What do glass slippers, leather shoes and the world of work have in common? Too many people pretend they’re the right size.
Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters and US president Donald Trump’s officials all attempted to wear shoes that didn’t fit. Likewise, too many employees with caring responsibilities outside the workplace are painfully shoehorning their lives into work structures built for a bygone era when men worked and women kept the home fires burning.
The office, the factory floor, the Civil Service all assumed the existence of someone at home managing meals, the laundry, school runs, sick children, ageing parents and the thousand other unpaid tasks that keep a family functioning. That person was usually a woman and the economy was built on her invisible labour.
This arrangement collapsed well over a decade ago. Two incomes are not a lifestyle choice, they’re a survival strategy to pay the household bills. So why do workplace systems, structures and policies still behave as if nothing has changed?
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Working in an office from 9am to 5pm (or 7am to 7pm), five days a week might be doable if you don’t have to drop off and pick up kids from creche or school or if you can afford a full-time childminder to do it for you. Most people are not in that situation financially and childcare is both expensive and hard to find.
Childcare costs in Ireland are among the highest in Europe, with more and more parents struggling to cope with soaring fees. Full-time childcare costs an average of €190 per week per child before subsidies, rising to more than €258 per week in parts of Dublin in 2024, according to Pobal.
Fees have only risen since then and if you have two children in full-time care it can cost up to €2,000 per month. Mortgage and rental costs for families are in the thousands per month too. Money is tight and time is scarce.
The workaround
Couples try to reduce childcare costs by taking turns with the morning drop-offs and alternating their working from home days. In this way, they just need to pay for childcare in the afternoons and some evenings.
But the one thing that makes their life manageable – flexibility – is now being rolled back.
Some companies are asking, in some cases demanding, that employees work from the office more days per week and start at times that don’t work with school hours. Informal hybrid arrangements (where you work) and flexible working hours (when you work) that have helped families manage since Covid are being reconsidered by their employers.
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Parents, carers and the sandwich generation – those who help mind their ageing parents as well as rearing their own kids – are the ones who struggle most with rigid workplace structures.
And yet the workplace continues to expect, across large parts of both the public and private sectors, that workers arrive at set times, sit at fixed desks (if they are fortunate enough not to be hot-desking), and leave only when the contracted hours of work have elapsed.
The logic of the face time or “presence economy” is that time at your desk equals productivity. The research shows something else. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) HR Practices in Ireland 2024 report, 61 per cent of Irish organisations reported increased productivity following the introduction of hybrid and flexible working arrangements.
Over a quarter perceived productivity as higher for hybrid workers specifically. And yet, today, many organisations have still not created a formal policy on remote or hybrid working, and only half of managers have been trained to manage hybrid teams.
Numerous studies also show improvement in employees’ wellbeing, work-life balance and engagement when flexible work is an option. It’s become an important talent-acquisition and retention strategy too.
When rigid structure workarounds aren’t working for couples, it is generally women who feel the impact most. According to the CSO, 94.3 per cent of those recorded as “looking after home and family” are women. Thirty-one per cent of working women are in part-time employment, compared with 14 per cent of men.
As a State, it’s harder to recruit and retain highly-skilled workers when parents, in this case mainly mothers, are forced to leave their jobs, reduce hours or accept lower positions because work is too inflexible.
When care falls disproportionately on women, it limits their hours of paid work, stymies career progression, reduces earnings, and shrinks pensions. Plus it means a large percentage of the workforce is no longer available for work.
Redesigning work
Restructuring the world of work to accommodate caring responsibilities is not about reducing productivity expectations or giving every worker whatever they want. For certain jobs and people, flexible work is just not possible or advisable. Younger workers and new employees also need to be in the office more often to learn ways of working, observe cultural norms and to benefit from supervision – meaning some of their more experienced peers also need to be there.
And even though family life has changed, businesses still need to hit targets and make money and the Civil Service needs to meet strategic objectives and work efficiently.
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To retain talent long-term, it is past time to help work fit the shape of parents’ and carers’ responsibilities. Flexible working hours, not just the ability to work from home, matter enormously for parents managing school-time mismatches and commuting times with work schedules.
Core-hours models, where employees must be available for defined time blocks during each week or day – but can flex around it, have been successfully adopted across many sectors.
Flexible work is increasingly the hallmark of forward-looking modern economies too. Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Iceland have redesigned the workplace with flexibility or reduced hours at its core.
In Denmark, flexibility is embedded in workplace culture and collective agreements rather than depending on individual requests. Employees are expected to leave at their contracted time, and management performance is evaluated on outcomes rather than presence. The public sector has normalised flexible hours and private sector employers have followed.
Sweden has introduced shared parental leave as a structural reform, acknowledging that men are parents too. The Netherlands allows workers the legal right to change their hours, location of work and schedule. Iceland has concentrated on reduced working hours while maintaining productivity levels.
These reforms succeeded thanks to well-designed and well considered flexible working policies, structures and systems. Key changes include: measuring employees’ contributions through outcome-based performance management instead of hours worked; addressing cultural barriers with structured management training; providing salary top-ups for maternity, paternity and parental leave; and investing in childcare.
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Where paternity and parental leave are well paid, take-up by men rises and the division of care becomes more equal from the start, according to research on OECD countries.
If we want a modern workforce, childcare infrastructure must be treated as economic infrastructure. At the moment it is treated as a personal financial burden or a welfare cost. Ireland spends just 0.16 per cent of GDP on early years care, compared to an OECD average of 0.9 per cent.
Embarrassingly, we have one of the lowest ratios in the developed world, according to OECD 2024. Thankfully, the Government says it is working towards closing the gap by 2028. It can’t come soon enough for frazzled parents and carers.
Margaret E Ward is chief executive of Clear Eye, a leadership consultancy. margaret@cleareye.ie
