Has The Pandemic Actually Helped Women Find That Elusive Work-Life Balance?

Imagine a help wanted sign seeking organized, solution-oriented, empathetic individuals looking to make a human connection while working from home? Who comes to mind? Women!

The job description comes from Greg Hanover, CEO of customer service platform LiveOps. The company, and others like it, are helping put a significant number of women, sidelined by the pandemic, back to work – from home. And in jobs that give them flexibility, with good financial incentives.

“LiveOps gave me the ability to go to nursing school while making a steady income because I could pick my own hours,” said Shanti Harris, a customer service agent supporting one of LiveOps luxury retail clients.

Finding That Perfect Work-Life Balance

While we’ve learned a lot over the past 15 months, one of the most important things is just how productive women can be “from home.” In a recent PWC survey, 83% of employers said the shift to remote work has been successful for their company.

Of course, juggling work, childcare and household responsibilities from our home offices can prove challenging. But stripping away commutes, eliminating the need for childcare, reducing gas and dry cleaning expenses and gaining convenience and flexibility is enabling us to work better and smarter and may just help us find the holy grail of working women – that elusive work-life balance.  

It’s clear that more and more women are seeking work-from-home opportunities. 58% of employees working remotely over the past year said they’d look for a new job if they weren’t allowed to continue working from home post-pandemic, according to a survey by FlexJobs.

But Women Are Still Absent From The Workforce

While companies are catching on to the benefits of working from home, actually getting women back to work at pre-pandemic levels is proving difficult.

This month’s bleak jobs report shed light on the continued plight of American workers, particularly women. In April, 5.6% of women reported being unemployed (compared to only 3.1% right before the pandemic) and in March, a staggering 1.5 million fewer mothers of school-age children were working than in February of 2020. And women face additional hurdles to entering the workforce like gender pay disparities, at-home learning and expensive or difficult-to-find childcare.

This makes the case for work from home even stronger.

Fortunately, The Pandemic Has Created New Work From Home Opportunities For Women

It’s tough to put a positive spin on Covid-19, but the pandemic has in fact resulted in increased demand in certain sectors that favor women and lend themselves to at-home work. Virtual call centers like LiveOps, for example, seek empathetic, competent people for online customer support. And women are filling those roles in record numbers. LiveOps saw a 12% jump in the number of women in their workforce in 2020 and almost three quarters of their agents now are women.

“I was relieved to find a job and be able to work from home during Covid,” said Susan Clatterbaugh, who learned about LiveOps from a friend. Clatterbaugh, who has only filled her gas tank twice since starting work, is not technically an employee of LiveOps, but rather an independent agent who provides customer support from the ease and comfort of her own home. Clatterbaugh selects shifts in 30-minute increments and controls when and for how long she works.  

“My friend told me about LiveOps. I love the convenience of working from home, the flexibility to choose my own schedule and the privilege of being my own boss,” says Harris. Working from home makes juggling other responsibilities, and in Harris’s case other jobs, manageable. “I’m also a nurse,” added Harris. “I love that I can use the empathy and communications skills I learned in school to help customers for the luxury brand I serve through Live Ops as well as the patients I treat as a nurse.”

Returnships – Getting Women Back In The Game

Clatterbaugh and Harris were lucky to have their jobs during the pandemic. However, millions of women, victims of pandemic-related layoffs and furloughs, were not.

Returnships, offered by some of the largest and most well-known companies like Amazon, Goldman Sachs and Merck, offer women who have been out of the workforce for some time virtual, paid internships. These programs allow women to refresh their skills and often lead to full-time work. Sites like irelaunch.com and pathforward.org are useful tools as they offer up-to-date returnship opportunities for women.

Women like Harris find juggling family, home and work difficult. “If I had to go into an office 9 to 5, I wouldn’t be able to do it all,” she explained. If there is one positive that emerged from Covid-19, it’s this. The pandemic has forced companies of all shapes and sizes to think outside the box, break free from traditional norms and find creative ways to attract and retain female talent.