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Being a Sensitive Employer
So the policies that are going to be most effective in helping you retain new parents and support them and grow your company and grow your industry are those that are completely untied to gender, that are fair for everyone, that don’t even label… a couple of years ago, there was sort of this trend toward primary parent, secondary parent, until everybody realized, “Oh gosh, well, that tends to divide along gender lines, first of all, and secondly, isn’t what we want actually, an even balance or at least, the right for parents to make that decision and decide for themselves how they want to split it down.” And also, any mothers who were breastfeeding, I think, kind of automatically felt like they had to be the primary parent and then the secondary ended up being dad, and then dad didn’t take as much leave.
Anyway, so first and foremost, it’s about having the same amount of leave for adoptive parents, same-sex parents, moms, dads, across the board. Let individual families make their own decisions about what works in their home and in terms of their income because if you have dads in the workplace saying, “I’m taking less leave,” what they’re really saying is, “My salary is more important. My work in the workplace counts more and is worth more money,” and that’s a perpetuating problem that ultimately impacts women’s paycheck and contributes to the motherhood penalty.
So it is also about acknowledging that in the United States, employees are generally back at work before they’re physically and emotionally ready to be there, being sensitive to that, and then really tending to their phase-back. One really, really useful thing that’s been shown to work internationally in terms of retaining women is to offer a phase-back program that is full pay for even as little as a month or six weeks, but you have someone working a three-day week. That little bit of extra time helps tremendously.
If new parents have a grandparent close by or if dad is able to take intermittent leave, offer intermittent leave if you are an employer. It lets baby get a little bit older before baby’s in somebody else’s care and a little bit less vulnerable and potentially healthier.
So there are all kinds of things that you can do. If you can’t necessarily give six months of paid leave to your employees, you can do a lot to manage that gap between when they’re coming back and when that six or seven months would be up and just be sensitive to that transition time and know that it ultimately can set people up for long-term satisfaction if it’s handled well.
Creating a Culture of Openness
One thing that managers can do is they can really be supportive of new parents talking about their kids in the workplace. They can themselves demonstrate if they have older children or grown children or even an aging parent who needs care. Be open about that personal life need in the workplace. Say that you’re leaving because you are going to coach Little League or whatever it is or you’re going to the doctor, whatever it is. Be open about that.
It’s really important for managers to model the kind of openness that they want to foster in their employees because if you’re working for someone and they hide everything about their parenthood in the workplace, you think that that’s the ideal, and you don’t feel welcome to share it yourself. But we all know that people who feel like whole human beings at work bring so much of their personal lives to work in a way that ultimately fuels the work that they do, that makes them more committed, more dedicated.
And to be fair, a lot of these managers are from, potentially, a generation before or even two generations before these current workers who are primarily millennials. However, what we see, everything we know about millennial workers who are going to be 75% of the workforce by the year 2025, so it’s happening is that they expect to bring their whole lives to work. And if you can’t manage around that and you can’t imagine what that is like, you’re going to be outdated really, really quickly, as is your company.
Managing a Big Ask
I think the biggest piece of advice for managers who are being asked something that is a big ask, that’s hard is to really listen, is to listen to what the needs are. The person may be proposing a plan that doesn’t work, but chances are their need is based in something that you might be able to tend to another way. So my best advice would be do not give an answer. If your answer is no, don’t say that no right in that moment. Say, “Let me think about it” and then really go and think about it. Or you can even ask the employee who’s come to you to do a little research about, “Well, other people have had this dilemma too at other companies that are our competitors. How has it worked there? I’ll look into it while you look into it. Let’s both look into it and continue the conversation.”
But it’s really important to show that you are engaged in your employees’ wellness, mental health, and that you encourage them to come to you when they have a problem. Otherwise, they will spiral and not come to you, and you will be left without an employee.