During the best of times, working parents hold things together through a tenuous tapestry of interdependent supports. These aren’t the best of times. Over the next couple of weeks, the parents you employ will make utterly impossible decisions about the next year of their lives./1
The individual algebra will vary. There will be an infinite number of wholly imperfect family solutions. And no US workplace is prepared to accommodate them all. Here are 5 key actions to take before August to get in front of this 💩 storm./2
#1 - Track caregiver status in your HRIS. Don’t rely on % of employees who utilize parenting benefits to estimate this demographic. Enabling caregiver self-ID facilitates targeted inreach to caregiver subgroups & helps track caregivers’ employment outcomes over time./3
#2 - Survey parents. In one of our May Covid surveys, I was surprised to learn that our parents were faring as well socio-emotionally as their counterparts. However, parents were already past the point of optimism re: the sustainability of Covid working and parenting./4
If you haven’t yet, survey your people as a launch point for building a workplace that effectively meets their needs./5
#3 - Talk to parents. I Slacked our Family ERG last week to see if anyone was willing to chat re: how they approached caregiving decisions for the coming school year. I heard back from a dozen colleagues, each with a unique set of circumstances and considerations./6
That personal exercise left me feeling better connected to and empathetic with my fellow working parents. I see you out here!/7
In the next few weeks, we’ll facilitate semi-structured focus groups to understand more of what parents are struggling with & anticipating. It’s abundantly clear that workplaces will need a dramatic re-envisioning of what supporting parents looks like./8
This is bigger than “flexibility” and FSAs. Covid has magnified all that parents have become accustomed to muscling their way through in order to “have it all.” It was never ok & US employers have an opportunity to fill the huge voids in our broken childcare infrastructure./9
I don’t have any conception of what this next normal will look like for working parents but I am confident that listening is the first step to imagining what’s possible./10
#4 - Center caregivers in your remote work capability building. This isn’t *just* about flexibility but my goodness we have a lot of work to do to make work boundary-less./11
The good news is that the thrust to remote work has already instituted a reckoning for many companies re: how work gets done./12
From the basics of time zones & calendaring conventions to the more substantive work of disciplined operating principles & standardized collaboration tools, leverage parents as critical contributors to your remote work playbook./13
This will ensure that your remote work indoctrination makes things more manageable for the employees with the greatest constraints on their time./14
#5 - Stop sending parents articles about how hard things are for parents right now. Please just stop. We beg you./15
I'm off to email my sons' schools to share that we're not re-enrolling next year. My husband and I have been paying full and half tuition since March to hold their spots in buildings that we know they won't step foot in until at least spring./16
We need to release those funds so we can brainstorm more freely on how we're going to make things work after summer. The options are complicated and none is ideal. But... baby steps.../end
PS - I use the term "parents" in this thread for brevity. I’m referring to all guardians of dependent minors.
PPS - I am focusing squarely on parents right now because they're in urgent need as schools are demanding decisions be made in the next couple of weeks. It's definitely critical to tease out the different caregiver populations in your workforce. See here:
