Why Organizations Should Prioritize a Family-Friendly Approach to Help Working Parents
For years, many caregivers sought to achieve a “balance” that allowed their work responsibilities and family demands to peacefully coexist. Surely, many felt, it must be possible to excel in or, at the very least, feel satisfied with both realms.
Commonly touted solutions often suggested simple fixes to this complex problem: if only they could define boundaries, communicate more effectively, or find the right support, then work-life balance would naturally fall into place.
But then COVID hit, and the collision of work and home life created a tipping point. The pandemic’s shift to homeschooling and virtual work led many working parents — especially women — to take a step back in their careers, or to leave the workforce entirely. Exhausted caregivers left their jobs in record numbers, and organizations are still feeling the effects today.
While offices have reopened and women’s employment numbers have since bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, senior organizational leaders continue to grapple with how to attract, develop, and retain women leaders (and ways to support working parents or other caregivers in general).
For those with caregiving responsibilities whose jobs can be done from home, many say that they want to continue working remotely at least some of the time. A study from the Pew Research Center reveals that 71% of employees who work from home at least sometimes say this helps them balance work with their personal lives.
Increased flexibility in the workplace comes as a long-awaited relief for working parents who struggled even before the pandemic to juggle both parenting and leadership responsibilities.
Is the idea of “balance” more attainable at last?
Organizations Must Lead the Way to Support Those Balancing Caregiving & Leadership
Certainly, flexible work arrangements help, but the golden notion of “balance” probably still feels beyond reach for many caregivers and working parents, and for good reason: we consider work-life “balance” to be a faulty metaphor.
It’s simply not possible for parents and caregivers to be fully present for their employers and their families all the time, while also taking care of their own health and wellbeing.
And the truth is, caregivers shouldn’t be forced to seek this equilibrium without organizational support.
If your organization is reconsidering how it’s supporting working parents and caregivers, you’ll want to ensure that you’re creating an environment where all your employees can thrive by offering equitable family leave policies, hybrid and remote work options, and ample growth and development opportunities.
For companies to support working parents and attract and retain top talent, they must be willing to acknowledge the juggle between parenting and leadership responsibilities, connecting leadership and employee wellbeing. It starts with managers who can create environments where others thrive — reducing stress and burnout while increasing morale and productivity, yielding people who thrive and a workforce that is flourishing.
Here are some specific actions that organizations can take to signal they’re serious about supporting working parents — and all employees who are caregivers.
Supporting Working Parents, Caregivers & All Employees: 5 Tips
Specific Actions That Organizational Leaders Can Take
1. Offer fair and inclusive family leave policies.
Workers now have more bargaining power. Companies don’t want to lose talent, so employees can often enact change by calling attention to archaic and inequitable leave policies, courageously asking for the support they need from their organizations. While these conversations are useful, we still believe the onus and impetus to adopt more inclusive leave policies should fall on employers, not on employees. Specifically:
- Organizations are charged first with recognizing that families come in all shapes and sizes. To create more inclusive policies around time off from work, “maternity leave” policies should be reframed as “parental leave” — or even better, caretaker or family leave — to reflect an expanded definition of caregiving. Providing care for a family member isn’t limited to biological mothers and new babies, and caregiving for children often includes fathers, grandparents, adoptive parents, spouses or partners, etc. Leave policies should also cover an employee taking time off work to care for any family member — including aging parents, sick partners, adolescent children, those with special needs, etc.
- Further, managers should normalize actually using the available leave to focus on caregiving. Simply renaming your maternity leave policy to a “parental leave” policy is not enough; senior leaders should also actively encourage new fathers and domestic partners to take the available leave (and model this behavior themselves where applicable). This signals that your organization is serious about enabling employees to bring their whole selves to work and helps combat ingrained stigmas and societal expectations that a mother’s role as caretaker is more essential than a father’s.
When organizations offer inclusive family leave policies, they’re better able to compete for talent and retain strong performers. That’s why both company language and culture should be explicitly and intentionally inclusive, so that taking time away from work to care for a family member seems (and actually is) equally accessible.
2. Be a champion for flexibility by extending it to all employees.
Flexible work policies aren’t effective (and can actually be quite harmful) when they’re only available to a select group, or in specific scenarios. While many talent managers might acknowledge that a new parent on their team just returning from leave might need additional flexibility in their schedule, it’s important that managers remind employees that flexibility is available to everyone.
According to research, people without children sometimes feel they’re expected to pick up extra work while colleagues with children are granted increased flexibility. This dynamic not only inequitably burdens employees without children, it also creates an environment that positions flexibility as an organizational weakness instead of a strength. But the opposite is actually true.
In addition, many employers realized in the early days of COVID that they don’t have to trade flexibility for productivity. On the contrary, studies revealed that productivity actually increased as many employees shifted to remote work. With this in mind:
- Don’t assume that your organization should resume the same work arrangements after the pandemic as before. Many things have changed in recent years, so carefully consider the necessity and impact of return-to-office announcements. Evaluate the potential impact to all your employees, including those who are balancing caregiving, parenting, and leadership.
- Offer employees as much autonomy as you can in determining work schedules and locations, including remote and hybrid work options. Regardless of whether they have children, employees who have the freedom and flexibility to schedule when and where they work are more productive with the time they have. You’ll improve employee retention post-pandemic with flexible work arrangements that enable a greater sense of control, leading to more engaged, productive, and loyal employees.
3. Support Employee Resource Groups.
Also known as “affinity groups” or “business networking groups,” Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are formed by employees who share common characteristics. Within these informal groups, members provide one another with support, career development, and professional networking. In recent years, such groups for caregivers have gained popularity, as working parents and others struggling with balancing family, caregiving, or parenting and leadership challenges found they needed a network for support and advice.
Your organization can help ERGs become even more impactful through your support. Here are a few ideas:
- Assist ERGs in being inclusive and in achieving specific goals; for example, providing resources, learning opportunities, and connections with other working parents or caregivers throughout the organization.
- Share ERG goals and immediate wins with your executive leadership team to encourage senior-level sponsorship and engagement.
4. Offer flexible opportunities for leadership development.
When working parents and other caregivers are feeling challenged by work-life conflict, leadership development can give them new skillsets and mindsets to adapt and show up in the ways they’d like to — both at work and at home.
For example, our flagship Leadership Development Program (LDP)® introduces participants to the idea of a button with 4 holes as a symbol for holistic leadership. The button helps participants remember that leaders are most effective when they understand how the 4 elements of their lives — self, family, career, and community — are woven together in an interconnected way, working in tandem to strengthen their leadership and enrich their lives.
- Offer training and professional development opportunities that build capacity and resilience. Incorporating vertical development as well as horizontal development can aid those who are balancing caregiving and leadership through the process of reconciling colliding perspectives.
- Avoid overwhelming their already full schedules. Acknowledge training as an important business priority, and provide participants with the space and time needed away from work to focus on their development, as well as to integrate the learnings into their daily routines. Working parents and other types of caregivers need options for how they engage in leadership development opportunities, including the format that best fits their needs. Whether it’s face-to-face training, virtual development programs, asynchronous learning, or a combination of formats, providing flexible development opportunities in a variety of modalities will help your employees balance parenting and leadership demands, while improving engagement and retention of your talent.
5. Support employees who choose to “power down” and stay the course.
Some caregivers, particularly women, may choose or be forced to step away from their careers entirely for a period of time to focus on child-rearing or other family needs. This was common before the pandemic, and data shows that COVID accelerated the trend, as it disproportionally impacted women, with remote schooling in particular causing many women to step back from their careers or leave the workforce, either temporarily or permanently.
- When an employee expresses a desire to step back, leaders can signal support for working parents by supporting this decision and also offering an alternative. Caregivers may not need to leave their organizations entirely, if they can adjust the demands of their roles. People managers can show compassionate leadership whenever and wherever possible by providing opportunities for parents or caregivers on their teams to reduce their hours temporarily if needed and enable them to stay connected through professional networks. To ensure caregivers avoid losing momentum in their careers when doing this, managers should have candid conversations about what the “powered down” period will look like, when it might end or be reviewed, and how they can support working parents or caregivers when they do ease fully back into work.
Learn 10 specific tips for juggling parenting and leadership in our book, Kick Some Glass: 10 Ways Women Succeed at Work. Co-authors Jennifer Martineau and Portia Mount explore the “power down” alternative for mothers to accommodate childbirth and child-rearing, balancing caregiving and career. The “power down” advice is widely applicable as a way of supporting working parents and caregivers in general.- Organizations can also pair younger employees with more senior mentors and sponsors who are willing to provide guidance and support, as well as advocate on their behalf. While mentoring at work is beneficial for all employees, such programs can be especially critical in supporting and retaining talented women leaders. Learn more about how and why sponsoring and mentoring women leaders is so important.
Help Caregivers Bring Their Whole Selves to Parenting & Leadership
While many companies around the world have publicly made claims about supporting working parents in the past few years, many have not followed through and lack measures that actually change their policies, processes, and culture.
To show your internal and external stakeholders that you’re genuinely committed to making real and sustainable change, your organization must evaluate your current practices and make upgrades where necessary — including addressing outdated leave policies to better support those struggling with caregiving, parenting, leadership, and workplace responsibilities.
Properly supported working parents and other caregivers will become better, healthier leaders at work, at home, and within their communities — leading to positive impact for your organization that’s much greater than an annual retention report might reveal.
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If you’re interested in supporting working parents and enabling caregivers at your organization to stay and thrive, thereby attracting, retaining, and engaging more talent, sign up for our newsletters to get our latest research, tips, and insights on leadership.
