How are women affected by pandemic worker burnout?
One of the Sentinel microfinance institutions (MFIs) that we interviewed shared an eye-opening insight with me recently: productivity has been up significantly in 2020. She posed that this could be due to work from home changes, as well as the pandemic-induced realization internally that processes were inefficient and needed to be streamlined. But she also shared a contradictory worry. “What if our staff is burned out?” She then brought up an even larger concern: “What if female staff is suffering in silence trying to juggle home and work responsibilities in an era defined primarily by an uncertain pandemic that has completely shifted the way that we work?” It seems that now is the time to understand worker burnout and its impact on women in microfinance, particularly because there remains a large gender gap in microfinance leadership, and female attrition could reduce the role of women in the leadership of MFIs even more.
Piqued by the questions, I began exploring the impact the pandemic is having on women in the workplace globally. I then looked back on some of the rich discussions from the past 18 months generated by Andares Mujeres, a network of nearly 400 professional women in Latin America promoting women’s leadership in the financial inclusion space. Throughout 2020-2021, Andares Mujeres collected stories from their members and offered opportunities to discuss not only the findings from shared experiences but also share some solutions that MFIs in the region have implemented to tackle worker burnout (shared during a webinar). Finally, I conducted a few additional interviews with MFIs to fill in some gaps. It is important to note that all of the examples, cases and interviews are on record and were held with women leaders of MFIs. This is no small detail. It reflects the interest, dedication and care that women leaders are placing on improving conditions for women in microfinance and emphasizes the importance of giving these female leaders a voice and space for action.
Women workers are burning out worldwide
I have been covering Latin America for the Sentinel Project, thus, much of this article focuses on this region. But many of the issues I discovered reflect global trends. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace Report (2021) reports that since the pandemic, women are two times more likely to report burnout than men in the United States. Mothers are 1.5 times more likely than fathers to be spending an additional three or more hours per day on housework and childcare since the pandemic while working the same hours as before at their jobs. Senior women, who perhaps can afford more help, have no respite. According to the report, women senior leaders have done 60% more than their male counterparts to provide crucial emotional support to employees at a time when this type of “soft” management is needed more than ever.
Latin America is more vulnerable to women’s burnout
Latin America is even more vulnerable to the impacts of the pandemic on female worker burnout. Families have had to care for their own to compensate for health care system deficiencies, and strong social norms in the region firmly place care work (physically and cognitively) on the shoulders of women. Prior to the pandemic, Campaña, Gimenez-Nadal and Molina (2015) with the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn studied the total paid and unpaid amount of work of men and women in Latin America. Gaps are particularly large in Ecuador and Mexico, where men work 7.34 and 3.70 hours less per week than women respectively. Gaps are not uniform, of course. It’s smaller in Peru (1.66 hours per week), and in Colombia, it’s mildly reversed (men devote 0.46 more hours per week to total work). However, when children are present, women’s work increases more than that of men in every country. Education seems to offer no respite but only adds to the burden of professional women who are expected to work harder than men to get ahead.
What evidence do we have from the microfinance sector?
The pandemic appears to have tested the already fragile work-home pressures of women working in microfinance. As children moved to remote learning and mothers, daughters and granddaughters were forced to work from home, sharing smart phones with children in online classes, balancing household chores, childcare and eldercare with the pressures of work. This appears to have impacted both the available time and cognitive load on female employees. In some MFIs, female attrition increased more than male attrition. This is undesirable socially, but also financially. Losing a loan officer, branch manager or executive means losing the investment in recruiting, training and development.
“One of our female executives came to me and said she had to leave. Even after we offered her remote work, mental and physical health support, she still left. She was a very professional and experienced worker,” shared Veronica Herrera, CEO of MiCrédito in Nicaragua. She explained that by sending female professionals home during lockdowns, MFIs inadvertently pushed women to prioritize children, family, husbands, and housework, which dampened their career motivation. Staying home, it appears, reminded women that there was a large personal cost to carrying most of the burden and responsibility of work at home while working. They perhaps “gave up” on trying to do both. MiCrédito, resultingly went from having 62% of the workforce comprised of women to 50%. Mariela Ramirez of MiBanco Colombia highlighted that in Colombia, exit interviews with staff show that more women are leaving than men, and primarily those women who work in the field. For female loan officers, the primary reason for leaving the Bank (over 40% of women who left) was personal and family reasons (as opposed to new job opportunities, or conflict at work, for example). At MiBanco Peru, female field staff shared their fears of contagion when they visited clients, particularly as caregivers of small children and elderly family members.
Campaña, Gimenez-Nadal and Molina (2015) found that more educated women in less egalitarian countries (Mexico and Ecuador) end up taking on more work on the whole. I called the HR Manager, Adela Giral, at Banco Compartamos in Mexico to see whether they were seeing female burnout given that this Bank has won Great Place to Work awards for decades. She explained that exit interviews revealed that women are more likely than men to have left the Bank to take care of family (60% of women vs. 40% of men). The burnout problem has been concentrated in women at headquarters, reinforcing lessons from the IZA study. Women are juggling the extreme pressure to implement large digital transformation projects in light of the pandemic. By the end of 2021, Banco Compartamos implemented a forced two-week vacation for all staff at headquarters to address this issue.
MFIs responded quickly to protect workers from Covid but pressures at home mounted
In the early stages of the pandemic, MFIs were addressing operational and health challenges and implemented measures that seemed to quell worker anxiety for a while. Many offered Covid testing, PPE, mental and physical care as well as insurance. Banco Solidario in Ecuador took additional steps, such as rolling out a vaccine program in partnership with the government to cover 3,000 staff. They also offered door-to-door transportation, food bonuses, and conducted home visits to remote workers to check in on their mental health (and potential domestic violence issues). MiBanco Peru equipped staff with home office equipment, embedded remote work into jobs, and re-shaped work processes to eliminate bureaucracy and create greater efficiencies. They created special conditions for pregnant women and staff caring for sick family members. MiCrédito in Nicaragua provided financial benefits for workers with families affected by Covid to help address the added costs of care. They focused on staff mental health and on making sure staff felt like they were treated “with humanity.” For example, on staff birthdays, they would hold a zoom party and send pizza and balloons to their home. MiBanco’s staff satisfaction in mid-2021 surprised even their management, with 92% reporting they were satisfied. In the case of Banco Compartamos, staff retention increased from before the pandemic.
Structural changes to worker conditions will be slower and more challenging
These emergency Covid mitigation measures were important, but I asked these leaders the extent to which these are becoming permanent, structural changes. After all, these new policies come with a cost. Many leaders consider that some changes, such as flex-work, will be permanent in a post-pandemic future. This suggests that the challenge of work-home balance will not go away even if the pandemic does. Some have recognized that worker burnout needs new HR structures and approaches.
In mid-2021, MiBanco Colombia surveyed staff to understand what issues they were facing and found increases in problems such as domestic violence at home. They have since retrained and repurposed HR staff to deal with domestic violence and consistently reach out to every staff person to check in. At MiCrédito in Nicaragua, they are piloting branches with rooms for the children of staff to participate in online school near their parents. MiBanco pan-Latin America now implements a “Triple Check”, to assess the client, the worker, and the Bank when implementing new policies. At Banco Compartamos, HR boasts a “FISEP” model, which considers the physical, intellectual, social, emotional, and personal aspects of work. They have rolled out a series of webinars on work-family balance, mental health and other important issues for staff. “Field staff participates with their whole family, it is gratifying to see this,” says the Head of HR.
Many of the MFIs in this piece guaranteed some commissions and reduced loan and client growth targets for remote and flex workers without a corresponding cut in pay. “We had to go through pain to change our reality and become more human,” explained one leader as she reflected about the potential permanence of some of the changes in her institution. The pandemic is shining a light on the difficult conditions of working in microfinance, particularly for field staff. Field staff are expected to manage portfolios of hundreds of clients, carefully balancing loan portfolio growth, new client acquisition, retention and repayment goals along the way, as Czura, Englmaier, Ho, and Spantig note in their recent piece on the pandemic impacts on loan officers in India (2022) [we’ll be publishing a post by the authors shortly]. At the same time, much of their compensation is variable and success-based rather than fixed, even when external conditions are not conducive to their success. One big question is whether loan targets and loan officer compensation can change to reduce the stress of meeting ambitious targets while balancing work, home, and financial responsibilities, without attendant changes in established MFI business models.
Not making hard changes may challenge the future role of women in the leadership of this sector
In many ways, the microfinance sector is not unique. The entire world is dealing with “The Great Resignation.” But MFIs have social objectives and a broad mission of inclusivity that sets them apart from many traditional businesses. We are seeing that some are beginning to consider new strategies to promote work-life balance both to support their staff and reduce attrition. This could have short-term cost implications. However, if alternatively, MFIs continue to place unrealistic expectations on their staff, this will disproportionately affect women and lead to further female attrition. Andares Mujeres is warning against this outcome. In a 2015 study, we found only about a third of MFI leadership in Latin America comprised of women, despite over 50% of total staff being female. The report emphasizes that “equity begins at home” and that if MFIs want to show their female clients that they value women and their contributions, they must also show that they promote women internally. But if the attrition continues, there may be no women left to promote.
