Written by Technically Media CEO Chris Wink, Technical.ly’s new Culture Builder newsletter features tips on growing powerful teams and dynamic workplaces. Below is the latest edition we published. Sign up here to get the next one this Friday.
Every other day at 2:30p ET, I have a block on my calendar. It’s my turn to take my eight-month-old daughter from our part-time nanny — the best in-pandemic solution we could manage.
The frequent early workday block can still be challenging, but one ought never underestimate the effectiveness of a fiercely guarded recurring calendar entry. The rise of the two-professional parent household in the late 20th-century had already brought new complexity to childcare. The pandemic flipped over everything for working parents.
Like others, Technical.ly has reported extensively on how mothers have been overwhelmingly more likely than fathers to drop out of the labor force once childcare was cancelled and school went virtual. For equity, retention and productivity, then, the workplaces that can manage it must embrace asynchronous work.
It’s a simple concept: Let professionals make their individual contributions whenever is most convenient for them. We need not lower our expectations of output, and we certainly will maintain shared collaborative meeting time. The focus just becomes on what you produce, not when you produce it. When my newborn daughter’s overnight sleeping was even more erratic, I experimented with more 1 a.m. work sessions than I expected.
Remote-friendly workplaces and asynchronous work can make teams more productive, and be a powerful tool for retaining working parents. These flexible environments benefit all workers, too. This afternoon, I’ll walk my daughter in her stroller through a local park in my neighborhood. In the evening, I will finish a proposal, not because I am overworking but because she’ll be asleep and that will be a better time for me.
I’ll be discussing these topics at length next week at the first of a quarterly webinar series from Technical.ly called BuildingUp, focused on trends we’re seeing in attracting, retaining and supporting teams of professionals. This first series is coinciding with the launch of our inaugural annual Hiring and Workplace Culture Trends Report.
Join us Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 11 a.m. ET by registering here.
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Weekly tip and what else we’re reading
- Embracing asynchronous communication — GitLab has a deep look at its approach to asynchronous communication. Get people information when they need it.
- How To Lose A Candidate In 10 (Business) Days — Robert Half has a big report tracking pandemic-influenced changes to hiring. Many of us are moving slower (but not everyone) and giving candidates less feedback.
- How do I make my workplace more welcoming to parents? — Back in July, I interviewed a few working parents, while I was myself caring for my daughter. The video and takeaways are still good ones (and familiar to my introduction here).
- The Future of H-1B Visas — This is a helpful look from ERE. Two-thirds of tech firms in January expressed interest in foreign tech workers, an increase over last year.
- Turn quiet event space into a family-friend activity place at work? — I can’t quite fathom the liability here, but it’s interesting that Philadelphia-based Seer Interactive turned their event space into an activity center for their working families.
- 46% of newly-hired employees will fail within 18 months — That’s a sure sign of bad hiring practices. Interpersonal skills, not technical ones, are most often blamed.
- When women’s labor force participation rises, so does GDP — Maybe correlation, not causation, but helpful data.
Company culture stories we’ve published lately
- Check out Technical.ly’s 2021 Hiring and Workplace Culture Trends Report
- Technical.ly launches BuildingUp, a webinar series on hiring and workplace culture starting Feb. 24
- NET/WORK 2021: Skills, culture and ‘location’ to be front and center at Technical.ly’s niche job fair
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