The amazing (and sometimes inexpensive) things workplaces are putting in place to support working parents
Last year, Victorian parents spent months with school-aged and childcare aged children at home with them while they attempted to work. A truly unprecedented (I know, I’m sorry) endeavour for employers and parents to negotiate. Unsurprisingly, some fared better than others, and an organisation’s current turnover data is likely providing a good indication about how your employees judged your performance over the last year.
But now, as children (in NSW and Victoria, specifically) return back home, the concept is now – precedented.
And what a great precedent many organisations have set. I’ve spoken to a bunch of employees and managers across multiple industries and here’s a sample of the supports employers have put in place to support parents.
Role modelling
This is critical. If your leaders don’t demonstrate a real commitment to the support policies your organization is put in place, your people will be worried to access them.
You can role model by having your kids in zoom meetings, asking how your people’s children are going, seeing which support mechanisms are working and welcome kids in to zoom meetings. Role modelling is especially important for men and for men to normalize and expect caretaking from other men.
Leave & Hour Reductions
Implementing a specific leave type to support employees with caring responsibilities or all employees. This can be an extension of annual leave or personal leave or a totally new leave type. It can have restrictions (used by X dates, used X days per week). Because it’s not a legislative required leave type organisations have formulated approaches that work for them.
Many employers introduced reduced hours. Examples include a 6 hour work day or 75% of hours across the week, for the same pay. Other organisations negotiated reduced time fractions for reduced pay.
Flexible hours and reduced meetings
Abandoning start and end times to allow people to divide care and work between parents (see more on what you can do to support gender equality during this time here)
Blocking out meeting times. Some orgainsations had no meetings before 9.30am or after 4pm. Others only had meetings for employees doing the juggle for a 2 hours a day (setting up virtual drop in meetings)
Adjusting roles and responsibilities
Lots of organisations spoke about changing roles and responsibilities based on peoples capacity and capability. Some staff found that this gave junior staff a chance to step up and develop. Reprioritise work in a meaningful way.
Kids classes and activities
Lots of organisation arranged activities for kids, with a mix of using existing staff or investing in professional support. Ideas include:
Providing programs through providers like Kids Co
Organising a teacher or early childcare educator to run a virtual activity like a music or dance class
Staff reading stories over zoom
Subscription to a streaming service like Disney or apps like Reading Eggs or Together App
Having craft supplies or activities like Kiwi Co Crates delivered.
Acknowledgments and Gifts
Acknowledgements and gifts were used by lots of organisations. Ideas include delivering cakes, chocolates, Uber Eats vouchers. The tricky thing with this is that employees prefer no gift to a stingy one. If the budget isn’t there better to go with specific, heartfelt acknowledgments than a gift that’s too small scale.
Wellbeing supports
Organisations had a great and cost effective ways to support wellbeing, these include:
Allocating someone to check-in on employee’s wellbeing regularly (one employee used a text 1 for good and 2 for bad system and a HR manager called all the ‘2s’)
Targeted counselling (for example on parenting, financial counselling etc) through employee assistance programs, specific sessions run by the EAP on burnout, resilience and parenting and EAP portals with information
Waiving the need for medical evidence for personal leave
Connection and information
Connect employees to support each other with support groups for parents with children of a similar age – using existing communication channels like Workplace, teams, yammer)
Lots of organisations used their communication channels to share information and tips – like this Royal Children’s Hospital seminar on supporting children’s mental health.