I was honored to participate in a panel conducted by Elevate IT at the Irving Convention center in Texas – which was relayed as a virtual conference as well.  We had a tremendous discussion between the 4 fantastic female Technology and security leaders which was moderated by Jessica Nemmers as we are merging from this unusual year! We all faced very unusual challenges especially women! The number of women that were furloughed or let go were 2 times of men. And the others were forced to work from home and take care of the kids while working from home. 

When a woman says that she has to quit her job to take care of her family – its an acceptable social norm. On the contrary, if a man takes a similar decision then its not acceptable or may seem odd to him even if he is willing to take that option. This issue has already been there and has come to light through this pandemic. It also highlighted the fact that women need to have a track record and prove themselves multiple times before getting opportunities, and men have to just say confidently that they can take the job on!

We as leaders had to make a lot of changes in the way we worked with our teams, as they struggled to jump through multiple hoops of taking care of their children, helping them with their online school, teaching them and helping them with their homework, playing with them, reading for them and at the same time taking care of work schedule, the deadline the deliverables and performing both duties effectively. It was great to hear different ideas how we allowed flexible work schedule and how we supported so there could be some relief to their already overwhelming schedule by using creative and innovative solutions, technology and tools, and by teaming with each other.

It was interesting to discuss how working remote is an acceptable way of working and what that means is just because you have young babies and cannot travel you do not have to quit your job that you so like and thriving in. The team will understand your situation and is willing to work with you during those times such as when you are focusing on being mom or taking care of someone who needs you in person. Had it not been for pandemic those career opportunities/jobs would have been taken away from us.

We did appreciate all the mentor/coaches/advocates and champions – in our careers both men and women – how they promoted us and helped us and marketed our skill sets to help us get to the next level of our careers and helped us become better leaders.

The pandemic has also opened an option to look for talent that can be hired not only from local markets but across the nation. 

As women performed these multiple duties as they worked from home, they also became role models for their children and proved to them how they are taking responsibility of being a Mom and a good employee and how at those hard times you dedicate to your duties.

Pandemic also highlighted the impact of remote work on Commercial Real Estate especially the office spaces. The need to have office space was reduced since the employees were working from home and the expiring leases were either not continued or required less space. As a result of this CRE was forced to rethink their business model and renting spaces on a temporary basis, co-sharing or using spaces on a rotational basis have become options for the businesses. Many companies are also realizing that they are missing out on the “human connection” and the culture of the company, working together collaboratively, having a quick dialog in person rather than multiple different email threads or brainstorming and bouncing idea off of each other is missed and may impact the productivity and teaming.

It was amazing to learn that most of us have been through the same set of challenges and how each of the leaders gave everything to support their teams to get through this challenging year and how we have emerged even stronger, ready to lead this new new world – where we are not out of the woods. We now know how to handle these difficult challenges and be the winners of this modern world, modern workplaces and deal with this modern virus!