Employers need to assume there are going to be disruptions and be flexible should schools reopen, according to Dr Anna Borg, the Director for the Centre of Labour Studies at the University of Malta.

With almost a month left to go till schools are planned to reopen – on the 28th September, as announced by the Ministry of Education – parents, employers and stakeholders have been looking ahead as to whether this remains a possibility, in the context of rising virus numbers, and what plans can be made in the interim.

“Employers need to plan ahead, since, with the rate going up, there are going to be many more workers in quarantine, especially in autumn and winter during the normal flu season. So, disruptions will happen, and employers need to assume this and need to start preparing for this. They need to have backup plans, so they won’t be surprised,” Dr Borg said in comments to The Malta Business Observer, when asked what the likely impact of schools reopening could be on the labour market.

To this end, employers need to “cross-train their employees, so they can work where possible, to cover for each other” as well as “ensure flexible working is possible”, particularly in terms of “temporal and spatial flexibility,” ensuring a focus on outcomes, rather than the time when or where the work is done, Dr Borg explained.

“There’s a lot of catching up to be done by employers. If you trust your employees, then the most important thing is output,” she continued, adding that there should also be an option to schedule working times around current challenges. “This would mean that, rather than working an eight-hour day, for instance, employees can increase the hours when children are at school, or, if a rota system has been implemented for schools, allow employees to trade shifts or to job share,” she added.

In such a context, employers may need additional support from Government, Dr Borg asserted, underlining that “Government should be a role model and a leader”, in terms of offering the necessary flexibility, since “the private sector will learn from what Government is doing, and will get clear guidelines.”

Indeed, clarity is key, she insisted, criticising mixed messages which have conveyed a sense that “everything is okay, when it clearly isn’t. Employers cannot have things changing all the time, so it’s important that the right messages are being given, and these need to be clear,” she said.

Zooming in on the alternative – what would happen if schools had to go back online – Dr Borg said the impact on workers will depend on the age of students. “There’s a distinction between pre-schoolers, students in primary school, or those in secondary, since younger children are more problematic,” and this is because they need more help in their online education and more attention and care, which makes it “difficult to work”.

Indeed, the impact of such a decision should not be generalised but assessed on a “caseby- case basis”, Dr Borg said. “Let’s look into the needs of particular families, the age of the children, what the parents do, and the size of the house,” she said, outlining the factors which would have an effect on how employees, and the self-employed, could deal with more months of online schooling.

However, despite the need to look at the unique circumstances of each family, women are more likely to be negatively affected by either situation, Dr Borg asserted, since “mothers were already taking on more responsibility than fathers” and, in the context of the pandemic, “it’s very clear that mothers bore the brunt of home schooling, and suffered more tension,” though she said that these insights have been garnered from studies conducted abroad, as, so far, little formal research has been done locally in this regard.