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    Linked: Covid-19 Explodes the Myth That Women ‘Opt’ Out of the Workforce

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    I’m a man with no children. So, working extra hours when the need arises isn’t really an issue. (It’s a mental health and work/life balance issue when it never ends, but when that happens I can choose to go do something else, and we’ve made some progress in recognizing this in many workplaces.) On the other hand, I know, pretty instinctively, that if I put a hard 40 hour limit, or a hard ending of my day at a certain time, no matter what, I’d probably be out of a job. Yet, for people with children, there needs to be a hard cap on the hours spent working. The pandemic creating this home/virtual school issue made this worse, and more obvious, but it’s always been an issue. Lots of workplaces talk a good game about balance and flexibility, but when push comes to shove, most of them will also demand that you figure out your childcare issues on your own time and be available to work in a pinch. So, you login from home all evening and work, and if you’re a single parent, the kids get ignored, or maybe you can find someone else to watch them for you. If there are two parents, you’d better hope you both don’t have those kinds of jobs, because one of you needs to be available for childcare, you can’t both be online working all night. 

    And, if you have to choose which one leaves that kind of work arrangement, well, in general, women get paid less and have less advancement opportunities, (partially because they are more likely to “opt-out”), so they are going to be the ones to opt out, perpetuating the impression that women make these choices, that are then used to justify not changing the workplace to accommodate working mothers. After all, they’re likely to leave anyway, right? 

    It’s really quite the little, vicious, circle we’ve made for women in the workplace. 

  • Shared Links (weekly) Oct 25, 2020

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    A Call For Greater Investment In Workplace Mental Health: Leaders From Facebook, YouTube, Best Buy, Verizon Media And More Weigh In

    Secure Phone Disposal

    Mental Health Benefits Are A Long-Term Strategy, Not A Contingency Plan

    Council Post: Let’s Talk About Mental Wellness, Even At Work

    October’s Notable Cases and Events in E-Discovery

    How to Network Professionally During the Coronavirus Pandemic

    Facebook Download Your Information Function Omits Significant Amounts of Evidence

    You Need a Personal Highlight Reel

    The Powerful Purpose of Introverts: Why the World Needs You to Be You

    How to create employee accountability without in-person interaction

    Don’t Change What Works

    Five Great Reads on eDiscovery for October 2020

    Mental health improves in employees after company moves to 4-day work week

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    Linked: Why Threats from QR Codes are Flourishing

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I have noticed this, haven’t you? Suddenly, QR codes are everywhere: “The COVID-19 pandemic has helped fuel the QR code renaissance. The glory of QR codes is you don’t need to touch anything apart from your own smartphone to use them. It is a quick and easy contactless system—and everybody is already carrying a suitable…

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    Linked: Why IT Departments Need to Consider Deepfakes

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    If I had to guess, I think most people, when asked about “deepfakes”, if they are concerned at all, are concerned about elections, political fakes, or famous people being taken down by fake videos. We aren’t thinking about phishing, and yet, in a time when many companies are struggling with employees who can’t seem tor…

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    Linked: Why you should still take vacation time during the pandemic

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    I totally agree with this, we took a week off in August. We didn’t travel, per se, though we did take some day trips to explore some wildlife preserves and state parks in the area, but I know that I needed that break. Heck, with the way this year is going, I might need another…

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    Financial Stress and Mental Health – Why Younger Employees Leave

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    I think this is interesting in a couple of different ways. Clearly, workers are putting a much higher value on their own mental health, and companies that don’t get that, and support it, are going to end up having quite a bit of turnover.

    But, the other thing that I wanted to think more about was what those specific reasons say about the mental health of Millennial and Gen Z workers. They seem to be dealing with a lot of stress around finances, and having that stress impact their mental health. Is that new? Or is it more likely that Gen X and Boomers have had those same stresses, but didn’t really identify them as mental health issues, like anxiety.

    I think there’s something to that. Not to start talking about how things were “back in my day”, but I don’t recall anyone talking about anxiety in the same way we talk about it now. I suspect that many of us had anxiety around finances, we just didn’t call it that, and our solution to that anxiety was, of course, to work harder and longer.

    And guess what? The next generations watched us do that, especially the Baby Boomers, and realized that it doesn’t actually work. Our mental health has sucked, for years, and we just didn’t admit it. They are willing to talk about it, and look for work that fits with lessening stress, especially stress that is related to finances.

    Now, you would think that if they had more stress around finances, they would also just “work harder and longer”, but that assumes that the relationship between employers and employees is the same as it was 25-30 years ago, and it’s just not. Companies come and go now overnight. They run out to hire when things are growing, and rush to fire when things are not growing. Whole industries barely exist anymore. None of us live in the same work world that we grew up in any more.