Startup Parent Work Flexibility is the Future — Annie Dean, co-Founder of Werk
#002 — Thirty percent of talented women drop out of the workforce, not because they want to, but because the way work looks is outdated, flawed, and fails women and families on a regular basis. And a full 70% of those women would still be working if they had access to better (or any) workplace flexibility.
What would it do for our economy and businesses if we weren’t losing so ambitious, committed employees so rapidly? The corporate world is stuck in a structural model that is a relic of the post-Industrial era. Today’s guest on the show is an entrepreneur building a simple, yet revolutionary answer that makes the world fit women—rather than trying to make women fit into the world.
Annie Dean is the Co-CEO of Werk, a company that pre-negotiates flexibility with top companies and creates a standard model, with definitions, of what flexibility looks like in the workplace. For too long, the idea of flexibility has been poorly defined, and they quickly changed that.
Annie shares her belief that flexibility is the future of feminism. Her company seeks to create compatibility between the objectives of the employer and the needs of the employee via simple modifications to the structure of work. Too many women are quitting or opting for less ambitious roles in a forced choice between career and care, and Werk is on mission to update company policies to reflect modern realities and provide women with the opportunity to reach the highest ranks of leadership.
Today we discuss the public’s response to Werk, from the backlash from both liberals and conservatives, to their highly discussed piece in the New York Times and how Annie faces the challenge of changing the narrative around women in the workplace.
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About Annie Dean and Werk
Annie Dean spent six years in corporate law, negotiating billion-dollar real estate transactions for institutional lenders and equity owners. After giving birth to her first son, Annie realized that the expectations and pressures of 16-hour days at the firm were setting her up for failure. Ever the overachiever, she co-founded Werk to repair the leadership pipeline and make the workplace compatible with parenting.
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