According to OptimHire’s hiring statistics, the adoption of remote work culture post pandemic has resulted in a 70% YoY increase in women’s employment as compared to 2020.

History shows that pandemics have resulted in significant fundamental changes. The recent global COVID-19 crisis was no exception as it brought forth profound changes and forced us to adapt new ways of living and working.

Despite being in terrible shape, the world adopted digital tools so swiftly that a decade’s worth of digitisation happened nearly overnight. We have seen a major shift in the work dynamics with work from anywhere, work from home, and hybrid work (a mix of both) culture taking over the way work happens.

With this new work culture in place, it became easier to hire women, people located in rural areas, and talent present across the globe who were difficult to hire for full-time roles earlier because of distance or their commitments at home.

Talking about positive changes post pandemic, many women entered or re-entered the workforce who would not have done so otherwise due to social constraints and family responsibilities.

Even though the pandemic was a global catastrophe, remote working has proven to be advantageous for the female workforce.

“The Pandemic is Creating an Opportunity to Bring More Women into India’s Workforce” – N. Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Sons.

It’s no secret that the pandemic has prompted a tremendous transformation in the way people work, with remote employment becoming the new standard. This has sparked an increase in female participation, as remote employment offers flexibility and a better work-life balance, encouraging women to take control of their careers.

Let’s take a look at the key drivers of this massive change in the modern workforce, which has resulted in significant growth in the number of working women.

1. No more exhausting commutes to work

Women coming to urban areas for work from remote villages or suburbs or different ends of the city often have to face exhaustive traveling experiences. With remote work, there will be no more tiresome journeys to work, allowing women to spend more time with their families because they won’t have to travel anymore. This will also result in significant cost savings and travel time.

“I had my first experience of remote working when my husband had some medical emergency. I worked from home for a month. Then, went back to work. But then again due to the pandemic, we started working from home and started working from the office once again when the lockdown was lifted. After that, I left that job and consciously chose OptimHire because it allowed me to work from home, which made my life simple and way more smooth. With re-mote working, the most peaceful thing is that I don’t have to travel anymore. I can give time to my family and save lots and lots of money. No petrol money, no need to spend money on vehicle and most importantly, now my family is immensely happy that I can be with them whenever they need me and I can adjust my working schedule according to our convenience.”

– Varsha Hingmire, Team Lead, OptimHire

2. Flexible working hours

Gone are the days when restrictive work hours made it difficult for women to think about their family obligations or their personal well-being. With the advent of remote work culture also comes flexibility and a healthy work-life balance. Remote work ena-bles flexible work shifts which allow employees to plan their day as per their conven-ience. Even businesses these days are now focusing on quality output rather than binding employees to restrictive work hours.

Having a 100% remote workforce, OptimHire is leading the way by allowing women to seamlessly balance their professional and personal lives. We believe in cultivating a productive environment rather than enforcing long working hours and hence women account for 70% of workforce at OptimHire.

“The best part of working from home is the flexible timing. Being a married woman I have lots of responsibilities. Earlier when I was working on-site, I had to finish all my household chores by 9 am and reach the office by 10 am. Household chores included cooking breakfast and lunch, cleaning and dust-ing, etc. To wrap up everything on time at home would be very hectic. Though my office ended at 6 pm, due to Ahmedabad’s traffic, I would reach home by 7:30/8 pm which would leave me no time to rest and I have to directly jump on to completing household chores. This was very exhausting. Now when I work from home, I have flexible timings and hence start working whenever I finish my household chores and finish them accordingly within that day. I have no fixed login and log out times. Hence I have no pending work left. I can gladly say that with flexible timing, my output has been so good that I was promoted twice in a year.”

– Nisha Gandhi, Team Manager, OptimHire

3. Apply for job opportunities anywhere in the world

One of the most significant advantages of this new way of working is that it makes job opportunities available to a wider range of people and enables more diversified hiring, allowing companies to hire best talent from across the globe.

OptimHire allows candidates to find best-fit companies from all around the world that offer remote work for mid to senior level positions which helps them in expanding their career horizons. OptimHire is helping candidates looking for tech roles to apply to the best companies across the globe, hence offering them a chance to work with a globally diverse workforce.

4. Balancing chores and work

Due to family duties or childcare obligations, many female employees are forced to forego a well-defined job function. This causes mental distress as women have to hold back from certain challenges and growth opportunities in the workplace. Thanks to remote work culture, women are able to balance their life better while also taking charge of their careers.

“I am a young mother. I took a break from work after my child’s birth and slowly started freelancing once he started going to school. I didn’t want to go for any full-time onsite work. Since I need to drop and pick him up and then spend time with him along with my personal space and household chores. Hence, I couldn’t afford to go out and travel for work. OptimHire allowed me to work from home with flexible timing. In this way, I could restart my career and also balance my childcare duties along with my career.”

– Sruthi Raju, Creative Designer, OptimHire

5. Working from the safety and comfort of their homes

Nearly, 120 million Indian women have completed their higher secondary education. However, only 23% are employed of all women who are eligible to work.

The lack of fundamental safety regulations for women while in office or while traveling is one of the reasons many women hesitate from onsite jobs. Remote work, however, allows women to work from the comfort of their homes, eliminating safety concerns to a great extent. Furthermore, working from home increases productivity since women are able to be physically present at home and hence feel less stressed about their responsibilities at home.

“Earlier when I worked from the office, I had my family with me to help me balance my two worlds very easily. But once we shifted and had to look after my children along with my work, it was getting very difficult for me. Now with OptimHire, when I work remotely, I can easily manage and work comfortably from home without compromising on any of the worlds.”

– Purva Vyas, Team Lead, OptimHire

The Final Word

In countries like India, where due to social and cultural constraints many talented and capable women were not able to participate in workforce can now be employed. The global COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to pursue work in a way that makes economic sense, reducing the waste of brainpower by encouraging more women participation in the global workforce.

Remote work has brought a revolution, and by strategically adapting it, we can create productive workplaces while lowering operational and capital company expenses and better responding to people’s demands. We can now design smarter, fairer, empathic, and better ways to run a business and move forward thanks to remote work.

Women account for 70% of the workforce at OptimHire since we have a remote, flexible, all-inclusive, and empathetic work culture in place – We, at OptimHire, are making the most of this new way of working as you could see our outstanding numbers.

Now the question is, are you?

It is evident that remote work is transforming the work landscape for women and we have enough stories at OptimHire to back this.

Have you or someone you know started a new remote job? What were the consequences? Were they able to turn their life for greater good? We’d be thrilled to hear your stories!