Work/Family Interventions and COVID-19 Pandemic Remote Work Arrangements

Introduction

Research studying the interconnections between the domains of work and family emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, influenced by changes in family structures and workforce demographics such as the influx of women into the workforce, dual-earner families, and single parents (Bellavia & Frone, 2005; Bianchi & Milkie, 2010).

Questions related to the impact of women’s employment on children and marriage directed the first studies in this field and suggested that the traditional breadwinner-homemaker model may no longer exist, having functioned under the assumption that workers would have someone they could rely on to cover household responsibilities (Friedman, 2015; Hochschild & Machung, 2012). However, social roles based on gender influence social expectations and attributes about both men and women, and gender-appropriate behaviors are first learned and then reinforced through society’s structures (Eagly, 2013). Dinella et al. (2014) stated gender segregation in work and educational choices is still very evident, creating a gender divide in the labor market. Bianchi et al. (2006) reported that married women with children continue to perform a disproportionate amount of childcare and housework compared to their husbands with women spending almost twice as many hours on non-work roles related to childcare and housework. Collins et al (2020) reported that children are more likely to seek out and interrupt their mothers for assistance, fragmenting the time mothers spend on non-family issues. While more families are dual-earner households, women experience more anxiety in their daily tasks, are expected to complete most of the family responsibilities and tend to multitask to fulfill all of their roles (Craig & Brown, 2017). The pervasiveness of defining gender roles of males and females continues to interfere with an individual’s personal and professional interests (Ridgeway, 2011) and guides their work and family role behaviors (Duxbury & Higgins, 1991).

The COVID-19 crisis disrupted when, where, and how employees work. Due to the quarantine nature of the pandemic, workers and employers were confined to their homes when non-essential businesses were shut down. The economy had to advance, so organizations were forced to contemplate new ways of working. Prior to the economic shutdown, only one quarter of the workforce used a modified version of employment such as flextime or telecommuting (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2017), and their accommodations were implemented after a period of planning and training to ensure productivity and a balance between work and non-work. Thus, Bloom et al. (2015) found higher job performance, work satisfaction, and worker retention as benefits of remote work. However, in 2020, millions of employees began working from home with little to no preparation or support. Early estimates now indicated over half of employees work from home (at least partially).

In this chapter, we explore the theoretical underpinnings of work-family issues and discuss the organizational responses to them and benefits of these policies in the workplace. Then we explore the barriers to the utilization of family-friendly policies in the workplace. We then examine workplace flexibility, one of the most useful of the family-friendly policies, since remote working is a form of workplace flexibility. We then discuss remote working under the pandemic, its benefits and its challenges. Finally, we discuss the ways organizations can meet these challenges to make remote working work, and end by exploring where it has worked well, and the future for remote working.