Bored Panda reached out to Megan Witherspoon, vice president of communications at Altria, mother of two, and the author of this amazing LinkedIn post that struck a chord with many people and went viral recently. “Caring is critical, in my opinion,” Megan told us.
She continued: “For a very long time, the business world believed personal and professional should be separate. When we walked into an office building, we would shed one persona and don another. Sure, we had office friendships, but we stopped short of talking too much about personal issues and many topics were considered taboo.”
Megan believes that many have wanted to bring more life and warmth into the workplace for a long time, and this was another change accelerated by the pandemic. “We’ve now spent 18 months with our colleagues in their homes, with their children and pets and in their personal spaces. We’ve had to help one another through extremely challenging circumstances. We’ve supported each other, cried together and talked about mental health and wellness.”
“Now the personal and the professional are intertwined, and we’ve all felt the benefits of caring for our colleagues, we no longer need to divide ourselves in half when we log into our computers each day.” Moreover, the communications expert believes that employees work harder and with more passion when they’re doing it with and for people they care about.
Flexibility at work, a new work model that the pandemic has accelerated, is a “win-win” for both companies and their employees, says Megan
And when it comes to flexibility at work, Megan said there’s a one-size-fits-all approach to flexibility. “The structure of work differs by industry and role, every company has its own culture and work patterns, and individual employees have different flexibility needs.” However, that said, “I would advise companies and leaders to go as far as they realistically can with providing flexibility to their employees. Flexibility isn’t a sacrifice – it actually makes great business sense. And employee expectations have changed and they’re willing to vote with their feet.”
Megan believes that companies that embrace flexibility “will better retain top talent, be able to recruit new talent from broader and more diverse talent pools, and have more engaged and balanced employees. It’s a win-win!”
The pandemic has changed office work as we knew it beyond recognition, and according to Megan, it “served as an accelerant, dramatically speeding up trends that were already in the works but would have otherwise taken much longer to materialize.”
She explained further: “Traditional office-based employees have been wanting flexibility and the ability to work remotely for a very long time, but workplace cultures and behaviors were so entrenched, it was difficult to overcome the inertia. The pandemic was a disruptor and a catalyst for change, because suddenly entire companies were forced to adopt flexibility and remote work overnight, and many are still remote some 18 months later.”
Most importantly, by now, we’ve all seen that it’s possible and that it actually holds benefits for both the employer and the employee. “We’ve adopted new technologies and new work behaviors and we’ve reorganized and reprioritized our lives. It’s hard to see how or why we’d go backwards from here.”
As for the LinkedIn post itself, Megan said she definitely didn’t expect such a response. “I know many people are passionate about this topic, and previous posts about flexibility and empathy in the workplace have gotten good engagement, but not to this magnitude.”
What it means is that clearly this particular post really struck a chord. “I’ve been amazed by the number of truly touching messages I’ve received from people sharing their own stories with me and encouraging me to continue using my voice to advocate on this issue,” Megan concluded.
everyone talks about how it doesn't work like that in all professions, and maybe that's true, but there are a lot of places it could work if they were not so insistent on the leanest staffing possible. if you have adequate staffing, you increase the chance that there is someone to help out when life happens. and life always happens. but if it's dealt with in short bursts like this, you can prevent a huge collapse later down the road. you can be flexible or at least more flexible than you currently are with genuinely sufficient staffing.
Came here to say that. If you are always running your business at a bare bones minimum, you don't have any backups for emergencies. That leads to burnout, high employee turnover, and frankly, loss of business.
This later part is true. A lot of the points above doesn't tell me that employers and managers have empathy or care about their employees. It just says that businesses are run with no buffer or contingency planning. If they had, none of the points above will need to even be mentioned. Flexible job arrangements aren't a boon or benefit, its another way to increase the number of hours employees are expected to work.
That’s our problem right now. We had a buffer, but she retired. They never filled her position and now our work has jumped up 1000% (I work in a hospital). We also have no one else that was trained in our department as an extra. Now we are burned out and run ragged and only 1 person can take any time off at any given time.due to this shortage. I have a chronic illness and I’m ready to look for another job after 15 years because I can’t do it anymore.
As a single women who choose not to have children, I was happy to see the comment about the dog. Many don't value people's pets as 'family'. My Zoe is my family and I would take time off to care for her if need be.
Same. I just started my job three weeks ago and I had to take a half day last week to bring my cat to the vet. They were like, "Oh don't worry about it. I hope your cat gets better!"
When my cat of 17 years was approaching the last days, I took the whole week off to be with her and then the following week to grieve. I was very fortunate that I work on my own and was able to give myself that time off because I don't think most employers would have understood.
Kara Weaver's response up there (the last one) and some of the others struck a cord with me...... No Kara - Megan came up with a solution that fit her situation and that's all she should be expected to do.......There's no "one size fits all" and you shouldn't expect other people to do your work for you.......It's up to YOU to come up with a solution that works for YOUR set of circumstances.
Yeah, those comments were almost in the Choosey Beggar range.
Yes, and I think it is also simple jealousy. Nobody said that hairdressers could work whenever they like or that bakers could chose not to have fresh bread in the morning but this is the same fruitless discussion like answering "All lifes matter" to somebody saying "Black lifes matter"... Do John and Kara realise how many people there are working in offices? And lots of these office workers are forced into very strict time tables although it would be perfectly possible to work different hours or work from home - as long as the work gets done on time, of course. Why should these people be denied better conditions just because the hairdresser and the baker cannot have them as well? Maybe Kara is only happy if everyone else has it as bad as she has.
everyone talks about how it doesn't work like that in all professions, and maybe that's true, but there are a lot of places it could work if they were not so insistent on the leanest staffing possible. if you have adequate staffing, you increase the chance that there is someone to help out when life happens. and life always happens. but if it's dealt with in short bursts like this, you can prevent a huge collapse later down the road. you can be flexible or at least more flexible than you currently are with genuinely sufficient staffing.
Came here to say that. If you are always running your business at a bare bones minimum, you don't have any backups for emergencies. That leads to burnout, high employee turnover, and frankly, loss of business.
This later part is true. A lot of the points above doesn't tell me that employers and managers have empathy or care about their employees. It just says that businesses are run with no buffer or contingency planning. If they had, none of the points above will need to even be mentioned. Flexible job arrangements aren't a boon or benefit, its another way to increase the number of hours employees are expected to work.
That’s our problem right now. We had a buffer, but she retired. They never filled her position and now our work has jumped up 1000% (I work in a hospital). We also have no one else that was trained in our department as an extra. Now we are burned out and run ragged and only 1 person can take any time off at any given time.due to this shortage. I have a chronic illness and I’m ready to look for another job after 15 years because I can’t do it anymore.
As a single women who choose not to have children, I was happy to see the comment about the dog. Many don't value people's pets as 'family'. My Zoe is my family and I would take time off to care for her if need be.
Same. I just started my job three weeks ago and I had to take a half day last week to bring my cat to the vet. They were like, "Oh don't worry about it. I hope your cat gets better!"
When my cat of 17 years was approaching the last days, I took the whole week off to be with her and then the following week to grieve. I was very fortunate that I work on my own and was able to give myself that time off because I don't think most employers would have understood.
Kara Weaver's response up there (the last one) and some of the others struck a cord with me...... No Kara - Megan came up with a solution that fit her situation and that's all she should be expected to do.......There's no "one size fits all" and you shouldn't expect other people to do your work for you.......It's up to YOU to come up with a solution that works for YOUR set of circumstances.
Yeah, those comments were almost in the Choosey Beggar range.
Yes, and I think it is also simple jealousy. Nobody said that hairdressers could work whenever they like or that bakers could chose not to have fresh bread in the morning but this is the same fruitless discussion like answering "All lifes matter" to somebody saying "Black lifes matter"... Do John and Kara realise how many people there are working in offices? And lots of these office workers are forced into very strict time tables although it would be perfectly possible to work different hours or work from home - as long as the work gets done on time, of course. Why should these people be denied better conditions just because the hairdresser and the baker cannot have them as well? Maybe Kara is only happy if everyone else has it as bad as she has.