Moms at Work founder Allison Venditti on return-to-office mandates

For this week’s MVP, we’re chatting with Allison Venditti.

Five years ago, Allison Venditti, a human resources professional in Toronto, pivoted mid-pandemic—with three kids under 10, by the way—to build the space and service she desperately needed but didn’t yet exist. Moms at Work is a support network for working mothers looking to connect, meet, make friends and, yes, commiserate about the old boys’ club that’s back in business post-COVID and pushing hard for a return to the status quo.

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From our sponsor

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Studies suggest remote and hybrid workers in many sectors have equal (or higher) productivity and engagement compared to in-office workers, and 79% of Canadians prefer it. Only 21% preferred full-time in-office. Yet, businesses big and small are implementing return-to-office (RTO) mandates that have Venditti and her mom-army up in arms.

This MVP profile is all about why the moms are mad and what they plan to do about it.

Tell me about how Moms at Work was born?

I started Moms at Work when I also had a full HR consultancy firm. It wasn’t planned; the only reason Moms at Work happened was because I was coaching and doing all the HR things and I capped out.

I realized my clients didn’t always need me; they needed each other. Most of what I was doing was saying “you should know so-and-so” and “do you know this person?” And I had a year-long waitlist I couldn’t possibly handle.

So I said, “Let’s make them into a community.” We started with 60 people, thinking they’d stay for a few months. But six months later, they were all still there. I scaled up, started another group and merged them. Now the collective is about 450 people, but the community is much larger—25,000 on Facebook and 70,000 on LinkedIn.

How does your business model work?

All our money comes from the collective. There are no brand partnerships, no sponsorships, no anything. It’s just the collective, and that funds our advocacy and all the free stuff we put out into the world. Most everything is free, intentionally, because we want everybody to access our programming. And that’s it; that’s the business model.

I run a small team and I work part-time, from home, Monday to Thursday. We don’t work Fridays, or on PA days, or over the winter break. We don’t work on March Break and we don’t work the last week of summer.

Sounds like a mom-dream! But RTOs are here now, so what’s the collective’s vibe on that?

Bad. Really bad. They’re stupid, and I’m going off. These companies faced a global crisis and begged people to keep their companies going: “Please work from home, please make sure things don’t collapse, you’re the most valuable thing ever, blah, blah, blah.”

Workers stepped up, and we delivered. We showed we could work this way and work better. Now they’re trying to change their minds and for reasons like commercial real estate, just doing whatever they want. By “they,” I mean men, by the way. Return to work mandates are absolutely done by dudes.

Can you tell me a little bit about the legalities?

Unfortunately, it’s totally legal because it’s an “employment relationship.” Unless you have it written into your contract, and even if it is written into your contract, a business owner has the right to do whatever they want as long as they give people significant notice.

Of course, people are trying to fight this. The union for the federal government is fighting it. So, we have lawsuits pending. But in the meantime, as someone who works with employers, I encourage them to make the right choice. There’s what’s legal—and there’s what’s right. And those are two very different standards.

Are you seeing a lot of women, specifically moms and caretakers, choosing to leave their jobs rather than return to the office?

I recently put this question out to our community, actually. We asked people with school-aged children, “Have you made any changes to your career in order to care for your children?” And 75% of respondents said yes. That’s a disgusting number. That’s three-quarters of us saying the system is not working for them.

None of it makes any sense really: Some people commute like four hours every day on top of their work day, while schools run every day from about 9 to 3. This is why so many women say they don’t want to—and won’t—do this anymore. They want to work remotely, part-time or start their own company. All the things we couldn’t get at work we’re going to build for ourselves.

Should I be writing letters? Speaking to a manager? What can regular people do to push back if they don’t want to go back to the old way?

Writing a letter won’t help because you’d only be writing to somebody in a position of power who makes a lot of money by having the rest of us commute downtown, sit in an office building, and spend your money. Getting upset with your manager isn’t going to do anything either because this is not your manager’s decision. They probably don’t want this either.

There’s a huge power dynamic that’s very hard to fight against and workers don’t have many options. Change might be slow, but many people impacted by RTO mandates will indeed be forced out of leadership jobs. But this doesn’t mean they’re gone. Many of them are brilliant and many will start their own thing or go to another company and they’ll be CEO sometime. These people become the big bosses someday and then will they change everything? Oh yes, they will.

Read more from this issue of The Get:

1. Canada’s federal Debt: Should you worry? Is it your problem?
2. The costs of starting over in Canada when you’re from India
3. Do you need $1.5 million (or more!) to retire in Canada?
4. What can a retiree in Canada do to increase their income?