Erin Bury is the co-founder and CEO of online estate planning platform Willful.co. She lives in rural Ontario with her husband and two young children.Supplied
As employers keep steadily pushing for a return to office, some working parents are pushing back. The genie is out of the bottle for moms and dads who have seen the benefit of remote work – on their budget, their families and their mental health.
There are obvious cost savings from remote work that have nothing to do with being a parent – the lower cost of living outside of major urban centres, not paying for gas or transit if you commute, saving money on takeout coffees, lunches, and office wear, and the ability to write off certain home office expenses when you file your taxes.
There are also specific financial, mental and logistical benefits to remote work for parents. I’ve experienced them firsthand and heard about them from countless parents I know.
Fewer hours commuting means more flexibility for kid schedules, which in turn can mean reduced child care costs, whether on daycare, paying a nanny, or before- and after-school programs.
Depending on the age of your children, it can also mean saving on babysitters during PA days when kids have no school, or sick days – if the kids can amuse themselves while you’re working at home. (Not so in my case, since my toddlers would interrupt me every five minutes).
But most of the savings related to remote work are in time, not money. And time is something very precious to parents.
Sonya Northeast, a single mother of two who lives in Guelph, Ont., says her remote job as an account manager at a digital marketing agency makes her life easier. It gives her time to complete chores around the house, get her kids to activities and save money on March Break camps.
“We have made more memories and gotten closer,” Ms. Northeast said through social media. “Best move I ever made as a single mom for all of us.”
Toronto freelance marketer Juliana Casale echoes the sentiment, saying that remote work has been a “godsend” because of the flexibility is provides.
“I don’t have to spend hours commuting to an office only to scramble at 4 p.m. to beat downtown Toronto traffic and pray I get there before I get charged by the minute for late pickup – or worse, feeling guilty they’re the last kids to be scooped up,” she said through Instagram.
Overwhelmingly, the sentiment from parents is that remote work allows them to be more present while they’re at work, and to spend more time with their children when they’re not.
Many parents, however, don’t have the option of working from home. There are many jobs such as teaching, nursing, retail or manufacturing that require being on site or in an office.
And even if they can work remotely, I know some parents who love going to the office, whether full-time or a couple days a week, because it means getting out of a toy-filled house to spend time with adults.
One former employee of mine loved her two-hour train commute because it was her only time to read a book and relax, a break from the chaos that hit her as soon as she got home.
But for those who have fallen in love with remote work, employers forcing their teams back to the office risk losing parents who aren’t willing to compromise the flexibility, time, and cost savings that come along with remote work.
One parent I spoke to, Phoebe Olswewski, said she left her marketing job in Toronto because she couldn’t work remotely from her new home in Prince Edward County – she now owns her own business as a pediatric sleep consultant.
I’m one of those parents who will never go back to the office full-time. I run a 20-person software business with my husband, and we went fully remote in 2020. We left Toronto for a rural area with a lower cost of living.
We have two young children, and we’ve met other parents in our area who have similarly moved out of the city in search of green space for their kids, more house for their budget, and a slower pace of life, all made possible by flexible working arrangements.
If time is money, then remote work makes parents rich, and many won’t give that up for any job. I sure won’t.
Erin Bury is the co-founder and CEO of online estate planning platform Willful.co. She lives in rural Ontario with her husband and two young children.
