again revolving around retiring the old idea of the ideal worker.
“There needs to be a recognition that this archaic belief that you need to be in the office nine-to-five, five days a week, really just does not work for most Canadian families,” she says, adding that the challenges families face in finding affordable childcare only adds to the problem.
“It's expensive, it's a fight to the death in some instances to get a spot,” says DeKeseredy.
“I also think too there's this idea that people can just lean on familial help to fill in those gaps, especially when people get sick or there's disruptions in school. But that's certainly not the case.”
Cross-training can be another way to encourage employees to take sick time when they need it, or to at least not be afraid to ask, says Pettigrew – if an employee knows there is someone who can step in to cover them, they may feel more comfortable asking for leave.
“If I have the psychological safety to know that I can call my boss and say I am really unwell, or my child is unwell, and they have the trust that that will be received well, then we will keep people staying home when they're not feeling well instead of sharing those viruses at work,” she says.
“The more we can grasp the idea that employees have full lives and outside work responsibilities and plan accordingly, I think the better off we are … if we treat them like numbers and just want bodies in seats, then people will leave as soon as they're able for a more welcoming, supportive environment.”
The case for flexibility and expanded more sick days
DeKeseredy advocates for a walking back or rethinking of RTO mandates to start, but says flexible work arrangements and expanded sick leave are also essential for supporting employees and maintaining productivity.
“Without a doubt, we need more sick days, and we need family sick days, absolutely,” she says.
“In an ideal world, the worker would be able to tell you what the ideal number of sick days is for them. They know how many they need. They want to work. That's what’s so upsetting about these remote options being taken away – because they want to work.”
DeKeseredy points to the now documented outcomes of the United States’ rescinding of accessibility for workers, and she implores Canadian employers to learn from that result.
“You look at the data coming out of the United States where they've been a little bit faster to remove these accessibility options, and there's been kind of a mass exodus of women from the workforce,” she says.
"There is so much research out there that shows people working from home are more productive. What about work-family balance? What about quality of life? The benefits to this are so overwhelming that it's really hard to try to understand why someone would want to take that away.”
