Zooming into better work-life balance?: gender and equity insights from New Zealanders' experiences with working from home

Even before the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic, trends in digitalisation and globalisation were changing the ways people worked, including the skills they needed, how they worked, and even where they worked. The public health measures adopted to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the trend of working from home in New Zealand and abroad. As restrictions are relaxed, employees and employers are grappling with the return to a new 'normal', for which working from home now plays a more prominent role in many workplaces. This reflects the benefits of working from home for both employees and employers, including reduced costs and increased flexibility.

But this flexibility is a double-edged sword - it can also blur the boundaries between work and home life. With women still taking on responsibility for the bulk of domestic chores, the risk is that the current trend will disadvantage women both at work and in the home. Employers need to identify practices and policies that ensure equity for all workers, i.e. creating opportunities for everyone to fully participate in the workplace productively and successfully, to progress their career equally and for the rewards and benefits of doing so to be equivalent. We conducted a survey of working New Zealanders to better understand what their experiences of working from home had been during and outside of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

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