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People’s priorities when it comes to their work have changed significantly since the days before the pandemic.
“The flexibility to be able to work from home, obviously shorter working hours to pick kids up from school, things like that. They would probably be the most important.”
A new report from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency and the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre or BCEC has revealed these shifting trends.
The findings show that less Australians are willing to stay at part-time roles, with a growing number of the workforce prioritising flexibility.
Professor Alan Duncan is the Director of the BCEC and one of the authors of the study.
“Less than 30 percent of the workforce now work part-time and there’s been a corresponding increase in those that work full-time, as well as an increase in the prevalence of flexible work arrangements among those that work full-time. So taken together, I think what we’re seeing, particularly amongst women who represent three quarters of the part-time workforce, is very much a sort of shift towards full-time and flexible work arrangements.”
Australia has one of the highest rates of part-time workers among all nations in the OECD.
Yet the share of women in those roles has dropped by a 3.2 percent in the last couple of years.
At the same time, full-time positions that allow flexible working arrangements have shot up by 2.3 per cent within the same time frame.
Dr Silvia Salazar, who is a co-author of the report, explains the reasons behind that shift.
“The flexibility that has been put in place in a lot of companies has allowed a lot of people to increase the time that they work, so getting to full-time work. But also, take care of their children in a way where they can manage both. So, before you could just choose between part-time and take care of your children, let’s say. But now you can work full-time at the same time that you care for your children because you have flexible working arrangements.”
Yet the unnaturally high rate of women in part-time positions also reveal the inequalities that persist.
“As particularly women start to move towards a child and family formation years, one sees a drop-off in the prevalence of full-time and a rise in the incidence of part-time up to retirement age where, for both women and men, one sees around half of the workforce working part-time. So, I do think that there are societal norms. The predominant responsibilities around care, either children or the elderly, those responsibilities are still disproportionately visited upon women, rather than men.”
With all this in mind, job opportunities might look a little bit different in the future.
Employers are already shifting their attention towards the everyday needs of their workers.
“If you’re the workplace that isn’t offering flexible working arrangements, you’re going to be the workplace that misses out on good staff. Because you’ll just leave or you’ll just go somewhere else. Especially for more niche kind of roles. So, I definitely think that most employers are going to have to start offering it, if they can.”
Dr Salazar says more change is inevitable based on the changes brought about since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She says employers will need to be agile to adapt to the shifting environment.
“If you want to retain those talented workers you will have to move towards more flexibility in the terms of the way we work. So, I think definitely remote work will be something that we continue, probably not 100 per cent of the time but there are some times that we will work from home and some others that we do in the office. And definitely flexible work arrangements in which you don’t have to be there at a specific time but have some flexibility on the times that you start, that you finish, and how do you do your job. I think this sort of thing, having more autonomy on the way you do things, when do you do it and where do you do it, this is something that we will see a lot in the future and I think there (are) a lot of conversations that will happen between employees and employers, in terms of getting those things right.”
Professor Duncan says companies need to ensure employees who pursue a path which prioritises their personal wellbeing do not face setbacks in their professional development.
“It’s really important that we reduce those career penalties associated with flexible work. And to do so, I think it’s really important that the businesses generate confidence amongst their employees that there is a normalisation of flexible work arrangements so it’s role-modelled by the senior leadership team that there is an investment in the skills and processes amongst managers and human resource professionals to manage a flexible workforce. And more that flexible work can be normalised, I think the greater the take of a flexible work and part-time work models within an organisation.”
