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Commentary: 'Zigzag working' is the new pandemic reality for parents and employers

Home and work can no longer be treated as separate domains, with clearly demarcated tasks, times and locations, say two New Zealand professors.

AUCKLAND: All parents work. The difference lies in the breakdown between their paid and unpaid workloads.

That equation is influenced by many things, including education, qualifications, age, ethnicity, financial status, number and age of dependants, gendered and societal expectations, and personal choice.

But during COVID-19 lockdowns, many working parents have had to conduct their paid work, usually done in the workplace, at home.

Personally, professionally and geographically, this is new territory - for working parents, their loved ones and their employers.

It is also largely uncharted territory for researchers.

Previous academic studies of work-life integration have largely treated home and work as separate domains, with clearly demarcated tasks performed in distinct locations and at different times.

Additionally, past research into balancing those roles and working flexibly (including from home) has found parents mainly worked while children were at school or day care, or that they weren’t in full-time paid work.

LOCKDOWN EFFECT ON WORKING PARENTS

Lockdowns have changed that, requiring many parents to work full-time while simultaneously schooling and caring for their children.

(Photo: AFP/Behrouz MEHRI)

In this context, established, seemingly distinct concepts such as “work-life conflict” or “work-life balance” are limited in their ability to reflect and describe this new pandemic reality.

To that end, we have conceived a new concept that more accurately describes the working parent’s experience of juggling paid work (formal employment) and unpaid work (such as caregiving, household duties and volunteering) when both are being performed in the same environment during the same blocks of time.

We call it “zigzag working”.

THE NEW ZIGZAG WORKING REALITY

Let’s imagine a typical example: Sarah teaches 26 nine- and 10-year-olds at a local primary school and is also mum to two kids aged 11 and 15, both studying from home during lockdown. Her husband is an essential worker, so he still goes out to work during the week. One hour of her morning might look something like this:

9am: Sets up in the kitchen as her designated “work zone” and begins a Zoom session with her class to facilitate a 20-minute discussion.

9.07am: Motions to her teenage son not to eat the ingredients she is planning to use for dinner that night.

9.20am: Leaves Zoom call, giving her students time to complete a task and for her to hang out a load of washing and reply to an email from a parent.

9.35am: Goes online again with her students for eight minutes to check their progress.

9.41am: Is approached by her 11-year-old daughter who needs help with maths.

9.50am: Brings her class back together on Zoom to hear about their work, while also indicating to her son what he can eat from the fridge.

Or another imaginary example: Ananya is a senior team manager working in banking. She’s a solo mum of twin boys aged 16, also studying at home and really missing soccer, which both play at a high level. They have a Labrador puppy.

1.15pm: Listens live to her CEO update while texting her boys to encourage them to get out for a skate rather than spend their lunchtime gaming (they ignore her).

1.30pm: After the update, grabs some of leftovers as lunch.

1.37pm: Takes a phone call from a team member.

1.48pm: Now that her boys have resumed online classes, sits down to reply to several emails.

2.07pm: Encourages one son to complete an overdue school project, as well as filling the dog’s water bowl.

2.11pm: Starts an urgent conversation via Teams with her manager.

2.17pm: Realises one of her twins is gaming when he’s meant to be working on his project.

2.19pm: Courier knocks on the door but no one else hears it, interrupts another Teams meeting.

NEW TERRITORY FOR EMPLOYEES AND EMPLOYERS

These scenarios illustrate the realities of zigzag working — the continuous and concurrent diving between paid and unpaid work as micro sessions or managing paid and unpaid tasks simultaneously.

(Photo: Unsplash/Brian Wangenheim)

During lockdowns, many of the forms of support parents rely on, including relatives, paid household services, schools, day cares centres and after-school sports, are not available.

This is also new territory for employers, with many making up the rules as they go along and with large numbers of staff working at home full time.

We encourage employers to think about the roles working parents are juggling. Some tried and true forms of organisational support and being a “good employer” will no doubt apply here.

Employers might also consider tweaks for lockdown working, including recognising that working parents may be frequently interrupted, prolonged periods of “focused time” do not exist, and there is no such thing as “complete silence”, not starting online meetings exactly on the hour, when school class sessions typically start, or checking in advance with working parents when is convenient to take a call, or scheduling a time for one.

This can also include breaking up long online meetings with micro breaks for all participants, recording organisational updates so parents can tune in at a time to suit the family schedule, enabling and encouraging staff to take reasonable breaks, as they would do in a normal work environment, or encouraging and facilitating discussions of “chaos” to counteract notions of being the ideal worker or parent.

Life was complex before COVID-19. Now it feels especially challenging.

Employers should understand the reality of zigzag working and play a positive part in it. As well, they should recognise zigzag working may also be experienced by working grandparents and contractors managing several jobs on top of family responsibilities.

For a parent, the impacts of zigzag working may be magnified if they have a partner also trying to do paid work in the home.

The permutations are many. So too are the research opportunities to study and understand this new zigzag reality.

Candice Harris is a professor of management in the Auckland University of Technology. Jarrod Haar is a professor of human resource management in the same university. This commentary first appeared on The Conversation.

Is it time to end the great work-from-home experiment? Listen to CNA's Heart of the Matter:

Source: CNA/ch

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