Episode 16: Romy Newman, Fairygodboss

Pandemic aftermath: hybrid schedules and work-life satisfaction

 

As the president and co-founder of the digital career community Fairygodboss, Romy Newman has a front-row view of emerging trends in the workplace. In this conversation with Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein, Romy discusses the impact of the pandemic on the workplace, how women can negotiate for flexibility, and her hopes for the hybrid office of the future.

 

The origins of Fairygodboss

Romy Newman already had a successful finance and marketing career including a stint as the only female vice president at the Wall Street Journal when a friend approached her about a start-up idea in 2015. The friend, who was pregnant and job searching at the time, was realizing how hard it was for women to find information about workplace policies supporting women. She was finding that her ability to collect information was only as good as the people she knew,” Romy recalls. “So if she didn't know somebody who worked at J.P. Morgan, she wasn't going to be able to find out what the maternity leave policy was . . . or whether the company had paid leave or infertility benefits or anything like that.”

 

With two young children at the time, Romy said she was looking for a change herself, so she jumped in to co-found Fairygodboss. At first Romy and her partner focused their new digital community on employee reviews, having women anonymously report their experience at different companies, but they soon changed the focus to be a forum where women can ask and answer specific questions. “What we've found is that women feel isolated as they rise up in the workplace and they have questions.” She says, “They don't know who to go to for answers. So was it okay that my boss said this, or I'm asking for a raise and I don't know the best way to approach it, or is now the time to apply for a lateral move or is now an appropriate time to ask for a promotion.”

 

Once the pandemic upended the workplace in 2020, the concerns being voiced on Fairygodboss centered more and more on the anxiety, burnout, and exhaustion of maintaining work-life balance while working from home, often with kids at home. “We have definitely seen it kind of rattle through our community,” she says. “Starting with kind of the shock of how am I even supposed to help my kids with homeschool at the same time that I'm doing a full-time job to the anxiety of I'm worried that if I am not available all the time, I'm going to lose my job to just like pure burnout and exhaustion.”

 

Negotiating for flexibility, and success in the hybrid office of the future

One positive to come out of the pandemic, Romy says, is a new appreciation for working from home. “I think this has been a wonderful experiment in how flexible schedules don’t impede productivity,” she says. And though she recognizes that there is value in the personal connections made in an office, she hopes the future will include more hybrid arrangements where women can set their own schedules according to their own strengths and needs.

 

For instance, she notes her own preferred work schedule: work early in the morning, then drop her kids at school, then work out, then get back to work mid-morning. “Instead of feeling like behind the ball, I feel ahead of things and I feel invigorated and happier,” she shares. “I think just being able to design my work around a schedule that works for me is so much better.

 

Her advice to women who want to negotiate more flexible schedules with their own bosses is simple: express it in a way that highlights the value it would bring to the company. “What is it going to do for them?” she asks. “If they help you have the flexibility that you want, I think helping them see that it's going to help you do better work, that you're going to be available to them, that you're going to get them everything they need is really important.”

 

For women currently searching for jobs, Romy advises focusing on areas where flexibility and hybrid schedules might be more available. Right now, she says, job postings are more than double what they were a year ago. “I know people don't want to hear this, but it's all digital, it's all technology,” she notes. “So I think for women who don't have those skills, the great news is they are so easy to acquire.”