For working parents — and in particular, mothers — holding a full-time job requires an intricate balancing act to keep up with both professional and caregiving responsibilities.
While remote work during the pandemic made that balance more manageable for many women, companies that once championed flexible work have been slowly walking it back for months, with more and more major companies announcing RTO mandates.
Business Insider spoke to several mothers who work in tech and were told to return to their offices within the last year to find out how that change has affected them and their families. Some saw lots of positives; others described the return-to-office push as disruptive, citing diminished productivity and misalignment between workplace demands and the realities of modern parenthood.
Here are the experiences of three women working in tech who were told to RTO, in their own words. Their stories have been edited for length and clarity.
Diane Thyer, 58
Thyer is an IT project manager at OSL Retail Services in Toronto. She has two children, ages 19 and 22.
I’ve worked as an IT technical project manager for more than 15 years. I implement new technologies and systems to improve and modernize business processes.
In January, my company called head office staff back to the office four days a week. It’s not a huge shift for me. My boys are university-age, so being in the office doesn’t affect my ability to parent. I prep meals on weekends and switched my hours from 9-5 to 8-4 to accommodate walking the dogs and going to the gym.
My husband, who works from home, has stepped up to help get dinner ready and drive my youngest to school as needed. The whole family is pitching in.
I actually find being back in the office helpful. I’m more productive working in the office since I can connect with my colleagues casually and resolve issues faster face to face. I feel more creative.
I find coming into the office enjoyable — I live close, so it’s an easy drive, but for my colleagues who have long commutes, not so much. I think for families with younger children, it’s adding stress.
The developers and analysts on our team work better at home without distractions. When we have deadlines, I get them approval to work from home until the coding is completed.
I think the secret is finding a job close to home. I’ve seen feedback in our employee survey, town halls, and team meetings where colleagues have expressed concerns about the return-to-office policy. I presume the employee satisfaction score for some teams at my company is lower this year because of the return-to-work policy. The company remains firm.
I think we’re back to the pre-COVID-19 normal— and that’s a good thing, in my opinion. If people don’t enjoy working in the office, they can seek positions that serve their personal situation.
Grace Cleveland, 37
Cleveland is a senior manager of AI and privacy compliance at Amazon in Boston. She has two kids, ages 3 and 5.
I grew up with a single mom, and I saw her get ready and go to work every day. It gave me a deep sense of confidence in women’s ability to build strong, successful careers. I was called back into the office five days a week in January, and I think that’s the benefit of RTO for my two kids.
They see me leave the house. They know that mom’s at work. When I come home, I take work calls. It’s not 1950s era in my household at all — if anything, the gender roles are reversed.
My husband has a lot of flexibility in his work and is able to do a lot that I’m not able to, like lunches, pickup and dropoff, and handling it if a kid’s out sick. It normalizes the idea that a man can take on this role in the family, whereas I’m a much stronger financial contributor. For us, this has been the silver lining of the mandated RTO.
I lead a team of 50 people, and I recognize that employees need some flexibility in work. We see a lot of people on the younger end and closer to retirement who love being in the office every day. Our offices are in major cities, so it’s easy for some people to get to the office. They enjoy the social aspects.
The office brings in local restaurants to do pop-ups in our cafeteria. Having to come into the office gets you out of the house and started on your day. I think the parents of young children would probably much prefer working from home.
I believe that RTO three days a week gave people the flexibility they needed. Switching to RTO five days a week took away some of their autonomy.
By Friday, my team is so exhausted that they’re not working to their full capacity. They’ve been commuting all week.
In the office, you have your desk and space, but there’s so much else going on around you that it can be hard to focus. The office is great for brainstorming, but if you’re someone who needs to sit down alone and get some work done, it’s exhausting.
I like going to the office and seeing my team, but managers still have the flexibility to make decisions. If someone needs a day to work from home, I have no problem with that.
Amazon has a great accommodation process and a team that looks at what’s going on in someone’s life. We really try to do the best for our employees when we can.
Kirstyn Allen, 30
Allen is a former account executive at Lenovo Inc. in Durham, North Carolina. She has one child, age 4.
I’d been working in tech for about four years before the pandemic. I led a team of seven at Lenovo. As an account executive, my role was very intense.
We traveled about twice a month. Even when we weren’t traveling, we’d work from home in the evenings after a day in the office.
Then the pandemic hit, and we went completely remote. My son was born at the end of 2020, and so I was also able to stay home with him. By 2021, leadership was itching to get the heart of the sales floor back.
It was a great message, but my life and priorities had shifted. Because COVID-19 was still a concern, I was strongly against sending my son to day care, so when I heard the rumbling, I began planning my exit.
I knew the company wanted things back to the way they were before, so I didn’t speak to leadership about my concerns. If I thought they would’ve been more flexible and allowed me to work from home until my son was in school, I might’ve stayed. There was really no making RTO manageable.
I’m married, but my husband works outside the home and never worked from home. I didn’t have someone who could keep my child during the workday, so I quit my job at Lenovo in May 2021 — some months before the RTO policy was officially implemented — for a fully remote position as a product marketing manager at Cisco. I didn’t tell my manager at Lenovo I was quitting because of RTO — I just said that I had a great opportunity that was better for me and my family.
RTO would’ve affected my mental health, my morale, and my satisfaction as an employee. It’s not that people haven’t done it before, but if you have a routine that you’re used to and a set way of rearing your children, RTO is going to affect you.
It would’ve impaired my ability to show up to work knowing that I’d shifted something that I did not want to do. It also has financial effects. Childcare — especially good care — isn’t cheap.
During the pandemic, we were shown that productivity and connectivity don’t suffer when employees work from home. Personally, I attended more meetings when we went remote than when I worked in person.
Some people enjoy coming to the office, but companies ought to create a flexible work environment where people can choose how they wish to show up as long as the work is getting done.
When we worked remotely, I could set up my son and do what needed to be done. I could focus on work or attend to them when I needed to, and make up for that by working a little later in the evening.
This is what I do now. I have the flexibility to be a mother and an employee, and I’m not giving that up.
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