I’m frustrated by the conversation on women, work, and what it means to live well in America. The rise of our hyper-connected, information-saturated workplaces has created a burnout culture, one that hits women particularly hard.
Statistics reveal 70% of workers don’t feel engaged in the work they’re doing and 53% report feeling overworked and burnt out. With full-time working women still shouldering the bulk of the housework and seeing few female role models in senior leadership, it’s no wonder a woman’s ambition and drive is sapped just TWO years into a corporate career.
And what is the proposed solution? Paid parental leave. At least that’s what we’re seeing lately from corporate HR departments looking to attract top female talent with perks that are considered a given in every other industrialized nation.
Don’t get me wrong — paid parental leave is an important piece of the puzzle. But in the new normal of the American workplace, women burn out well before babies are a factor. We must do more to provide real solutions to ensure our workers — and workplaces — are sustainable from the start.
We must escape the limited thinking of the “ideal worker,” a leftover concept from the 1950’s of the company man who was always available to tend to the boss’s needs because, ostensibly, his wife was holding the home front. When we reward workers for being always-on, for arriving early and staying late, there are no incentives to work more efficiently and strategically.
Heaven forbid we walk out of work early to tend to personal needs — whether that be a doctor’s appointment, yoga class, or something “more justified” like picking up the kids from school.
Having a sense of autonomy and agency is key for anyone looking to prevent burnout, and new research shows that 4 in 10 women report feeling “on the brink of burnout,” right now. According to ratings at InHerSight.com, a reporting tool to help women choose workplaces based on female-friendliness, flexible working options are a key ingredient to overall employee satisfaction. The most highly-rated companies understand this and consistently score well in workplace flexibility.
(Photo: Thinkstock)
Further, having role models in leadership showing that it is possible to have a satisfying personal life and kickass career, can help sustain women’s ambition over the long term. According to the Harvard Business Review’s latest findings:
“The majority of leaders celebrated in a corporate newsletter or an offsite meeting tend to consist of men hailed for pulling all-nighters or for networking their way through the golf course to land the big account. If corporate recognition and rewards focus on those behaviors, women feel less able, let alone motivated to try, to make it to the top.”
When we begin to unpack the ripple effects that our culture of overwork has on closing institutional gender gaps in leadership, it becomes obvious that paid parental leave is a just a small step in what must be a bigger leap forward.
To make modern work work for men and women equally, we need to advocate for a more fulfilling and sustainable life for ourselves as well as fight to make such a life attainable for those without the power or privilege to make such demands.
It starts with something so basic it sounds cliché: it starts with our own self-worth. In the New York Times exposé on Amazon, revealing burnout culture at its’ worst, this underlying problem was crystal clear in this quote from a former employee:
“I was so addicted to wanting to be successful there. For those of us who went to work there, it was like a drug that we could get self-worth from.”
In our achievement-obsessed culture, it’s hard to remember that what we do is not who we are. Even if you’re lucky enough to love your work, feel passionate about your performance, and are driven to achieve greatness, seeing yourself and your work as inextricably intertwined is fraught with danger.
Once we begin to separate our core being (who we are) from our performance at work (what we do), it enables us to make choices from a frame of healthy self-worth. We can actually begin setting boundaries that not only leave us healthier and happier, but also enable us to be more focused and productive while we are at work.
This mindset shouldn’t start when we have babies.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that almost nothing becomes easier when one becomes a working parent. But from my experience working with hundreds of ambitious, driven women in their 20’s and 30’s through Bossed Up, those who are mothers are much more willing to put their foot down and carve out time for their personal lives. Why? Because they’re advocating on behalf of their children and families instead of just themselves. This mirrors the research on women and negotiation: we’re great negotiators on behalf of others, not so much for ourselves.
Granted, we women are understandably hesitant to push for our own needs because we fear the real social repercussions of being labeled as selfish and not a “good team player.” But this ability to push back on our burnout culture and draw the healthy boundaries we need is essential to our long-term success.
We must be the boss in our own lives first. We individuals must set the terms of engagement when it comes to our own work/life balance. And the businesses that want to thrive and succeed over the long-term will not only provide sane parental leave policies, they’ll beat back our burnout work culture altogether.
Need A Massage? Learn How To Give One To Yourself And Your Loved Ones
Receiving a massage, whether it’s given by someone else or self-administered, can help loosen your muscles and establish a better connection not only with your body but also with the people you love.
