Female Frontliners in 2022: Who Wouldn’t Want to Quit?

“The benefits of remote work.” “Why work from anywhere is the new normal.” “Gen Z demands hybrid work policies.” These are the headlines and phrases taking over workforce conversations these days. But all of these ‘hot topics’ completely ignore a huge segment of our workforce: female frontline workers who never have the luxury to work from home, let alone ‘anywhere.’

As a daughter of the 70’s and 80’s, my generation has had more access to education, opportunity, and healthcare than any that came before. Over the last 50 years, women have ‘leaned in’ in droves and many earned their way into management, C-suites and boardrooms at historic rates. The #metoo movement reset social norms in the workplace. Parental leave is more accessible today than when I first became a mother 21 years ago. Today, 4 of 9 U.S. Supreme Court Justices are women, and our Vice President is a woman of color. It's irrefutable that American women have come a long way from earning the right to vote when the 19th Amendment passed 100 years ago.

And yet, the last two years have threatened this progress–and women’s resolve–to the core. The pandemic caused many to have to carry multiple jobs simultaneously–often on inconsistent schedules from employers looking to reap more from part-time employees vs. paying full time employee benefits. Women have taken on the roles of reliable employee, super mom, home school teacher, home health nurse, housekeeper, and chief forager (or hoarder) of essentials like baby formula, toilet paper, and COVID-19 home tests. Our families were, and still are, shaken by loss and grief as well as mental and economic strain. ALL of our jobs have become harder than ever.

No one should be surprised that women are experiencing record levels of exhaustion, burn out, and ‘quiet quitting’.

On Women’s Equality Day 2022, we need to recognize that women who serve in frontline industries have been hit the hardest and take action to level the playing field for them. They risk health exposures every time they go to work in grocery stores, shops, factories, hotels, restaurants, healthcare facilities, transportation and construction sites to keep our world running. Childcare is unreliable or unaffordable, while schools struggle to staff classrooms and bus routes. Everything is more expensive while wages remain flat or increase slower than inflation. Employers in every industry struggle to fill empty roles, forcing many to work overtime or carry more than their normal workload. Persistent supply chain shortages continue to create an extra layer of chaos for frontliners, as many businesses don’t have the materials workers need, when they need them.

On Women’s Equality Day 2022, we need to recognize that women who serve in frontline industries have been hit the hardest and take action to level the playing field for them.

It’s no wonder that up to 50% of women are planning to leave their frontline jobs in the next 2 years. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently found that 32% of unemployed women are not returning to work to care for a family member, and during the early months of the pandemic, women lost 1.7 million more jobs than men. And yet frontline companies can’t afford to lose this vital talent. Without staff to do the work, their businesses will slow down or grind to a halt. The health crisis of 2020-21 has been replaced with the talent crisis of 2022. Unless employers act quickly to resolve the systemic inequalities that fuel frontline frustration and turnover, The Great Resignation will continue to dominate headlines in 2023.

But I don’t believe women will accept a massive backslide in opportunity, earning, and quality of life for themselves and their families. In fact, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, more women are actually taking higher paying full time jobs in male-dominated fields like warehousing and transportation. This trend of the ‘Great Renegotiation’ is widely hoped to replace the previous years dubbed by the IMF as the ‘she-cession’, where women dropping out of the workforce slowed economic growth during the pandemic years. That said, jobs to support women’s reentry into the workforce, like nursing and childcare, are lagging – mostly because of employment conditions that do not adequately support the women and minorities who make up the bulk of the talent pool for those jobs.

Here are the top 5 ways for businesses to empower frontline women workers and help everyone benefit from a stronger workplace and a healthier future:

1. Don’t let female workers feel like just a number: recognize their effort, reward their accomplishments, and invest in their professional development. Prioritizing workplace happiness improves workforce retention AND company performance.
2. Be more flexible to help them juggle: realize the demands outside of work are real–make it possible for them to meet responsibilities in all corners of their lives. Hourly workers are now demanding stable, more predictable shifts when choosing between potential employers.
3. Don’t make their work harder than it has to be–do away with excess paper and bureaucratic processes. Utilize technology to simplify the number of applications used - from onboarding, to scheduling, payroll and daily tasks. The time to digitize frontline businesses is NOW. 
4. Make sure your female workers have the benefits they need to care for their own physical AND mental health and that of their families.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the first year of the pandemic alone resulted in a 25% increase in the number of people dealing with anxiety and depression.
5. Finally, make sure female workers earn a fair and equitable pay that will allow them to keep up with the rising cost-of-living. Combine this with on-demand pay apps with expedited access to earnings, helping families stay afloat between paydays. 

The good news is that history proves that women can and will find a way to make it all work. And the employers that step-up and help them do that will reap major financial and competitive rewards.