From a widely publicized op-ed in The Hill to last week’s celebrity-laden ad in the New York Times, the proposed Marshall Plan for Moms has been making headlines and simultaneously highlighting some alarming statistics. The numbers reflecting the impact of the pandemic on working women and mothers are staggering: An estimated 5.4 million have lost their jobs since last February. As of September, there were three working mothers unemployed for every father who’d lost a job. The percentage of American women in the workforce is currently the lowest it has been in 32 years.

But those figures come as little surprise to any working mother who’s been weathering the pandemic while juggling the seemingly insurmountable demands of home and coronavirus working conditions.

Reshma Saujani, the plan’s architect and founder of Girls Who Code, knows all too well the challenges being faced by mothers in the American workforce. Their situation was stressful enough even before the pandemic, she said, speaking on a Zoom call from her son’s bedroom in a From Day One webinar with fellow mother and Maven Clinic founder Kate Ryder, also a signatory to the New York Times ad.

But now the demands on working mothers in American society are exponentially worse, and failure to address them will result in devastating setbacks, undoing decades of female progress in the workforce.

“I think the thing that’s so scary is how quickly we lost so many gains,” said Saujani, the mother of two children ages six and one, pointing out that labor participation among women in the U.S. has declined to levels not seen since the 1980s. “That happened in nine months," she said. "That should frighten all of us."

Saujani was speaking from a particularly well-versed place; she started Girls Who Code a decade ago to fix the “pipeline problem” that had contributed to a low percentage of women in tech jobs.

“Ten years later, almost, we have taught over 300,000 girls to code,” she said. “We have 10,000 Girls Who Code clubs across the country. When we started Girls Who Code, almost 18% of computer science graduates were women–and now, in some schools, it’s almost as high as 50%. So it’s no longer a pipeline problem.”

“The work that we’re really focused on is rooting out bias, sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, to make sure that tech companies actually hire these amazing women,” Saujani said.

Yet now, thanks to the pandemic, the challenge is retaining these women in the workforce. “If we’re ever going to solve climate, if we’re going to solve Covid, if we’re going to solve cancer, we need women sitting around the table,” Saujani said. “Women are leaving the workforce now not because we don’t want to work, but because of child care–and because our companies that we work at, oftentimes, don’t respond with the flexibility that we need.”

“And so I, out of anger and frustration and desperation, wrote an op-ed, and it resonated with millions of women who said: I feel seen. And so now we’re going to get it done. Because that’s what we do as moms, right? You know, the fabric of our society is based upon motherhood. As we build America back better, we have an opportunity to build motherhood back better. And I think we should take full advantage of that.”

Her proposal for a Marshall Plan for Moms, a reference to the 1948 U.S. government program that spent billions of dollars to help rebuild Europe after World War II, calls on President Biden to implement, in his first 100 days, significant protections for working mothers. But Saujani remains a realist about the blowback and the challenges–as does Ryder, whose company provides health care for women and families. “At the end of the day, your moms are going to pick their children over their jobs,” said Ryder, “and so how do you support the moms who will always make that choice, which I think almost all moms will make?”

She continued: “For moms that have left the workforce but then want to come back, how do you create returnships in a really profound and pronounced way?”

To do that, Ryder said, employers must be “super thoughtful about what flexibility means for their organization and how to really make a leadership-level and board-level imperative to maintain gender equity in the workforce.” If a company has lost a lot of women, she added, it needs strategies to bring them back.

That’s a tall order, she and Saujani agreed–particularly when women were “already facing a motherhood penalty and a fatherhood premium in the workplace,” the Girls Who Code founder said.

“I think the penalty is going to be even greater when we go back, unless we do something about this case and we’re very intentional about rooting out the deepened bias that we have towards motherhood that has also, I think, been exacerbated by this pandemic–because now you really see our roles, doing all the unpaid work.”

In her own life, Saujani said, she’s become–on any given day, at any given moment–nanny, tech support, cleaner, cook and mental-health counselor.

“As you’re thinking about a reopening plan, and you’re figuring out the cost of keeping teachers safe, I want you to calculate the cost of lost labor–factor that in,” she said. “Until you really start putting a value on our unseen, unpaid labor, nothing changes.”

“The second thing is, we need to pass policies like affordable day care and paid leave,” Saujani said. “There are some good ideas that are in Biden’s plan right now in terms of bailing out the day-care industry and making sure that low-income mothers, in particular, get a tax credit to pay for child care. But it can’t just be a one-year stopgap. We need real structural change.”

“The third thing is, look, schools have to be open five days a week, period. If we don’t open up schools five days a week, safely, then we’re going to be in the 1960s” in terms of gender equity, she said. “So we should be working on, again: What do we need to do in terms of batch testing, keeping teachers safe, social distancing in the schools?

“And lastly, what are we doing to bring women back?,” Saujani asked, picking up on Ryder’s earlier point. “The vast majority of those working in retail and health care and education are women and women of color. And a lot of those jobs are not coming back. So how do we retrain women for the jobs of tomorrow–and then for women who have left and want to come back?”

To support and retain moms on their workforces, companies need to expand their concepts of job flexibility, said Ryder. Some “leading companies” are doing a commendable job, she said, “telling people that they could keep full benefits, which are really expensive, [and] they could work part-time, so they could work on a reduced schedule.”

At many companies, Ryder said, “if you go down to 25, 30 hours a week, and you work with your managers on that, then there’s no penalty.” Employers should be “really, really clear about what those rules are,” she added. “You really have to get in at a manager level and train them for how to work with their teams and assign some kind of support on how to pick up some of that work if somebody goes part-time.” Oftentimes, she said, there are a lot a good intentions on setting these flexibility policies, but then in some cases employees are “at the whim of the manager–and how was the manager adapting to that? What tools did they have?”

Integral to solving the growing problem, Saujani said, is gathering the knowledge and data to know its true extent. There is a need, she said, “to be specific about who is suffering–what are they struggling with, how do we help mothers at our workplace? What are the things that they need?”

“I think the first way that you actually solve the problem is by being specific and by being intentional, so really getting the data. How many mothers have left? Why have they left? What are the needs that they have? You know, is it about child care? Is it about an aging parent? What would it take for them to actually come back to work?”

She continued: “This point about the motherhood penalty is going to be huge. We already know that so many women are asked, ‘Hey, are you planning on having another kid? How young are your kids? What’s your child-care situation at home?’ [Employers are] already trying to assume that, because we have kids, we’re suddenly not as interested in our careers,” Saujani said.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, “that is simply going to be exacerbated. So in the same way that we’ve been doing a ton of unconscious-bias training, and really trying to root out some of the inherent bias that we have, we’re going to have to do the same when it comes to the motherhood penalty, because we are going to pay a bigger tax for this, post-Covid,” Saujani said.

“And if we’re not careful, we’re really quickly going to get back to where we were in the 1960s. Before we know it.”

Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this webinar, Maven Clinic. You can watch a video of the conversation From Day One webinar. Please visit our conference page to register for more upcoming events.

Sheila Flynn is a Chicago-based journalist who has written for the Associated Press, the Sunday Independent, the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Times. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.

Skills-Based Hiring: Getting Started and Overcoming Common Objections

It’s never been easier to put skills-based hiring into practice. The tools and the resources are there–and the potential benefits are abundant. And yet, some leaders and hiring managers are skeptical.“One of the major positives about the skills-based approach is that it adds more science and rigor to the hiring process,” said Christopher Rotolo, vice president of global talent at Mitek. Adding science, Rotolo says, adds objectivity, which can remove some of the bias and “increase the validity of the whole hiring process.”“The fact is that over 60% of people don’t have a college degree. But that hasn’t stopped employers from benchmarking candidates that way,” said moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company. Dishman moderated a panel of leaders during From Day One’s recent webinar about Skills-Based Hiring: Getting Started and Overcoming Uncommon Objections.Unconscious bias can easily creep into the hiring process when looking at a candidate’s resume, which can reveal indicators like elite educational opportunities, prestige, race, and even generational wealth, none of which are necessarily predictors of career success. Hiring almost exclusively on skill can help employers dial into what really matters.Rather than focusing on degrees, says Amanda Richardson, CEO and head of people at CoderPad, “You have to dissect the role into the skills that are needed, working with the hiring manager and people who are currently in the role. The most important part of the conversation is not just ‘What are the skills?’ but ‘What does good look like?’” This approach requires more in-depth conversations between hiring managers and department leaders to get a stronger sense of not only what success looks like, but how previous successes can be communicated during the interview process.“I find that taking a practical approach [means] literally saying, ‘What does a great answer sound like? Does this person really know what they're talking about?’” said Stacey Olive, VP of talent acquisition and employer branding for Medidata, Dassault Systemes.“Because there’s not an empirical objective test for everything, we really have to go based on our conversations with people.” This means hiring managers need to prepare upfront so they can infer if they’re hearing “flowery language” merely alluding to past success, or if a candidate actually has lived experience that will be beneficial to the role.Focusing on skills-based hiring isn’t just a great way to reduce unconscious bias, it can also make the hiring process quicker. “A little bit of upfront work on understanding and aligning on the skills and the level of the skills needed will actually make a much faster hiring experience,” Richardson said.Semoneel Bamboat, VP and global head of diversity, inclusion and talent acquisition at Capri Holdings, shares that while her organization has a rubric within which they score talent competencies on a scale of one to five, her team does not let the skill scoring fully dictate the conversation.“While we have numbers and rigor around it, nothing is set in stone,” she said. “The purpose of that really is so we can cast this wide net. We don’t want to be that specific, because we don’t want to then lose sight of someone that might not fit that exactly.” Skills-forward hiring should be used to identify previously untapped candidates, not a blanket way to eliminate unusual or creative choices that could be an interesting fit.Richardson adds that getting too technical in the taxonomy can overwhelm the conversation, especially as hiring managers try to parse the subtleties between junior and senior versions of the same role. “I've seen the situation where developers start arguing about the nuances of ‘What does it mean to be very proficient versus mildly proficient?’ And I think you can lose the forest for the trees pretty quickly.”Copying and pasting old job descriptions when looking to fill a role is no longer enough. Instead, there should be periodic check-ins to make sure descriptions are up-to-date as the nature of the work, and therefore the role, continues to evolve. Part of this can be solved by shortening and simplifying the job listing. “It tends to be a lengthy laundry list of desires and needs. Instead, employers should aim to distill it into ‘What is the required skill for success?’” Olive said.With an eye toward DEI, Bamboat’s organization uses short external job listings with neutral language, keeping the more elaborate and specific job description for internal use only among the hiring team. “We take a lot of the details out to be able to cast that wide net,” she said.“We never want to post the exact job and be very specific about those requirements, because we feel like we’re decreasing our talent pool.” Bamboat shared the well-known study that showed women tend to only apply for jobs where they feel they will fit every single benchmark. Shortening the list of requirements can make it more inclusive. Once candidates make it to the interview phase, the hiring manager can discuss the specific details from the full listing to gauge if it’s a fit.In conversation moderated by Lydia Dishman of Fast Company, the panelists discussed the topic “Skills-Based Hiring: Getting Started and Overcoming Common Objections” (photo by From Day One)Pamela Rodas, global senior director of talent acquisition at Telus International, hires for a company with more than 3,000 types of job profiles, all of which are changing rapidly as her organization embraces hybrid workplaces and remote opportunities. In turn, she and her team must change how they assess skills. For example, her newer sales development hires may not have been exposed to an in-person environment where they could hone their technique. Therefore, she finds herself hiring more for soft skills or what Dishman prefers to call power skills, especially as the post-pandemic corporate environment has higher than ever expectations. “All of our clients want to go faster. So forget about skills, do you know how to do the job and do it in less time?” Rodas said.Trying to identify those more amorphous qualities, like being a fast learner, in a candidate can be a challenge. Panelists offered two solutions. The first is reviewing case studies. “To identify these characteristics that lead to outstanding performance, you study what those outstanding performers do,” Rotolo said.The second, is conducting actual testing during the hiring process. “Work simulations can be helpful, whether that means programming together for two hours or sitting and doing a sales demo. What are those real-world experiences where you can actually test the proof points?” Richardson said. Just having a great conversation in an interview is not necessarily enough.But the interview process can still be helpful if you are asking the right questions. “The research still says that behaviorally based questions are the most valid. And there’s really two types: ‘Tell me about a time when’’ past experiences, or situational questions,” Rotolo said.Rodas believes it’s also important to have an honest conversation about the nature of the role and pay attention to the applicant’s response. “The recruiter can [now] spend more time with the candidate talking about how they would endure the type of workload we’re going to put on them. In any type of business today, that’s worth 10 times more,” she said.This also means asking the right questions internally too, to ensure there is no unconscious bias at play and that a candidate’s competency is still at the forefront. “We have an opportunity now to ask [hiring managers], ‘What's the basis of your decision?’” Olive said. “You have to understand and politely point out where you think you see bias happening.”Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

The Long-Term Shortage of Talent in the Post-Industrial Age: How Companies Can Respond

In the early industrial age, companies had a hierarchy built around manufacturing and machinery. But now workplaces are organized much differently. Their new priority? The talent. We’ve entered an era where the shortage of workers, obsolescence of skills, and new levels of employee agency will present employers with historic challenges. Most companies are not ready.The new Intelligence Age is a time when skills, employee creativity, information and AI will define our companies. In a recent From Day One webinar about “The Long-Term Shortage of Talent in the Post-Industrial Age: How Companies Can Respond,” speakers explored three strategies for success: rethinking the organization as dynamic rather than static, rethinking management with human-centered leadership, and rethinking HR as no longer an expense center, but rather a function like R&D that must build and invest in the company's people.All told, this means we need to redesign our companies around the person and shift to a new model for work. The time to act is now, experts say.The Changing Power Structure in the Labor MarketThe renowned Josh Bersin, founder & CEO of The Josh Bersin Company, says that with Baby Boomers retiring and declining fertility rates, there will be smaller generations coming forward to replace them. Employers will have a high demand for skilled workers but a much smaller talent pool, he says.“If you look at the supply and demand of workers and the labor force, it’s absolutely different from what we’ve seen in the past,” said Sania Khan, chief economist and head of market insights at Eightfold, an AI-driven talent intelligence platform.This could signal tough times ahead, especially in an age where companies are defined more and more by people and ideas than by machinery and products. “Scarcity of talent is one of the biggest challenges out there for companies,” said moderator Steve Koepp, From Day One’s chief content officer and co-Founder.Bersin notes that his company is getting consistent feedback from employers post-pandemic that they are having trouble sourcing new talent and with the retention of what is “a highly empowered workforce. We have employees saying, ‘I'm going to quietly quit. I'm going to work my wage. I'm going to do what I need to do. I don’t care what you say. You don’t like hybrid work? Tough luck, I’ll go find a job where I can work remotely.”Bersin predicts this is a long-term trend, and companies need to get smarter about finding and keeping their people. This is especially true in industries like healthcare, which is facing a major labor shortage despite a recent BLS report predicting 54% of new jobs will be in healthcare due in part to that same aging population that is decreasing the workforce.A Renewed Focus on Employees and ProductivityWith technology changing rapidly and more and more roles relying on it, companies will need to prioritize upskilling and reskilling opportunities to keep their workforce up-to-date and competitive. “Companies will need to focus on their employees,” Khan said, noting that companies that don’t prioritize training are already experiencing higher employee turnover.Another way to curb turnover is to take a hard look at workplace policies and make sure they are serving employees personally to make the organization more attractive, whether that is through flexible hours, hybrid options, and even AI assistance, Khan says.Bersin’s organization just finished a report on the prevalence of the four-day workweek or work time reduction. “This is becoming a big deal because employees want flexibility. We’re finding that this idea creates job productivity, and forces companies to redesign jobs,” Bersin said. “There are things that we’re going to do that seem unnatural now to deal with this labor shortage. In the future they will be commonplace. That’s just one example.”The recent webinar featured Josh Bersin of the Josh Bersin Company and Sania Khan of Eightfold (photo by From Day One)This changing definition of productivity, a focus on “revenue per employee” rather than hours worked, will also serve working parents well, Khan says, as they manage to get more work done in a shorter period.“Hiring more people isn’t necessarily more productive,” Khan said. Companies will start to measure their success by how efficiently they are utilizing their human resources to generate revenue, a focus on output rather than the size of the team. “The companies that are really good at productivity are good at human resources. They’re good at training, facilitating workshops, redesigning jobs, flattening the corporate hierarchy, changing the role of leaders, and democratizing career development,” Bersin said. “These things that might have felt like ‘nice-to-haves’ ten years ago are becoming critical to becoming productive in this new economy.”Reimagining a Skills-based HierarchyIn the information age, employment has been less about job titles and more about the work, Bersin says, with employees taking on tasks and using their skills for objectives far beyond their stated job description in order to accomplish the mission of the day, week, or month. “These rigid job descriptions, titles, and hierarchies are getting in the way of reorganizing and redesigning the company to be more efficient,” Bersin said. He anticipates an existential change in which the titles of managers and corner office perks will be deprioritized in order to get the work done.In turn, companies will be looking less at what skills prospective employees currently have and instead look at adjacent skills that show an employee has the potential to be upskilled to be the right fit, Khan says. A focus on skills, says Bersin, can also pave the way for automation. Employees can be allowed to utilize the top of their skill set if their lower-level, less skilled tasks can be automated.“If you look at the needs of an organization, you can put employees in specific, goal-centric projects,” Khan said. “Instead of just having you siloed to one department, you can now move around to where you’re needed based on your skills.” This would also allow employees to be well-versed in the whole enterprise, rather than just one area, so both the individual and the organization benefit. And tools like Eightfold can use machine learning to help companies analyze what skill areas are lacking and fill those gaps with talent.How Leaders Can Adapt to the New Workforce“Leaders have to understand this labor shortage existentially and operate in a company where transformation and growth isn’t an episodic thing–it's never-ending,” Bersin said. “The new model of leadership is, ‘can you build a company that can move people around, that can develop people, that can hold people accountable, but also give them the opportunity to move when you need them into a new place?’ Those are different kinds of leadership skills.”And with the hierarchy flattening, workers need to be prepared to sometimes be leaders and other times be more subordinate depending on the current project. “We have to democratize the concept of leadership.” Those with flexibility and an appetite for innovation will be most attractive to potential employers, Khan adds.And in a talent-driven company, HR will become more and more essential, and will be called on to understand a wide variety of skills, roles, and changing corporate models to operate within skills-based planning, Bersin says. Gone are the days where HR will be associated with conflict resolution and complaints. Instead, HR is becoming a forward-thinking, technology, and data-driven career path.Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Eightfold, for sponsoring this webinar. You can read more from Josh Bersin on the post-industrial age here.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.

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