Читать книгу Diversity, Equity & Inclusion For Dummies - Dr. Shirley Davis - Страница 42

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic may erase the gains toward equity and parity for women in the workplace. The challenges of the pandemic have pushed women employees to either downshift their careers or leave the workforce altogether. The pandemic has had the worst impact on mothers, women senior executives, and Black women for a variety of reasons, including the following:

 Lack of flexibility

 Feeling they need to be constantly “on call”

 Caregiving burdens due to COVID-19

 Feelings of being negatively judged because of caregiving during the pandemic

 Discomfort in sharing challenges with team members or managers

 Feeling unable to bring their whole selves to work

The pandemic effect on women in the workplace has been so overwhelmingly negative because work performance goals didn’t adjust to accommodate the pandemic changes but rather increased to meet market needs (more on this in the later section “Increasingly Digital and Hyperconnected”). The work performance goals and needs were met, but there was little consideration for the added stress and trauma of the pandemic (and other social justice concerns that took place in 2020). Some companies provided supportive services like changes to the performance review process, homeschooling support resources, mental health counseling, and stipends to offset working from home costs, the majority of these measures came from less than 50 percent of employers. So room for growth definitely exists to tangibly support employees in a major crisis such as a pandemic.

The bottom line is companies can’t afford to lose women in the workforce and, in particular, in leadership roles. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, nearly 80 percent of those who exited the workforce were women, and now more needs to be done to engage and retain them. The industries most impacted by COVID-19 were hospitality, retail, travel, and other service-related jobs, most of which are filled with women employees. When women can work and thrive, families and communities thrive.

What are some ways that your company worked to engage and retain women during the global pandemic? What could you have done differently?