Does your company’s culture support working parents?
“Bring your best self to work.” We hear this one all the time.
I can tell you the group who is often NOT bringing their best selves to work… working moms. Dads, too! Too often.
I recently saw a good friend for lunch….She reminded me of her work experiences over the past few years with different employers.
One manager she worked with for 10 years and helped build his company. Once she got pregnant and was no longer willing to work a zillion hours and wanted to be a present mom, she was told: ‘I want the old you back. Where is she?’
(“Um, she’s gone. This is the new me.”)
More recently, another woman who works 70+ hour weeks didn’t understand why my friend needed to be at home.
(“Kids are sick. Weren’t you ok with me being at home during the worst of Covid?”)
My friend is a loyal, dedicated employee.
Folks, I think it’s great that people want to work hard but stop asking parents to go back to a pre-children version of themselves that is in conflict with who they are in the present.
The companies, leaders and people who will succeed in the future are the ones who operate with empathy, support and flexibility.
Only then can we say that we allow folks to “bring their best selves to work.”
Because, ask any parent…They will tell you - the best parts of us are our children.
So, how can you now if your company support’s working parents. Here are five things I’d point out:
Your Manager and those in other key leadership roles have a life outside of work that involves service to others. They are coaching their kids baseball team or volunteering in the PTA. They are involved at church or in the local community. Your manager has a life outside of work that matters to them. They talk about it as a priority and a commitment that is important to them. They make time for it.
People ask, in an honestly curious way about your family and your kids. They want to know you. They want to understand your children’s lives and interests. They want to understand your challenges. Your boss is interested because maybe there is some way that he or she can help you. For example, need to leave early to get child to soccer practice.
The company culture doesn’t reward or encourage behaviors that lead to burnout. It is not the norm or the expectation that people should be working 60-70 hour work weeks. On the contrary, leaders will deliberately put strategies in place where this kind of situation does not exist. They will create more reasonable expectations and set more realistic priorities of work to get done because they are concerned about what they are putting on their teams and how that effects them.
People are encouraged to take advantage of the benefits and perks that their company offers. Often times, companies will have many perks and options available to them that are in the benefits plan on the intraweb, but no one knows about them and no one promotes them. Maybe it’s because it’s sort of a passive thing. (“We’ll have them here but if we promote them, what might that do to our environment if too many people start to use them?”) Instead, they are actively promoted and embraced
Managers on their own make up for any inadequacy from the company. They say things like, “I don’t get that policy. Let me see what we can do to change that”, or, “That isn’t going to work in your situation, it sounds like. Let’s do it this way instead”. When needed, they will escalate things to their managers or HR to see if there is an alternative path that can be taken.
So, if you are interviewing for a job and need to understand how the company’s culture will impact you, or, if you are part of a great company culture for parents and want to remind yourself what makes the difference, consider these things.