Organizations Thrive When Parents Do Too
Unlocking Organizational Success: A Deep Dive into the Correlation between Supporting Working Parents and Business Growth
I talk about parenting a lot on LinkedIn because I see the potential that organizations are leaving on the table.
My friend, Leah Ward, founder of Seedling Stage, shared a Times article titled As People Return to Offices, It’s Back to Misery for America’s Working Moms. In it, writer Alana Semuels wrote about how the workforce is beginning to revert to its old ways, spelling trouble for working Moms.
Alana wrote:
Evidence suggests that the increase in companies enforcing return-to-office mandates may drive American mothers out of the workforce at a crucial moment. Those 72 minutes matter, perhaps now more than ever. The skyrocketing cost of housing has made it much more difficult for families to live close to corporate jobs in cities, causing commute times to balloon. (People taking public transit to work had an average commute of 50.6 minutes each way in 2019.) Jobs in industries like law and finance are “greedier” than they used to be, leaving employees with grueling schedules — and their partners to pick up the household slack. Mothers are far from the only workers affected by these changes, but the data about their experiences provides a crucial window into the impact of working from home.
As the pandemic made its way throughout America, mothers were disproportionately affected by job changes.
By January 2021, mothers’ active work status was 6.4 percentage points lower than in January 2020 and fathers’ active work status was 5.9 points lower, narrowing the initial gender gap of 6.4 points in April to 0.5 points in January.
The pandemic gave many of us a taste of remote work, and speaking as a parent, remote work was one of the tiny numbers of benefits of a worldwide shutdown.
Every minute that I would have spent in the office, looking at a laptop and typing with my headphones on was now spent at home, where 30-minute chats with colleagues about last night's game were now spent doing yoga with the kids or taking my dogs for a walk.
And I was just as productive. Sometimes more.
“The pandemic gave me a taste of what my life could be like — I could get excellent reviews at work and still felt like I’m being a good mom,” said the woman, who didn’t want her name used because she is still looking for a new job. “Why are we trying to push so hard to go back to this previous reality that wasn’t working so well?”
I hear the arguments about workplace culture and the importance of being in person. At times, those 30-minute chats about last night's game built a level of trust between myself and a hiring manager that would otherwise be challenging to reproduce over zoom.
But coffee chats don’t sustain culture. A sustainable culture is measured by how well your people thrive in all aspects of their lives. For moms and parents in general, our ability to thrive starts with our connections at home.
A flexible schedule allows people to live well outside of work. Flexibility will enable parents to get their kids off to school in the morning, sit down for dinner and enjoy a slow/chaotic meal, and read their favorite bedtime stories as their children fall asleep. These are priceless moments that organizations should encourage their people to lean into.
Not solely because it’s the right thing to do but because it’s financially practical.
PeopleKeep reports that turnover can cost a company:
One to two times an employee’s annual salary
$1,500 for hourly employees
100% to 150% of an employee’s salary for technical positions
Up to 213% of an employee’s salary for C-suite positions
Not actively driving working parents away from their jobs is a wise business decision, no matter how you look at it.
Can every job be done from home? No, of course not.
Are there benefits to in-person work? For sure!
But sacrificing family time should not be a pre-requisite for job offers and promotions. Like everything, it takes balance, and who understands balance better than parents?