Well, hello everyone. Uh Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Rachel Peterson. I'm the VP of Marketing at Fountain. We are a high volume hourly hiring platform.And I'm gonna be talking today about the woman's workforce, how to integrate flexible um and equitable practices within your workplace. And I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen to get us started. All righty. Um And so, one of the things that I want to start off with in this conversation is really the fact that a more equitable workplace starts with myth busting management. And what I mean by that is that the status quo of the modern working world, particularly for knowledge workers, you know, it was largely designed for the post World War two, homogenous working population of, you know, fifties, sixties, seventies, um going beyond that. And yet the modern workplace has changed very little despite the fact that our working population has changed a great deal and many of the practices that were put in place that seemingly made sense when a traditional working household had one person working and generally a woman might be staying home, she might be looking after the Children, she might be, you know, taking care of the home, the practices that were designed for that type of society are not the practices that are really going to get us to a more equitable workplace today.

And it's interesting and important to consider that when we're talking about what a modern workplace needs oftentimes the ideas of what is status quo are rooted right in decades past. Um And so what I'm gonna do is talk about a couple of the most common myths uh that exist that prevent us from integrating these flexible practices and then how we can overcome them specifically from a management level. So myth number one, empathy and productivity are opposing behaviors.

Um And so I think this is one that especially as women we often struggle with is this idea that you cannot be both empathetic and also encourage productivity on your team or encourage productivity within your organization. You know, and we can even see this in sort of the, the quote unquote hustle culture that took hold in Silicon Valley um through both, you know, the first tech bubble and then through 2008, 2010 and now beyond to where we are today, there's this idea that like you've got to hustle and if you're not giving that 110% and if you're not doing it in a way that is very black and white, very focused, sort of devoid of emotion that's not productive enough.

Um And so I think when we talk about integrating different types of practices, whether it's optional meetings or no set, working hours, um whether it's, you know, what a track to leadership looks like is that managing people, is that not managing people, all of that needs to come and can come only after we've successfully gotten over this idea that empathy is a barrier to success for ourselves and for our teams rather than empathy being at the root of success.

Um And so instead, you know, I always suggest managing teams knowing that empathy and productivity are two sides of the same coin. So when our teams feel as though we hear them, we're listening to them and we are invested in them as people, that's when we really start to get the type of work that we're looking for out of our teams. And that is both because they want to do their best work for themselves, but also because they understand that they are being seen as individuals and respected as individuals, not just as workers when they come into the workplace. Um Myth number two hours of work, equal quality of work. And this I think is one of the biggest status quo ideas that gets in the way of implementing flexible practices because we are still very much conditioned to believe that the person who is sitting at their desk the longest or in the days of remote work, you know, the person whose slack bubble is green for the longest period of time, that is the person who is working the hardest.

And that is also the person who is creating the highest quality work. And that is not necessarily the case and where that really starts to damage us. Uh not only in terms of thinking about, you know, women who may be in positions of caregiving where the hours of work might be different, but the quality is the same. It also ends up damaging us when we think about uh the neuro diverse workforce and how the expectations that we place on people might not necessarily be aligned to their best way of working. And so this is where we have the opportunity again, going back to empathy to speaking with our teams, to speaking within the leadership team specifically of our organization and understanding, driving home. This idea that the quality of the work matters, the hours that it takes to get there may vary widely from person to person. And I mean that both in terms of a project that might take one person, five hours could take another person 10. Um But also in terms of the actual working hours that we expect from our employees. And I think we fall into a trap similar to that of unlimited PTO, which we know statistically means that people take less PTO.

Um But when organizations start off, simply by saying, oh, we don't have any set hours. What that tends to breed is a 9 to 9 workforce. Right. People are at their desk at 9 a.m. They're sitting there until 9 p.m. They don't know when to leave. Is it ok to leave? And so we have to be really thoughtful, even when we look at a practice, like, oh, we won't have set working hours, think about what that actually means for our employee populations and go a step beyond that to say, hey, here is what we expect from you within a working day. You know, that your projects are in good shape, that you're providing the updates you need to, to your manager. But also that you have the freedom to step away when you need to, to handle the types of things that we know most often come up for women who are more likely to be the primary caregivers in their households, even when they are working full time and understanding that if we judge a woman's career by her ability to be available, you know, 9 to 9, so to speak, that's not necessarily an indicator of how good she is at her job, nor how successful she is going to be in the future.

And so the focus here really needs to be that quality counts. But when and how it happens is far less important and this is where remote work has presented us with some interesting opportunities, but also challenges. I think we have all at this point heard a lot about productivity paranoia. Uh and this idea that because workers are now remote organizations trust less that they are doing the work that needs to be done. And what that was leading to is sort of an influx of unnecessary meetings and check ins and too much kind of oversight if you will. That implies that organizations do not trust the folks that they have brought in to work with them. And so that has been one of the negative side effects of remote work. Whereas on the positive side, it has allowed us more freedom, you know. So for example, if you need to step out for a doctor's appointment, you need to step out to handle childcare or to take a relative to a doctor's appointment. These types of things are now easier to do if you're within a remote work situation, but they also haven't necessarily been served up on a silver platter that has fixed everything.

Um So when we think about our role from a leadership perspective and what we need to do within our organizations to encourage this type of thinking that the quality counts the when and how does not. Um we really need to exemplify that a ourselves and in how we manage our teams and then allow that to move down into how our direct reports are managing their direct reports and so on. Because this is something that really starts as with all things from the example that we set in the workplace and that too can be incredibly challenging, you know. So for example, going back to empathy, we might demonstrate a great amount of empathy when we are speaking to the folks on our team, but we don't have that same empathy. When we consider our own situations, we are harder on ourselves, we are more likely to beat ourselves down. And so again, from the place of empathy, the ability to focus on quality work then comes forward and you are able to divorce that from this idea that it has to be based on the number of hours, someone is physically sitting in a chair.

Myth number three, bring your whole self to work. So this is an interesting one that I think again, tends to bring specific challenges for women because when we think about where we are expected to be present in our lives, it is 100% everywhere. It is 100% at work. It is 100% at home. It is 100% with your Children, with your family, with your friends, with your community, with volunteer opportunities. And we don't have 34 500% of ourselves to go around. And this is another idea that while it started off in a positive realm, this idea that you should bring your whole self, um what it actually translates into is really an inability to give ourselves permission to create healthy boundaries and an inability to allow our teams to create healthy boundaries when we think about how they show up every day.

And so, while the unique characteristics that every individual brings to the workplace are highly valuable and are something that we should be focused on. Something that we should celebrate. We should actually focus on bringing ourselves, telling our teams to bring themselves but not lose themselves.

Um And that's really what can end up leading to burnout both for ourselves as well as our teams is when we don't allow for the space to set healthy boundaries, or when we expect that someone brings every aspect and every ounce of themselves to work every day. Not only is that unrealistic and setting ourselves and the other folks we work with up for failure, but it's also damaging in leading to burnout in that long term way because no one can sustain that pace ad nauseam infinity forever. Um And so, you know, one of the examples that I give of the ways that this can be damaging many moons ago, I was let go from a place where I was working and it was the first time I had ever been let go. And I was so distressed and I, I left this job and, you know, I was talking with my husband and he said, oh, this is good. Maybe this gives you some time to focus on hobbies. And I realized that I did not have a single hobby. I couldn't tell you what my interests were outside of. Well, I led marketing at the start up and before that I led marketing at another start up and before that another start up. Um, and so there was this realization there for me that while I had built a very successful career, it had been focused on giving my whole self to my work. And that is particularly something within the tech space.

As I'm sure many of you come from young or hypergrowth organizations, you know, that is encouraged, right? Even the perks that are offered are all about bringing your whole self to work, sticking around, becoming best friends with your coworkers, spending your time with them outside of work.

And that on the one hand can create a very strong community within your workspace, but it can also lead to a lack of identity outside of work. And this is once again an idea where we are setting the example. And so if the example that you are setting is I'm always here 100% I'm always on. There are no boundaries. That is the example that we're setting for our teams as well. Uh And that is really the most damaging thing, even if we're telling them one thing, if what they're seeing from us as leaders at an organization is another, they're going to follow what they see, not necessarily what we tell them because we're not living up to those values.

Um And then, you know, finally, the most important key to an equitable organization is operating with the understanding that the why is fixed and the how is flexible and that why is why we do what we do, what drives us in the mission, what gets us up every day and takes us to work, why the company exists, what our goals are, how we reach those goals, especially if we want to build flexible workplaces that work for everyone moving forward in the future has to be flexible.

And that means letting go of the idea that quality equates to the number of hours worked or the set hours that are worked. It means giving up the idea that you cannot be both empathetic and encourage the highest level of productivity on your team. And that of course, bringing your whole self to work is the only way to be successful. Uh when, in fact, what we see is that more often than not, that can be very damaging. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop share there. And I think, you know, when we talk about some of the most important aspects of bringing these practices to life, um A couple of things that I've seen work well, that I think are, are very important. One of them is we need to be loud and we need to be repetitive when we talk to our organizations about why flexible practices matter. Um And we know that they matter for the bottom line. We know, for example, that organizations with more diverse leadership teams perform better, their revenues are higher. We have sort of a library of statistics from research that has been done in the past 5, 10 years, but that isn't worth as much if we are not when we have a seat at the table banging our fists about it and making sure that there is an understanding that look, we know that if we want to attract diverse talent, if we want to maintain diverse talent, and we want to increase the level of women in leadership, we need to design a workplace not of 1950 when women were more likely to be staying home, caring for the Children and men were out there working, but rather a workplace that is designed for what will ultimately benefit everyone in the workplace.

And that is flexibility. And that is recognizing that there is a vital importance in ensuring that those who are responsible for child care, that those who are responsible for family members, for other aspects of their homes, their lives, their communities as we all are, they are deserving of a workplace that fits those needs.

And that is what is going to get the highest quality and highest level of work out of them. So, you know, again, I think that idea of the why is fixed and the how is flexible is incredibly important. And I think even if you are within a large organization, you know, even if it's thousands or tens of thousands of people, and this isn't necessarily something that can come to life in the day to day immediately. Or maybe it has to go, you know, 20 folks up the chain to even get a conversation started. There are ways to enact these principles within your own teams and even within how you show up how you bring yourself to work and really model those behaviors for the other leaders on your team and ensure that you have the empathy and the understanding when someone is working flex hours or that you offer flex hours and that you are aware.

All right, how someone works best when they work best, it might be from nine pm at night to 1 a.m. and that's how they work and their work is always done by the next day. And that's ok if that is what works best for them. And I think as long as we have team members who are passionate about a mission of a company who are excited about why they're there, who are good at their work, you know, really at the bedrock of all of this is the ability to trust um to trust our teams to trust the women we work with, to manage their time as best they can to do their best work.

And I think every one of us would probably say that we are some of the best multitaskers we know um there is not a woman, I don't know who isn't doing seven things at once. And I think when we bring that level of trust into the workplace and allow room for flexibility and allow room to talk to our management teams about this, to provide them with examples to say, look, I'm gonna try and experiment with my team and I am going to let them work these flex hours.

I am going to let them decide when and how they're most productive. And let's see how that goes. That experiment is probably gonna go really well and that's something that you can do regardless of whether you have, you know, full 100% team support or full company buy in. There are ways to test this out on micro levels and then bring your findings back and keep banging your fist on that table because the only path forward for us is if we're able to test things to prove what we already know to be true, which is that adding these flexible practices into the working environment is the best way to a more equitable future.

Um And I do see that we're coming up toward the end of our time here. Um But I do want to thank you all so much for joining. Um Again, my name is Rachel Peterson. And if you would like to chat more, feel free to reach out to me. Um My email is pretty simple. It is just Rachel dot Peterson at fountain.com. Um Look forward to hearing from all of our other amazing speakers today. And again, just want to thank you all so much for joining us.