Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has been a hot topic in the recent years, as companies and organizations have been striving to being more inclusive, equitable and diverse. However, there is obviously still much learning and work to do around ways to advocate for more DEI.
While there is a large misconception around the fact that DEI work has to be done at the highest levels of management, the reality is this work can be completed at all levels of the organization. DEI work is not just the responsibility of management or leadership, although much of its outcome is heavily impacted by the “tone at the top”. At the core, DEI work is the responsibility of each and every individual making up the fabric of an organization. In this sense, everyone can contribute to and advocated for increased diversity, equity and inclusion at work.
Here three major ways in which you, and all of us really, can advocate for increased DEI in your organization:
Start by educating ourselves and others in the process
DEI is still a relatively new concept, especially in the realm of organizations and companies. Its meaning has been evolving over time, yet there is so much most of us need to learn about it, both in terms of what it truly encompasses, and what the best ways to implement it are. This is why it’s crucial to start by educating ourselves and others in the process.
Educating ourselves on DEI can be done in many ways, from reading books to consulting related studies. Some interesting books to consider include The Memo by Minda Harts, So you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo, or Yellow by Frank H. Wu. Studies such as McKinsey’s 2015 Why Diversity Matters report on public companies, Morgan Stanley’s 2016 research on “Why it pays to invest in gender diversity”, or “The Other Diversity Dividend” report by the Harvard Business Review, are also valuable tools to gain more information on DEI and its positive impact on productivity, innovation and creativity. These educational tools not only help understand the concept and history behind DEI better, but also allow to make the business case for DEI.
What you can do: Read and share books and studies about diversity, equity and inclusion in your workplace, department or team. Educating yourself and others can bring about a real difference in how you work with others, as well as how your direct professional environment deals with DEI.
Promote sensitivity and anti-bias training
Many, if not most people, are not aware of what constitutes micro-aggressions, or micro-inequities. Even more people are unaware of the struggles faced by minoritized communities, and how individuals, as well as organizations and communities, can help. This is where anti-bias and DEI training can help.
While training and practice cannot (and should not be expected) to eradicate injustices and biases of all kinds, it does contribute to helping educate, sensitize and inform people of these issues.
What you can do: If you’re in a position to include or recommend DEI training as part of your team’s required professional development, please consider doing so. You can also join Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which are voluntary, employee-led groups devoted to fostering inclusive and diverse workplaces, and recommend bias and diversity trainings if they are not already being offered.
Contribute to Changing Your Organization’s Culture
Ultimately, diversity, equity and inclusion must be reflected in the organization’s culture in order to truly have a positive impact. A diverse, equitable and inclusive culture is one where everyone can freely contribute, show up as their authentic selves, and be treated equitably. Changing an organizational culture towards increased diversity, equity and inclusion is a monumental endeavor, which requires everyone’s input and collaboration.
It starts with assessing where the organization stands in terms of DEI, and be honest about the culture of the place. This can be done by asking for feedback and being open to individuals’, teams and units’ assessments of the organization. It also requires displaying empathy and being open to differences of opinion and even virulent disagreements and conflicts in the process. Yet, as challenging a process as it can be, it also has the potential of identifying the blocks and obstacles, such as the proverbial “glass ceiling” for instance, standing in the way of a more diverse, equitable and inclusive culture.
What you can do: Be part of the culture change at your organization, in whatever capacity you can.
How are you advocating for more diversity, equity and inclusion in your organization?
Being a working mom is hard. Being a working mom during and in the slow aftermath of a global health crisis and pandemic is beyond hard. Things were already challenging before the pandemic, from working in and outside of the home, wearing too many hats to remember, and dealing with pressure both at work and at home. After over 18 months of remote working and homeschooling children, managing the home and career front, and struggling to keep their sanity intact in the face of school and daycare closings along with a pressing lack of childcare, working mothers are tapped out. About two million women have left the workforce entirely already as a result of the pandemic.
However, most working moms do not recognize or acknowledge burnout until it reaches a critical point. Yet, it is a valid and recognized health condition, which has actually been added as a syndrome to the International Classification of Diseases by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO defines it as “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”. Dr. Sheryl Ziegler, author of “Mommy Burnout”, adds: “The pandemic has revealed how closely tied mental health and stress are and I think a lot of people have hit their breaking point and they just can’t get by anymore.”, on a CNBC interview.
Burnout manifests itself as a host of signs, including:
Feelings of exhaustion
Feeling unproductive
Depersonalization (feeling cynical, disconnected and unmotivated)
Insufficient or poor self-care
Poor sleep
Concentration problems
Mood instability
Feeling isolated
Physical symptoms such as headaches, chest tightness, and stomachaches
If you recognize any of these signs in yourself or someone you know, here are a few tips to cope:
Acknowledge the problem
Be honest with yourself and others. When burnout occurs, the temptation may be to isolate and disconnect from others. Instead, consider reaching out to friends, family and using therapy as a way to cope.
Seek help
Burnout is a clear indication that you need help. Whether it’s asking your partner to pitch in more with household chores and parenting responsibilities, hiring a housekeeper, or requesting a more flexible schedule at work, tap into your network to get some help.
Set boundaries
Learn the art of saying no, or at least taking the time to consider requests coming your way. You don’t have to do it all or say yes to every demand on your time, space or energy.
Create some boundaries between your various tasks, as well as between your personal and professional spheres.
Schedule some time for yourself
This may be easier said than done, but it’s absolutely crucial to set some time for yourself to tend to your own self-care. Whether it’s waking up a bit earlier to read and journal, or saving some time for yourself in the middle or at the end of the day, carving some time out of your busy schedule can help relieve a lot of stress.
Create a routine
A lot of stress is created by blurring the lines between work and life, as well as parenting and other areas of our lives. Instead, consider setting up a flexible, predictable routine that separates your work and personal lives.
Stop multitasking
Research has extensively proven that multitasking is not effective, and can actually be counter-productive. Instead, consider switching your approach to focus on one task at a time.
Lower the bar on expectations
Last but not least, consider lowering the bar on your high personal and professional expectations. Instead, focus on building simpler habits such as meditating and getting adequate rest.
How have you been coping with burnout as a working mom?
For most working women and moms, having a flexible schedule is a blessing. It can also quickly turn into a curse if, and when, not managed well. Trying to fit in everything that could possibly fit into your schedule, or on the other hand, underestimating what needs to be done and wasting precious time, can both wreak havoc on your time, energy and self-esteem. As a result, flexibility can be a trap for so many working women and moms, who can end up overworked, frustrated and exhausted from it.
As much emphasis is being put on affording working mothers a more flexible schedule, what is not talked about as much is what it can cost the latter. On one hand, due to subjective work and gender-related negative perceptions about remote work and flexible schedules, the lessened face-to-face time has been shown to hurt working women’s advancement and promotion prospects in the workplace. On the other hand, while a more flexible schedule allows working moms the latitude to handle their various responsibilities, it also requires them to carefully plan ahead and manage their newfound flexibility. The latter is a significant challenge for many working moms who often feel a need to overcompensate for it, and don’t always have the tools to efficiently use it.
Managing the blessed trap of flexibility is an exercise in discipline, focus, but also self-awareness. Here are three tips that can help:
Set “sacred” areas for work, life and relationships
Flexibility can give us the impression that we have all the time in the world to get everything done. This is when the various areas, priorities and demands of our life and work can get mixed up in a feverish mishmash of to-do’s. As a result, while we may end up genuinely doing a lot, we may also miss out on the most important tasks and priorities, and work ourselves right past what truly matters, both personally and professionally.
This is why it is so important to set “sacred” areas and times for work, life and relationships. Professionally, it may be a matter of defining what our most important work is, and dedicate the best and most time to it. Personally, it’s a matter of also understanding what our non-negotiables are, including family time, rest and entertainment too.
Define flexible yet clear boundaries
The advantage of having a flexible schedule is that we get to organize it ourselves without too many outside impositions. The drawback of a flexible schedule is also that we get to organize it ourselves, and as such may overlook the crucial boundaries needed to maintain our sanity, productivity and efficiency. We’ve all seen examples of overworked mothers during the pandemic go from one personal to professional task without missing a beat until all hours of day and night, yet while totally dismissing the all-too necessary boundaries between work and life.
Establishing clear yet flexible boundaries adapted to our sometimes unpredictable schedules as working moms is not just a life-saver. It’s also a precious opportunity to understand, delineate and continually work on the time, energy and productivity that go into both our personal and professional lives.
Resist the temptation to over-commit
One of the constant temptations brought on by a flexible schedule is that to overcommit. As we have flexibility to structure our schedules ourselves, we also often fall prey to the “yes” syndrome, acquiescing to every and all demand and request on our time.
This is where learning and practicing the art of saying “no” comes in handy. While it is a challenge for many working moms accustomed to serving as sources of support and help in so many personal and professional capacities, it’s also absolutely necessary to distinguish between what we have the bandwidth to do and what we cannot fit in to our schedule. This avoids many a frustration, disagreement, or mismanaged task due to lack of time, energy or sheer capacity. To alleviate the discomfort that can be created by the prospect of declining a request or demand, asking for some time to think about it can help.
How are you managing the traps of flexibility as a working mom?
Welcome to our #AskACPA feature where we answer financial, accounting and business questions.
Question: I’m a side hustler and small business owner? How can I keep track of the expenses in my business?
One of the most frequently asked questions by small business owners is how to keep track of expenses, so as keep them from getting out of hand and better control them. If you’re a small business owner, whether you are side hustling or working on your business full-time, you know how important this can be. Not only is it crucial for you to account for what you’re actually spending, but having an accurate record of your expenses also comes in handy at tax time when you’re reporting these and potentially getting some related deductions.
Here are a few ways that can help:
Open a business bank account
Having a separate business account dedicated exclusively to business transactions makes it easier to track your business expenses and record them accurately. While you may use your personal account in some (rare) instances, you will eventually need a business bank account.
Set up your accounting system: Cash or accrual accounting?
Cash or accrual accounting?
Cash accounting consists of recording transactions when cash is exchanged. As such, you would only record your expenses when you pay for them in cash, and would record revenue only when received. Cash accounting is often used by very small businesses, as well as freelancers and sole proprietors, because of its simplicity and ease of use. However, this simplistic accounting method quickly becomes inadequate as the business grows, uses other forms of payment than cash, or needs more detailed bookkeeping.
Accrual accounting, on the other hand, requires that revenue or expenses be recorded when the transactions generating either actually happen, not when cash is paid or received. As such, you would record revenue when selling a product or service, not just when you’re paid for it. Similarly, you would record an expense when incurred, not just when you pay for it. This system of accounting is more accurate, and more suited to growing businesses.
It’s essential that you set up your accounting system properly based on your business goals and outlook.
Manage your records accurately
Last but not least, manage your receipts properly so you have accurate records for your expenses. While this can be done using a manual system such as folders and envelopes, it is more practical to do so using an application you can easily access through your phone or compute. Quickbooks offers a convenient way to scan in your receipts or download them as part of their bookkeeping suite.
In addition, make sure to promptly record your expenses in the system of your choice. While you may also use more of a manual system such as Excel spreadsheets for instance, using an accounting software that allows you to electronically record and keep track of your expenses can be more beneficial. Quickbooks not only allows you the convenience of scanning in your receipts, but also helps you record these expenses as part of your bookkeeping.
All in all, tracking your business expenses is central to your business. Without properly recording and managing your expenses, you put your business at risk and endanger your hard-earned revenues.
If you ask most working women and moms, time is not only a hard commodity to come by, especially in the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s also a fluid concept that doesn’t necessarily abide by all, or most of the official time management techniques…Not when interruptions are par for the course, and last-minute crisis management becomes a given on any day…
Managing time for working women and moms is far from being an organized, disciplined, scheduled day-to-day sequence of events and choices. Rather, it’s a spontaneous, change-laden, transition-filled and evolving process on the best of days. On the worst of days, it’s managed chaos under somewhat of a sense of serendipitous control.
The reason behind this is the long-lost realization that for working women and moms, time management is less of a choice than it is a constant, regular trade-off between what’s most important and what’s less important, what has to be addressed now versus what can wait another minute, what cannot be planned yet still happens and what happened without ever being planned…The COVID-19 pandemic was a harsh reminder of this fact, exposing the whole world to the fragile subjectivity and utter subordination of women’s time, energy and devotion to unending, unpaid and often un-rewarded, endless caregiving…
In her book “Year of Yes: How to Dance is Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person”, Shonda Rhimes says it well: “That is the trade-off. That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous. Something is always lost. Something is always missing. And yet. I want my daughters to see me and know me as a woman who works. I want that example set for them”. Yet, it’s this constant, often heart-wrenching trade-off, that also teaches our daughters and sons about not giving up on who they are while still giving of themselves. It’s this trade-off that has allowed the world to benefit from the indispensable contributions of women to all fields of work and life. Most importantly, it’s on the harsh yet generous foundational shoulders of this trade-off that so many of us stand today, to accomplish the work of our lives and leave the legacy of our existences.
Don’t get me wrong, time management is crucial. However, the traditional idea of time management, the one constructed around the history, traditions and schedules of a patriarchal system, are no longer reflecting the realities of a working population made up by half of working women and mothers. We must re-think antiquated concepts of time and ways to manage it, as part of the now accelerated process of change and renewal our society is finding itself in the midst of. Part of this, maybe the most important part of this, is the realization that for working women and mothers, time is but a trade-off.
Do you agree that time management is a matter of a trade -off for working women and moms?
