Is Your Company Part of The Village?
All the women I knew as a child were working mothers. I have long held the assumption that if I chose to have children, I would manage a career and building a community would be central to my motherhood journey.
Since returning to work after the birth of my second child, I find myself taking note of all the aspects of my company’s culture and talent systems contributing to my ability to manage my professional and personal responsibilities. If you are responsible for supporting team members who recently added children or other significant caregiver responsibilities to their lives, consider these aspects of my company’s culture and benefits package that I found most supportive to me leading up to and returning from leave after my second child’s birth.
Given my work with InspirED Solutions, I decided that I wanted to provide some advice to organizations thinking about how to support returning parents. When I had my son years ago, I had the benefit of a village that wrapped around me. This time, with my daughter and being in a new community, finding that village has been a bit more difficult. I believe that it’s possible for a company with a thriving staff community to be a part of that village. How?
Help your employees in their search for reliable and quality childcare and back-up care. I started searching for daycare early in my pregnancy. With my first child, I had noticeably fewer choices for daycare centers, but more family and friends than we could ever enlist for loving, safe, reliable care pretty much any time we needed or wanted the help. Choosing childcare has proven to be much more complicated with my second child, as my family has relocated to a new community and I travel regularly for my job. So, what did I do?
I used the Next Door app to request applicants for our current babysitters. There are several other reliable options for locating sitters, nannies, and tutors.
I found a list of accredited daycare providers by using Bright Horizons, an incredible benefit my company offers as part of its benefit package. In the rare event that all of our other regular care-givers are unavailable and I cannot miss work, I can use Bright Horizons to locate daycare options or an in-home caregiver.
Investigate benefits or share information that helps your employees outsource personal responsibilities. Time has become my most elusive and highest valued commodity. I work hard to reserve it for things that have the highest priority and, to do so, I outsource some of my errands and chores. Being able to outsource specific errands and responsibilities is a privilege, but doing so actually gives me time back to both my family and my company.
One of my friends gifted me with house cleaning services as a shower gift for my first born and I extended the services for a year. This could be an amazing gift to give to new caregivers as a part of their benefits package!
My first child was born prior to Amazon's Alexa and Google's Echo and during the early days of home meal delivery services so I implemented my parents’ strategy to ensure we always had our grocery staples and household essentials at home. After an extremely stressful experience grocery shopping with my first born, I reduced trips to my favorite grocery store down to monthly and started buying certain items in bulk quarterly at Costco. By the time my second child arrived, Target, Walmart, and many other retailers had ramped up their online shopping and same-day pick-up or delivery and I utilize these options. These tips from my parents saved my sanity. As an employer, offering support groups (or an Employee Resource Group) for new parents or caregivers could be great strategy for support (more on that below).
Develop your managers on how to support staff members with caregiving responsibilities. Before children, most of my personal responsibilities I completed in the evenings and weekends. The sheer number of doctor visits for my healthy children came as a surprise to me. Ten visits for a well-child during their first year. Then, of course, there were the school obligations once my son became of age. With a vast majority of school events occurring during school hours, I have to plan months in advance for everything related to my home and community. Advanced notice, however, is a luxury, so establishing open and consistent communication with my manager and teammates ensures I can meet expectations and ask for support when the inevitable emergency or last-minute-ask comes my way. As a working parent, my manager can relate to some of the changes and challenges I’m experiencing right now, but I know of managers who do not have children or caregiver responsibilities that are also extremely supportive and empathetic. Weather I ask for help or appear to need additional support, my manager offers strategies to help me stay on track with my professional responsibilities. Companies can codify this practice by putting caregiver support into their leadership development for management.
Establish structures and a culture that promotes parent and caregiver resource groups. I joined two resource groups to extend my village and have a space where I can hear from other parents navigating new personal responsibilities and their professional goals. Resource groups are a core component of our commitment to fostering inclusiveness by giving resources (time, money, and space) for staff members to establish communities based on identity and/or affinity shared with other staff members. In addition to my team, my resource group colleagues extend my community when we convene to share questions, tips, and stories of how we are learning and developing as working parents in a forum that fosters connection.
Some of these resources and approaches do not require additional dollars, but having them has increased my engagement and ensured my retention during this significant life change. Workplace has one of the greatest influences on individual capacity to live a healthy and thriving life, so asking your employees how you can support them as caregivers and parents may provide valuable insight for your employee engagement strategy.
